The Infinite Reopening of History
20th December 2025
Over the past year, a new ideological framework, which I’ll call neo-decolonialism, has been taking hold in activist, academic, and political discourse. This framework has the potential to reopen and reinflame a vast number of conflicts. This is where slogans like “globalise the intifada” ultimately lead—to a world in which no political settlement is ever final, and no peace is durable.
It’s important to make a clear distinction between actual decolonisation and what I am calling neo-decolonialism. Real decolonisation was a concrete, historically specific process in which empires withdrew from territories they had been administering, as exemplified by the end of the Raj. These withdrawals changed legal and political realities on the ground: e.g. British colonial governance in India ended, and two new sovereign states, India and Pakistan, emerged.
This is not to say that the end of empire erased the effects of colonialism. Political borders, legal systems, and economic structures often outlived the formal withdrawal, and many societies still live with deep, measurable legacies of colonialism. It is one thing to argue for civil rights, equal representation, or institutional reform within an existing civic order.
But neo-decolonialism is not about dismantling real empires—even though some empires still exist today, such as the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Instead, it retroactively reclassifies political arrangements as “colonial” based on contemporary group dynamics, racial or ethnic categories (e.g. “whiteness”), and the question of which side has the most power.