I’ve decided that the world will probably end as we know it (because it’s being reborn) in my lifetime so I’m going to use a lot more declarative statements. Anyhoo…

Liberalism is empire in flowery, annoying language; it is philosophically structured in a way that produces hierarchy, extraction, and civilizational ranking, while performing morality. This is why, now, when all liberal institutions are seemingly breaking down, people are surprised and horrified. Those who aren’t are those that know that it is a farce to begin with built on it.

These days, I try to view all derivatives of western thought as farcical, I term it “a practice in anti-coloniality.”

Below are the reasons for the above dogmatic assertion of this essay. (I can’t help myself, everyone gets hot and bothered when women have a strong opinions and assert their personhood, so I like to oblige, BOLDLY.)

1. It Defines the “Human” in European Terms

Early liberal theorists such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill grounded rights in rationality, property ownership, and “civilization.”

Those criteria mapped almost perfectly onto European bourgeois men.

So the critique goes:

• Liberalism does not start with “all humans.”

• It starts with a specific prototype.

• Others must approximate that prototype to qualify. WHITE COLONIAL DADDY.

That structure mirrors colonial civilizational ranking.

2. Property Is the Foundation of Personhood

In liberal theory, property is not ONLY economic, it is ontological, but also not tied to the earth in any way that is regenerative or wholistic or accurate.

Locke’s framework ties labor, ownership, and political legitimacy together. Those who do not cultivate land in European ways are seen as failing to actualize it.

Colonialism becomes justified as:

• Bringing land into “productive use”

• Advancing “improvement”

This logic underwrote settler expansion in places like the United States and Australia and Palestine.

The deeper critique:

If property accumulation is sacred and universalized, dispossession becomes inevitable.

3. Individualism Dismantles Collective Sovereignty

Liberalism treats the individual as primary.

Many colonized societies were organized around:

• Clan structures

• Communal land stewardship

• Spiritual-political authority

When liberal governance is imposed:

• Communal land becomes private property

• Kinship becomes contract

• Obligation becomes choice

That shift makes extraction administratively simpler.

Liberal individualism is a derivative of the colonial project.

4. “Freedom” Is Market Participation

Liberalism defines freedom as:

• Freedom from interference

• Freedom to contract

• Freedom to exchange

But “markets” historically expanded through empire.

Colonies were forced into global trade networks where they supplied raw materials and consumed finished goods.

Free trade was often enforced violently, and free only to the colonial overlord.

Thus, liberal freedom depends on global economic integration, which was and is built through colonial force, and to the detriment of the “former” colony.

5. Universalism Masks Power

Liberalism claims neutrality and universality. Which is inherently a colonial idea also known as the hegemony of western thought, I’m always harping about.

But universality that originates in Europe and spreads globally through imperial expansion is civilizational imposition.

Universalism becomes the soft language of dominance; true universalism would be pluralistic and out of that pluralism would come a shared set of values. But because the baseline understanding of universalism is INDIVIDUALISTIC AND COLONIAL, we are in this shit show known as “democracy”.

6. The Nation-State Model Is Exported as the Only Legitimate Form of Living

Liberalism assumes:

• Territorial sovereignty

• Fixed borders

• Central authority

• Uniform citizenship

Colonized territories were reorganized into European-style states, along lines that benefited the colonialists and imposed strife.

Even postcolonial nations operate within this imposed structure, because they are still enslaved to their colonial overlords by virtue of monaaayyy and resources.

Coloniality remains embedded in governance form itself.

7. Liberal Secularism Privileges Enlightenment Epistemology

Liberalism elevates Enlightenment rationalism as the standard of legitimacy.

Non-Western cosmologies are:

• “Cultural”

• “Religious”

• “Traditional”

• “Non-objective”

• “Non-neutral”

• “Backwards”

Western rationality is “political” and “modern.”

That epistemic hierarchy is the basis of colonial civilizational hierarchies and political practice.

8. Inclusion Requires Assimilation

Liberal systems expand rights over time for the underprivileged groups.

