Masking the Systematic Violence Perpetuated By Liberalism Through the Concept of ‘Totalitarianism’

Abstract

Starting from the European conquest in 1492 which established the beginning of colonialism, going through the establishment of liberalism’s racial (‘social’) contract, and coming to present times of neocolonialism and neoliberalism, this paper underscores the interdependence between colonialism and liberalism, and liberalism’s systematic violence of oppression, arguing that the term ‘totalitarianism’ is unable to shed light onto this violence. An analysis of the violence prevalent within social relations is offered here – more precisely, the violence of racism within liberalism- by focusing on the solipsistic historicity and identity of Europe/the West, and its concurrent violence of ‘othering’. The colonial dimensions of ‘modernity’ and its hierarchical binaries become apparent by discussing the ideology of whiteness and its process of absorbing the radical alterity (absolute difference) of the non-European. The Holocaust, thus, is a particularity of colonialism brought home to Europe. There is a need to de-link social relations and (re)presentations, state structures, practices and knowledge from the colonial matrix of power by employing a decolonial approach to history, knowledge and practice.