Why Is Globalism "Anti-Colonialist"?
The logic of de-colonization.
In the early 20th century, Woodrow Wilson introduced the concept of “popular sovereignty” as the official policy of an expansionist United States. On the one hand, Wilsonian democracy was invading Europe and maintaining the Monroe Doctrine. On the other hand, Wilson chided European colonial powers, and demanded the breakup of Europe into microstates, ethno-states, and parochial backwaters.
Wilson, like many idealogues, may have believed his own message. However, no matter how sincere he was as an individual man, the logic undergirding ideological development can, in a contradictory or hypocritical way, be cynical. This can be explained in Freudian, Jungian, or Darwinian terms.
In Freudian terms, the conscious individual believes genuinely in the ideology, but the unconscious (the id) is acting on a deeper, self interested level. In this sense, genuine ideological belief is the “tip of the iceberg,” and submerged beneath it is a network of selfish interests which support it. In Jungian terms, the “collective unconscious” can be captured by a primitive spirit, and then become logically justified to conform to the superego. For example, Jung saw Hitlerism as a manifestation of the wild spirit of Wotan, despite the protestations of many National Socialist ideologues who claimed (and still claim) that Hitler wanted peace. Finally, in Darwinian terms, ideology might be entirely sincere, but it is “boxed in” or “selected for” by a series of pressures. If an ideology does not ultimately serve the interests of the ideologue, it will (eventually) be snuffed out as a form of “memetic selection.”
Hitler, interestingly, adopted Wilson’s attitude almost exactly. When it came to the matter of German national determination, Hitler was absolutely Wilsonian. In his annual January 30th speeches, he constantly referenced the “unfairness” of Germany’s limited kilometers, and contrasted them with the greater kilometers of other states. In this sense, Hitler presented himself as a defender of equity and justice, who just wanted every nation to have its fair share of land. Simultaneously, this language of equality also supported his expansionist aims.
Although Wilson is thought of as the substantial opposite to Hitler, being a defender of democracy, the form of Wilsonian and Hitlerian rhetoric shares many parallels. The difference is in petty semantics, in labels, and in geographical particularism. Wilson was concerned with America, and Hitler with Germany. But had the two men swapped countries at birth, not much would change.
American Anti-Colonialism
Wilson’s anti-colonialism, which informed the policy of FDR, was grounded in British Freemasonry of the 18th and 19th centuries. British Freemasonry began its anti-colonial project in America itself — America was a colony of Britain, and its revolution was an affront to the church and crown. French Freemasonry during the revolution also promoted anti-colonialism, as in the tragic example of Haiti. During this time, Freemasonic revolutions against imperial or aristocratic governments focused on moralizing and evangelizing among white European populations. However, beginning in 1830, Freemasons began to support Abdelkader (also spelled Abd al-Qadir) in Algerian resistance to the French invasion.
Prior to 1898, America’s anti-colonialism were largely directed outward in a sentimental rather than practical manner. America did not have a navy capable of power projection which could successfully challenge European imperialism abroad. However, the Spanish American war changed this dynamic. America proved that it was capable of attacking and defeating European powers outside of defending the contiguous states. This presented an ideological challenge which resulted in the founding of the American Anti-Imperialist League.
The League was concerned with the pending annexation of the Philippines, and also the annexation of Hawaii. The league was founded by Gamaliel Bradford the Sixth, who was the grandson of Dr. Gamaliel Bradford the Fourth.1 Bradford the Fourth became an abolitionist in 1832. The moral cause of abolitionism therefore shares a genetic legacy with the cause of anti-colonialism.
The Civil War as Anti-Colonialism
Anti-colonialism is a form of religious imperialism. In the same way that monarchism justifies itself by the divine right of kings, by the sanction of the church, or by the superiority of blood, democratic governance justifies itself on the notion of the social contract and the consent of the governed. Both monarchies and democracies seek to expand at the expense of their rivals, but do so with distinct justifications. Monarchies expand generally for the purpose of the glory, honor, and prestige of the king. Democracies, on the other hand, expand to bring the light of civilization, science, and education to the world. It is animated by the same evangelical spirit of Christianity, which seeks to be a light to all nations.
Directionally, democracy is, in particular, an intensification of the Protestant ethos, which sought to make all men (and women) literate so they could read the Bible and become “true Christians.” In South America, Catholic empires forced the conversion of the natives to Christianity, but native peoples retained many of their old beliefs and “syncretized” them with Christianity. In the Protestant colonies of North America, Harvard college was set up with the intention of educating natives so they could become “true Christians.” The result of this higher barrier to entry was that most natives did not convert to Christianity, maintained their native ways, and were exterminated by Protestant crusaders.
