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Let's get into it:
In an incredible stroke of irony, a World Decolonization Forum is being held in Turkey. Yes, the nation that was founded by laying siege to Constantinople in 1453, starving out the Byzantines, killing, pillaging, plundering the city, and desecrating the basilica of Hagia Sophia just to later turn it into a mosque, is actually standing on the principle of "decolonizing" the West.
What could that mean for the Turks and their decolonial allies other than going on a raping, killing, sieging rampage to take over more land that did not originally belong to them? This forum is anti-Western, and it uses the ideology of progressivism to bolster its claims. How many in the American left would also claim the West needs to be decolonized? Probably many, probably AOC, and she's on the verge of becoming the 2028 presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.
In her opening remarks, Dr. Esra Albayrak, daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, claimed that "the roots of the colonial mindset... go back to 1492—the founding moment of the modern world," claiming that the year "marks the birth of a global matrix of power. What began as economic exploitation gradually evolved into a vast system of domination in which racial, linguistic, spiritual, and epistemic hierarchies became deeply entangled with one another."
I wonder why she didn't reference 1453? When the culture to which she is heir took aim at the eastern-most outpost of the West at Constantinople? Albayrak then goes on to criticize as colonialist and therefore evil some of our greatest philosophers, such as the French thinker Rene Descartes. She claims that his statement "I think; therefore I am" is a way that the West went about "proclaiming itself the sole source of knowledge, this way of thinking reduced all non-Western forms of knowledge to the realm of folklore, dismissing them as 'magic,' 'tradition,' or 'primitive.'"
To that I reply: damn straight. Our western culture, with our scientific method, Christian moral underpinnings, social order, and global dominance, is better and I say that as a very biased, non-relativist western American who absolutely will not cede power, authority, or dominion to the decolonizing colonizers who simply seek to replace our dominance and influence with their own. This whole thing, this attitude, this leaning into socialist Marxist communism, is just a linguistic tool to gain supremacy over our land, people, and resources.
Then the first daughter of Turkey goes on to bash Kant and the appearance of ethnic Europeans, claiming that their preference for their own physical characteristics is in some way racist. Of course, she doesn't believe that she is racist for hating those characteristics. Once she is through bashing everything that our society is based on, she lifts up Islamic and African societies as the end-all, be-all of civilization. Reading her remarks is nothing short of infuriating.
What is her solution? Retconning Western history from the perspective of the colonized. Remaking all our Western institutions to favor the oppressed over the alleged oppressor—namely, forcing Western students to study more foreign history than their own history. And forgiving all debts of the third world to the wealthy Western nations.
But let's be clear: this is not some morally altruistic ask to help the little people, it's just a form of colonization and usurping of power that doesn't use traditional tools of warfare but is intended to manipulate the West into handing over all our hard-won good stuff to invaders. Don't do it, Western brothers and sisters. Our culture is worthwhile, our societies are strong because of that culture, and we must maintain that power in the face of those who wish to steal it from us and then pummel us with it.
Libby