Colonial radicals weaponized British liberal traditions of free speech against the Empire

Evidence

For Makonnen, who had lived for a time in the United States, the center of the British Empire was a most significant platform. He celebrated the contrast between its liberalism and that of his own society in British Guiana. It did not take him long to come to the belief that colonial radicals could depend upon British traditions of free speech and a free press in their attack on the Empire. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1228

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the metropole’s own liberalism as an instrument of imperial self-subversion — using the oppressor’s stated ideals against him.