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?
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.