Now that capitalism is reverting to the brutal methods of colonialism, it may be necessary to revisit some of its most oppressive aspects for human populations, both to avoid confusion and, above all, to dismantle the system’s propaganda machine. This thinly veiled publicity often conceals the crimes of colonialism and disguises them as civilizing endeavors, among which the supposed democracy and development brought about by the conquest of the Third World stand out.
A recent article by Rafael Poch in CTXT, titled “The Virtuous Empire,” has the merit of describing colonial atrocities and linking them to the attitude of Europe, and the Global North, toward the Palestinian genocide. Furthermore, it highlights that “the role played in the 19th century by ‘civilization,’ ‘commerce,’ and ‘Christianity’ imposed on ‘savages’ is now played by the ideology of human rights, gender equality, and other noble causes.”
A two-pronged media operation allows the massacres to be concealed while the colonial conquest is disguised with concepts that justify them, all in the name of a supposed greater good that the conquered never shared.
A first point to emphasize is that nothing resembling democracy ever existed in the colonies, as they were ruled with an iron fist by the conquerors, without the slightest concession to the peoples who were savagely repressed. Poch reminds us that the elimination of tariffs on British textiles, while taxes and barriers were imposed on the sale of Indian textiles, played a decisive role in the destruction of India’s manufacturing sector.
A second point is the direct and indirect violence they exercised in their colonies. The famine in Ireland around 1846 and 1847, which he calls the “Irish Holocaust,” resulted in between one and two million deaths from hunger and its consequences, in a population of eight million. While other European countries, also suffering from the potato blight, halted food exports to compensate for losses, the British not only failed to do so but exploited the famine to impose free-market reforms.
As can be seen, Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine” has a long history, and remains strikingly relevant today. Even now, the media whitewashes the disaster, either by insulting the people or praising the measures that promised “progress.”
The third issue is central: crimes against humanity. In India alone, between 1880 and 1920, 100 million people died out of a population of just over 200 million, due to famine and impoverishment. In Bengal, ten years earlier, famine killed a third of the population, ten million.
We Latin Americans, and in particular the Indigenous and Black peoples, know this history, as our continent suffered a true holocaust that nearly wiped out the non-white population. To this we can add horrors such as the Opium Wars, which resulted in 150 million drug addicts in China, one in three inhabitants.
The fourth issue is the release of prisoners to be used as forced labor against other peoples, particularly by Great Britain. The data is very telling. In the 30 years prior to 1776, one in four migrants arriving in Maryland were convicts. In 1840, half the population of Tasmania (southern Australia) were convicts. Between 1788 and 1868 (eight decades), 162,000 convicts were sent to Australia, “deported to kill Aboriginal people at will.”
Although Poch doesn’t mention it, a parallel can be drawn between the use of prisoners as the spearhead of the colonial enterprise and the current encouragement drug traffickers receive to attack social movements and communities in resistance. On the one hand, it is clear that drug trafficking cannot prosper or survive without state support, whether in the justice system or the armed forces, and at different levels of government.
On the other hand, the facts demonstrate that we are facing a social engineering far more sophisticated than that of colonialism, which seeks to direct drug trafficking against those who oppose governments. It is no coincidence that throughout Latin America, drug traffickers attack social movements and leaders, generalizing methods that appear to have originated in Colombia. The ability to direct drug cartel violence against grassroots movements is devastating for the people and an invaluable aid in consolidating capitalism through so-called “wars on drugs.”
In the August 2025 gathering, Sub-commander Moisés, spokesperson for the EZLN, spoke about the attitude to adopt toward the drug cartels. He said that, in general, they are as poor as the EZLN and that there is no point in starting a war among the poor. It seems important to debate this issue in order to develop a position on such a present and painful reality.
Original article by Raúl Zibechi, La Jornada, February 5th, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.