WEBVTT - Settler Colonialism with Andrew 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:07.400 Alz media. 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:10.640 With scenes of the genocide and Palestine plastering or screens 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.080 over the past few years, and increasing analysis of the 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:18.960 settler colonial and supremacist route of Israel's violence. It's having 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.880 me thinking more about the concept of settler colonialism. Many 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:26.800 people know now about Israel's settler colonial past and it's 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:30.920 parallels with the US, Australia, South Africa, and Canada. Those 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:34.720 are common comparisons, but few know much about the settler 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.640 colonial origins of Liberia, which has gained a little attention 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.600 as people have begun learning more about the concept. So 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.199 I'd like to take a look at Liberia, Israel and 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:49.400 the parallels of settler colonialism. This is it can happen here. 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.440 I'm Andrew Sage Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined once 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:55.680 again by James Again. 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:57.040 I'm excited to learn about this. 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.720 Yeah, I'm mainly looking into parallels through the lens of 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:06.440 analysis provided by historian Patrick Wolfe in his famous article 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:11.240 Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Nature, with other 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:16.160 historical resources and articles linked in the show notes fust Off. 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.920 Before we start making comparisons, I'll need to introduce the 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:25.680 concept for those unfamiliar, settler colonialism is, in one sentence, 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:31.960 an ongoing structural process where outsiders permanently occupy indigenous lands 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:36.880 to build new societies. Wolf notes that invasion is a structure, 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:42.520 not an event. He calls setler colonialism inherently eliminatory but 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:47.720 not invariably genocidal, and calls elimination an organizing principle of 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:52.240 setler colonial society rather than a one off occurrence. Unlike 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.200 the kind of exploitation colonialism which seeks to extract resources 0:01:56.280 --> 0:02:01.400 and leave, settlers come to stay to claim land. As 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.400 Wolf quotes that were bird rose to get in the 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.720 way of settler colonization, all the native has to do 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:12.000 is stay at home. Settlers tell various stories to justify 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:18.800 their eliminatory ambitions race, religion, ethnicity, civilization status, but it 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.560 really comes down to territory. Settlers want to establish lastin 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:27.080 autonomous communities by eliminating the existing indigenous way of life 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:31.639 and replacing it with the colonizer's culture, economy, and political order. 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:37.280 Wolf says that settler clunism destroys to replace point into 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.519 the quite visceral example of Israeli settlers of root in 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:44.200 ancient olive trees and replacing them with foreign fruit trees, 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:50.239 or as Israel often euphromizes it, making the desert bloom. 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:55.320 Elimination doesn't have to mean the wholesale slaughter of indigenous people, 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.880 though frontier homicide tends to be a trend, but elimination 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.040 seeks to dissolve indigenous people and their way of life 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:10.240 through various means expulsion, encouraged population mixing and forced assimilation, enclosure, 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:16.720 child abduction, missions and board in schools, religious conversion, marginalization, 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:23.600 labor exploitation, and more often several at once. Settler clunalism 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.079 tends to remain deeply embedded in the laws and institutions 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.880 of the countries foundly that way, but Woth points to 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.000 a curious side effect of settler clunalism, which is the 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:37.240 way that settler society subsequently attempts to recuperate indigenity in 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.440 order to express its independence from the mother country. He 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:47.640 references Australia's incorporation of indigenous symbolism for one example. Australia, Canada, 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:52.960 the US, New Zealand, South Africa, French Algeria, Rhodesia, Liberia, 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.480 and Israel are all examples of contemporary or historical settler 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:02.360 colonial societies used on the parallels between just two of them, 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:08.320 Liberia and Israel. In eighteen eighteen, the American Colonization Society 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:11.760 scouted what was then known as the Grain Coast and 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.400 deemed it a suitable location for their planned African colony, 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:18.320 meant to be a home for formerly enslaved people in 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.839 the US foreign emancipation, as well as free black people 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:26.400 that already existed in the territory. The first successful settlement 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.560 was established in eighteen twenty two after an agreement with 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.200 the local chiefs signed in eighteen twenty one granted the 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:37.480 society possession of Cape Mesurado. Now, some free black Americans 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.520 had advocated returned to Africa projects long before the ACS 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.440 was even founded, so we shouldn't erase the agency in this. 