Every settler’s second biggest fear is that those they oppress are just as bloodthirsty and violent as they are. Every settler’s biggest fear is that they aren’t.
The first is because they worry that if the shoe were on the other foot, they would be the ones marginalized and destroyed, the second dismantles their entire worldview, their entire idea that everything is “us vs them” that the enemy will destroy us unless we destroy them first, they justify the existence of their colonial states by insisting that if they didn’t conquer, they would be the ones conquered. But if people aren’t all violent conquerors, if people can be peaceful and work together, it means that the entire western imperialist worldview is fundamentally wrong.
Every settler’s second biggest fear is that those they oppress are just as bloodthirsty and violent as they are. Every settler’s biggest fear is that they aren’t.
Why?
The first is because they worry that if the shoe were on the other foot, they would be the ones marginalized and destroyed, the second dismantles their entire worldview, their entire idea that everything is “us vs them” that the enemy will destroy us unless we destroy them first, they justify the existence of their colonial states by insisting that if they didn’t conquer, they would be the ones conquered. But if people aren’t all violent conquerors, if people can be peaceful and work together, it means that the entire western imperialist worldview is fundamentally wrong.
But do they really care?
Care about what?
Suspicion haunts the guilty mind.