Bruce Gilleys’ paper
The Case for Colonialism provoked a storm and resulted in something not seen since
Galileo and
Lysenko: a double-blind, peer-reviewed scientific paper was memory-holed under threat of violence. That this dangerously regressive step went almost unremarked apart from near-universal approval from the academic establishment is testament to the New Dark Age on whose edge we teeter.
What was so heretical about Gilleys’ paper? Merely that it argued that colonialism was not a universal evil, and that, in some instances, some developing nations today might benefit from a managed, temporary, return to colonial-like oversight of at least some of their functions. A contentious argument, certainly, but the violent reaction spoke to something else entirely.