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.000 But the ACS was led by a mix of white 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.919 abolitionists and white and slavers who mostly just wanted to 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:56.679 rid themselves the free black population in the US. Most 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.760 free Black Americans opposed the project, either in a or 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.240 in time. Those Black Americans that did participate came to 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.480 be known as Americo Liberians. They carried on the American 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:12.640 Colonization Society's narrative that the establishment of Liberia was a 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.320 return to the promised Land and exodus of formally enslaved 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:20.160 people returned into the ancestral homeland to establish an independent 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.719 land of freedom, and as a minority in that land, 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:27.360 the American Liberians would establish a government and various settlements 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:31.200 they ruled that would attempt to expand Liberia's initial territory 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:36.320 and to bring civilization and Christianity to the natives. Those 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:39.880 that went were clearly heavily influenced by the American background, 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:45.040 viewing themselves culturally, socially, and educationally superior to the Native 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.640 African ethnic groups they encountered. After a few decades of 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:52.919 support from the American colonization society, independence was declared in 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.359 eighteen forty seven, but only recognized by the US in 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:02.280 eighteen sixty two. They also very quickly a deteriorating economic situation, 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:08.080 marked by heavy foreign deck obligations culminating in multinational intervention 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.080 and oversight in the early nineteen hundreds, as well as 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:15.000 the establishment of a million eco rubber plantation for the 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:19.040 Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which would exploit the indigenous 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.520 people in Liberia for decades to come. 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:25.040 Any time is setting up a rubber plantation. I feel 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.920 like that should be a massive red flag that you're 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.560 one of the bad guys. Yeah, yeah, exactly, people who 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.280 have been subject to settle a colonial violence and to 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:39.200 like racially motivated sound like a cople I say, racially 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.320 motivated violence, like the violence to inherent and racism and capitalism, 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:46.000 the idea that the way to kind of right those 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:49.599 wrongs is to become the one doing the violence, not 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:53.400 the one subject to the violence. It's it in the Anmar, right, 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:57.240 like a country that was brutally colonized by the country 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:01.560 that I was born in, but in which essentially today 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.599 the state of Myanma is it self a colonial entity. 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:05.800 Right. 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:09.080 We have a number of different ethnic groups, dozens of 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.440 ethnic groups within Memma, and we have one ethnic group 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.560 which is dominated governance, and which has dominated the military, 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:17.760 and which has used the tool of the state to 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:23.720 extract resources, labor, human bodies from the other ethnic groups, right, Like, 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.800 because they've gone from being colonized to effectively being like 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:30.880 a contiguous empire, and they've adopted the logic of the 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:32.080 colonizer in doing so. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:37.520 Yeah, Unfortunately, this is a very common phenomenon. You know, 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:43.720 this is why I tend to view nationalism, even so 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:52.720 called Third world nationalisms, as dead ends, as explicitly counter revolutionary, 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:56.560 as against the liberation of all people. Yeah, because that 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:00.400 construction of the nation state, or really of states and general, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:06.560 tends to come with the establishment of certain superiors and inferiors, 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:12.360 you know, subordinates and rulers. Yeah, and the privilege in 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:17.120 of certain religions, ethnic groups, skin tones, whatever the case 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:24.280 may be, even within so called ethnically homogeneous societies. Yeah. 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:27.560 You can even look at Japan, right, which is touted 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:32.040 by you know, supremacists of all flavors as an ethnically 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:37.319 homogenous society. Even within that society there's you know, colorism, 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:43.080 and there's also the exploitation and marginalization of certain groups 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:45.880 within that territory, such as the I knew. 0:08:46.840 --> 0:09:02.040 Yeah, I think a lot about like nationalism. Now, there's 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:03.920 a time when there was a movement to try and 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.520 use nationalism as a positive thing. They have a Brotherhood 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.360 of Nations, right, It existed within Catle anti fascism in 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.400 the nineteen thirties, Like, we are a nation which has 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:16.160 been suppressed by the state, so we will build a 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:20.000 nationalism that doesn't suppress people right, which sort the same 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:22.640 thing with Kurdish people right, with the Kurdish Freedom movement. 