We hear a lot about ‘decolonisation’ these days, even though practically all countries that were colonised by the European powers gained their independence decades ago. In contemporary parlance, ‘decolonisation’ means adding non-white authors to university reading lists and ensuring that ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ are reflected in the curriculum.
What’s more, there’s a whole academic field called ‘post-colonial studies’, which seeks to critically analyse Western colonialism. And while there’s nothing wrong with this in principle (we should analyse Western colonialism from a critical standpoint), many post-colonial scholars are less impartial critics than anti-Western activists.
They refuse to accept there was anything positive about Western colonialism. And when dissidents like Bruce Gilley or Nigel Biggar point out that there were positive aspects, those dissidents find themselves on the receiving end of censorious petitions signed by hundreds of their colleagues.
Such activism stifles intellectual debate and gives the false impression that Western colonialism was “a litany of racism, exploitation and massively murderous violence” – to quote Biggar.
One indication that the legacy of colonialism is far more mixed than most post-colonial scholars will admit comes from a recent study published in the British Journal of Political Science.
Andy Baker and David Cupery combined data from several cross-national surveys in which respondents in different countries were asked for their opinion about certain named foreign countries. The exact question varied from survey to survey. In one case, respondents were asked for their opinion “with zero expressing a very unfavorable opinion” and “100 expressing a very favorable opinion”. In another case, they were asked if they have a “have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion”. Baker and Cuprey combined the various surveys using a technique called factor analysis.
They were then able to calculate, for each country in their dataset that was a former colony, the average favourability toward that country’s coloniser minus the average favourability toward all other countries respondents were asked about. They call this quantity the ‘former-coloniser gap’.
Interestingly, they found that this gap was positive for a large majority of the former colonies in their dataset (47 out of 64). In other words, most former colonies have a more favourable opinion of their coloniser than they have of other countries. Results are shown in the chart below.
Looking at the left-hand side of the chart, we can see that Poles have an unfavourable view of Russia, Greeks have an unfavourable view of Turkey, and Iraqis have an unfavourable view of Britain. None of which is particularly surprising. What is surprising, though, is that these are exceptions. Most former colonies have a favourable view of their coloniser.
Further analysis revealed that the tendency for ‘former-coloniser gaps’ to be positive, rather than negative, could be explained by three main factors: colonisers tend to be democratic; they tend to have large economies; and they tend to trade more with their former colonies.
The authors interpret their findings in line with an ‘admiration hypothesis’, whereby former colonies’ views of their colonisers are characterised more by admiration than by animosity and resentment.
Add this study to all the post-colonial reading lists.
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Very well put, thanks.
Good for Mr. Chase to stand tall. Millions support you Sir.
Mental illness cult.
Some Science; x and y chromosomes. DNA. Mitochondria. Physical structures. Testes and Johnson vs a Vagina.
2 genders.
The rest are mental illnesses and confusion. Simples.
Could we have the names of the companies that threatened boycott?
I’d like to boycott them. And spread the word about how they are trying to crush free speech.
If it’s too compromising to single those companies out, is there a place we can see the list of advertisers and sponsors of Propel Opinion?
#MeToo
Incidentally, I also stopped using PayPal for its opposition to free speech.
Additionally, I cost them some money by submitting a Subject Access Request, requiring them to provide me with a hard, on paper, copy of every piece of information they retained on me.
It is not sufficient that these orgnisations get away with just changing their minds back. There must be a penalty for them attempting to subvert our freedoms, or else they will go on trying it.
.
The best succinct summary of reality I’ve read.
A few years ago, we would have read the article and said: ‘Well, obviously!!!’ Now we applaud it, because the world has gone nuts and someone speaking the truth is an exciting, daring thing! How far we’ve fallen in so short a time.
Gender-Borg is rather appropriate…
“Your diversity will be added to the collective as you’re assimilated”
An excellent article, the rabid responses to it are proof, that the truth hurts, and to apologise for telling the truth is wrong.
An idea I had today was to use the term Anti-Nature-Party to refer to the full spectrum of wokery because that’s really what it’s all about: Denying the existence of anything which hasn’t been made or isn’t controlled by man. At best, nature is a mortal danger to us, as in COVID or climate change, the solution to both problems being control of something we cannot control (movement of virions, the weather) but where some people will literally go to arbitrary lengths to maintain their illusion that they are controlling it (Just abolish human life, that’ll show those damn virions!, Back to the roots! In order to finally control the weather, we just need to become hunter-gatherers again!). At worst, it’s outright denied: Humans are not mammals and don’t reproduce sexually, that’s all just an illusion created by the (erstwhile) dominant majority in the West to maintain its (ill-gotten) power!
The ZIP (zero-intelligence party) someone came up with yesterday would also be a fitting name, just a more indirect one.
Yes – it’s another “religion of the abandonment of religion” confusion, perhaps. One abandons the idea that God created us, and the world, and that therefore by and large nature is on our side, and replaces it with an exaggerated Darwinian “red in tooth and claw” idea of nature, yet combined with some vague notion that man is not part of it, so that not even evolutionary adaptation makes us at home.
After all “the wrong body” concept makes no sense either in theological or evolutionary terms, but only in some Ovid Metamorphosis mythos where nothing can be relied on to be what it seems.
