‘Colonization in Reverse’ is a borrowed title from a Bennet’s Poem, in order to portray the political condition of USA in the same way the poem portrayed the condition of England. According to the poem, the people of Jamaica have started to move towards England to settle there in huge number that they can be seen all around. These people were doing menial and other jobs. They were present in schools, colleges, on the roads, in the clubs, bars and were singing and dancing. Bennet says that Jamaican people are colonizing England because not only physically but also mentally as they have brought their habits, behaviors and lifestyles with them and the way they speak English that is dominantly available here.
Bennet may be reflecting her vision and desire about the process of colonizing (in reverse) England but we Pakistanis are doing so in case of America and its political environment. In recent elections for the presidency of America, Donald Trump lost election and the Democrats won and as a result Joe Biden was appointed president of America for the next four years. But Trump, who has been the most controversial president of USA from 2016 to 2020, did not accept it and prior to his end of the term, his supporters invaded the most powerful center of the world, ruined lives and destroyed property. It was the most difficult moment in the history of America. The fall out of that incident is still in action.
Similarly, Trump was frequently seen attacking the process of elections and accused it of rigging. He is demanding recount or recast of the vote in 6 states of America. According to him, he would win the election and become the president of USA if recounting happens. Not only as a leader he is claiming the fraud in the voting process in America for the first time, but many of his supporters also are now openly claiming the elections as fraud and are demanding the re-polls in six states even after one year of the Biden government. These two incidents in the political arena of USA are new, and therefore, disrupting the very foundations of the democracy and its norms established in USA.
Similarly, Trump was frequently seen attacking the process of elections and accused it of rigging.
Not only this, the press for the first time in USA was accused of fakeness by Trump and he refused to hold press conferences with them and instead turned to Twitter for a usual announcement. He declared CNN a ‘fake news agency’. The press, which in any democracy, has been touted to be the representative of the free speech and is termed as the fourth pillar of the state, was reduced to a propaganda tool and fake news because of the Trumpian style of democracy. Consequently, digital media, which is mainly a social platform, gained superiority over print media. The politicians in USA, who used to be a model for political debates on TV, resorted to verbal attacks and threats of physical assaults. Trump even attacked personal weaknesses of his opponents and on many occasions, he jeered at his opponents publicly.
All these activities being done in USA now have been largely in practice in most of the postcolonial states, especially in Pakistan. For example, during the agitation by PTI against the previous government, our youth attempted to invade the parliament and the national television center. This onslaught was not that vigorous and sophisticated as it was in America when the angry mob attacked the Capitol Hill. Similarly, the noise and hype was created by the agitators in the sit-ins against the authenticity of the poles of 2014 challenging the legitimacy of the government. Slogans were raised in favor of the re-counting of the votes. Many media houses were abused of being partial, and hence, responsible for the spread of fake news in Pakistan. The politicians started verbal fights and later began physical assaults on each other. They, during their squabbles, attacked the families of each other as well.
One may brush off these happenings in the American and western world as the impact of global interaction of people or terming it the similar human nature of the politicians and people. But it can also be taken as the influence of the postcolonial world on the formerly colonizing civilizations, because of an increased volume of migration of the third world people to the West and American Home lands carrying their cultural baggage with them. The theorists and critics of postcolonial theory have also affirmed this two-way impact through the concepts such as negative mimicry, cultural interaction, and linguistic hybridity, thereby, implying that if the world is the Americanism impacts the world, the world is influencing it too in slow but sure manner. It may not bring any big socio-political change in the world, but is helpful to understand the similarity of basic human nature.
The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson College, Multan. He can be reached at [email protected] and Tweets at @Profzee