This is a thought that I have been tackling for quite a while now, but in the event of a country or region undergoing decolonialization, how should settler populations, especially multigenerational populations, be handled?
For example in the example of Israel, once the nation is reestablished as a one state Palestine, what would happen to the settler population? Especially those that aren’t living or participating in illegal settlements or exploitation?
This question is complicated farther by multiple generations of people who were born in a location and have no ties to any other country or location. Those people don’t have anywhere to go and can’t be “sent back” to where they came from as they have no ties. For example if a person’s grand parents immigrated decades ago to a country as settlers, and then their children and then grandchildren were born and lived their whole lives in a location, what would you do with those grandchildren? You can’t just throw them back to the country their grandparents were from. This question is made even harder when the generations start spanning back much farther.
Another problem that I am running into is that many solutions including “leftist” ones essentially boil down to ethnic cleaning even if they do not say it outright. Or they completely ignore the question or resort to some fantasy scenario where the settlers magically disappear or all agree to move.
So how should these populations and people be handled?
In reality, these people have zero standing. If they are displaced and the colonizer nations won’t take them back, it won’t be much different than the refugee situations we have been managing for a century. The decolonizers do not need to solve this problem.
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I mean, it’s the settlers who did the ethnic cleansing. This would merely be displacement.
It’s not the problem of the decolonizers because they are literally solving the problem of colonization. They do not have an obligation to protect themselves and also to protect their oppressors. This would be like black people having the obligation to educate white people about racism. It’s the white people that have the obligation.
If the decolonizers assume responsibility, it will be for the nation they create and to the restoration of justice. If that means displacement of colonists, on what grounds do colonists demand anything?
You say there’s no free pass, but the colonizers have had a free pass for 600 years. Why is accountability suddenly a thing. And why does that accountability only apply to the oppressed? Why don’t you take that attitude and direct at the European nations that birthed the colonies. After all, your starting assumption is that the Europeans are taking no refugees from the colonies because they are not accountable to them. That sounds a lot like you just shifting the burden onto the oppressed, which is exactly what has been done since colonizing began.
I am telling you with a straight face that the colonists have no claims. You assume Europeans will not accept refugees. Well, that’s Europe’s doing. Are you telling me with a straight face that the oppressed should continue to foot the bill for white settler oppression when your foundational premise is that not even Europe would lift a finger to help?
Do you not see why this is massively problematic?
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There is a difference between land reforms that rematriate land from Bill Gates (or some other mentionable land owner) and deporting him to a country he has no actual connection to beyond feeble grasps at genetic heritage.
What would be the point of mass deportation of all settlers anyway, besides some kind of ultra purity? Some settlers are entangled with Tribal projects and long term goals by design of Tribal leadership. You think they have to go create Israel 2.0 in Ireland for justice to be served?
This is such a strawman that the only reason that people might be displaced is because of the formation of an ethnostate. Tuck and Yang have argued quite well that the interests of settlers are incommensurate with the interests of the indigenous and that this incommensurability precludes structural solidarity. The point of mass deportations would be because the displacement process that would precede such a deportation results in mass reactionary movements by settlers against indigenous national self-direction and it ends being a choice between total war and deportation. No one is talking about an indigenous ethnostate except the right wing trying to spook everyone.
We’re not talking about the very very very very very few individual settlers who are actually working with indigenous people and supporting their project for self-determination. We’re talking about masses, we’re talking about classes, we’re talking about class war through structural racism, through structural colonial oppression.
Drop this delusion of an ethnostate and analyze the situation dialectically. Apply the theory of reaction to the context you’re examining. Read Tuck and Yang.
Decolonization is not a metaphor.
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I very sorry but reading over your replies to myself and other people in this thread, you are arguing in horrifying poor faith, your views are disgusting, and you are delusional.
I’m sorry. I won’t be replying to you anymore. Have a good day.
You are misusing the concept of bad faith argument, your “views” are congruent with colonialist chauvinism, and the delusion here is that “white people who live in former colonies today did nothing wrong because they didn’t personally kill any one”.
The fact that you won’t be replying to me anymore is a shame for you. Read Tuck and Yang, study AIM and Red Power, and good luck breaking through your BS.
This is a settler-colonial solution to a settler-colonial problem. It’s how you get occupied Palestine. Indigenous people are certainly not calling for this kind of solution.
That’s not correct in the least.
A) it’s not a settler-colonial solution. This is world salad and has no meaning. Demanding that white people leave sacred lands and leave unsustainable lands is the opposite of settler colonialism, it’s literally decolonization
B) Palestine is occupied by European Jews using European force. What part of anything happening in Palestine isn’t European settler colonialism?
C) Indigenous people are absolutely calling for white people to leave their ancestral lands. If you haven’t heard it, then you’re not listening
A: No one is saying people should be living on sacred sites… Ffs
B: this is my point. A bunch of colonial powers created Israel. It is colonial logic to fix problems this way. It’s not a solution born of Indigenous philosophy.
