Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests

Evidence

As implied by the Czech delegate’s jest about jet-propelled planes, opponents of the colonial clause sought to accelerate the process of modernisation. In arguing that human rights were prerequisites for civilisation, they accepted the directional account of progress that underpinned colonial civilising claims. On the one hand, they challenged metropolitan arguments that the culture of the colonised constituted an insuperable barrier to the exercise of human rights, and contested the metropolitan prerogative to determine when ‘native’ culture had been sufficiently reformed. On the other hand, they largely accepted the necessity of such reform, and depicted the exercise of human rights as a civilising practice that would promote the modernisation of ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ peoples. Faced with the cultural-relativist arguments of the colonial powers, most opponents of the colonial clause now distanced themselves from the Saudi delegate Jamil Baroody’s earlier warnings that the UDHR was based primarily on Western philosophies and cultural patterns. They accepted, at least rhetorically, the superiority of the self-possessed, modern individual of human rights over the ‘primitive’ native condition. In doing so, they unwittingly prefigured the later repurposing of human rights; in a changed geopolitical context, the civilising mission of human rights would license coercive interventions to remake societies, subjectivities and economies in the interests of global capitalism. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 273

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The specific mechanism by which a progressive rhetorical move becomes the legitimating frame for later coercion is dense and paradigm-shifting for how we read human-rights history.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated interest in connecting human-rights discourse with economic policy; the ‘civilising mission of human rights licensing coercive interventions’ anticipates later structural-adjustment and interventionist regimes. — connects to: Even anti-colonial activism via social media reinforces the corporate systems of settler colonialism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 22; Anti-colonial movements drastically changed UN composition and human rights debates — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 229; Anticolonialists defended universal rights against cultural-difference exceptions — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 271 (+10 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the rhetorical compromise of anti-colonial delegates at the UDHR as the genealogical root of today’s ‘rights-based’ justifications for market coercion.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal human rights discourse entailed a duty to spread capitalism globally #complicates (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 283
• Neoliberals feared colonial anti-imperialism would morph into anti-capitalism #complicates (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 251
• Anti-colonial delegates reversed civilising logic, framing human rights as the route to progress #corroborates (0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 272