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:27.079 Their understanding, I would say, was more advanced than the Catalans, 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.080 and that like their their analysis was that we are 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.800 a nation that has been suppresed by multiple states, and 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.680 therefore we will build society without the state in order 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:38.200 to link create well where there is no boots, so 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.320 you can't tread on people, right. I still believe that 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:46.199 that is possible, but like in the last six months, 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.640 you know, I've seen people back away from that within 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.680 Kurdistan write and start talking again about the Brotherhood. People's 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.160 was a mistake. They feel betrayed. I don't think those 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.959 people would consider themselves to be superior, but they feel 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:04.720 that their project didn't work. That really makes me sad. Ultimately, 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:08.520 the Brotherhood of Nations like didn't succeed in Syria, right, 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:11.000 And we've seen it effectively at like Sirious Dog or 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.640 the Syrian Arab Republic after hundreds of thousands of people 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:16.800 gave their lives for it to be a place where 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:22.000 everyone could be free. And yeah, it really saddens me 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:25.440 to see that that, like, like I really hoped for 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:28.920 something better. This idea of brotherhood of nations which acknowledges 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.120 people's difference, but it doesn't create a hierarchy. But we're 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:36.400 not We haven't made it quite work yet, I guess. 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:38.480 And because we live in a world right where where 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:43.080 they appeal to nationalism and bigotry and the idea like 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:45.680 specifically in Syria, I think that like Arabs should not 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:50.160 be equal to Kurds was appealing. Through making that appeal, 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:55.320 this project was able to be sabotaged, I guess now. 0:10:56.080 --> 0:11:01.079 I think that while we're still fortune the front approaches 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.800 to liberation trying to figure out what that looks like, 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.160 we've seen the truck record of nationalism, is my point. 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.840 Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's fair like it's it's 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.679 been used much more as a force for dividing us, 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:16.920 in making us hate each other, than it has been 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.440 for creating a world what we can all live together 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:20.320 alongside each other. 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:26.079 Yeah, this is a digression, but in my experience in Trinidad, 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.119 what I've noticed is that their efforts to kind of construct, 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.520 and they have been since the establishment of Trinidad as 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:37.719 an independent country trand Tobago as an independent country in 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:41.640 nineteen sixty two. First led by doctor Eric Williams. There 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:45.880 were efforts to kind of build this kind of cross 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:52.600 racial like overarching like Trinidadia and Trindigo Nian identity, which 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.520 I mean, I use that term trind Diego in some 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.400 of my work, but the Beagle is kind of attach 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.040 to Trinidad against their will. And even now if there 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:08.800 are people who try to push that trend bag or unity, 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:11.920 but there are also people who will assert, particularly people 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.160 from Tobago, who will assert that yeah, no, we want 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:19.360 greater autonomy, we want even independence from Trinidad. And so 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:23.600 for maybe certain people unifying purposes that would use the term, 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:25.920 but I try not to give off that impression that 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:30.080 I'm using it for kind of unifying nationalism, because I 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:34.760 think with the nationalism of such a young, quote unquote nation, 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:37.839 a nation of nations of various people from all over 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:40.960 the world, mostly brought here against their will. Yeah, they 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:45.920 are these competitions I think over the proportionality of the 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:52.520 representation of different racial ethnic groups, the competitions over who 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.360 gets to define what this Trinidadian nation is, what it 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.959 means to be a Trinidadian and afthlets to kind of 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:06.760 balance or imbalance the proportion of representation depending on which 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.600 government is in power. You know, our current