Death threats force journal to remove pro-colonialism paper
The fascists win: Death threats have finally forced the academic journal Third World Quarterly to take down a paper that had expressed some pro-colonialism ideas.
In a “withdrawal notice” posted on the now-blank “Viewpoint” article page, publisher Taylor & Francis said the death threats were “serious and credible” and “linked to the publication of this essay.” It reiterated against contrary claims that the article had “undergone double-blind peer review.”
Gilley [the author] himself had asked for the article’s withdrawal following a coordinated international campaign to ruin his reputation and blacklist him from other journals, and to shame Third World Quarterly into removing it. Fifteen members of its editorial board resigned in protest of its publication.
What had Gilley said that was so terrible?
Research …often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit…Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowledge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions.
He couched this statement with numerous caveats and politically correct expressions of doubt, in the hope the mob would not come after him for stating something that is simply not permitted in today’s modern fascist academic community. I should also note that as a historian who has researched this subject myself, his position is easily documented by numerous papers across the entire field. The colonialism movement of Europe had numerous bad aspects, but numerous benefits as well for the countries colonized.
None of this mattered. Gilley had blasphemed against the leftist anti-western ideology, and had to be destroyed, along with anyone else who even hinted at mild support.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The fascists win: Death threats have finally forced the academic journal Third World Quarterly to take down a paper that had expressed some pro-colonialism ideas.
In a “withdrawal notice” posted on the now-blank “Viewpoint” article page, publisher Taylor & Francis said the death threats were “serious and credible” and “linked to the publication of this essay.” It reiterated against contrary claims that the article had “undergone double-blind peer review.”
Gilley [the author] himself had asked for the article’s withdrawal following a coordinated international campaign to ruin his reputation and blacklist him from other journals, and to shame Third World Quarterly into removing it. Fifteen members of its editorial board resigned in protest of its publication.
What had Gilley said that was so terrible?
Research …often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit…Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowledge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions.
He couched this statement with numerous caveats and politically correct expressions of doubt, in the hope the mob would not come after him for stating something that is simply not permitted in today’s modern fascist academic community. I should also note that as a historian who has researched this subject myself, his position is easily documented by numerous papers across the entire field. The colonialism movement of Europe had numerous bad aspects, but numerous benefits as well for the countries colonized.
None of this mattered. Gilley had blasphemed against the leftist anti-western ideology, and had to be destroyed, along with anyone else who even hinted at mild support.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I was reading a list of countries that a prudent person would not visit. Almost all of them were in Africa, usually the result of tribalism and corruption. I thought at the time it would have been better is the Colonial Powers have not left so abruptly, but had instead had taken time to set up proper governments and then hung around good while to make sure it was working.
SCooper-
Highly inclined toward that view myself, although not sure how it would have played out.
[You might like an interesting lecture series on “British Empire,” from Gresham College;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0KYI8DQQb0&list=PLfQSMdoKtXU1iWI1GtgS23wndk-Xe21td%5D
Islam’s colonization of the southern half of the Roman Empire and Persia et cetera are never criticized in public. Although they destroyed all culture and dragged them down to the stone age horrors of the desert nomadic life style. The world’s leading civilizations have been transformed to the most violent and improductive part of the world today and since 1000+ years. They explicitly intolerantly forces everyone to remain undeveloped for ever.
Colonial wars in Africa were AFAIK fought only after indigenous people had been aggressive. As with the wars with the natives in America, right? Once war broke out, they became bloody because the savages killed everyone, and they had no clear system to differ between their own soldiers and civilians.
@SCooper
Africa is very diverse, so don’t exclude going to Nigeria because of news of violence in some remote part of it. Half of the people in West Africa live in Nigeria, so there are by pure quantity more conflict there. But not as much violence as in Chicago. Some ethnologists count different 10 000 ethnicities in Africa. Some ethnicities with a unique language are live in only one single village. Some of those because they have been massacred and left as slaves in that village, still ritually practiced (some say still with yearly human sacrifices). Other people are spread across the continent from east to west.
Much of public statistics from the UN and such is pure fantasy, completely wrong. They have no clue. The SUV was invented by western bureaucrats in Africa, for going between the luxury hotel in the capital to the conference hotel a few blocks away. I worked and lived for years in black West Africa, and I never saw any UN presence outside of the capital. They obviously just extrapolate their “data” from satellite photos, which is a poor way to know what’s happening on the ground in a different kind of society.