And as you say, in the end it’s all about man (singular, ie “me”) at the centre.
After all “the wrong body” concept makes no sense either in theological or evolutionary terms, but only in some Ovid Metamorphosis mythos where nothing can be relied on to be what it seems.
It sort-of makes sense when considering the background: As I already wrote last time, a precondition for the wrong body notion is that the (Christian) body/soul duality is actually real, ie, that the essence of a person is distinct from the body and of an inherently higher value (as exemplified by the fact that it’s considered ok to damage the body, often seriously, if that benefits this essence). This means these people-essences must come from somewhere and something must pair them with bodies. As this requires supernatural powers, this so-far nameless assembly facility can rightfully be called a god. Or rather, a devil, as it apparently misplaces souls solely to torment them. Which circles back to the notion that nature is vaguely personal and out there to get us, and that only human ingenuity can save us from this potent and malevolent force.
“Anti-Nature-Party”
Brilliant.
Excellent summary in 10 points. I’ll save and re-use if I may sometime.
Myth #10 Fact puts it succinctly Imputing hateful motives to those who disagree with you, or pathologising dissent, is the hallmark of an extremist. If you’re happy pretending to be a woman, I’m happy for you. You don’t need to resort to science-denial to justify your self-presentation
Stewart – Propel Opinion seems to be at
http://propelinfonews.com/archive.php
with many advertisers but not clear who may have threatened boycott
Excellent article Mr Chase, one to hammer onto the (metaphorical) church door a la Martin Luther!
Why has such a tiny proportion of the population – whether they’re mentally-ill, sexual fetishists, people exploiting the system for perfectly rational reasons (men who can be best in female sports, men who want to go to female prisons or men who want to benefit from quotas, for example) or piss-takers, like the Canadian bloke who wanted to have his balls waxed – achieved so much power?
OK, they have the support of a significant minority of the general population, but those people are drooling imbeciles.
It’s clearly because they have the support of and are directed by the same people and organisations who have been behind all of the other attacks on European Christian civilisation over the past few decades.
I recently discussed transgender ideology with my registrar.
I posited that it is not possible to be “born in the wrong body” and that the desire to change one’s sex may be due to mental health issues, social pressures, a milieu of “victim rights”, etc.
He aligned transgenderism with homosexuality and could not understand there being any difference.
When our young specialist doctors think like this, I wonder what hope there is for the future of humanity!
Well done Mr Chase for setting out the REAL SCIENCE of biology so comprehensively.
Millions of us agree with you.
Great article, which demonstrates nicely how (the much denied) cancellation is done-pressure from the extremists applied to advertisers.
An excellent article, many thanks. As for all those idiots complaining; take them as badges of honour – they cannot cope with the truth. That’s their problem, not yours.
They have a tendency to make it into a problem of other people. That’s because to them, there is no such thing as reality or at least, while there might be a reality, we cannot ever learn anything certain about it. We have only our own, subjective perception of things which cannot be validated objectively because all we can do is talk to other people to determine how they see things and the only thing we then get is their subjective viewpoint. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we can never be sure that we’re really getting other people’s viewpoints as it’s not certain that other people exist at all. That’s a concept called solipsism: There are no things, only opinions about things and even these opinions might not really exist. Hence, if you tell some guy who claims to be a woman that he isn’t one, your denying him the right to express his perfectly valid opinion about the world and because of this, you’re obviously a bad person denying other people their human rights.
This used to be called lunacy but since about the middle of the last century, it successfully recast itself as philosophy.
It beggars the mind that an article like Paul Chase’s even had to be written. How have we reached the point where stating objective facts is a sackable offence? What this boils down to is a small number of weird activists who have got into key positions in the state and big business and a small, but gobby mob on (anti-)social media.
It’s not an exaggeration to say the gender fraud represents perhaps the tipping point that that could collapse Western society. The search for truth and objective reality – the acceptance that there are objective truths and standards – has been the basis of Western human development for centuries.
To link to another Borg reference, in ‘The Best of Both Worlds’, the crew of the Enterprise realised they could get on board a seemingly insuperable Borg ship and cause damage by hitting a small vulnerable area, equivalent to a mosquito biting someone in a vulnerable area that could cause severe damage. The gender nutters have attacked the West’s fundamental belief in objective truth. Without a belief in a core objective reality, everything we are crumbles: it’s the vulnerable spot the postmodernists have been chipping away at for over a century.
On a low level, we’ve seen things happen in our language for some time that deny reality: on example is changing the term ‘chairman’ (as in the human being who sits in the boardroom chair) into ‘chair’ (a human cannot be a chair: a chair is something you sit in!) Now we’re denying biological facts like what constitutes a man and a woman and we claim ‘micro-aggressions’ – insults that are supposedly hidden and unspoken, because people weren’t actually insulting other people at all.
I’ve said it many times and will say it again: there’s going to have to be some sort of diaspora: it’s simply not possible for people who believe in objective reality to live among people who don’t. Objective reality is where law and order come from, relativism and subjectivism are where chaos and death come from, where the ‘law’ is made up on a whim. There are going to have to be new countries created in the next few years and people are going to have to face moving, possibly a long way from where they live now.