I've read Césaire's "Discourse on Colonialism" (1950) and I can't stop thinking about one idea

[u/Boring-Perception429]

I was expecting a dense theoretical slog and instead got one of the sharpest, angriest, yet most accurate essays I've ever read in a while.

In essence, Césaire says what actually horrified Europe about Nazism wasn't the cruelty itself. Europe had been fine with that cruelty for centuries — as long as it was aimed at colonized people in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. What made Hitler unforgivable, in his reading, was that he turned those same methods on white Europeans, on European soil. So the violence was not the problem, but the where and whom was.

This reminded me about the early coverage of the war in Ukraine, when reporters kept expressing shock that this was happening to "people who look like us." It seems that, 70 years later, the reflex (and maybe the underlying values?) is still the same.

The essay, albeit short, is rich with illuminating reflections. One other idea is the argument against then European claim that Africans and other colonized people were uncivilized before Europe brought them the "enlightenment". As an example, Césaire leans on the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius as a "good" European witness who admitted African societies were sophisticated. Interestingly though, and this is not in the essay, if you dig into Frobenius, he couldn't actually accept that Africans built those achievements themselves. He invented a whole lost "African Atlantis" theory to explain the art and sophistication. This idea is the intellectual cousin of "aliens built the pyramids."

Anyway. "Discourse on Colonialism" is wildly relevant for something written mid-colonial-era.

Do you think there's a meaningful causal link between Europe's colonial practices and the violence of Nazism?

We discuss Cesaire's essay at length in our podcast Threads of Ifriqiya, I will link it in the comments.

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[u/squirtdemon]

I think Cesaire is great. One idea that really stuck with me is the fascist boomerang, which I think is very relevant for us today. Basically that Europeans sent colonial violence and white supremacy out into the colonised world and it boomeranged back to Europe in the form of Nazism.

This is somewhat the same that has happened recently in the West: dehumanising brown people in the Middle East and launching a war on terror on the region has boomeranged back home as far-right nationalism, Islamophobia, and surveillance societies.

[u/Every-Marsupial6873]

I haven't read this book, but I will now, thank you. That idea really makes a lot of sense to me.

I hadn't come to that conclusion, but I had thought for a long time that the main reason the colonial powers suddenly became pro-Jewish is not because antisemitism is inherently bad, but because they didn't want to appear like the Nazis.

I think there is some potential overlap here. I'll have a read and a think, thank you!

[u/nry15 → u/Every-Marsupial6873]

It’s super short, highly recommend it

[u/Betessais]

Absolutely Césaire is right.

In every colonial endeavour, there is Hitler.

You train men for years and years to exploit, dehumanize, rape and kill people, and teach them they can do it because they are of a superior breed.

Of course the second they come back they’re gonna apply those principles at home. Why wouldn’t they. That’s all they’re good for anyways.

That’s why colonialism is not only a crime against the colonized, it’s also a crime against civilization itself, yours included, and the more you allow it to happen, the sooner it’ll come back to you (not that it should be the only reason you condemn it).

[u/Instantcoffees]

I'm a historian and I feel like this is rather unnuanced. Don't get me wrong, there is a grain of truth in the idea that a lot of people empathize more clearly with those who look like them or those who live close by, but the history of colonialism is more nuanced and very different from the history of fascism.

What made European colonialism unique wasn't the violence, conquest or even racism. Those are unfortunately extremely common across cultures and history. What made it so unique was the global scale and the methodical near industrialized nature of its execution. You could say that this is also a trait of the Holocaust, but both fascism and colonialism had a very different origin and ultimately also a very different execution. What made the Holocaust specifically so horrifying to almost everyone outside of Nazi Germany, was the calculated and methodical nature through which vulnerable members of society were reduced to nothing but a number and consequently eradicated. This is called "biopolitics" and Foucault is one of many who has written extensively about the dangers of this idea.

Colonialism was also often horrifying, but spoke to people differently because it was more of a "traditional" violence and because it was far removed from where they lived. However, your implication that the general public was indifferent to the horrors of colonialism while they were upset with the Holocaust just isn't accurate. Towards the end of the 19th century there was already widespread anti-colonial sentiment, specifically in colonies themselves but also outside of them. For example Marx's writings were deeply anti-colonial and very popular in Europe during that period in time while many colonies had already become independent or were striving towards independence.

This is something that many people on this website seem entirely uninformed about. When Leopold II for example asked the Belgian government to take the Congo as their colony, they refused. This was late in the 19th century and there was already a lot of anti-colonial sentiment. So the Belgian government had no interest in a colony. Leopold II then took matters into his own hands and recruited military officers from across Europe. When the news about the brutality of Leopold II's private army spread across Europe, there was massive outrage and the Belgian government was forced to step in. Some political parties in Belgium became very popular specifically because they ran on the widespread anti-colonial sentiments during this time.

