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?
Palestine was recent enough to where there are still documents of Palestinian ownership over homes and land, setup an investigative body to settle who owns what. Everything else gets claimed by the Palestinian state and redistributed democratically. Public housing will need to be built all over and there’s no reason why settlers can’t be relocated to new housing. The issue is largely around property and not existence.
Take Hawaii as an example, look at this: https://realhawaii.co/blog/who-owns-hawaii
Most of the land in Hawaii is owned by the state and federal governments, and a bunch of monopoly family farms. This should be immediately handed over to the Hawaiian nation. How are the settlers employed, who owns their workplaces? These are answerable questions.
Understandable. These seem like reasonable assumptions and plans. Especially when opposed to the other things I’ve heard which can be described as delusional at best and downright fascistic at worst.
How would you consider the issue of the personal property of settlers? In regards to homes for example? I can fully agree with the seizing of exploitative uses of land such as massive farms, property owned by landlords, and government based land; but how would you approach personal housing or very small businesses (of a reasonable scale, so I am not referring to mansions or multimillion dollar business ventures).
Also as an aside, if they were given a choice to decide for themselves; would you believe that Hawaii would be better as an independent nation, or as an integrated socialist republic in a larger US union state? Much like how the Soviet Union incorporated lands and peoples colonized by the Empire into republics in the Union.
We tend to consider homes to be personal property, but to be honest, land, including single family homes, should be treated differently from cars, pets, TVs, computers, diaries etc.
The whole issue of Settler Colonialism is that land was confiscated and turned into property of individuals, this is what we need to de-Colonize. Homesteads and their suburban imitation will be de-colonized, mostly through the form of de-carbonization. Homestead and suburban lifestyles are horrific wastes of energy. Every human deserves a home, but there is no contradiction in moving them to new housing, especially if their old housing is environmentally destructive. Small businesses should probably remain until production and distribution is sufficiently planned to abundance, while transitioning the over time into the public economy (taking experience from China and Vietnam’s socialist market economies). In the book Socialist Reconstruction, they outline a plan to incentivize independent farms to transition into a Socialist model voluntarily, by making certain economic guarantees if they participate in reconstruction.
I’ve been brainstorming this problem for a while, to summarize my current view I think the former territories of the USA constitute an economy that effects the hundreds of millions of people, Settler, Indigenous, Immigrant, or oppressed peoples (Africans, Latinos). The people dependent on this economy/society, should organize the reconstruction of this economy together, whether they rebuild in such a way to increase independence and break up the former territories or not. I don’t think it’s fair for the Hawaiian nation to remove and clean up America’s military occupation themselves, they’ll need help and the other territories of the former USA should assist. In any case, we’ll all need to work together, whether our goal is eventual separation or not.
The colonial borders should be immediately removed. The Blackfoot nation is split between the US and Canada, there’s no reason to maintain that separation. Similarly with the NW Coast peoples of AK, BC, WA, and OR, there’s no reason for them to be cut off from their historical community due to colonial borders.
Lastly in my view, equality between individuals cannot be guaranteed in the lower phases of Socialism. I think we should instead focus on equality between nations, where the Settler nation constitutes a majority (like the US). As in, Hawaiians as a nation should be at least equal to the Settlers, because equality of individuals cannot be guaranteed when the colonized are outnumbered. In the case of Palestine, where the Israelis are the minority, the Israelis could be incorporated into the state of Palestine, but it should be up to the Palestinian nation to choose whether they recognize Israelis as a nation or a minority within Palestine.
I do wish to firstly apologize, as I was a bit vague with my descriptions of housing. I fully agree with the ultimate removal of the western suburban model, and I was including all types, locations, and sizes of housing under my definition. So urban apartments all the way to rural homesteads.
I agree almost entirely with your reasoning regarding housing, however I will offer some minor pushback and advocate for not the complete destruction of the suburb model, but for a massive reduction in its size, and replacement of single family units with large multi purpose dwellings in the style of Soviet housing planning. These “suburbs” would include vital businesses such as pharmacies and grocery incorporated into the buildings so they are within walking range, and for reaching the city they can also be serviced though the use of short-medium range public transportation such as trams, buses, and monorail systems. This would act to reduce significantly the environmental impact of the suburbs while reducing urban congestion and the negative effects of urban sprawl.
I also fully agree with your sentiment of an organized intersectional rebuilding in a newly socialized society.
I also agree with the removal of colonial borders, and I while I don’t believe in a “balkanization” there still needs to be an immense reorganization of the current US state system.
I will however push back slightly on your analysis of equality of individuals, as while there should be significant righting of historical wrongs towards colonized groups, that is not the only distinction that should be taken in mind.
The reason why I emphasize nations over individuals is because the primary contradiction in the world is Colonialism, which is by Leninist definition, one nation dominating another. Undoing this contradiction requires equality between nations in the first phases, while later moving to equality between individuals. This is much in the same analysis as equality of individuals from the lower phase of socialism to the higher phase.
