645Refusal consolidates the coercive state---emergency becomes routine and pluralism becomes betrayal.
Aina 26 — Folahanmi Aina. April 13. Lecturer in Global Security Challenges, University of London; specialist on the Sahel and West African security. Small Wars and Insurgencies, “Ibrahim Traore: Burkina Faso’s saviour, dictator or revolutionary anti-imperialist,” vol. 37, no. 6, p. 1473-1488, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2026.2656299 Clopus
The consolidation of power under Traore has revealed that the underside of his revolutionary governance style is authoritarian. The suspension of constitutional protections, repression of dissenting voices especially those of journalists, and coercive mobilization of citizens in the name of national survival point to a governing logic that equates unity with forced obedience. Media restrictions and the targeting of perceived critics have been justified as necessary to prevent sabotage and foreign manipulation, yet they also insulate the regime from accountability.
This authoritarian turn is not incidental but structurally embedded in Traore’s political project. Revolutionary narratives often require a permanent state of exception, in which emergency becomes routine, and pluralism is reframed as betrayal. In this sense, Traore’s rule reflects a familiar paradox of post-colonial revolutionary regimes, the pursuit of emancipation through instruments of coercion. The danger lies not only in democratic backsliding, but in the institutionalization of militarism as the primary mode of governance.
646...or it bars the campaign---but the movements their authors cite go after arms companies.
Rossdale 25 — Chris Rossdale. Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Bristol; author of Resisting Militarism. Global Studies Quarterly, “Racial Capitalism Must Be Defended: Reading the Arms Trade through Critiques of Policing,” vol. 5, no. 2, ksaf032, https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksaf032 Clopus
In recent years, movements in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle have recognized the arms industry as integral not only to the occupation and genocide but also to the global circulation of policing technologies. Through the occupation, companies have developed and refined weaponry, drones, surveillance, and border control technologies, which are then deployed in broader systems of global order (Halper 2015; Machold 2016). This recognition has fostered powerful expressions of solidarity between movements opposing imperial violence and those challenging policing (Erakat 2020). Since October 2023, Palestine solidarity movements around the world have faced widespread police repression, often while taking action against arms companies; they have been forced to confront the deep entanglements of military and police violence, and the position of the arms industry in relation to both (Dasha et al. 2024; Fekete 2024). By confronting those entanglements, these movements offer visions of global solidarity against the forces of war and policing.
647Cabral is the model---the battle of ideas and the fight for material conditions are inseparable.
Okoth 20 — Kevin Ochieng Okoth. January 16. Writer and researcher on imperialism, anti-colonialism and Black radical thought; author of Red Africa. Salvage, “The Flatness of Blackness: Afro-Pessimism and the Erasure of Anti-Colonial Thought,” https://salvage.zone/the-flatness-of-blackness-afro-pessimism-and-the-erasure-of-anti-colonial-thought/ Clopus
Academia’s aversion to Cabral stems from its lack of interest in the crucial everyday work of revolutionary struggle and its fetishisation of revolution in the abstract. Cabral insisted that we must not only fight the battle of ideas, but struggle for material benefits and improved conditions of life. The revolution can never be separated from the daily needs of the people. Given the elitist and corporate nature of higher education, particularly in the Anglo-American world, it is thus no surprise that the academy has chosen Fanon (‘the prophet of revolution’) over the tireless anti-colonial strategist Cabral. This is, of course, not to dismiss Fanon’s crucial contributions to the study of psychiatry and anti-colonial movements. It is only to say that the perspective of one anti-colonial intellectual does not suffice; instead of decontextualizing Fanon, we must read him in conjunction with other anti-colonial intellectuals who offer valuable insights into fields – such as revolutionary strategy – that Fanon rarely engaged with.
648Mamdani and Veracini draw the line at sovereignty---settlers displace polities, others join them.
Vaughan and Maddison 25 — Franka Vaughan and Sarah Maddison. April 2. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. Settler Colonial Studies, “Thinking through the history of Liberia’s formation with settler colonial theory,” vol. 15, no. 4, p. 726-747, https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2025.2485741 Clopus
Like these other settler colonial projects, Liberia sought to establish a new society from its inception. Yet the motivations that underpinned the formation of Liberia, and the political imagination that accompanied the repatriation of freed and formerly enslaved people, are different from other settler projects in many respects. Significantly, the settlers in Liberia’s case were the minority and were Black people, most of whom were freed slaves. The phenotypical appearance of the settlers in Liberia’s case, not to mention their positioning as Black people in the slaveholding regime is noteworthy. Liberia’s case confronts the conception of whiteness and race in settler colonial theory, highlighting problematic assumptions in settler colonial studies that map whiteness onto settlers and Blackness onto Indigenous people. In this sense, Liberia troubles an analysis that casts only White people or Euro-Americans as colonial antagonists.