government is 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.439 very much oriented toward a kind of Indo Trinardi and 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:23.280 Indian focus and have in many ways marginalized all other groups, maligned, 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.079 all other groups, disrespected all other groups within the country 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:30.319 to kind of elevate the sense of or get back 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.880 for the Indian people in turnet and I don't want 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:36.520 to go too much down that road talking about that, 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.839 but it's just another example to me or the frustration 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:49.000 and misdirection that comes with investment in nationalism, which currently 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.880 holds a monopoly both here and as much of the 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:59.160 world on narratives of liberation and anti colonial resistance. So 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:04.040 I was treated as a anticlonial resistance is synonymous with nationalism. Yeah, 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.040 as though the two cannot be distinguished. 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:09.760 It should be a relic of the twentieth century, right, 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:14.200 like it was heavily tied to state socialism. Right. 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.360 The idea of the way that we. 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.800 Fight the wrongs of colonialism is through creating post colonial 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.160 nation states and ignoring the fact that many of those states, 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:30.280 many of the boundaries they find themselves within, include a 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.000 diverse range of identities. Like you said, of many people, 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:35.720 including those bought against their will to those places, and 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.520 many of those identities don't line up with the national identities, 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:42.680 and it almost always results in a change of the 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.240 oppressure rather than the absence of oppression. 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:47.680 Yeah, I mean you could literally just look at the 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:53.560 entire history of independent Nigeria. Yes, the one very clear 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:59.600 example of that. Yeah. But getting back to the comparisons, right, 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:04.000 I don't see an explicitly titled ideology behind the founding 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:08.920 of Liberia beyond settler clunalism, I suppose, but the implicit 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:13.200 ideology was the supremacy of the elite American liberian way 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.200 of life and the right to that territory and the 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.520 label and the resources of its people. While the elite 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:24.480 would themselves be subordinate to the global catalyst order dictated 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:28.880 particularly by America and Europe, so the supremacy the American 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.840 Liberian elite did not place them in a position of 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.480 supremacy in the global stage. They were still in a 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:41.120 subordinate position in some ways. Turning out to Israel, the 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.800 political Zionist movement emerged in the late nineteenth century Europe 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.880 amid programs and a failure to achieve equality for Jews 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:54.040 in many countries. Its most influential early theorist Theodore Hurzel, 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.760 argue that Jews constituted a nation and that anti Semitism 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:03.640 could not ultimately be so through integration into European societies. Instead, 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:07.080 they required a state of their own, and Palestine was 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:13.920 not initially the only territory under consideration. Various proposals included Argentina, Uganda, 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:18.200 and other locations before Palestine became firmly established as the 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.160 movement's focus. Not all Jews agreed with this political Zionist 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:26.720 cause that many Jewish socialists, particularly those associated with the 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:31.880 General Jewish Labor Bund, rejected Zionism altogether. They argued the 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.200 Jews should fight for libration where they lived, rather than 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:40.360 establishing a separate nation state. Nevertheless, the Zionists colonial settlement 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:44.960 efforts began and expanded in Palestine through the late nineteenth 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:50.200 and early twentieth centuries, aided by wealthy benefactors, land purchases 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:55.360 from absentee landlords, and growing immigration. The movement received a 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.400 major boost in nineteen seventeen when the British government issued 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:03.120 the Balford Claratia Express in support for the establishment of 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.320 a Jewish National Home in Palestine, despite the fact that 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:11.240 Palestine's Arab population constituted the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.879 at the time, a settlement expanded Sinus narratives increasingly emphasized 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.119 the idea of return. The Jews were not colonizing a 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.680 foreign land, but return into an ancestral homeland from which 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:25.879 they had been dispersed centuries before, and the state of 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:30.199 Israel was officially established in nineteen forty eight, accompanied by 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:34.080 the Nakba or catastrophe, when more than seven hundred thousand 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:38.760 Palestinians were displaced or expelled from their homes across Palestine. 