On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – the annual Alpine gathering of the global elite – to declare that now is “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism”.
This, of course, was a reference to the current ambitions of Macron’s counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, who, in addition to recently kidnapping the president of Venezuela and repeatedly threatening to seize the Panama Canal, has made a great deal of noise about taking over the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland.
Trump himself took to the podium in Davos on Wednesday for a typically rambling speech, during which he alternately babbled about windmills, snidely complimented Macron on his “beautiful” reflective sunglasses, and declared that he would not “use force” in the acquisition of Greenland – which he also accidentally referred to as Iceland.
Indeed, Trump’s designs on the island have got Europe’s panties in a bunch, and the European Parliament has announced its unequivocal condemnation of “the statements made by the Trump administration regarding Greenland, which constitute a blatant challenge to international law, to the principles of the United Nations Charter and to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a NATO ally”.
Following Macron’s intervention at Davos, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that European leaders had “lined up” in opposition to the “new colonialism” denounced by the French leader.
Now, it goes without saying that the categorically demented Trump should by no means be encouraged in his predatory international endeavours. But it bears pointing out that, when it comes to colonialism and imperialism, Europe is hardly one to talk.
Let’s start with France, which continues to rule a dozen territories scattered across the globe – many of them marketed as exotic holiday destinations – including the Guadeloupe islands in the Caribbean Sea and the archipelago of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean.
While these territories have officially moved beyond lowly colonial status to bona fide departments of the French Republic and thereby part of the European Union, France can’t seem to shake the old patronising imperial mindset and attendant superiority complex.
When in December 2024, residents of cyclone-ravaged Mayotte – France’s poorest overseas territory – criticised the ineffective government response to the disaster, Macron charmingly snapped: “If it wasn’t for France, you would be in way deeper s***, 10,000 times more.”
How’s that for some “new colonialism”?
As for the tried-and-true “old” colonialism, France has a particularly appalling track record on that front, as well. Recall the case of Algeria, where some 1.5 million Algerians were killed during the 1954-62 war for independence from French rule.
Although Macron previously acknowledged that French colonisation of the North African country was a “crime against humanity” that was characterised by rampant torture and other brutality, he has consistently refused to offer a formal French apology.
But it’s not just France. Plenty of other European powers who are suddenly against colonialism also possess impressively savage legacies worldwide.
Indeed, from Africa to Asia to the Middle East and beyond, it’s difficult to find so much as a speck of land that has not been affected in some way or other by past centuries of European plunder, enslavement, mass killing, and similar atrocities.
The Spaniards decimated Indigenous populations across the Americas, Britain wreaked imperial havoc wherever it possibly could, and King Leopold II of Belgium presided over the deaths of 10 million or so Congolese starting in 1885, when he established the “Congo Free State” as his own personal property.
In 2022, Belgian King Philippe offered his “deepest regrets” for the abuses that transpired during the colonial era but withheld an official apology. As one article on the occasion of the non-apology noted, life in the Congo Free State was such that “villages that missed rubber collection quotas were notoriously made to provide severed hands instead”.
Over in Ethiopia, meanwhile, British historian Ian Campbell estimates that 19-20 percent of the Ethiopian population of Addis Ababa was wiped out over a mere three days during the Italian military occupation of East Africa in 1937.
The list of European atrocities goes on.
This is not, of course, meant as a suggestion that Trump should therefore have free rein to commit whatever crimes or plunder he pleases. It is simply a friendly reminder that you can’t be selectively opposed to colonialism. (Greenland, by the way, was a full-out colony of Denmark until not so long ago.)
Speaking of colonial atrocities, Europe has not, over the course of more than two years of Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, managed to be sufficiently up in arms over the mass slaughter, preferring to go the route of superficial criticism and de facto complicity.
As the killing continues under the guise of a US-brokered ceasefire, Gaza is now, per the Trumpian vision, set to be administered by a so-called “Board of Peace” chaired by – who else? – Trump himself.
Also participating on the board will be Israeli prime minister and genocidaire extraordinaire Benjamin Netanyahu, which no doubt heralds a “new colonialism” of the most sinister variety.
Unfortunately for the world, however, blood-soaked hypocrisy is nothing new.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