Beyond the complexion of the Black American settlers, Liberia also challenges assumptions in settler colonial studies that conceive of the settler as made mostly through movement and sovereignty. Since immigrants rarely encounter empty lands, the Indigene/settler dichotomy is fundamental to settler colonialism as the colonised/coloniser binary is to classical colonialism. Wolfe for example, bases his theorisation of the Indigenous/settler binary on the frontier, arguing that that encounter describes a foundational moment in the development of settler colonisation. His thesis of the frontier binary is crucial to appreciating the predicament of settler colonialism and its enduring nature. Nevertheless, in defining Indigenous people, Wolfe categorises them as ‘the only ones who have not come from somewhere else’. Such categorisation is overly simplistic in some contexts, however, since movement alone is not adequate to distinguish between the settler and native. Such categorisation suggests a geographical binary between those already on the land and those who invaded it. This assumes that no migration occurred prior to settler colonisation and tends to assign the settler status to all new migrants. In contrast to Wolfe, Mahmood Mamdani and Veracini differentiate between the mode of settlement by settlers and immigrants to draw our attention to settler sovereignty. Mamdani contends that immigrants join existing political systems whether they seek equality or advantage, while settlers displace existing polities to establish their own exclusive sovereignty. Similarly, Veracini argues that settlers and migrants ‘move in inherently different ways’ and ‘towards very different places.’ Settlers, according to Veracini construct themselves as both exogenous and indigenous, because they come from elsewhere and yet are permanently situated in the settler colony. Thus, unlike the privileged existence of settlers, migrant lives are often devoid of inherent rights and sovereign entitlements even when they are co-opted into settler colonial regimes.
The analytical distinction between settlers and migrants is useful in making sense of the settler homogeneity in settler colonial studies that lumps all newcomers (including forced migrants such as asylum seekers and refugees) and Indigenous migrants into the same category of ‘settler’. Nevertheless, it falls short in making sense of the settler category in Liberia’s case, particularly the categorisation of Black Americans as settler-colonists. The settler/indigene dichotomy is inherently complex because Liberia’s history consists of the movement to, conquest, and settlement of the lands of different migratory groups, some from within Africa and others beyond including the Black Americans. Kieh, for example has identified five major cultural streams of migration to present-day Liberia: the first is the African ethnic groups such as the Golas; freed and formerly enslaved Black Americans repatriated to the area beginning in the 1820s; the Congos/Recaptives liberated enroute to enslavement and settled in the area; immigrants from the Caribbean and lastly, immigrants from various West African states such as Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria. Counter to the dominant view in settler colonial theory, we argue that the establishment of sovereign political systems through native conquest alone is not sufficient to differentiate between settlers and natives.
We categorise the Black Americans immigrants as settlers, thus differentiating them from other immigrant groups that make up the Liberian mosaic. In essence, the African ethnic groups who occupied the area at the time of colonisation were indigenised through the settlerisation of the Black American settlers. As observed by Goenpul scholar Moreton-Robinson, it is settlers’ racialisation of all those they consider other that produces the indigeneity of these others. In essence, the settlerisation of the Black American settlers indigenised the African ethnic groups who we categorised collectively as Indigenous.
Beyond the Black Americans establishing a new settler society that displaced the sovereign entities of the African ethnic groups, we also consider the relations they developed toward the Africans they encountered in the Grain Coast and how that relationship structured cultural, economic and socio-political systems to benefit the settler class. These structures and relations entrenched inequalities in terms of land ownership, income wealth, educational attainment as well as opportunities to access political power and economic gains. In our categorisation of Black Americans as settlers, we borrow from Evri and Kotef who in their argument about the Zionist project in Palestine contend that ‘the movement that results in the “settlerisation” of the moving person [as distinct from the native] is … a function of their relationship to place and people’. The Black American settlers racialised the Indigenous African groups as ‘primitive African Blacks’, a category they determined to be inferior to their positioning as ‘civilised American Blacks’. The Black Americans were settler-colonisers despite their small numbers and cosmetic appearance because their settlerness emanated from the racialised relationship they developed towards the Indigenous Africans and the lands they appropriated.
649In Nigeria the category is constitutional---it’s Section 147 and residency, not conquest.
