History has proven anti-colonialism to be among the most destructive ideas ever imposed on the masses by the elites. Many of the other destructive ideas of the 20th Century flowed from it.
Chief among those secondary destructive ideas was the conviction that Westerners are inherently evil, all of their ideas are corrupt, the Third World is filled with wonderful alternative models for society, and only the evil Westerners have any real agency.
That latter notion informs the Left's response to almost all world events, as you can see most recently in their bizarre fawning over Iran as an innocent passive victim of sinister American policy.
The inheritors of anti-colonialism's intellectual legacy believe everyone else in the world, including the most vile terrorists and oppressive dictators, is merely reacting to whatever the evil West has done.
You can see strains of anti-colonialist fever in the Left's refusal to hold anyone except Western nations responsible for climate change, even though the world's worst polluters by far are non-Western nations, and they have stated plans to get WORSE in the decades to come.
Some of the Left's refusal to criticize non-Western nations on environmental grounds is cowardly and pragmatic - they're authoritarian states that would not tolerate such criticism - but it's also the "all evil flows from the West" mindset at work.
Another destructive bit of foolishness we've had to endure is the idea that democracy is a magic potion that cures all ills. Time and again, the globalist elite are stunned when "liberated" populations simply elect authoritarian dictators or corrupt oligarchies.
The problem with anti-colonialism is that it was profoundly arrogant and hated the Western legacy too passionately to understand it. Self-determination and democracy were not properly understood as the end result of long and difficult social evolution.
We should understand, after a brutally disappointing century of "nation-buidling," that it's not easy to bring any culture up to the level that makes true representative democracy and constitutional government possible. Sadly, it might be all but impossible for some.
Unfortunately the globalists have created a world order with a VERY low barrier to entry. We don't require any particular hallmarks of social evolution to gain entry to the globalist club and begin interfacing with the economy and politics of the free world.
Consequently, all of those global institutions are trending downward toward the lowest common denominators. Ruthless authoritarianism is more LOGICAL for Third World rulers to pursue than vibrant democracy and limited government. There is simply no real downside to it.
Authoritarianism then propagates through global institutions and infects the free world, compromising its standards of free speech and lawful commerce. "Anti-colonialism" indeed - the Third World is colonizing the First now, both intellectually and physically.
And the bitterest irony of the new century is that the rising hegemonic power, China, is UNABASHEDLY colonial in its outlook. It's like a nightmare version of everything the anti-colonialists of the last century criticized the West for, right down to racial supremacism.
China is busy using debt traps and infrastructure programs to colonize and plunder the Third World, with the acquiescence of its corrupt elites, who care only about the big payoffs promised by Beijing and its willingness to indulge their abuse of human rights to stay in power.
A hundred or so years later, many Third World nations "liberated" by the anti-colonialists find themselves under the control of a vastly more ruthless colonial master that offers no gifts of enlightenment to its possessions and will allow no criticism of its agenda. /end