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.119 Like Liberia before it, ISRAELI emerged as a state founded 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.360 by a population claiming a historic connection to the territory, 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:49.400 and like Liberia, is legitimacy would be built upon narratives 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:54.000 of return, civilization, and nationhood, while the indigenous inhabitants found 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.920 themselves excluded from the political order being constructed on top 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:12.720 of their home now Already, these situations aren't exactly one 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.399 to one, but they don't need to be. To apply 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.800 a settler clonal analysis. The key questions for ascertaining settler 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.760 clonalism are if the settlers established permanent residents, if they 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:28.600 claimed political sovereignty, if they dominated inditionous populations, if they 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:33.440 created institutions that privileged settlers. Basically, what was the political 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:37.000 and social order that emerged after they arrived and who 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:41.520 was elevated and degraded by it. For Liberia, the answer 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:43.680 becomes pretty clear once we look at how the new 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.240 state was organized. Over the course of the nineteenth century, 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.320 American liberia and settlements expanded their territory through a mixture 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.640 of purchases, treaties, coercion and military expeditions, and outright warfare 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.800 with Inditionous peoples, who made up the overwhelming majority of 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:03.680 the population, were largely excluded from political life for generations. 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.640 They lacked meaningful representation and government, and were treated as 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:11.760 subjects to be administered. The settler elite monopolized state institutions 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.879 and eventually established what was effectively a one party state 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.600 under the True Whig Party, which ruled Liberia for over 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.560 a century. The Liberian state extracted taxes and tribute from 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.840 indigenous communities, relied on indigenous labor, and by the early 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:32.080 twentieth century, international investigations were uncovering systems of forced labor 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:37.000 and human trafficking so surveyor that they generated an international scandal. 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.000 While the settlers themselves had once been victims of slavery 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:45.840 and racial oppression, they recreated similar class and ethnic hierarchies 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.520 in their state. Liberia, of course, differs from many other 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.080 settler colonies, but they retained the basic framework of a 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:57.920 settler population, clearing sovereignty over territory inhabited by indigenous peoples, 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:02.080 and concentrated political and e chemic power in its own hands. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.000 Now compare this to Israel. From the late nineteenth century onward. 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:11.640 Zionist organizations acquired land through purchases and violence following the Knappa, 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.959 which created one of the largest refugee populations in the 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:18.800 modern world. The Palestinians, which remained within Israel, was subjected 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:23.600 to military administration for years. While Palestinians in the occupied 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.680 territories continue to live under a different legal regime than 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:31.600 Israeli settlers. The nineteen fifty two Citizenship Law and the 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.560 twenty eighteen Nation State Law cemented the Jewish supremacist heart 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:39.680 of the Zinis project. As since nineteen sixty seven, settlement 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:43.240 expansion in the West Bank had steadily increased, accompanied by 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:48.160 land seizures, home demolitions, restrictions on movement, and the fragmentation 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:52.000 of Palestinian communities, and Gaza has been an open air 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:58.080 prison where settlers occasionally move the lawn aka slaughter population 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.800 since two thousand and seven. It's worth noting a major 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:05.520 difference between the two cases, which is the demographic element. 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:10.600 America Liberians remained a small minority ruling a much larger 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:15.600 indigenous population, but the entire history of American Liberian ruled Liberia. 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:20.160 Those kind of demographics are more akin to settler societies 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:24.880 like South Africa, Rhodesia and French Algeria, which leaned heavily 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:31.360 into the exploitation aspect of clonalism. Israel developed differently intentionally 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.200 to ensure that Jewish people became the demographic and majority 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.320 within its territory, so it's more comparable to settler societies 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:44.680 like the US, Canada and Australia. Such demographics necessarily led 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:48.520 to a difference in how indigenous peoples were managed between projects. 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:54.080 Liberia system depended upon indigenous labor, while Israel's project has 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:59.320 generally prioritized secure in land while minimizing dependence on Palestinian labor. 