I remember Republicans having a bullshit talking point about Obama being a Kenyan anti-colonialist. The idea was to scare White people, even though Obama had no history with Kenyan politics.
But: Why the fuck wouldn't you be an anti-colonialist?
I was just reading about the
Mau Mau Uprising. (Got there because I was thinking about Twitter MAU.) As colonialists are wont to do, the British were stealing Kenyan livestock. So, an uprising started. The rebels were not well organized and complex, as they often are. The British reaction was to torture civilians:
Between 320,000-450,000 of them were moved into concentration camps. Most of the remainder – more than a million – were held in "enclosed villages". Although some were Mau Mau guerrillas, many were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Thousands suffered beatings and sexual assaults during "screenings" intended to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Significant numbers were murdered.[206] Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". Castration by British troops and denying access to medical aid to the detainees were also widespread and common.[207][208][209] Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama, the former President of the United States.
There's been this idea in discussions lately that the West does not torture. On one hand, I'm for any idea that reduced torture. On the other, it is clearly historically false, just like this idea that the British are very civilized.