It’s incorrect to believe that the Colonial contradiction is solely enforced by the US government. Colonization occurred in the “private” or “civic” spheres of society, individual or small bands of settlers killing and occupying. Defeating the Colonial state is only defeating the most organized element of the Colonial society, it is only the beginning of decolonization. Colonial domination will still occur if we immediately embrace equality between individuals, why can I say this? Because that is the current structure of the USA, nominal democracy allows the Settler system to reinforce itself under the guise of “freedom” between individuals, while oppression is primarily based on nationality, race.
The question of equality between individuals is dependent on the equality of nations, individuals cannot be equal if their nations are not equal. The Plurinational constitution of Bolivia is an example of a new foundation of society based on equality between nations.
I think we should do the opposite; integrate them. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” sort of idea. New government, new economy, new rules, same people. I don’t see decolonization much different than the struggles along the lines of ethnicity and culture within the USSR and I believe a similar paradigm will take place in these cases. So decolonization by removing all hegemonic aspects of the settler state, completely dismantle it and rebuild the new state. No deportations. Trials yes assuming there are any guilty left after the inevitable war, but no deportations. Through the dialectical process of economic development, these peoples have joined. Home has a new meaning and many don’t have a place to go back to. When someone in America tells me to go back to my country, I was born here. I just go back to my house and continue as I was, it is pointless. Where would they go and where should they go? The drive for vengeance should not be hampered, the proposed target should be brushed off, lit with a very bright light, and the finest telescope must be used to improve it’s identification. Those responsible originally are long dead, but their legacy, their state, their class still lives on in their name, and therein lays the true ancestor of that responsibility.
That is an excellent analysis. Thank you for taking your time with this question, I will be saving this response.
It’s an incredibly difficult question rife with contradictions. Consider what happened in South Africa. Even more intense, consider what happened in Algeria. Nobody would have thought that in less than 40 years in 1939 all the white people and their compradors would be violently kicked out, but that’s what happened.
It would all depend on how things play out. Since settlers are the majority in settler colonial nations, I’m gonna guess and say there will be some sort of civil war similar to Russia 1917 and won’t be pretty. Settlers are definitely not going to want to give up their property, rich or not so rich. However, property is hugely tied to colonialism. How this happens imo depends on several things:
-
Which settlers were on the side of the revolution and who was against?
-
Will the economy crash as a result of revolution? I think it is likely. We will likely first and foremost see a large exodus of economic refugees, (provided that the devastation is similar to 1917) which will unfortunately hurt a lot of working class people, I’m gonna guess the majority of them will be settlers.
-
Obviously, utilize the wealth confiscated from the rich to bring all the oppressed peoples up to a good living standard to kickstart a socialist economy. Give Indigenous people sovereignty over their lands and increase them in size substantially.
-
Perhaps after a civil war and the most reactionary elements are defeated/fled (hypothetically) and there is a strong socialist state, I think we would just see a mass requisition of property over X value, regardless of race, giving exception to Indigenous people and maybe others. Most “middle class” workers will likely keep their house, with the richer aristocrats having their property seized and likely relegated to decent public housing. Give people adequate compensation so they don’t get feelings of revanchism, and re-educate the most reactionary sorts. Give people the option to emigrate to their ancestor countries with a little financial compensation (taken from the hyper rich, of course). Although I don’t think this is a morally good idea to be paying white people off, I think it would have the lowest cost in the long term. Obviously not to the extreme that Britain paid off former slave owners.
-
Other than that, who knows that the future will hold. Ideally, we would want some sort of articles of constitution that prevent white people from having a hold over the DOTP to undo the gains of the revolution. If settlers don’t like this, then they get re-educated, if that doesn’t change their mind, then deportation.
consider what happened in Algeria. Nobody would have thought that in less than 40 years in 1939 all the white people and their compradors would be violently kicked out, but that’s what happened.
It wasn’t hard, we just had to kick anyone who had a fr*nch citizen as we didn’t even have citizenships, and ones who helped got to stay for instance Elaine Klein, I have no compassion for settlers or the so called sons of settlers, anyone who sits around while looking at my grandfather’s village get thrown in a hole and shot, while looking at 45 thousand Algerians get massacred in a week after being promised independence is as good as the one pulling the trigger, how can a human see their rulers commit atrocities on the daily and still associate with them, they had the opportunity to leave the land and go somewhere else, it was their choice to stay and enjoy the show, in fact later on pied noirs formed counter revolutionary terrorist groups. Algeria deporting them was a show of mercy nothing else, we didn’t deport them to the Solomon islands or the sea like they watched happen to us, we sent them to their overdeveloped country where they happily live and have nostalgia of making us work in wine fields.
Well said. The French got what they deserved and their colonization was outright evil. In countries where settlers are a majority, the prospect of something like Algeria does scare them, but I don’t think it’s as likely as settler-colonialism is more entrenched in N America. Anything could happen in a short span of time though.