Akintola and Yabayanze 17 — Olusola E. Akintola and Akumka Joseph Yabayanze. April. Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Federal Secretariat, Abuja, and PhD candidate in Political Science, University of Abuja. Nigeria Customs Service Headquarters, Abuja. European Scientific Journal, “Settlers-Indigenes Question in Nigeria: Much Rhetoric, No Answers,” vol. 13, no. 10, p. 365, https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2017.v13n10p365 Clopus
Nigeria operates a federal system of government whereby Nigerians can reside in any part of the country and enjoy the rights and privileges of being the citizens of the country. However, the experiences of the citizens across the states of the federation have proved that this ideal is not true in all instances. The authors, therefore, examined settlers-indigenes question in Nigeria placing the theoretical citizenship as contained in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) side-by-side with the reality of the country. Secondary source of data collection was adopted as our methodology. Through this method, explanatory and deductive analysis was made. The findings of the paper revealed that settlers-indigenes question is negatively affecting Nigerian federalism and the peaceful co-existence of citizens. It was, therefore, recommended that Section 147 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which encourages indigeneship should be expunged or amended as it reinforces division and heightens settlers-indigenes question in the country. Keywords: Nigerian federalism, settlers-indigenes, 1999 Constitution (as amended), citizenship INTRODUCTION
As a political system, Nigeria is unique and exceptionally different from other countries. For instance, although Nigeria operates a federalpresidential-democracy like the United States of America (USA), the theory and practice of the system in Nigeria is unique. This is not because the Nigeria’s constitution is so much different in theory regarding what is obtainable in the Constitution of the USA, but in practice. Nigeria’s federaldemocracy is out of the blue. The chief among the strange thing about Nigerian federalism is the ‘definition’ of who is a Nigerian. Everyone born in the country is practically a citizen of the country, but not everyone given birth to in a state (the second tier of government in Nigerian federation) is truly regarded as a bonafide Nigerian in that state. This gives birth to settlerindigene lexicon in the political vocabulary of Nigeria. Thus, settlersindigenes question has been one of the greatest challenges confronting Nigerian federalism.
Complicating settlers-indigenes question in the country is seen in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Constitution frowns at discrimination, yet it upholds indigeneship. By implication, the Constitution encourages unity – one Nigeria – and paradoxically, it encourages the disintegration of the country.
650The category came from divide and rule---amalgamation manufactured it, settlement didn’t.
Akintola and Yabayanze 17 — Olusola E. Akintola and Akumka Joseph Yabayanze. April. Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Federal Secretariat, Abuja, and PhD candidate in Political Science, University of Abuja. Nigeria Customs Service Headquarters, Abuja. European Scientific Journal, “Settlers-Indigenes Question in Nigeria: Much Rhetoric, No Answers,” vol. 13, no. 10, p. 365, https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2017.v13n10p365 Clopus
The beginning of what is today known as Nigeria is traceable to many communities and ethnic groups existing in the pre-colonial era. Apart from other ‘smaller’ socio-ethnic kingdoms, three major political organisations existed in the pre-colonial times; the Old Oyo Empire in what is referred to as the South-West (Yoruba) today, the Sokoto Caliphate (in today’s Northern part of Nigeria), and the village political structure of the Igbo society (South Eastern part of the country). Each of these major political organisations in the pre-colonial times existed independent of each other and were organised based on the peculiarities and needs of the people.
In broad terms, the people of “Nigeria” in the pre-colonial era were organised into either centralised or non-centralised systems of government. The formal system usually had kings, class arrangement, administrative officials, privileges of ranks, regulation of tax and tributes, among others. The latter does not possess these features in clear-cut manner (Dauda, 2012:2). It is these political arrangements that the colonial master, the British Imperial Government, met on ground when the Nigerian area was subjugated. The colonial government initially created Southern and Northern Protectorates, ruling them separately, before the two Protectorates were amalgamated in 1914.
Furthermore, the bringing together of the two Protectorates can be seen as the genesis of federalism in Nigeria. Sadly, the genesis of settlersindigenes question is traceable to this amalgamation. Federalism, according to Babalola (2013:43), in Nigeria was necessitated by the desire to achieve ‘unity in diversity’. However, from the outset, the British Imperial Power had another agenda. It was a “divide and rule” (Nnoli, 2003:3) strategy employed by the colonial state to heighten “ethnic and regional sectionalism (in order) to curb Nigerian nationalism and to maintain colonial power (Nnoli, 2003:3)”. In fact:
651It is necessarily vague---a coalition device, and coalition devices don’t cancel licences.
