Colonizer democracy: a transient, exclusive democracy of colonizers by colonizers for colonizers needed for the success of colonization which gradually transforms to oligarchy (autocracy by few) due to increasing inequality.
Colonization is impossible without colonizer democracy which inevitably transforms to autocracy.
Apartheid South Africa was democratic in the sense of colonizer democracy – an exclusive democracy of the colonizer Afrikaner by the Afrikaner for the Afrikaner. In the same vein, America was initially crafted to be a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) democracy – an exclusive democracy of the colonizer WASP by the WASP for the WASP, de facto, if not de jure like apartheid South Africa.
Until recently, WASP America had an unwritten law that only a WASP can occupy the highest offices of the country. The first Catholic president (John F. Kennedy) was elected in 1961, 185 years after the US was founded. The Irish were stereotyped as crime-prone drunkards not fit for decent jobs and housing, postings including “No Irish Need Apply” being quite common. The Immigration Act of 1924 was introduced to drastically reduce immigration from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Italian Americans were the second largest group (after Black Americans) to be lynched by WASP supremacists. Suffice to mention one of the largest mass lynchings in American history (the 1891 New Orleans Lynching) whereby 11 Italians were viciously murdered by a mob for no crime other than being Italians. In fact, Columbus Day was first introduced as a one-time celebration by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 (one year after the New Orleans Lynching) to appease Italian Americans for this heinous crime and it didn’t become a national holiday until 1934.
As the resistance to WASP domination of America stiffened (especially by Black Americans), the Anglo-Saxon was forced to make an alliance – a marriage of convenience – with all Europeans under the generic name “white”. In their turn, the newly minted “whites” felt the need (rather were made to feel the need) to prove their “whiteness”, explaining why the most vicious and vociferous white supremacists happen to be mostly from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe as well as from Ireland. As a result, America’s WASP democracy gradually morphed into white democracy – an exclusive democracy of whites by whites for whites – strictly enforced by white supremacist laws like Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws.
Moreover, America’s exclusive white democracy is becoming increasingly more exclusive and is dynamically transforming itself into exclusive white oligarchy whereby a group of few prominent oligarchs wields absolute, all-encompassing power. How effectively America’s prominent oligarchs like Peter Theil – whose motto is “competition is for losers” – have used their immense wealth to fund the brainwashing of America’s white youth towards absolute oligarchy and how close America is to absolute oligarchy can easily be observed, for example, by watching Mehdi Hasan’s debate with 20 so-called “white Christian conservatives” (“Mehdi Hasan vs. 20 Far Right Conservatives”).
The transformation of America from an exclusive white democracy to an exclusive white oligarchy is not a choice but a must because of the very nature of America as a settler colonial state. It was started when colonizers who were basically penniless and, therefore, equal (wealth-wise) during the campaign to ethnically cleanse indigenous Americans become unequal when sharing indigenous lands according to their hierarchy in the colonization campaign. Robbers have to cooperate to achieve their shared objectives, but that cooperation quickly dissipates when dividing the spoils, because of the inherent selfishness and greed associated with robbing. And colonizers are nothing but murderous robbers of the highest order.
Settler colonialists need exclusive colonizer democracy to facilitate their colonization. For settler colonization to be as successful as possible, elections of leaders of the colonization have to be as democratic and as merit based as possible, and the most effective colonization leaders are revered as demigods. In this sense, settler colonizers are essentially like share-holders in a big company interested only in the maximum possible profit and, therefore, on leaders who would quickly deliver. Moreover, while settling, settler colonizers have not only free and fair elections but also unabridged “freedom of speech”. Each colonizer is not only encouraged but also urged to freely express his opinions and make suggestions for ensuring the success of the colonization.
However, once the colonized land is apportioned unequally in accordance with leadership hierarchy, nepotism, and other factors, those who benefited least from the colonization resent those who benefited most. As a result, the synergy during colonization quickly changes to discord. As the rich colonizers get richer at the expense of the poor colonizers, the resentment of the disadvantaged grow stronger, eventually changing to animosity. The division between the rich and the poor colonizers keeps widening with time, until it leads to outright rebellion which can turn into revolution, if and when organized.
Fearful of losing their property through such a revolution, the rich colonizers setup a legal system emphasizing the sanctity of “private property” and a “law enforcement force” to “serve” them and “protect” their property, while terrorizing the poor from ever rebelling, let alone organizing their rebellion into a revolution. In addition, they use their vast, all-encompassing, highly effective media to demonize any type of organization or union in the interest of the poor. Unionization by the poor for collective bargaining power is made a taboo, whereas monopolization (which is essentially unionization by the rich for concentration of power) is promoted. To quote, once again, the present-day prominent oligarch Peter Theil, “competition is for losers”, meaning “monopoly is for winners”.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As the oligarchs of a settler colonial state gain more power, they become more corrupt and use their ever-increasing power to twist the laws of the state more and more to their favor until they, themselves become the law. Such a gradual transition from exclusive colonizer democracy to exclusive colonizer oligarchy is the fate of each and every settler colonial state. All settler colonialism starts with exclusive democracy for all colonizers and ends with exclusive autocracy by very few ultra-rich colonizers. Oligarchy is the last stage of settler colonialism, as imperialism is the last stage of capitalism.
