British Empire

Lawrence of Arabia or Lawrence the Swindler of Arabia?

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Exposing One of the Greatest Imperialist Myths of All Time

One of the greatest untold geopolitical stories of the modern era is how a former settler-colony that developed into a hegemonic superpower saved its former Imperial master from existential geopolitical disasters. How the United States provided salvation for Britain in two world wars and then inherited and maintained its former master’s imperialist global interests, especially in the Arabic-speaking region of west Asia aka “Middle East” during the twentieth century is a phenomenal story in itself. Alongside this secular salvation, the United States maintained the foundational geopolitical mythology about the British presence in the Arabic speaking world. This particular mythology is based around the imperial agent T. E. Lawrence (aka “Lawrence of Arabia”). He is considered to have led the Arabs to freedom from Ottoman Rule in the “Arab Revolt” during World War One. Lawrence chronicled his adventures in his classic book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Steve Bannon the former advisor to President Donald Trump, is the latest to fall gullibly for this foundational mythology in an interview with world-renowned journalist Tucker Carlson. Bannon is an advocate of “America First”, a strategy which calls for the prioritisation of United States interests instead of forever foreign wars which are considered to mostly serve foreign governments. He recently drew an analogy of his interpretation of “America First” priorities with the “Arab Revolt” campaign during World War One. He told Carlson,

“I said to quote T E Lawrence from the Seven Pillars of Wisdom what they told him at the time when he showed up at Cairo’s military headquarters. They said, “Look, the Middle East is a sideshow to the main event, the Western Front”. And the Arab revolt is a sideshow to a sideshow. And I said, “The Middle East right now for us with everything geopolitically going on and the economic war with China…The Middle East is a sideshow and the Israel issue is a sideshow to a sideshow.”

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Refuting Montefiore’s Decolonisation Diatribe: Mandate Palestine Revisited

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Zionism, without a doubt, is a British fostered settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine

Western elites have been unnerved by the outpouring of grassroots support for the Palestinian people over the last seven weeks. As such, the British establishment historian and bestselling author, Simon Sebag Montefiore, was quick off the mark to denigrate these popular pro-Palestinian sentiments. Writing in the American journal “The Atlantic” he generously wrote a 4,500 word essay in an attempt to disabuse humane people of their misplaced sympathies in light of the Zionist genocidal response to the Palestinian resistance’s military advance on October 7th. The erudite diatribe, titled “The Decolonisation Narrative Is Dangerous and False” argues the reason there is so much support for the Palestinian cause among “Western academics, students, artists and activists” is because they are ‘toxically’ taught a distorted account of history by intellectuals who have embraced the ideology of “decolonisation” which he defines as “a toxic, historically nonsensical mix of Marxist theory, Soviet propaganda, and traditional anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages and the 19th century.”

Whether this hotchpotch definition of decolonisation is correct or even intelligible is beyond the scope of this essay but what I shall do is identify and unpack some of the dubious claims, sleight of hand and factual errors in Montefiore’s elegant invectiveness.

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