European colonial atrocities were rehearsals for fascist violence at home

Evidence

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind-it’s Nazism, it will. pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack. — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 21

Categorization

• DEFINE: Césaire’s core mechanism: colonial practices applied only to non-Europeans were later turned back on Europeans themselves.
• XREF: Connects to Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (boomerang thesis of imperialism), and foreshadows the ‘coloniality of power’ idea used in Islamophobia scholarship. — connects to: European fascism returned colonial violence back upon the European bourgeoisie — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 20; Crispi’s colonial violence and nationalism prefigured Italian fascism.; White supremacist attacks transcend national borders via shared colonial history (+1 more)
• SEED: An essay tracing how the ‘boomerang’ critique recirculates in contemporary debates about Islamophobia as European fascism internalized.

Related

• Belief in commerce’s pacifying virtues collapsed only when colonial violence came home to Europe (similarity 0.80)
• European fascism returned colonial violence back upon the European bourgeoisie (similarity 0.78)
• Europeans forgive crimes committed against non-whites but not against whites (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Crispi’s colonial violence and nationalism prefigured Italian fascism. #exemplifies (0.95)
• European fascism returned colonial violence back upon the European bourgeoisie #corroborates (0.90) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 20
• Europeans project their repressed evil onto the racialized Other #expands (0.80)
• White supremacist attacks transcend national borders via shared colonial history #contradicts (0.75)