Newly assimilated colonized people become colonialisms most zealous defenders

Evidence

Rejected by the colonizer they share in part the physical conditions of the colonized and have a communion of interest with him; on the other hand, they reject the values of the colonized as belonging to a decayed world from which they eventually hope to escape. The recently assimilated place themselves in considerable superior position to the average colonizer. They push a colonial mentality to excess, display proud disdain for the colonized and continually show off their rank, which often belies a vulgar brutality and avidity. Still too impressed by their privileges, they savor them and defend with fear and harshness; and when colonization is imperiled, they provide it with its most dynamic defenders, its shock troops, and sometimes instigators. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 220

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The tragic mechanism — rejection by the colonizer yet contempt for the colonized — precisely explains why converts to any dominant order become its fiercest shock troops.
• XREF: This echoes the dynamic in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, where Changez’s assimilationist drive is precisely what unravels, and connects to white-adjacent immigrant conservatism debates. — connects to: Colonized elites also helped exploit their own people under colonial protection. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 259; Pied-noir FN voting stems from mapping colonial enemies onto today’s immigrants — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 854