The news, naturally, focus on crises. It is not at all representative for Africa in general. I’ve never felt so safe in Sweden as I did at night on the streets in a million city in Africa. The social control makes any kind of crime unthinkable. Everyone in every street corner knows everyone. Might be more chaotic in suburbs with heavy immigration from the country side. The respect for women was surprising. All women are treated like your own mother, and they are the ones who take care of the finances of the family (so that seems to be truly global…) My first task at my job was to buy computers for the newly formed company. One out of the five computer suppliers in the country was run be Koreans, the other four by women.
Africa’s problem is that it is unexploited. Enormous wealth is there in the ground, and in the form of the labor force, soon a majority of all young people will live in Africa, it’s the next China.
Local fluff, your comments surprise me. It just shows that you cannot judge a person without understanding what they’ve been through. I suspect you have quite a story to tell.
When reading this article, the first thing I thought of was the Roman empire. They invaded and conquered Europe and north Africa, but they didn’t just sack a city and enslave the people, they built aqueducts for farming and industry everywhere they went. Installed sewers that greatly reduced the amount of sickness and plages while civilizing The population to be taxpayers to the empire. Their rule, without doubt, was beneficial… But it was also brutal.
@Max
At least until a decade ago, some African countries still had a kind of Tintin feeling to them, in my weird frame of references. When I walked on the streets in the central capital, gangs of children sometimes appeared and followed be, chanting “foti foti!” which means white man. If I suddenly turned around, they ran away laughing. It was so rare for them to see a white man. My brother once ran to mommy saying that he just played with a living doll in the sand box. Well, that was his first meeting with an African child. Things change quickly. When I lived in Africa, over night everyone got a mobile phone and suddenly everyone seemed to be literate way beyond any UN statistics, because everyone started to send text messages. Imagine now that they have smart phones. People immediately learn how to write when they have a use for it. Being a Swede was different from being a Frenchman or American (the Marines are of course there too as they are all over the world). They are treated with some suspicion, but a Swede only with curiosity and good will. The non-colonial white.
I was pick-pocketed once in the crowd at the market place. An indigenous colleague noticed it (I didn’t) because I was distracted by a car that almost ran over my foot while someone took about $100 cash from my pocket. Half a years average salary, for the minority who even have a job! She asked me to check if I lost something, and I had, so she shouted something and incredibly, my roll of local bills was handed from person to person over head in the crowd back to me! How did that happen? They are so afraid of getting caught for committing a crime! There is a attitude that it is okay as long as one doesn’t get caught (hence it is very “corrupt” for those who don’t understand it), but that also means that they REALLY don’t want to get caught. It is socially completely unacceptable for them.
A thing with the Roman Empire, at times at least since it is such a long era of constant changes, is that it was a nightwatchman’s state. It had a huge military, but almost no bureaucracy. Pontius Pilate judged Jesus personally (or chose to let the crowd to it democratically) because the governor was also the judge. They had no legal bureaucrats. To rule his province he had two secretaries (writers), a couple of priests to make forecasts (exactly like today’s economists) and used soldiers as mailmen. Compare with the number of bureaucrats in Israel today! Of course, the locals had their own administrations.
The Coming Dark Ages!
Q: Is it known who or what organization made the credible threats? (I can pretty accurately imagine who it would be)
And, sometimes conquest, in this example, Western conquest, although brutal and a destroyer of local indigenous culture has its long term benefits. Although that term “benefits” can be very subjective if you are on the receiving end of it, in many ways these are expressions of Darwinian competition. Still, Western culture good bad or otherwise has brought many, many benefits to civilization in general from a “progress” point of view.
Would anyone other than a religious zealot or a Leftist political operative argue otherwise today? The answer is no. This entire argument is based only in these kinds of fascist and Marxist type thinking and they are based in them because they attempt to take a second bite at the power apple by leveraging the tendency of our Liberal Western Democrat society to entertain such thinking. A Liberal is able to confuse themselves when they listen to a Leftist tell them how guilty they because of their success in life and so they need to commit suicide to remedy the inequity.
Darwin identified Mother Nature as a brutal huntress that stalks us all and not a kindly grand ma that looks out for everyone’s best interests and these expressions of colonial power and success are exactly that.
Let us not be naive nor entertain such foolish and suicidal thought processes.
Interesting Topic, above and beyond the fact that these fascist are blatantly anti free speech.
While I remain highly sympathetic (in a sorta false nostalgia realm) toward British & French ’empire & colonialization,’ the fact we had to kick the British out of Colonial-era America, to get their jackboots off our own necks, is not lost on me. (I doubt I could be convinced to cut-a-deal with the King in the 1770’s, unless and until, we kicked him out.)
