Native informers tell the colonizer what he wants to hear, not what he needs.

Evidence

As I have already said, the native informer does not tell the white master what he needs to know but what he wants to hear. In the case of Ibn Warraq (followed closely by that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali), the native informer personifies what the white master wants to loath. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 478

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘native informer’ as a distinct figure who serves the colonial master’s self-loathing rather than conveying truthful knowledge.
• XREF: Connects to Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ and the long tradition on the informant’s position within colonial knowledge production.

Related

• Colonial education’s burden fell on native informers who refined local dialects (similarity 0.80)
• Native informers differ from collaborators by selling wars to domestic audiences (similarity 0.79)
• The native informer is a pathology created by coloniality (similarity 0.78)