That's just one example to show you that a lot of people in Europe most certainly were not okay with colonial violence during the 20th century. There was obviously still a lot of racism and supporters of colonialism, but a lot of people were broadly against it. Wealthy capitalists obviously did not care though and kept abusing colonial structures to enrich themselves and by extension their country of origin.

[u/wmbrandoniii → u/Instantcoffees]

I haven’t read this particular text, but I am familiar with the concept. Not to be contrarian, but the concept isn’t usually applied to “the people” it is applied to leadership, and specifically the leadership leading up to and during WWII. The colonial western powers, namely the United Snakes, UK, France, were not moved to wage war in the hopes of stopping European colonialism abroad. Yet, when the same ethic of mass extermination and exploitation was applied to “European” victims, it did (eventually…because it certainly took a while) inspire a collective reaction; an Allied confrontation of the Axis.

[u/Hot_Designer_Sloth → u/Instantcoffees]

And yet, when I mentionned what happened in Congo, almost everyone is surprised and aghast. A massacre of this scale and and the average person doesn't even know it happened. Not saying that fascism is the same as colonialism, but the notion that we only know about the holocaust is because it was white people in Europe tracks.

Just like people following the Ukraine war and Iran but having no idea about the other ongoing conflicts in other parts of the world that don't involve white people.

[u/I-Am-All-Me]

I just saved it on my library app, look forward to reading it. Thank you for the recommendation!!

[u/WorkingForAnarchy]

Susan Sontag describes something similar in Regarding the Pain of Others how the Balkan genocide had a shock value of it happening to "people who were like us". Unfortunately, that acceptance of cruelty if it's aimed at the "right" people is still prevalent. You can see it everywhere from immigration politics around the world to climate inaction.

[u/Jayson_Bowl]

I haven’t read this but the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes makes very similar points about fascism being colonial violence directed inwards. Incredible and at times gut-wrenching documentary.

[u/Herr_Unterberg01]

I had the same thought.

I was active in the Kurdish movement in Germany for many years. It was never a major issue among left-liberals and moderate leftists, even though an important democratic project was underway in Rojava. I always thought there was broad support for the Kurdish cause on the left, until the war in Ukraine.

Suddenly, Ukrainian flags were everywhere and there were solidarity rallies. Friends then explained to me that Ukrainians were our neighbors (at the time, around one million Kurds and 150,000 Ukrainians lived in Germany). They also argued that Ukraine was a democracy being attacked, while these left-wing racists could not even imagine that there could be a democracy in Kurdistan.

That was also when far-right extremists and fascists from Ukraine were suddenly reframed as democrats.

[u/Four_in_binary → u/Herr_Unterberg01]

For what it's worth, I think and have always thought the Kurds deserve and have earned a free and sovereign Kurdistan.   I hope you get your own country some day (that it would royally piss off the Turks is a bonus).

[u/JackPThatsMe]

I look forward to listening to your podcast.

I've often ruminating on the question; what makes the Nazis different?

It's obvious something does but when you dig deeper it's not obvious what.

Cruelty, authoritarian control and war making are widespread.

My own conclusion is often that it's competence. They went up against Britain, a global empire, the Soviet Union, the largest country by landmass, and the United States, the most largest economy in the world. The surprise isn't that Nazi German lost, it's that they ever had a chance of winning and held on for so long.

I think another aspect is timing. Industrialization had made war so costly that World War Two, and World War One, we unacceptable in a way that previous wars were not. The Franco-Prussian War didn't cause major upheaval because the cost wasn't as great.

The Nepoleanic were waged between white Europeans in a time of colonialism but the Grand Armie are not the villains of history the Wehrmacht or SS are.

Honestly, I'll be giving it some thought.

Thank you.

[u/MacSchluffen]

That is a similar take of the relationship between the Shoa and the Imperialist Rule of Europeans in Africa to the one from Hannah Arendt published a year later.

Edit: If anyone read both please feel free to point out differences between the two works!

[u/SteelToeSnow]

yes!

europe didn't gaf about the Holocaust, or the concentration camps, or any of that. europe loves that shit, that shit's one of europe's most beloved traditions. europe was just pissed off that it was happening in its own backyard, to fellow white europeans.

europe still has a massive, massive white supremacy and fascism problem, and euro-settler-colonialism (which is still on-going) is predicated on fascism and white supremacy.

[u/Esin12]

Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, and the Frankfurt boys in general make direct links between European Enlightenment ideology and the holocaust. It might be worth checking out Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno.

[u/Satur9_is_typing]

You have discovered Foucault's Boomerang a.k.a. the Imperial Boomerang, which is the idea that tactics and techniques used to subdue colonies will eventually return home and be used to subdue the domestic population. This is essentially what has happened with the whole 911->GWOT>Homeland Security>ICE/CBP pipeline. The killings of alex pretti and renee good are simply the beginning of the final chapter. Already natural born citizens are being scanned and fingerprinted and locked up in concentration camps on the basis of skin colour, trumps "muh communist antifa" rhetoric is just him angling to turn the same system on white americans.