Marginalized groups gain recognition by:

• Adopting dominant norms

• Participating in markets - a redefinition of the world in colonial business terms

• Performing respectability

• Conforming to colonial institutional expectations

The system absorbs difference by reshaping it into it’s own image.

This is structurally and literally similar to colonial assimilation policies.

9. Liberalism Requires an External Frontier

Historically and presently liberal economies expanded through:

• Land acquisition

• Resource extraction

• Labor exploitation

• Market expansion

When domestic frontiers closed, expansion became global, and now that it’s gone global it’s become a fight over individuals minds and attention.

Empire seeks to obtain:

• Raw materials

• Labor

• Markets

• Strategic advantage

Liberal prosperity depends materially on colonial extraction

10. It Frames Itself as the End of History

Liberalism presents itself as:

• The final political form

• The universal endpoint of development

• The standard by which societies are judged

This creates a developmental hierarchy and binary:

Advanced ↔ Backward
Modern ↔ Traditional
Developed ↔ Developing

#colonial

LIBERALISM is a civilizational template that universalizes a European experience of personhood, property, rationality, and governance, and organizes the world around it. TO EVERYONE’S DETRIMENT, INCLUDING THEMSELVES.

Colonialism is not an aberration within liberalism, or vice versa.

Liberalism is colonialism globalized.

Foundational Postcolonial Critics

Frantz Fanon

• Argued that European humanism was built on colonial violence.

• In The Wretched of the Earth, liberal universalism is exposed as racialized and exclusionary.

Aimé Césaire

• In Discourse on Colonialism, he argues Europe’s “civilization” is inseparable from brutality.

• Liberal democracy at home coexists with fascism abroad.

Albert Memmi

• Analyzed how colonial systems structure identity and dependency.

• Shows how liberal equality rhetoric masks domination.

Decolonial / Coloniality of Power School

Aníbal Quijano

• Coined “coloniality of power.”

• Argues modernity (and liberalism within it) is inseparable from racial hierarchy.

Walter D. Mignolo

• Argues Western liberal modernity produces epistemic dominance.

• Universalism = a local European worldview globalized.

Enrique Dussel

• Claims modernity begins in 1492, not the Enlightenment.

• Liberalism depends on conquest and extraction.

Nelson Maldonado-Torres

• Argues coloniality shapes the very definition of being and humanity under liberalism.

Liberalism as Racial Contract

Charles W. Mills

• In The Racial Contract, argues liberalism was always racially structured.

• The “social contract” was really a racial contract among Europeans.

This is one of the most direct philosophical attacks on liberalism’s innocence.

Black Radical & Afro-Pessimist Traditions

Cedric J. Robinson

• In Black Marxism, argues capitalism (and liberalism with it) developed within racial hierarchy from inception.

Sylvia Wynter

• Argues the liberal concept of “Man” is a colonial construct.

• Humanity itself was redefined around European bourgeois man.

Saidiya Hartman

• Shows how liberal freedom emerged alongside slavery, not after it.

Indigenous & Settler Colonial Critique

Glen Sean Coulthard

• In Red Skin, White Masks, argues liberal recognition politics reproduces colonial power.

Patrick Wolfe

• “Settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.”

• Liberal property regimes sustain ongoing dispossession.

Critical International Relations

Uday Singh Mehta

• Shows how liberal thinkers justified empire as a civilizing project.

Domenico Losurdo

• In Liberalism: A Counter-History, argues liberalism historically coexisted with slavery and genocide.

The Core Intellectual Pattern

• Liberalism defines humanity through European norms.

• Property, rationality, and sovereignty are racialized.

• Universalism masks civilizational hierarchy.

• Colonial extraction was not accidental — it was constitutive.

• Inclusion requires assimilation into a European template of “Man.”

Intellectual spine for “liberalism is innately colonial” would be:

• John Locke (foundational theory)

• John Stuart Mill (explicit imperial justification)

• Charles W. Mills (racial contract critique)

• Sylvia Wynter (definition of the human)

• Walter Mignolo / Aníbal Quijano (coloniality framework)

  TLDR. The hegemony of western thought needs to end. Join me as I do so . Mwah.