Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Settler Colonialisms and Ethnic Cleansing

Many states that were built through settler colonialisms (frontier state building) have in common a belief that they are God's 'chosen'. From the Puritan belief in the 'City on the Hill' and the need to drive out, convert, or annihilate the American Indians to the Afrikaner belief that Zulus were Amalikites to be driven out or killed to the Israeli belief that the must go forth and take the land that God gave them, settler colonialisms specialize in justifying the eviction, if not annihilation of indigenous people. In fact settler colonialisms often specialize in uniting a diverse immigrant population through aggression against a subhuman 'other'. The commonalities cannot be missed nor are Americans, South Africans, and Israelis it's only practitioners. All settler states have this commonality.

Intriguingly--despite all the hoopla and media-generated fear of some sort of Islamic will to convert or annihilate another people, we've never seen this happen. Settler states seem to have exclusively grounded their ideologies in the Old Testament and European racism. While it's likely this is something of a consequence of European power, it's odd that some people insist upon seeing an Islamic menace for what has been done exclusively by Europeans.

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