Austin 26 — Jonathan Austin. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen; works on humanitarianism, violence and knowledge production. Review of International Studies, “Is all decolonialism metaphorical? On the aesthetics of decolonizing humanitarian futures,” https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210526102113 Clopus
Vis-à-vis decolonizing humanitarianism, the goal must therefore be to find ways to unite actors that are diverse and different not only in their specific postcolonial experience but also internally, where – for example – divisions also necessarily exist between domestic elites and those suffering from humanitarian crisis. As any form of global governance, the (utopian) goal is always to move beyond difference and find forms of solidarity. It is for this reason, perhaps, that decolonial humanitarianism must generally remain vague on its concrete image of the future, which is something that will emerge only after a long period of negotiation, contingency, and political uncertainty. To return to the humanitarian practitioner mentioned earlier, the idea that ‘we’ll figure out the other [technical] stuff’ on what decolonial humanitarianism means in practice ‘later’ might not be immediately pragmatically satisfactory at first glance, but is actually an astute strategy for coalition building.
Decolonial counter-aesthetics must, therefore, be necessarily vague, open, and imprecise – floating across different identities. In doing so, decolonial humanitarianism at its best, and in practice, embraces what Edouard Glissant described as a politics in which we do not have to ‘understand’ or ‘agree’ with everyone ‘in order to agree to live with them, to build with them, to take risks with them’. For us, understanding how all decolonialism is metaphorical, thus allows us to see the radicality that exists across its diversity. For example, despite critiques, there is a true form of decolonial praxis in Adeso’s refusal to accept funding from international development or humanitarian organizations, albeit one that then leads to a reliance on the private sector. Equally, there is a true form of decolonial praxis in the efforts of reformists to imagine a form of global ‘emergency fund’ led by local actors, albeit one that indeed risks retaining elements of white saviourism. And, despite the critiques above, there is naturally also a true form of decolonial praxis in revolutionary attempts to grapple at more structural levels with global capitalism and imperial structure. As Paustian’s discussion of critical humanitarian fiction makes clear, however, those who inhabit the ground truths of humanitarian violence are opaque in their preferences for one or another among these forms of humanitarian praxis. Indeed, they typically mix these approaches in action. The aesthetics of decolonial humanitarianism are thus also necessarily opaque in how they authorize expertise differently, maintaining an ambiguity that allows for allegiances to be built.
652Ontology displaces political economy---that is what makes the alternative unable to reach a transfer.
Okoth 20 — Kevin Ochieng Okoth. January 16. Writer and researcher on imperialism, anti-colonialism and Black radical thought; author of Red Africa. Salvage, “The Flatness of Blackness: Afro-Pessimism and the Erasure of Anti-Colonial Thought,” https://salvage.zone/the-flatness-of-blackness-afro-pessimism-and-the-erasure-of-anti-colonial-thought/ Clopus
The retreat of the AP™ and Black Ops from politics poses a problem for activists and scholars looking to engage in struggles that take seriously the political economy of race and the need for cross-racial solidarity. But how have these key themes of radical Black movements from the 1960s and 70s – from the Black Panthers to African anti-colonial struggles – disappeared in the AP™’s theories? The erasure of radical Black and anti-colonial struggles rests almost entirely on misreading – or in some cases not reading – Marxist contributions to the study of race, colonialism and slavery. And this unfounded dismissal of the entire Marxist tradition allows the AP™ to kill two birds with one stone: on the one hand, it can position itself as a radical critique of Eurocentric left discourses. On the other hand, it allows the AP™ to disregard a vast body of Marxist scholarship that has ‘raced’ the history of capitalism and developed a nuanced analysis of the relationship between New World Slavery and capitalist accumulation on a global scale. Thus, the AP™ can ignore the specificities of how different Black populations are racialised and displace the study of political economy (and particularly of imperialism) in favour of ontological questions.
In the interview ‘We’re trying to destroy the world: Anti-Blackness & Police Violence after Ferguson’ Wilderson makes the bizarre claim that ‘slaveness is something that has consumed Blackness and Africanness, making it impossible to divide slavery from Blackness’. If this assumption sounds familiar, look no further than the Afro-pessimism of old, with its conflation of Africanness and Blackness and its disregard for the African continent and its inhabitants. But how has an approach that attempts to grapple with the complexities of Black being ended up rehashing the same assumptions and prejudices of Eurocentric discourse designed to dehumanise Black people on the African continent in the first place? The AP™’s theoretical position is riddled with contradictions: how can Blackness be separated from white supremacy, neocolonialism or imperialism and women’s reproductive labour, when these are the mechanisms that structure the quotidien experience of most people racialised as Black on a global scale? Moreover, if the Black/Slave exists in a state of powerlessness and natal alienation – characterised by the loss of ties of birth in ascending and descending generations – how do we theorise the Blackness of those whose ancestors remained in Africa throughout the translatlantic slave trade?