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:04.160 In many periods of Zionus history, Palestinian labor was actively 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:09.440 displaced in favor of exclusively Jewish labor. But again, settler 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:13.400 colonism operates according to a logic of elimination that might 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:18.679 often be expulsion and extermination, but it can also mean assimilation, confinement, 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:22.960 and whatever else. Again, the settlers want the land. The 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:27.119 native becomes an obstacle, and difference that the societies developed 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:31.280 different methods for dealing with that obstacle. The US had 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:36.800 its ethnic cleansings, removals, reservation system and boarding schools. Australia 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:42.119 had frontier wars, stolen generations and land dispossessions. Canada had 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.560 assimilation policies like reservation schools. South Africa and a wide 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:50.440 rule couldn't expel the black majority, so they maintained apartheid 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:54.720 controlled reservations and extracted labor. But again, what matters for 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.919 definance at the clonalism is that indigenous sovereignty is displaced 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:03.159 and set look control over the land is secured. Of course, 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:06.600 indigenous people in all cases do not take this abuse 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:10.520 lying down. From the very beginning of Liberian settlement, Indigenous 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:15.359 peoples resisted the crew grabo by and numerous other ethnic 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:20.600 groups fought against territorial expansion, taxation, forced labor, and attempts 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:24.160 by the Liberian States to extend its authority into the interior, 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:29.359 and despite generations of American Liberian dominance, indigenous resistance never 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:34.480 entirely disappeared. Eventually, the political order that had governed Liberia 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:38.680 for over a century began to crack, economic crisis, corruption 0:23:38.880 --> 0:23:42.560 and grow, and resentment towards settled domination culminated in a 0:23:42.600 --> 0:23:46.959 military coup in nineteen eighty led by Samuel Doe, overthrowing 0:23:47.000 --> 0:23:50.080 the government of President William Tolbert and ended more than 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:55.480 a century of uninterrupted American Liberian political dominance. Now, that 0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:59.679 coup clearly did not create a free or egalitarian society. 0:24:00.240 --> 0:24:04.720 Liberia would soon face dictatorship, civil war, and immense suffering, 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:07.800 but it did mark the collapse of the older settler 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:11.840 elites monopoly on state power, and efforts at recovery in 0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:16.240 the country are ongoing. Palestinian resistance, on the other hand, 0:24:16.480 --> 0:24:21.360 faced a very different structury from the beginning of Zia settlement. 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:27.480 Palestinians resisted displacement and land loss through protests, strikes, political organizing, 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:30.640 and armed revote. The Great Arab Revolt of nineteen thirty 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:33.720 six to nineteen thirty nine saw Palestinians launch a massive 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:38.480 reich An uprising against both British colonial rule and Zonu settlement. 0:24:39.000 --> 0:24:43.200 Decades later came the first and second in defaders mass movements, 0:24:43.200 --> 0:24:47.560 a combined protest, civil disobedions, community organized and armed resistance. 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:52.920 Pastidians have built a number of institutions alongside international solarity 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:58.320 movements in an effort to sustain their efforts under occupation, siege, exile, 0:24:58.359 --> 0:25:03.320 and apartheid. Amid the destruction genocide of Gaza, passing and 0:25:03.359 --> 0:25:08.160 resistance continues. Liberia and Israel are both settled clunal projects, 0:25:08.480 --> 0:25:11.000 but they are different enough in scale and goals and 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:15.400 methods and historical development that obviously treating them must equivalent 0:25:15.440 --> 0:25:18.720 for be misleaded. The point of the comparison is to 0:25:18.760 --> 0:25:23.400 identify what these societies have in common. Since the cool 0:25:23.400 --> 0:25:26.880 In Liberia, the old American Liberian elite has lost its 0:25:26.880 --> 0:25:30.880 monopoly on power, but in Israel, the settler clunal project 0:25:31.000 --> 0:25:36.600 is alive and well, with ever expanding settlements, occupation, displacement, 0:25:36.760 --> 0:25:43.040 and brutality. Whether settler dominance in Israel remains or falls 0:25:43.600 --> 0:25:46.520 is yet to be seen in Liberia. The end of 0:25:46.560 --> 0:25:51.720 settler rules not automatically bring justice, equality or freedom. Deliberation 0:25:52.040 --> 0:25:54.960 through state power has not brought their relief, especially in 0:25:55.040 --> 0:25:58.199 the context of a global capitalist order. The replacement of 0:25:58.240 --> 0:26:01.560 one ruling class for another has ended the struggle, but 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:06.000 maybe put us semi cooler on that struggle. I believe 0:26:06.040 --> 0:26:09.920 the aim of deconization must be not merely the fight 0:26:10.119 --> 0:26:13.920 against the people at the helm of the system, but 0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:18.399 the very helm of the system itself, dismantling the structures 0:26:18.440 --> 0:26:24.560 that make domination possible. The first place, for Palestine and 0:26:24.600 --> 0:26:29.640 for all people's struggling against oppression and then set localism 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:35.040 is only the beginning in the pursuit of liberation. That's 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:38.800 all I have for today, All powers to all the people. Peace. 0:26:43.600 --> 0:26:46.080 It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 0:26:46.280 --> 0:26:49.320 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:26:49.400 --> 0:26:51.960 cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the 0:26:52.000 --> 0:26:55.959 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 0:26:56.359 --> 0:26:58.280 You can now find sources for It Could Happen here 0:26:58.320 --> 0:27:01.240 listed directly an episode description. Thanks for listening.