C: I am in Indigenous spaces regularly and have been taught multiple Indigenous languages by Indigenous elders and through programs started by the Tribes themselves. You are wrong. I have never heard anyone say white people or any settlers should go back to Europe as an avenue for decolonization or whatever the fuck. I havent seen it in scholarship either. You are projecting.
Edit: lots
a) That’s displacement
b) No one said European powers should create new indigenous states. It’s the indigenous that will do it as part of their national self determination and they will solve the problems in their own ways according to their own contexts. For a European to say how it must be or what it must do or what moral obligations it must have is chauvinism. You are imagining that I am designing a revolutionary program and then arguing that it’s just like the Israeli project. When instead what I’m doing is saying that the indigenous have clearly stated they want settlers off their land and they have no obligation to the those settlers who will be displaced by the process.
c) Then you’re not following the AIM and Red Power movements, you’re not listening to their podcasts, to their contemporary dialog at the boundaries of the reservations, to the various movements in various parts of the world. There is no single indigenous bloc. In the US, AIM was resisted heavily by tribal elders, even fighting over the use of the word “sovereignty”. There is not a broad consensus, there is a multiplicity of perspectives and theories of change informed by tradition, lived experience, theory, and practice.
I’m so sick of this delusion by settlers that the only proper leftist take is the one that lets them continue to live their lives without consequences and without suffering.
So Tribal elders are just fools then. My teachers are fools because they don’t listen to the right podcasts. Oh! And Indigenous people aren’t a bloc so… I shouldn’t listen to my teachers because by doing so I am somehow acting against tribal interests.
You sound like an ultra that isnt on the ground but rather lives in a hyper reality you wish to enforce on others. It would be a damn shame if I didn’t follow the direction and wisdom of literal Tribal elders and Indigenous activists in my own comlunity and chose to listen to your moronic diatribes.
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Thanks. I was furiously typing but I will let it go.
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Its just a take from real Indigenous people, scholars, activists, elders, and leaders. There will obviously be upheaval brought by genuine decolonial action but that isnt the fucking same as sending hundreds of millions of people back to Europe As if its even possible or makes any damn sense.
Also, fuck the left. I don’t give a goddamn what some leftist is saying. I don’t get my directions from them.
It’s a highly selective take, one that matches your interests.
Like literally entire cities of millions of people being evacuated from lack of water.
Again, try reasoning about reactionism and what is likely to happen, because it sure as shit isn’t going to be a bunch of white people being like “oh, it’s OK, we’re all proles, I totally understand why you won’t let us destroy that habitat anymore and why my kids can’t grow up in the way I did. Please, teach us your ways”
Have you even studied what happened in the USSR?
Ummmm…
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying about you.
Wut?
What would happen if Europe decides not to take their settlers back in your view? Seeing as the indigenous population doesn’t have to “solve this problem”.
I think it’s pretty clear from history what would happen.
That’s not really an answer 😅 what would be your solution materially? Would they be forcibly moved back to the coast and then live in refugee camps until they get to leave? Would they be hunted down to the last? Would they be sent to live in remote towns?
You’re asking for a pretty thorough analysis from a non-indigenous person. Looking at history, the US is going to end up in a refugee situation no matter what. The water is running out in the Southwest. There are cities of millions living in the middle of the desert where no indigenous people ever chose to live due to it being unsuitable for life. Those millions are going to be displaced as soon as the water runs out. What’s going to happen with them? They’re going to where there’s water, and they are going to go before there’s sufficient housing for them. According to history, that means they’re living in temporary encampments. No one needs to force them to move in this case, they’ll die otherwise.
But then you’ve got people who live in places that do have enough water, but their living situation depends on other resources. An indigenous nation has no responsibility to maintain those supply chains if they are antithetical to their interests. I’m thinking primarily of extractive industries and their wells and their pipelines, but there are other things like electricity, climate control, transportation, etc, and each of these things is not guaranteed. Any aspect of life that people deem critical could disappear under indigenous sovereignty based on their national interests. Again, in this situation you’ll end up with mass displacements and lack of infrastructure to manage them, and again, historically that means people living in temporary encampments.
The problem with these things, of course, is that you’ve got an immovable object and inexorable force. On the one side you have extinction through climate catastrophe motivating things like refusal to truck water to Vegas, and on the other hand you’ve got millions of settlers with guns and an ideology born of manifest destiny. What do you think is going to happen? Emigration to Europe is one way to ensure that settlers get to feel like they can keep their ideology and don’t need to form militias to fight against an indigenous nation. Barring that, history shows that reactionary ideologies will emerge just by virtue of the indigenous ascending to sovereignty, even without the environmentally-enforced displacement. With displacement, reactionary forces are going to be violent and incredibly difficult to manage, so there will absolutely be repression enforced by the state on behalf of the ruling class. After all, that’s what the state is for, right? In this case, indigenous self-direction is going to be in the seat of power and reactionary settlers are going to be repressed.
But “Hunted down to the last”? What is this racist BS? Who the fuck suggests this? There’s not a single serious person who says anything like this. This is the sort of thing Europeans said to each other, wrote into laws and doctrines, and then executed. It’s not surprising when Europeans project it onto others, but it’s still just as disgusting.
That’s what historically happened in Haiti.