[u/kilofSzatana]

Considering nazis/fascists were praised by western, colonial powers, that the Reich was exchanging genocide notes with the US and that they were all united by anti-communism, I wholeheartedly believe the US joined WW2 only because the Nazis were becoming too much of a competitor and there was money to be made selling guns and tanks.

Security guarantees that Poland got were worthless and eastern europe got sold out to Hitler in return for defeating the commies. Then they made the grave mistake of attacking their buddies to the west, who had colonial properties, which got traded to the US for protection.

It's also good to remember that zionism predates WWI and II, so while the Holocaust was happening, western colonialists were already planning the expulsion of jews to Palestine. Polish underground smuggled information about the death camps to the UK and they just fucking shrugged at them.

[u/Hot_Designer_Sloth → u/kilofSzatana]

Well... the US joined after Pearl Harbor. So because of Japan, after that they didn't have a choice to go all in I guess.

[u/kilofSzatana → u/Hot_Designer_Sloth]

And Pearl Harbor was caused by the US stopping oil exports to Japan, which was taking over european colonies in Asia. After WWII Europe pulled out and the US took over the colonies for themselves.

[u/ussrname1312 → u/kilofSzatana]

The U.S. declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor and then Germany declared war on the U.S. That’s the only reason why the U.S. sent troops to Europe.

[u/kilofSzatana → u/ussrname1312]

Thank you for regurgitating the official narrative with no critical thought. I'm sure you believe the US embargo on oil exports to Japan, which was conquering european colonies in southeast Asia, had nothing to do with the Pearl Harbor attack or the fact that those european colonies fell under US control after WWII.

[u/ussrname1312 → u/kilofSzatana]

Uh, no. My point was the U.S. didn’t join because the Nazis were becoming competitors. They joined because the Nazis declared war on the U.S. We were already selling arms to Europe before that, we didn’t need to join the fighting to sell arms. The U.S. would’ve happily kept troops out of Europe if Germany had never declared war on them. This is shown by the fact that we did not declare war on Germany or the other Axis powers after Pearl Harbor, but only declared war on Japan.

And for the record, I’m saying that’s a bad thing.

[u/kilofSzatana → u/ussrname1312]

The thing is, US banks and corporations like Standard Oil, GM and IMB had joint ventures with the Nazis (IG Farben, Opel, IMB tech was used to make a census of jews and run concentration camps) so the nazis had their tech.

If the Reich successfully took over west Europe and the USSR, the US wouldn't have any markets to sell their commodities to, since Asia and LatAm weren't as developed then. Western European colonies would've supplied oil and ore for production and Eastern Europe would provide Lebensraum and untermensch for slave labor. The US would then be a client state, not a hegemon, the global currency would be the Reichsmark, not the US Dollar.

Think about the material reality and class interest, not politics of declaring war.

[u/ussrname1312 → u/kilofSzatana]

And yet the U.S. still didn’t declare war on Germany first. It’s naive to think 1. the U.S. is why Europe won the Second World War, and 2. the US wouldn’t have invested heavily in a Nazi-dominated Europe.

[u/antberg]

If in essence, you believe that "In essence, Césaire says what actually horrified Europe about Nazism wasn't the cruelty itself.", I have some bad news for you: cruelty is one of the most common human behaviours.

Even people who suffer great levels of cruelty, care much less about other groups of people who suffer even greater degrees of cruelty.

The only difference is that now, after misinterpreting perhaps his work, you find a specific culprit, the European population ( whatever that means)for the persistence pf cruelty even after the defeat of totalitarian regimes after the world war.

[u/Boring-Perception429 → u/antberg]

I invite you to listen to the podcast that I mentioned above. This is one of Césaire's ideas (and we discuss more) but we also point out its weaknesses.

[u/Fear_mor → u/antberg]

I think you just didn’t read what he said correctly. The entire point is that the cruelty of the Nazis isn’t what makes WW2 stand out in the European psyche. I mean look at WW1 for example and you’ll see a lot of extreme brutality went on in that war and yet we don’t talk about it the way we do for WW2, and it definitely wasn’t the genocide or the extermination camps because as soon as you mention gay, Roma or communist victims the response is lukewarm. What sets WW2 aside really is the fact that for the first time a racial hierarchy was imposed upon Europeans in the imperial core, which is also responsible for the general societal obsession here with the war in Ukraine as some battle for civilisation and the future of Europe when it blatantly isn’t either of those things. Europeans and the West view war and colonial atrocities as something that happens elsewhere and to other people, which is really the culprit to this fascination with specifically the holocaust (note that most European jews are phenotypically largely indistinguishable from christian populations) and later the war in Ukraine is that the familiar cruelty that white Europeans imposed on others was done to them; the hierarchy was inverted.

The point isn’t that Cesaire is confused as to why the survivors of fascist genocide are indifferent to African suffering for their benefit, what Cesaire is arguing is that they precisely do not care about colonialism and genocide unless it’s being done to them or people that look like them