Settler colonialism and the white ties that bind in the Age of Trump 2.0

One of the significant points the heralded historian Gerald Horne makes in his seminal text The Counter-Revolution of 1776 is that at the core of settler colonialism is class collaboration. Horne made this point to show that whiteness is the underlying ‘identity politics’ which binds Europeans in the process of genocide, land dispossession and enslavement which brought into being the United States of America, currently under the fascist presidency of a settler descendant Donald Trump. Europeans from across class positions understood the ideology of whiteness which entitled them to murder, dispossess the Indigenous people of their land and to enslave Africans. The ascendency of Trump and his assumption of presidency are embedded in this idea of class collaboration. But settler colonialism is not confined to just the U.S. Settler colonialism is the historical motor of European imperialism since the 1500s. The system of global white supremacy is premised on the international scope of settler colonialism. The white ‘nomos of the earth’ since the 1500s is a reflection of the extent of the tentacles of settler colonialism. The doctrine of Discovery is at the heart of this international nature of settler colonialism thus, the global character of whiteness. This doctrine was utilized by European conquerors to invade and conquer Indigenous peoples and their lands outside of Christian Europe. Although authorized through a series of Catholic papal bulls such as Romanus Pontifex in 1455, this doctrine is at the core of what Horne identifies as class collaboration. Through this doctrine all Europeans became Christian soldiers thus, potential settler colonizers once they reach the lands of the Indigenous peoples. Thus, despite the religious family wars between the Catholics and Protestants, the doctrine of Discovery was the foundation of class collaboration which was also rooted in the Christian racist fantasy of the civilizing mission.

At this point of course this analysis of class collaboration at the heart of settler colonialism reads like it is anchored in historical idealism. It is indeed true that the possibility to acquire land and to become a slave owner which was dangled by the project of settler colonialism to every European is at the core of class collaboration. While this is a solid historical materialist claim, it is also important to underscore the role of the doctrine of Discovery which was based on the idea of Christianity as the true religion of the one true God as also central to class collaboration in the project of settler colonialism. Apart from the original ‘identity politics’ of whiteness which bound all settlers, there was also the prospect of owning the land. It is in this sense that settler thinkers such as Patrick Wolfe argues that at the heart of settler colonialism is the conquest of the territory of the natives by the settlers - the settler and native antagonism. This conquest is of course premised on racism. As Frantz Fanon would put it ‘settlers and natives are old acquaintances’.

In addition to whiteness, land dispossession is the ideology of legitimation in the sense of ‘silencing the past’ of the natives. The ‘logic of elimination’ of settler colonialism includes the contested attempts to eliminate the very process of settler colonialism. This is in order to naturalize the presence of the settlers in the land of the Indigenous peoples. Due to the anxiety among white settlers in what Cedric Robinson called ‘racial regimes’, they are nervous about the truth of their origins. Frequently, this ‘nervous condition’ about their origins reaches absurd heights as when white settlers claim that they are a ‘white tribe of Africa’(e.g., the so-called Afrikaners in South Africa). They seek to portray themselves as white victims of exclusion by the rightful owners of the land. It is in this sense that whatever efforts the rightful owners of the land make to restore their land will never please white settlers. It is in this sense that expulsion of all white settlers as opposed to their appeasement is always the best strategy to resolve the question of settler colonialism. In any event, white settlers were regarded as strange temporary visitors by our ancestors when they first encountered them.

Of course, white settler victimhood is weaponized to legitimate the unethical and violent presence of white settlers in the land of the Indigenous people. This is how white settlers seek to naturalize the violent and unethical process of settler colonialism. White settlers are quick to manufacture all kinds of what Robinson calls ‘forgeries of memory’ to legitimate their claim to the land of the Indigenous people. The Indigenous people who are usually naively generous are insidiously invited to pity white settlers when they claim that ‘but we cannot go back to Europe, we are no longer Europeans’. This is in spite of the historical fact that the Indigenous people never invited these Europeans in the first place and that their unprovoked violent invasion was premised on their decision to leave Europe.

This historical backdrop is important to comprehend the logic of white settler solidarity at the heart of Trump’s position on the land expropriation debate in South Africa. Elon Musk is of course a white settler from South Africa who is working with Trump, another white settler in the U.S. It in this sense that while settler colonialism is rooted in class collaboration internally in the settler colonies as well as being anchored in white settler collaboration internationally across settler colonies in the world. It is in this sense that Racial capitalism interfaces with settler colonialism and Euro-American imperialism in its decline. This logic of internal and external class collaboration at the core of settler colonialism is important for historical and political reasons. Africans in South Africa and in the U.S. who are resisting settler colonialism need to understand its global nature. They must comprehend the nature and objective of international white racial solidarity, to effectively counteract it. This implies understanding that settler colonialism as the historical motor of European imperialism is rooted in pan-whitism which binds all Europeans in the process of becoming white settlers through genocide, land dispossession and enslavement. It is in this sense that when settlers construct new white settler societies on the land they dispossessed from the Indigenous people, they are motivated by the white supremacist logic of the Whiteman’s land. This kind of an unreasoning force of white supremacy should be confronted by an uncompromising revolutionary logic of Africa for the Africans, those at home and abroad. Africans across the globe need to understand the potency of the race-first ideology of Garveyism today or perish.

Masilo Lepuru
An Afrikan philosopher and founding director of the Institute for Kemetic and Marcus Garvey Studies (IKMGS).

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