It follows that, as a settler colonial state, oligarchy is the final, logical conclusion of the American saga, filled with cruelty, violence, and horror. America has been heading to its final oligarchic destination ever since the “Declaration of Independence” was signed by the prominent oligarchs of the time – the so-called “founding fathers” of America.
The “founding fathers” of America were ultimate hypocrites who could not see (rather did not want to see) the obvious contradiction of complaining about “taxation without representation” while they themselves were treating enslaved Blacks as three-fifth of a human being. At best, they were superficially enlightened, pseudo-intellectual, pretentious feudals (with slave serfs) whose understanding of enlightenment was only skin-deep, limited to stating well-known enlightenment clichés for self-serving purposes. They lived most of their lives mostly confined to rural America, far from the centers of enlightenment and were heavily influenced by white supremacist Puritan pastors like Cotton Mather, pretty much like Donald Trump is now heavily influenced by white supremacist evangelical pastors like Douglas Wilson.
When Abraham Lincoln (the very same Lincoln who oversaw the largest mass execution in America’s history following the Dakota Natives Uprising) spoke about “government of the people for the people by the people“, it was obvious that by “the people” he meant whites and whites only, since his government was nothing but a white by white for white government.
“I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” (Abraham Lincoln)
No wonder why Lincoln paid reparations to white enslavers and why his emancipation proclamation was only a self-serving war measure to help the Union cause, explaining why he declared slaves “free” only Confederate states where he had no control.
When Thomas Jefferson (the very same Jefferson who had more than 600 slaves including his own children from his own slave) stated “all men are created equal“, he literally meant white men, not including even white women, let alone slaves. When Francis Scot Key penned “The Star-Sprangled Banner” and claimed America to be “the land of the free” (at a time when native genocide was at its worst and slavery was at its ugliest), he was simply stating the obvious fact that American freedom is exclusive to whites and whites only. When George Washington, to rally his troops against the British,cried “the time is near at hand which determines whether Americans are to be free men or slaves“, he was conveniently forgetting that he, himself was enslaving more than 300 Americans. And when Patrik Henry (another “founding father” hypocrite) cried “give me liberty or give me death” at, of all places, the pulpit of a church, he, himself was “giving” slow, agonizing death to his hundreds of slaves.
Frederick Douglass was right on the mark when he asked, “what to the slave is the Fourth of July?” I, for one, will go further than Douglass and say Blacks should observe July 4 not as a day of independence, but as a day of mourning, as the day the American colonialist became fully independent from the British Monarch to make Native genocide and Black bondage harsher. Native genocide and Black bondage became harsher after the “independence” of America because of the very nature of whites who came to settle in America.
In the days of the “founding fathers”, the British who came to settle in America were the lowest of the low and the poorest of the poor in Britain. In fact, a large number of them were fugitives or banished criminals. They had to migrate to America only because they couldn’t make it in Britain. However, when they settled in America, they owned huge tracts of land British aristocrats would not even dream of owning. In addition, they owned another a very special “property” even British royals cannot own – a human property, a slave. This is why British colonial settlers in America were vicious slave masters, since they themselves were essentially slaves in Britain.
In effect, the British who were abused in Britain settled in America to become worse abusers. The low-class British who were despised in aristocratic Britain moved to America to become worse “dispisers” – virulent white supremacists. They passed on their white supremacism to the next generation by adding a religious justification for it and, therefore, making it worse from generation to generation so much so that it has now become basically inherent, almost impossible to unlearn. Only an American white supremacist coward can have the bestial cruelty to drag a Blackman behind a pickup truck for 3 miles along an asphalt road, dump the mutilated remains of the victim in front of a church and then drive off straight to a barbecue.
This also explains why the overly exaggerated, highly glorified so-called American War of Independence was more of a skirmish than a war. After all, why should a poor British soldier fight to death for a remote British Monarch when he can easily change sides, settle in America, rob huge lands, own numerous slaves, and lead a life materially much better than the British Monarch himself? However, for the “lower caste” British colonial settlers, the so-called “American Revolutionary War” is nothing but their ultimate message to the British ruling class that they are no longer “lower caste”. And not sure of being heard, they have to repeat the message ad nauseam, hence the need for excessive exaggeration and glorification.
No general has ever been glorified as the once slave-holding tobacco farmer George Washington, a second-rate general who lost a number of battles and was repeatedly criticized for weak commandeering and low troop morale. And no war has ever been glamorized as the “American Revolutionary War”. In fact, there was nothing “revolutionary” in the “American Revolutionary War”, and the adjective was used for mere exaggeration and glamorization. In the same vein, the so-called “American Civil War” was not a civil war between Americans but a fight between two vicious looting gangs of America over their differences in managing their loot, explaining why it was by far the most deadly war in American history, simply because it was colonizer against colonizer, beast against beast.
