Colonial demands and defences - RIF Podcast Ep. 6 - 16 Feb 2025

In this episode, Nounja, Sacha & Benji explore the psychological demands and defences of colonialism. Benji relates it back to narcissistic family dynamics and how these illuminate the demands and defences. Nounja points to the colonial bubble and the freedom and sense of real community to be found in resistance. We discuss the psychological impact of colonialism, and how joining the resistance can be a way to lessen ego. We explore the costs of speaking out against oppressive systems, and how, inside narcissistic systems one can try to salvage some basic humanity. In the end, freedom id found outside the confines of colonial capitalism and the potential for a new world to emerge from the ashes of the old.

Chapters
00:00 Understanding Colonial Demands and Defences (Sacha)
02:33 Colonial demands are capitalist demands that seek to extinguish the spirit (Nounja)
03:55 The uses of AS as a colonial demand and defence in the narcissistic system of imperialism (Benji)
07:58 The narcissistic mirage of misunderstandings and reconciliation (Benji)
10:36 Community Accountability vs. Colonial Threats (Nounja)
13:35 The Disconnect of Education and Learning (Sacha)
16:22 Colonial Systems as Narcissistic Family Systems (Benji)
19:12 The illusory hope of approval by those living inside the system (Benji)
21:37 We are raised on these narcissistic imperial dynamics (Benji, Nounja)
23:16 Not capitulating to the system is existing (Nounja)
25:58 We need to practice disciplined resentment (Sacha)
26:28 Moving toward resistance and loss of ego (Sacha)
29:25 Absurd Foundations of Narc and Colonial Systems: the case of a State's "Right to Exist" (Benji)
31:57 Comfort of submission vs. cost of resistance (Benji)
35:14 Understanding Narcissistic Dynamics to help build Class and Anticolonial Consciousness (Benji)
37:09 Stepping out of the mind-control magnetic field (Sacha)
38:36 There is a world outside the imperial-colonial bubble (Nounja)
40:56 The promise of salvaging some humanity while living inside the bubble (Benji)
45:14 The Interplay of the internal and external dynamics (Nounja)
45:59 The Unbearable Clownishness of Imperial Narcissism UCIN
52:23 Hating the US Empire is not hating Americans (Sacha)
53:18 Conclusion: Nourishing the Seeds of Resistance (Nounja)

References
Mohammed El-Kurd, Perfect Victims https://www.youtube.com/live/FXcqfLsraJI?si=eJmODbWyJ2MSvPJc
Macklemore Fucked Up https://youtu.be/sn9EKC9nqU4?si=WiH7YMpKxXwqMUxw
Indie Nile https://youtu.be/MslskZT48ac?si=PcxIaeKFWymQHvUO

In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
baskets of olives and lemons,
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
with rose-pink fish;
armfuls of dark grapes
heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
they burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
the taverns were full again,
baskets of olives and lemons
again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
one clear spring evening
to the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
the salvos from the ghetto wall,
and couples were flying
high in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
would drift dark kites along
and riders on the carousel
caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
blew open the skirts of the girls
and the crowds were laughing
on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
that the people of Rome or Warsaw
haggle, laugh, make love
as they pass by the martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
of the passing of things human,
of the oblivion
born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying,
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
or peddled their white starfish,
baskets of olives and lemons
they had shouldered to the fair,
and he already distanced
as if centuries had passed
while they paused just a moment
for his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
forgotten by the world,
our tongue becomes for them
the language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
and many years have passed,
on a new Campo dei Fiori
rage will kindle at a poet's word.

Czeslaw Milosz Warsaw, 1943

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