You bring up several good points, and of course, my post did not bring up all the possible nuance, but I agree with practically all your points.
Though it should probably be assumed that a revolution will inherently lead to a civil conflict. Though that will most likely have its roots more strongly tied to the higher class attempting to maintain their hegemony with racial, settler, and other nuances taking a backseat.
-
i think a good option would be to give indigenous people Palestinians in this case priority on newly built housing until all of the people who were displaced are adequately housed. i think in the case of Palestine specifically a court to give back property to Palestinians whos homes were stolen and giving them back would not destroy the lives of innocent people who had no choice in the whole thing like the children of colonizers.
aside from that the same way we should treat all other working people by freeing them from capitalism and giving them democracy seems kinda self evident.
Of course, this seems like a good avenue and path to take. Both in relation to Palestine and ideologically in general. Thank you for your answer.
This is a contentious issue, so I remind comrades to be respectful when discussing decolonization. We will not hesitate to issue temp bans if it gets out of hand.
OP has requested their post be locked as they’ve received plenty of replies.
Which “leftists” are you refering to actually call for ethnic cleaning? The anti-colonist posts that I encountered on social media call for ethnic deportation to make them suffer from the same refugee situation that they impose on others even when they did commit worse acts like mass murder and Indian Residential fake School enslavement and inheritance thief. I would say that the treatment of the free riding white immigrants depends on the change of their lifestyle away from parasitism or reparation.
This is quite literally what I was referencing. “Ethnic deportation to make them suffer the same way” is the literal definition of ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t just have to be mass murder. Mass expulsion is considered ethnic cleansing by international law.
Along with that, the very essence of what those “anti colonial” posts advocate for is reactionary and benefits no one. You cannot just solve a problem by “pushing them somewhere else and making them someone else’s problem”. That would only lead to refugee crisises, terrorism, or the risk of outside intervention since I doubt neighboring or other nations would take to kindly to the creation of a pointless humanitarian crisis.
Just to add, in long-existing settler-colonial countries, the lines between settler population and colonized population has blurred significantly. I never really see mentioned in these discussions that we continue to progress into a more multiracial world. Especially given the history of genocide in settler countries like the US, many native people are mixed with settler blood. Families are integrated, which opens up a whole other can of worms. Not to mention, there are populations that live in imperial core countries because their home countries were colonized by said empire. Do these populations deserve to be painted with the same settler brush?
In my personal experience, I’ve rarely encountered self-described Marxists who approach this topic with the nuance it deserves. Land back is a needed discussion that must be led by indiginous nations. But just vulgarly saying “Kick all the settlers out” like I’ve seen some on the left advocate for makes me feel like those leftists and their analysis are divorced from actual reality.
a more multiracial world This is not a thing. Lord almighty, this is not a thing! Races are not real in the base. Races are superstructural. They are invented, they are the mechanism by which class war is waged. We are not progressing into a more multi-racial world. What’s happening is that racialized groups are continuing to do the arduous work of demonstrating the limits of the race paradigm.
Especially given the history of genocide in settler countries like the US, many native people are mixed with settler blood
This is also not true, especially of the US and Canada. If you were going to make this point, you would be studying the Mestizo movements, which are material movements that truly blur the lines of settler and settled and create opportunities for what is called plurinationalism. But in the US, “blood mixing” (what a disgusting perspective) doesn’t happen that much.
Families are integrated, which opens up a whole other can of worms.
Only if you assume what’s being discussed is an ethnostate, which is not what’s being discussed. That’s a European concept. Indigenous people are not interested in purity tests nor in one-drop rules.
Not to mention, there are populations that live in imperial core countries because their home countries were colonized by said empire.
Making it the responsibility of that empire.
Do these populations deserve to be painted with the same settler brush?
There are no desserts. Settlerism is not a moral position. It is a material one.
In my personal experience, I’ve rarely encountered self-described Marxists who approach this topic with the nuance it deserves.
Perhaps you are more worried about yourself than the analysis.
Land back is a needed discussion that must be led by indiginous nations.
Indeed.
But just vulgarly saying “Kick all the settlers out” like I’ve seen some on the left advocate for makes me feel like those leftists and their analysis are divorced from actual reality.
Perhaps you’re misinterpreting what is actually being said. You’re so focused on who “deserves” what that you might actually be missing the analysis, which is that settlers have no moral standing at all and that the indigenous bear no burden for their stewardship.
It depends. The bourgeois class? Yes. The working class? What has the working class done beside be born? We have no hand in this, and being idiots isn’t a crime although it is a shame for humanity. The bourgeois class continue and maintain the actions their class began. It is the system which demands these actions, the system which was created by and benefits the bourgeois class. The blood of the world is on their hands, not ours.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
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?
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
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.
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.
But “Hunted down to the last”?
That’s what historically happened in Haiti.