The MAGA revolution is a clear, unmistakable sign that settler colonial America is in the last stage of its necessary transition from colonizer democracy to absolute oligarchy. Every time America takes one step towards true, multiracial democracy (such as through the Voting Rights Act of 1965), it immediately reverses course to take two steps towards oligarchy under the catch-phrase “less government”, electing Nixon in 1969, Reagan in 1981, and Trump in 2016. Nixon was the American oligarch’s reaction to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, just as Trump was the reaction of the same to the election of Obama in 2008.
Reagan officially began his first presidential campaign in the most racist state (Mississippi) near the site where three Civil Rights Movement activists (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner) were viciously murdered by KKK in 1964 (a year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965). Being a sports broadcaster, Reagan’s main usefulness as a puppet to the American oligarch was his unique ability to rouse the rabble. He was the one who introduced the catchphrase “Make America Great Again” to stir up his white supremacist base who yearn for pre-1965 Jim crow era.
Had Reagan cared for his Irish roots, he would have known that pre-1965 America was never great to the Irish who were stereotyped as heavy drinkers and wanton criminals. He would also have not called the very Blacks dominating the very sports he used to broadcast for living, “monkeys uncomfortable wearing shoes”, were the “Shanty Irish” derogation of the English offensive to him. However, all indications are Reagan may very well have been an English wannabe Irish self-hater – an idiot endowed with empty, superficial rhetoric. This may partly explain why Reagan’s superhero was none other than the English supremacist, Irish disdaining, apartheid defending Margaret Thatcher. After all, this was a man so insecure of his masculinity that, at his own Inaugural Ball, he had to warn Frank Sinatra not to dance with his wife (Nancy Reagan) and when Sinatra ignored him (perhaps thinking that he was joking), he physically “cut in”, lacking the confidence to wait for few minutes.
Reagan’s relentless campaign against the federal government was also led by another catch-phrase – “States Rights” – which essentially means states like Mississippi should be able to freely follow their racist policies with little or no interference from the federal government. This is, to say the least, ironic, coming from Reagan the macho-man, the epitome of American imperialism which goes around the world to topple sovereign governments opposed to its unwarranted interference in their internal affairs under the guise of rules-based international order, democracy, and human rights. The fact is, no state (whatever its shape or from) should have the right to trample universal rights and that is the foundational principle – the raison d’être – of the United Nations headquartered, ironically, in the United States.
The idiotic Donald Trump, as a puppet of the American oligarch, is a mere extension of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, albeit much more brazen. He is brazen partly because he is astute enough to know that white supremacists enraged by the election of Obama and the little progress made in the direction of multiracial democracy are venting their anger through him. Besides, as a nepotism baby, he has worked for no one, was accountable to no one, and was responsible for nothing and, therefore, has overinflated ego unchecked by authority and reality. Like all white supremacists in general and, as the president with the “smallest hands” in particular, he is highly insecure and white supremacism is his way of compensating for his chronic inferiority complex, especially in masculine attributes Blacks are presumed to be superior.
Donlad Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is another name for Ronald Reagan’s “States Rights”. Regan used the “States Rights” pretext to give states full power to legislate white supremacy, with no oversight form the federal government. Donald Trump’s pretext to do the same is “government efficiency”. DOGE is the American oligarch’s crusade against the federal government and its workers (especially Blacks) and has nothing to do with efficiency. Otherwise, DOGE would not have left out the Department of Defense – the most wasteful and inefficient component of the US government which has never passed a full financial audit. Unlike the Department of Education, the Department of Defense is the darling of the American oligarch, if only because (as a purchaser of military supplies with excessively inflated budget accounting for more than 40% of the global military expenditure) it is the main lifeline of the American oligarch’s military-industrial-complex.
With the election of Trump, white supremacist America is now highly oligarchic with a police force unlike any other in the whole world, armed to the teeth and next to none in brutality, a force Trump may soon give “qualified immunity” to shield it from any and all forms of accountability. To make this highly autocratic America fully autocratic and become the “Dear Leader” or “Mein Führer” of America, all Trump has to do is take few more steps in the direction he is heading. To this end, Trump is guided by the “Mandate for Leadership” of “Project 2025” which is essentially Trumps “Mein Kampf” authored by former Trump officials under “The Heritage Foundation” – a white supremacist think tank heavily funded by the likes of Peter Theil.
Standing on the shoulders of giants like Nixon and Reagan, Trump is now able to clearly see the final, oligarchic destination of settler-colonial America. America is hurtling towards its inevitable final stage – absolute autocracy. The question is not if, but when will it get there.
Mesfin Arega
mesfinarega.com
mesfin.arega@gmail.com
