Terror is the primary mediator of colonial hegemony.

Evidence

As rituals of lynching suggest, what we euphemistically call ‘prisoner abuse’ today is not new. Colonial regimes have long been structured by what, borrowing from Michael Taussig, we might more appropriately call racial terror. Taussig reminds us that we would be unwise to ignore the role of terror in securing power. Terror is ‘the mediator par excellence of colonial hegemony,’ Taussig notes, and ‘the space of death is one of the crucial spaces where Indian, African, and white gave birth to the New World.’ Terror is how we come to know and make known colonial power – how it gets written on our bodies. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 186