Hol

If there is on the one hand a need to think of oneself as being invaded and colonized and on the other hand no tangible enemy to fulfil this need, the job has to be given to somebody more visibly present. Who is doing the invading? It is the tens of millions of Turks, Iraqis and Syrians who are, in the mendacious pro-Brexit ads, about to head straight for Britain after the imminent accession of Turkey to the EU. Who is doing the colonizing? Those Poles who moved in up the street. What has been transferred once – the guilt of Empire – is free to be transferred again. The old empire appropriates the pain of the subject peoples and then transfers the guilt of invasion and colonization to the immigrant.