In the case of the Civil War, the south deviated from the Protestant ethos of universal education. Both poor southern whites and blacks were largely illiterate. The southern aristocracy was largely hereditary and based on blood. Northern resentment for slavery was religious in nature. But this religious sentiment was not merely a empathetic love for black people, but a vicious hatred of the old aristocratic order, the order of blood and soil, the hatred of caste systems of all types.
The Puritan, Quaker, and Freemasonic agitation against slavery was ultimately not born out of a pure love of black people, but out of a special resentment for the enemies of universal religion. Abolitionists allied with white farmers in new territories like Missouri and Kansas, since those independent farmers did not want to compete with cheaper black slave labor.
The plan of abolitionists under Lincoln was to slowly gain a constitutional 2/3rds majority of the states by inaugurating more free states than slave states. Eventually, this would allow for the passage of federal law against slavery. The desire of abolitionists was to strip all slave owners of their proper, their wealth, they livelihood, and their way of life. Slave holders understood that the election of Lincoln would lead inevitably to this outcome, and declared independence as a result.
“The War of Northern Aggression” is an accurate term for a conquest of religious imperialism. At the end of the war, the southern economy was destroyed. 20% of southern fighting-age men were dead. To this day, states like Mississippi and Alabama remain the least educated, most economically depressed, and most violent states in the union. This is true even if we exclude blacks from our analysis and focus only on the white population.
Anti-Colonialism and Bipolarity
After the Second World War, America and the Soviet Union emerged as the two superpowers. America’s first intervention during the Korean War in 1950 was marketed, successfully, as an anti-colonial measure against communist imperialism. By the time of the Vietnam war, however, this narrative began to break down. This was not due only to Soviet infiltration of American public life, but owes much to the spirit of Gamaliel Bradford.
The same spirit which founded the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 was also present in the student protests against the Vietnam War. By comparing these different moral campaigns — abolitionism, Philippine independence, and Vietnam — a pattern emerges. The span between Benjamin Franklin’s support for abolition and the end of the Civil War is 75 years. The span between the conquest of the Philippines and its independence was 48 years. Finally, the span between the invasion of Vietnam and withdrawal was only 9 years.
Since Vietnam, American military interventions have been exclusively justified in the language of left wing causes: combating religious extremism, protecting the rights of women and minorities, liberating the oppressed, and promoting democracy.
Anti-Authoritarianism
In Africa, the CIA and State Department have worked to undermine and attack any form of white minority rule. White mercenaries, most recently the Wagner PMC, have been attacked and sanctioned with anti-colonial justifications. This is despite the fact that white mercenaries typically create a safer economic environment for the average African, in contrast with the cannibalism and terrorism of war lords.
In El Salvador, the American foreign policy establishment has taken a critical stance toward Bukele, whose mass arrests of gang members is described as authoritarian. Why is American foreign policy consistently opposed to law and order? Why does it promote crime and chaos? What connection does this have to the 2020 crime spike, and lawlessness in American cities?
With regard to crime in American cities, one hypothesis is that the degradation of inner cities is a tool used by real estate companies to drive residents into the suburbs. Companies can buy up land and build cookie-cutter houses for under $100k, and then resell these houses at double, quadruple, or ten times the original value. Large real estate companies have a vested interest in driving up the price of suburban property by forcing city residents to leave through successive waves of crime.
On a larger scale, creating chaos abroad also incentivizes immigration from countries such as El Salvador into the United States, once again driving up the cost of housing. This has been especially true in Europe, where the Arab Spring, Syrian Civil War, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, collapse of Libya, and now the War in Gaza have resulted and will continue to result in mass migration from the third world.
The average resident from the third world does not benefit from having their country destroyed, and the average resident in Europe or America does not benefit from mass immigration. However, at the highest level of the financial system, increased demand for housing and property results in a wealth transfer of billions of dollars from the middle class to the real estate sector. Without mass immigration, the real estate industry would be in decline, since low birth rates mean lower demand for housing.
This hypothesis, so far, is entirely circumstantial. There is no clear evidence that any particular, individual real estate investor is promoting third world chaos or mass immigration. Donald Bren, for example, is one of the richest real estate developers, and has supported both Diane Feinstein as well as Donald Trump — it is difficult to portray him as an extremist in favor of open borders or foreign wars.
The argument, more broadly speaking, is that multi-national investment funds like BlackRock stand to profit off increased housing activity.
De-Colonizing the Housing Market
According to BlackRock, they hold $120 billion in real estate investments. In total, this only represents 3% of the entire American real estate market. However, Larry Fink, who founded BlackRock, began his career by trading mortgage-backed securities.
