People responding to news from Palestinian sources crying “Pallywood” are recycling one of the dirtiest lies of white supremacy: Indigenous people do not have the right to document, present, and narrate our own struggle because we lack “objectivity” in the eyes of the colonizer.
This isn’t just despicable because it is an attempt to erase the daily realities of Palestinian oppression (or other forms of oppression) and silence those of us who are willing to document and explain these systems in context.
It is despicable because it reinforces white supremacy by placing “objectivity” and “credibility” and the ability to narrate history firmly with the colonizer. This means that They are the “educated expert,” while oppressed people—no matter how many degrees they stack up—
are dismissed as being “too close” to their own contexts, and therefore untrustworthy, unfit to narrate their own history and reality. Not only is this a ridiculous and illogical notion; it also contributes to the silencing and disempowering of those oppressed by the hegemony.
Who can write history?
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