Settler-Colonial Democracy and the Production of Consent

Your vote is the shroud of consent covering colonialism

Jan 20, 2024

At the end of this article, there is some translated Arabic poetry as a gift.

In the name of Allah, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

There is the false conception that if one votes for their oppressor, they have safeguarded themselves against oppression. The candidates, who have been pruned and screened years before you choose between them, are not designed to represent you. Rather, you are assured that they represent someone, and you must pick the one that is closest to your values. I must ask then; I do not remember making genocide a key value of mine, and yet I must pick between candidates who support genocide.

Is it genocidal candidate A that I feel best represents me, or is it perhaps genocidal candidate B, who has nicer climate policies because perhaps he does not openly support the exploitation of the earth’s resources for short-term wealth, yet he supports genocide all the same while he will certainly continue to support the exploitation of the earth all the same?

We are always presented with a ‘minor’, an ‘alternative’ party in democracy, one that appears so optimistically ahead of the other parties, yet we are told that it is irrational and unwise to vote for the alternative, that we must be realistic; we must vote for the genocide-lovers; but why is it that the genocide-lovers are the only viable choice?

Simple, because we can never vote out our oppressors, we can never vote for the abolishment of colonialism, and we will never be presented with a choice that may radically transform the systems of exploitation in our favour. Let me provide you with a simple history timeline courtesy of the North American colonial state, the one with the red stripes.

A group of American colonialists declared independence in 1776 from their parent company, demanding full and autonomous control over the genocide and theft of land. They held themselves to an Articles of Confederation, a document that stood for about 12 years until 1789, when a few rich white slave owners wrote a ‘better one.’ Except not really, because they accidentally did not make it explicit that the right to vote was only meant for white men when they established property as the barrier of entry into the process of democracy. Of course, they let the states themselves decide on the finer details of how they wished to formulate this entry cost. They thought they were being smart with that dog whistle, “Only men with property may vote,” because it conjured images of wealthy colonialists who were eager to expand westward and drive forward the genocide of the Indigenous Nations. Except that there were a few ‘Black’ property owners, and this was immediately clarified within the year that they really had meant White property owners. And, in 1790, again only a year later, the US Federal Constitution passed the Naturalisation Act of 1790, which explicitly clarified that White Christian men were the only desired group.

Now we know the history of ‘enfranchisement,’ which has hereto been a complete myth. Let me remind you that when you give a people ‘freedom’ from slavery, but then ensure over the next few centuries that you prevent them from working, steal their property, raze their businesses, defund and close their schools, incarcerate their youth and their elders and force them to work as slaves in the prison, ban them from participating in the civil state that oppresses them, criminalise their every action, create legislation solely to justify imprisoning them, ban them from voting, limit their movement, reward their prosecution, fund movies and literature that demonise them, conscript them as frontline troops for your colonial wars, steal their children, and erase their history, you have given them no freedom. This is not limited to America, however, as the British during their 28-year occupation of Palestine built no new schools for the Palestinians, defunded the available schools, shut down high schools and higher education facilities, and were content with one “Arab” school having to serve thousands of students while the British poured money into building new schools for the budding Israeli population. It is because of this that only 29% of Palestinian children could attend school, while nearly 90% of Israeli children had access to and attended a school built just for them. Yes, there was colonial-apartheid rule in Palestine long before 1948; do not be fooled into thinking it only began recently. For as long as colonisation has been an act, de-education has been standard policy. But fear not, for we will get our education and we have been educated, and nothing will prevent us from learning what the colonisers wished we did not know. We know, and we will continue to learn and teach until we have filled each and every hole in our histories.

Yet, from 1790 until the present, the settler colonial state of America has hereto managed to provide exactly zero presidents who have redistributed even a penny in stolen wealth to the people it has stolen it from. One would have imagined that if the exploited got the right to vote, they surely would have voted for one of their own so that they might get their due rights, right? I mean, it can only seem reasonable that after centuries of oppression, a single candidate must surely emerge in this long 400 years of exploitation seeking redress. Do you mean to tell me that in 233 years of ‘enfranchisement,’ there has never been a single one? Not even a single viable candidate? How can it be that the system, which we have been told is designed solely to represent the interests of the people, has failed this one singular job? You do not surely mean to tell me that the exploited people do not wish for justice and that they are content to be stuck in the cycles of prosecution that have been waiting for them since their birth and adolescence? So, it must be either one of these two, and you can tell me which of the two you think is more realistic. One, the people no longer want justice and are happy to remain in relative poverty compared to the billionaires who have made their billions by stealing their wealth. Two, the systems were designed to ensure the people, when they got their right to vote, would never be able to genuinely change anything. Ah yes, go ahead and enfranchise millions, but first ensure that they will never push the system even an inch, a millimetre, or a radial degree to their side. In the centuries of this settler-colonial state’s existence, it has not even provided a nourishing crumb to the people it has prosecuted to damnation and back.