The financialization of the real estate market began with the "collateralized mortgage obligation" (CMO). The job of a CMO is to make it easier for investors to pool, repackage, financialize, split, and re-structure a "mass" of loans. Instead of directly buying or selling the mortgages themselves, a CMO combines and separates large numbers of mortgages to create different risk profiles to make them more attractive to investors. CMOs were created by Salomon Brothers and First Boston in 1983, with Larry Fink managing First Boston.
Between 1988, when Fink founded BlackRock, and 2007, the height of the real estate bubble, “private-label” investments amounted to between one quarter and one half of all mortgage-backed securities, which was a market between $1 and $2 trillion. This was enabled by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, signed by President Clinton. It overrode the federal regulations against real estate speculation instituted by FDR with the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
From the website of the New York Federal Reserve:
"The mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market emerged as a way to decouple mortgage lending from mortgage investing. Until the 1980s, nearly all US mortgages were held on balance sheet by financial intermediaries, predominately savings and loans. Securitization today allows these mortgages to be held and traded by investors all over the world[.]"
In other words, the invention of mortgage-backed securities internationalized the American real estate market.
The third technical financial term to be discussed to gain a broad overview of the financialization of real estate is the REIT, or Real Estate Investment Trust. REITs today have a total value of $4.5 trillion. This is still a small fraction of the total real estate market, which is over $119 trillion.
The real estate market is incredibly complicated. Semantic sophistication obscures any “smoking gun” tying real estate interests to the policies of anti-colonialism, both in terms of mass immigration as well as the instigation of rioting and crime.
One of the problems of linking anti-colonial ideology with financial interests is that these interests are largely indirect, abstract, and devoid of powerful, public personalities. Real estate investors, with the singular exception of Donald Trump, are almost universally reserved and shy from the public eye. Furthermore, there are very few billionaires who focus exclusively on real estate. Most financiers diversify their assets, and the extent to which financial incentives relate to policy is not clear.
That said, it is clear, at the least, that anti-colonial policies are not incompatible with real estate investment. For example, since 2013, Bill Gates has bought over 270,000 acres of farmland. However, the link between anti-colonialism and real estate need not be the only cynical explanation for these policies, and alternative explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Security and Chaos
Besides driving up the price of real estate, chaos in the third world also serves the purpose of making countries in the third world easier to control and less able to project power. As the unipolar power, America has an interest in protecting its allies, but also keeping them weak enough to not be able to resist American hegemony. Similar, America has an interest in sowing chaos among its enemies. Therefore, anti-colonial policies, including the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, and other conflicts, as well as the policies of open borders and mass immigration, all contribute toward these goals.
The greatest supporters of the War in Ukraine are also the greatest supporters of mass immigration. Is this a contradiction? Or do both policies serve America’s control over Europe? A Europe of strong, internally coherent nation states has the ability to question American hegemony. In particular, for ethnically homogeneous Europeans, the greatest foreign influence comes from America. Historically, opposition to American influence in Europe has come from both the radical right and the radical left.
Mass immigration distracts from this tension. By introducing third world populations to Europe, the influence of America seems technical or abstract, whereas the influence of non-white populations seems immediate and tangible. Any visitor to a major western European city can see the way in which Europe has been radically demographically transformed. Right wing energy is then directed internally toward these elements, rather than being directed externally toward America. Left wing energy is directed toward protecting these elements from racism, rather than fighting American hegemony. Mass immigration into Europe has been a net positive for America.
With regards to Ukraine, America could have chosen to reach an agreement with Russia not to expand NATO prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Instead, the military under Trump sent massive aid to Ukraine. America’s tendency is to inflame tensions in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by refusing to cooperate with “strong men.” Instead, the state department funds terrorist, separatist, or nationalist groups such as the ANC, ISIS, the Mujahideen, and drug cartels. In every country outside of its grasp, America promotes the opposition. This is a tradition going back to the Boston Tea Party, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the 1830 Algerian insurgency, and America’s involvement in both world wars.
British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger refused to make peace with Napoleon, and instead forced a blockade and decade of war to destroy European unity. Without Woodrow Wilson, Europe would be peacefully managed by German hegemony, preventing Hitler’s rise to power and the Holocaust. Without FDR, the British would have given up after Dunkirk and allowed Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union.
Global peace is not in the interest of American foreign policy. Neither are strong borders. By agitating in every country for “anti-colonial” ideology, America is pursuing a successful strategy which is now over 247 years old.
They did not refer to themselves as “the fourth” or “the sixth,” but I add these numbers to indicate that there were seven different men named “Gamaliel Bradford” who each named their sons “Gamaliel Bradford,” until the seventh broke with the tradition. Talking about each person in conjunction becomes confusing.