Colonial masters and mass manipulation

Nasir Khan, April 13, 2014

 During the last five centuries European colonisation of the Americas, the New World, started. Mass manipulation was at work right from the early days of the conquistadores. The local populations were dehumanised, many were wiped out and the rest had a tragic fate waiting for them as isolated communities in some forlorn corners of this continent which once was theirs. First Nations, the original inhabitants were seen as wild and primitive. Even now the same attitudes prevail among the descendants of the European settlers.

The settlers needed work force to make the land habitable according to their wishes. They enslaved African people to work for them. These slaves were not given even the status of primitive human beings; they were regarded subhuman.

The same attitudes were infused by the colonial rulers when they took over Asia, Africa and Australia. Their administrators treated the ‘native’ populations as inferior and the subjugated people of these continents believed in their inferiority and cultural backwardness. Now, even after the end of the direct colonial rule in Asia and Africa in the twentieth century, the people of these continents have not broken the chains of mental slavery. They look up to their old colonial masters for guidance and help. They see the West as the holy direction from where only light and goodwill spreads. These days the epicentre of that light is Washington D.C., the capital of the United States of America.