This, again, is because the system was specifically created to protect the interests of those who sponsored its existence—those who banded together and demanded autonomy. It was the White colonisers then; it remains the White colonisers now. The candidates are all preselected for you, carefully whittled down, and trained to protect the interests of the incumbent party. This incumbent party is neither the donkey nor the elephant, nor is it the Labor or Liberals; the incumbent party is the colonial state. The parties are merely two sides of the same coin, two flavours in the same cake; they are not separate from each other, nor do they differ on their fundamental belief that colonisation is good praxis, that colonisation is a profitable venture, and that colonisation must be protected. If both parties in these two-party settler colonial states both agree on maintaining colonisation and profiting off genocide and apartheid, then how do they possibly differ in any meaningful way from those whom they oppress for a living? No, my demands for liberation cannot wait a little bit longer, because you have said that for centuries. No, my demands for liberation will not be subsided by candy while you hone the stick of ‘law-and-order,’ which you will surely beat me with when I raise my voice demanding justice.

This is why we cannot possibly support the parties that, for decades, have taken every opportunity to beat us with a stick our stolen wealth has funded the honing of. One party claims it cares for rights and the other party claims to care for culture, yet both parties centre traditions of imperialism; both will gleefully commit genocide and occupy our homes, and both will profit off the killing of our people with their military industrial complexes and arms trades. Which is more important to you? Tax breaks for the landlords, or tax breaks for the landlords? Perhaps you will enjoy another imperialist venture, except we promise to disguise it as feminist liberation, while the other party will not even bother to lie to you about what its aims are.

But why is this so? How do we understand this system that enrages us so thoroughly with its poisoned smile?

We must incorporate our class analysis into this race analysis, as democracy is not a system that squashes the intersections of societal identities but rather expounds them. The genocide lovers are presented as our only option because they represent a class that has come into existence on the back of genocide, colonialism, and exploitation, and in its continued existence, it must reinforce the conditions that created it. To them, we exist only to provide them profit, and in return, they make it appear that we picked this system when we voted for them, that we wanted it, and if we so wished, we could simply vote for a better one. Except, of course, that we cannot vote for a better one; that choice was never given to us. If the system that has thus far profited trillions in stolen wealth were to disappear tomorrow, we would find that we have woken up to a quieter world. No, try as they might to tell us that the world ends with the ending of the exploitative system of capitalism, we will instead find that the world will begin to heal, and we will heal along with it. But we cannot expect that this stolen wealth will merely find its way into our hands, nor can we expect that a mere immediate redistribution of wealth will solve or end oppressive systems. If we are not careful, we will find ourselves in the same cycles of oppression, as the newly wealthy will inherit the mantle of exploitation, and we will find ourselves under another bourgeois leadership. The bourgeoise is the class that has entrenched its position at the very top; they are the ones who own the means to produce wealth and employ us to churn the wheel of money. Into the churner goes our lifeblood, and after hours of vigorous churning, we pour the produce into the container, separated by a strainer. The strainer does the easy work; it sifts our hourly wage, the stubborn buttermilk that did not become butter, into the bottom container, while the valuable butter, the bourgeoise’s profit, is safely separated. Then, for a few dollars extra an hour, we gladly hand over the butter, pretending to be content with the buttermilk, which was only a byproduct of our churning.

You see, the bourgeoise, who have thus far been protected from the consequences of their actions through their privilege, have no qualms about expanding their business ventures into every avenue of profit because the notion of responsibility and ethical duties to the community is a lesson that did not grace their upbringings. If you remember in my last article, I discussed that the White mining companies, protected by the settler-colonial state of Australia, reserve the right to dispossess Indigenous nations of their custodianship and that they are not beholden to respecting Indigenous knowledge, wisdom, concerns, and demands and never will be so long as there exists a colonial state. ‘Justice’ Natalie Charlesworth, presiding over the case between Santos Gas and Indigenous Elders from the Tiwi Islands, including the Jikilaruwu people, amongst other First Nations, not only threw out the case from the Elders but also ordered them to pay for Santos’ legal fees. In case you are unaware, the Barossa project is a gas pipeline project valued in the billions of dollars designed to, yet again, place profits first. Despite being projected to have significant contributions to climate change, the project has been permitted to continue under a Labor government that promised in its election campaign to put climate first. Shock and horror: the genocidal party wraps up its profits with empty promises. Regardless, what we have seen is the same issue I discussed: the settler colony has always placed its profits before the concerns of the Indigenous people it has exploited and oppressed. You will never find a concern paid to the increasingly apparent climate disaster we beeline towards in these colonial states because, without exploiting the earth they have stolen custodianship over, they have nothing. These states, which have existed and continued to exist solely for the purpose of maximising stolen profit, will have no reason to exist if they lose the right to exploit the resources they so treasure. This is why you will find that no Indigenous people, uninfected by the wretched disease of imperialism, will place profit before custodianship. How can you exploit the earth, which feeds you, houses you, warms you, and loves you, knowing that in doing so you will be ended when it dies? Again, the Indigenous Nations across the earth have maintained and tended to this earth for tens of thousands of years, and in only a few centuries, these colonial states have managed to irreparably damage it in their short-sighted greed.

