When a moral or logical argument cannot be refuted, a common tactic employed by the coloniser, is diversion.
Public attention is diverted away from an immoral imperial aim towards a cause that requires a ‘more immediate’ response or reaction, one that conveniently justifies imperial goals, while othering the objects towards whom that response is directed.
In British controlled India, when authorities needed to justify tighter controls on a native population that vastly outnumbered them, they exaggerated the prevalence of acts such as ‘sati’ (widow immolation). It was portrayed as a widespread rite performed by Hindus and central to their religion. In reality it was already a declining practice, but the British gained the moral imperative required to further subjugate the native population.
In French occupied Algeria, Algerian women were portrayed as downtrodden and oppressed by Algerian men, religion and culture. They were central to the ‘civilising’ mission of the French in North Africa.
In North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Australasia, European colonisers depicted native populations as savages and barbarians. This dehumanisation was essential to further the colonial project. It meant that any moral argument against colonialism could be diverted to focus on the subhuman nature of those being colonised. The violent offensive of the colonisers was acceptable, even necessary, while the violent resistance of the colonised merely reinforced their ‘savage’ nature.
In the United States and Canada, dehumanisation played a sinister role in the persecution of indigenous peoples. European colonisers not only depicted the native populations as savages and barbarians but acted upon these beliefs to carry out a systematic genocide through forced removals, cultural assimilation policies such as residential schools, and the spread of diseases to which Indigenous people had no immunity. This systematic erasure of Indigenous peoples and their cultures was a stark manifestation of the settler-colonial doctrine of superiority, aiming to eradicate the very existence of the original inhabitants to facilitate European settlement and expansion. The violent offensive of the colonisers in North America was not just acceptable in their eyes but was deemed necessary to suppress the rightful resistance of the indigenous peoples.
There are countless examples from all over the world, of rebellions, revolts and resistance by slaves, colonised peoples and indigenous tribes against occupying or colonial powers that has resulted in their indiscriminate slaughter and collective punishment for daring to resist. These incidents of resistance have then been used as the starting point of a narrative that frames the subaltern populace in whatever terms are most convenient in furthering the aims of the occupying force or political authority.
Should any moral or logical argument against such abuse of power be presented, the constructed narrative simply diverts attention towards the violence of the natives / enslaved.
In the first Indian War of Independence in 1857, (often referred to as the Sepoy Mutiny), native resistance against the rule of the British in India resulted in the death of thousands of civilians. In quelling the revolt, atrocities were committed by the British against those even suspected of participating. The number of deaths on the British side were approximately 6000, which included mainly soldiers. On the Indian side, the death toll was more than 100,000, and primarily civilians (though some have claimed it was much higher if subsequent reprisals are counted). Since British deaths also included some families of British soldiers, including women and children, it resulted in reprisals by the British, at times against entire villages, that included sexual violence, the torture of Indian soldiers, and cruel methods of execution.
A British officer officer whose family been killed in the uprising wrote:
“The orders went out to shoot every soul…. It was literally murder… I have seen many bloody and awful sights lately but such a one as I witnessed yesterday I pray I never see again. The women were all spared but their screams on seeing their husbands and sons butchered, were most painful… Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that man’s heart I think who can look on with indifference…”1
British media was an active participant in justifying the reprisals, since the narrative they pushed focused on British civilian deaths at the hands of Indian soldiers. The Spectator published a column where it alluded to animal-like qualities within the natives; “…the Hindoo is a tractable animal when he is managed with intelligence, intractable when his European managers are negligent or indiscrete.” In this edition, the paper also takes the description a little further, in describing the mutineers as “half children in understanding…. actuated by the same spirit that animates schoolboys in the “barring out.”” This conveniently disregarded the resentments of a native population subjugated under increasingly harsh colonial rule. It also ignored the disproportionate death toll. Those British voices who did object to the actions of the colonial rulers, were derided in British press.2
Since the end of World War 2, and particularly over the last few decades, though racist and orientalist tropes are still undeniably used to describe ‘subaltern’ populations, a shift did take place in the public opinion of the Western countries that formerly colonised the Global South. Colonialism was no longer considered acceptable, and outright racist language increasingly unacceptable.
Today, those who hold ‘unacceptable’ views have to be more subtle in their language. The word ‘savage’ is considered offensive and outdated; ‘barbarian’ is a relic of the past. Though language has changed, imperial aims have not – they are merely more subtle in their application, while moral and arguments against those aims are still diverted.
Consider the slogan ‘Black lives matter’; when Black people attempt to readdress the injustices they routinely face in America and elsewhere, instead of responding with ‘Black lives *don’t* matter’, opponents say ‘All lives matter’ – both demonstrating that language in mainstream discourse can no longer be outrightly racist (it needs to be more subtle), and a diversion tactic; an argument that cannot be refuted logically or morally is diverted to another issue (here, the imagined threat to white people).
Today, the settler colony of Israel occupies historic Palestine, but the shift in public opinion mentioned above has meant that supporters of Israel will not openly refer to the state as a settler colony, even though it falls under the definition of one, because the concept of a settler colony can no longer be easily justified in Western public discourse (even though its founders referred to it as one). The settler/ coloniser and colonised dynamic can never be admitted.
With the change in language, Palestinians cannot be referred to as savages either, so are referred to as terrorists instead; instead of barbarians they are anti-semites. The principle remains the same: the violent offensive undertaken by the coloniser is acceptable and necessary, while any resistance to that offensive by the Palestinians merely reinforces their ‘terrorism’. This shift in language makes the imperial aim acceptable in Western public discourse – thereby successfully diverting the moral argument against the subjugation of an entire populace. The use of outright racist and dehumanising language does of course still continue, but it is the more subtle use of language that allows the diversion of moral arguments.
Furthermore, in an age of mass communication and migration, now that the subaltern lives among and interacts with the Western world, the tactic of diversion has developed to demand condemnation directly from the mouth of the native. Before a moral argument can even be presented, one must disassociate from and disavow the colonised, thereby reinforcing the ‘truth’ of the colonisers framing of the narrative and undermining the as of yet unstated moral argument.
The occupation and colonisation of Palestine cannot be justified in any religious or philosophical framework of morality, so the coloniser and its supporters divert the argument to ensure it focuses on the ‘more immediate’ concern: the threat to ‘us’ by ‘them.’
Additional input by Omar Rais.
Footnotes
1 Dalrymple, William (2006), The Last Mughal, Viking Penguin, p. 4-5.
2 Punch, 24 October 1857.
