Human rights rhetoric masks imperial assumptions that racialize colonized peoples

Evidence

Thus, liberalism and human rights discourse effectively masked imperial objectives and imperial violence. “Benevolent hegemony” is a reworking of the white man’s burden and is based on the notion that the United States knows best what is in the interests of developing nations. While the rhetoric is no longer blatantly racist in neocon and realist/liberal circles, its assumptions that people in developing nations are incapable of self-rule or of change from within minus imperial intervention has been part of a bipartisan consensus for a while. Such an attitude still infantilizes and therefore racializes those who disagree with the imperial agenda. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 471

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how humanitarian framing legitimizes power, echoing the sacrifice piece’s treatment of ideology legitimizing violence.

Related

• Liberal human-rights rhetoric racializes by infantilizing those it claims to help (similarity 0.91)
• Humanitarian rhetoric masks a bipartisan assumption that developing peoples cannot govern themselves. (similarity 0.90)
• Liberal humanitarian rhetoric masks imperial violence and infantilizes its targets (similarity 0.88)
• Benevolent hegemony language still infantilizes and racializes the colonized. (similarity 0.83)
• Human-rights rhetoric functions as core neoconservative propaganda, not liberal exclusivity (similarity 0.82)
• Liberal rights discourse has historically been used to justify imperial domination and war. (similarity 0.81)
• Imperial racism explained away failure to democratize colonies (similarity 0.81)
• Human rights and democracy discourse replaced older imperial justifications for war (similarity 0.80)
• Liberal rights discourse has historically justified rather than opposed empire (similarity 0.80)
• Responsibility-to-Protect discourse shifted sovereignty from nations to individuals (similarity 0.79)
• Human-rights discourse has replaced civilizational rhetoric as war’s legitimation (similarity 0.79)
• Public humanitarian language masked private economic motives in imperial expansion (similarity 0.79)
• Imperialist discourses succeed through resonance rather than truth or intelligibility (similarity 0.79)
• Human-rights legitimacy debates hinge on contested claims about their universal or colonial origins (similarity 0.79)
• Hobson argued imperialists used humanitarian rhetoric as a moral fig leaf (similarity 0.78)