So, of course, the settler-colonial state places Santos before Indigenous sovereignty—only another case in a long history of exploitation. Never mind that Santos, by its own admission, has not paid a cent in corporate taxes to the settler-colonial state of Australia.

Why would the colonisers support Santos if Santos would not even give the settler colonial state the time of day? In order to prevent the end of the bourgeoise’s world of privilege, the colonisers invest everything into ending our earth before their world of profit through theft ends, shoving us to the frontlines of a mass extinction event of their own construction. It is in their hubris that they pretend they do not live on the same planet as us, but they must remember that the consequences of climate disasters will reach them too.

But go on then, vote! Yes, vote, vote, vote, and vote some more! It is not like these systems were in place centuries before you and I were allowed to vote, and in centuries of enfranchisement, they have not budged a muscle, and they will continue despite our voting. You see, we are not allowed to vote for these things; our choices are limited to shallow pedantry and useless shows of solidarity for issues that are so low on the list of concerns that one wonders who they sought consultation from on their policy briefs. But how can it be that we are not allowed to vote for it? Why are we not up in arms? Simple, because they must manufacture the consent for it. You must consent to the continued existence of these exploitative, profit-generating instruments of destruction.

But how do they invoke consent? Through the construction of a society that has normalised these structures, which gaslights you into thinking that this is normal and reasonable. That we are designed—no, in fact, created—to work for the hand that wrings us dry. Our state-controlled and mandated education systems do not ever once question the validity of the state; do not be fooled into thinking that the dystopian novels you read in school are meant to only describe far-away lands, perhaps a puppet state of some imperialist project, or, if you grew up in Australia, China. See, by providing you with the material and then filling in your imagination with the ‘correct answers,’ they guarantee you will think of oppression as merely being ‘unable to think differently’, and being able to vote for every menial thing is freedom. Ah yes, because the settler colonial state of Australia is famous for tolerating differing opinions in its history of genocide and Whiteness, and we have hereto clearly been able to vote for mass structural changes.

Then you have your political parties, which I have described as sharing the same fundamental beliefs, that set aside entirely the salient issues. You want to vote on Palestine, but they put it to the side and instead occupy your time with side issues. You want to vote for climate; they wave you off and go back to discussing trade wars with an invented enemy. In this way, much like a toxic partner, they gaslight you into thinking your concerns are not really important and that you must engage with them on their issues because they know better.

At every single step of your life, the same system is reinforced until you come to live with it, until it becomes as normal to you as breathing and blinking. Except, of course, if you live on the outliers, the fringe, or the subaltern, then you will find that at every turn you are forced to bear witness to an oppressive system that invokes such a nauseating emotion.

So, do not think that voting in these settler-colonial democracies is freedom. There is no freedom until liberation. You cannot vote for your liberation, though, try as you might, you may band together a group of people who demand reform. Maybe, at best, you can reform the state to appear nicer, but you cannot decentre the nasty beast of colonisation with a vote. The system must and will be deconstructed, demolished, and an entirely new one built in its place. This is our end goal; it is what we organise for and what we educate in hopes of.

I wish to include a few Arabic poems here, and I will provide you with their translations to the best of my ability. I will not interpret them for you; I will leave that privilege to you. The names are hyperlinked, and pressing on them will take you to the source, so you may read the poem if you read Arabic. To be frank, the beauty in both poems is untranslatable, but the issue with poetry in translation is not for today’s article.

The first is from Jordanian poet and professor of Arabic literature Mohamad Al-Majali (محمد المجالي), titled “The Return of Pharaoh” (عَودَة فِرعَون). I will provide you with the first three stanzas from his poem (you can hear him perform it here):