Ambassador John Adams meets King George III of England
https://youtu.be/n725zX3zIk0?t=243
[tangentially look up german colonialism 1860-1900-ish, they did a complete beta-test of the jewish holocaust, against some but not all their indigenous colonial populations in Africa.]
(I’ve been heavily reviewing the whole WW-1 period, pre & post, recently, as it relates to ’empire.”)
There is also a fascinating contrast between efforts toward settlement vs colonialization, and annihilation vs. mercantile exploitation. Canada, for example, was settled, but that didn’t preclude the extermination of indigenous people, there just wasn’t very many of them. And Australia was settled by convicts (what possibly could go wrong with that!?)
Robert wrote: “Gilley had blasphemed against the leftist anti-western ideology, and had to be destroyed, along with anyone else who even hinted at mild support.”
Truth, reality, and facts do not matter to the tyrannical, fascist, left. They will do anything to get their own way, including death threats. This was a tactic used by the NAZI fascists to gain power, and it worked for them. We need to learn from history and prevent fascism from taking power again.
The withdrawal of this paper means that we have lost another battle.
The truth of colonialism is different than the fascists want us to believe, just as is the truth about Columbus; now that the fascists want us to redefine Columbus Day as Indigenous People’s Day. The indigenous people around the world were not any better than the Europeans, and many were worse. At least Europe hadn’t adopted cannibalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MshsZPD2aNs (17 minutes, Christopher Columbus – a great man)
History and current fact indicates Weinstein had nothing on indigenous peoples!
People tend to think of colonialism as a white man’s thing, but that’s not the whole story.
The Japanese empire was all about colonialism, and they committed a number of unspeakable acts. most Japanese won’t talk about it, and probably don’t know much about it; the few who talked to me about it insisted that Japan was doing a service to the countries they had taken over.
There’s not this monolith called colonialism; some instances were horrific, others more benign, and there were undoubtedly benefits even in the worst instances. But that doesn’t fit the black and white thinking that the left loves to engage in, so they’ll go to great lengths to stop any discussion.
I have made these points before and suppose I will be making it again at some point because this will not be going away any time soon.
Colonialism and or slavery existed long before America even existed and slavery has been with the human condition since we were in caves. The intricacies of which were invented in Africa scores of millennia ago.
What we are witnessing in the media and in these expressions of an attempt at control through violent threats I.E. Fascism is a part of a political agenda, a Leftist political agenda, that if they can force its adherence leads ultimately directly to the Constitution and its disassembly or replacement. This IS the over all goal IMO.
Taking down the Confederate statues, Columbus’s statue, kneeling NFL players, “Hands Up Don’t Shoot”, “Black Lives Matter”, “You didn’t build that”, presidents taking symbolic pictures in front of the iconic Che mural in Cuba, the apology tour, financially and militarily empowering our enemy’s, “Globalization”, the U.N., George Soros’s “Open Society Foundations”, its a long list I stop here.
These IMO are all elements of an organized Leftist oriented attack on America and its founding documents that are sooo inconvenient to these next level plans a segment of the population of the world has their mind set on. America because of its unique Constitutional structure specifically is their enemy and stands in their way as long as it exists.
The moment that you allow yourself to agree with their logic on any of these issues that is the moment that they own you and the logical extension of their argument is exactly focused on Americas founding documents and their need to rewrite or replace them, of course because they were written by rich, white slave owners.
One interesting observation I recently made, George Soros’s foundation is called “The Open Society Foundations”, that’s plural. I in the past read it as “The Open Society Foundation”, singular. And you can find entry’s with the singular instead of the plural but they do not appear to be a Soros affiliate.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/
What appears to be underway is that this structure allows Soros to legitimately generally disperse his primary foundation funds to other smaller foundations and they disperse to other smaller foundations thus creating a clandestine way to fund the above listed organizations among many other organizations, up to 200 or more, that do this work to disrupt and render America from its founding concepts in order to accomplish the “Globalization” of the world.
This Soros construct IMO appears to amount to the distribution of “Street money” money to their street muscle. If you look at the foundations reports they list some very general headings of causes that they support, but what else do the many other foundations that source their funding from the primary foundation fund?
Several years ago this was all just “Conspiracy Theory” thinking of the paranoid, but its funny that the paranoid musing of some appears to be exactly what is and has been under way all of those years.
Q: How far behind the curve might we all actually be recognizing the failings of our previous thinking?
“Make the lie big”, (A. Hitler), they will never believe it.