Colonialism as a form of mind control

 

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Colonialism functions as a form of mind control when it does not just seize land and labour, but reshapes how the colonized think about themselves, their history, and what is “normal.” Many decolonial and Indigenous scholars argue that this psychic reprogramming is essential to making material domination stable over generations.philosopheasy+3​

From external rule to internal control

Classical colonialism starts with military, legal, and economic control over a territory and its people: taking land, extracting resources, controlling movement, and imposing foreign institutions. Over time, these external controls are coupled with mechanisms that restructure subjectivity—education systems, religious conversion, media, and law that present the colonizer’s order as natural, superior, and inevitable.tandfonline+2​

The goal is not only obedience through force but consent through habituation and identification. When people start to police their own behavior in line with colonial norms, less overt violence is required to maintain the system. In this sense, mind control is not science fiction “brainwashing,” but the gradual production of colonial common sense.journalofglobalindigeneity+1​

Colonization of the mind

Frantz Fanon and others describe “colonization of the mind” as the process by which colonized people internalize the colonizer’s values, language hierarchies, and racial myths, often coming to see their own cultures as backward or inferior. This internalization is tied to material conditions: Fanon stresses that economic exploitation and social structures create the ground on which feelings of inferiority and fractured identity emerge (“first, economic, then internalisation”).philosopheasy+1​

This psychic colonization shows up in phenomena like “colonial mentality,” where people devalue their own language, appearance, or heritage and idealize the colonizer’s. Practices such as skin whitening or rejecting Indigenous names and languages are often analyzed as expressions of this internalized inferiority.wikipedia+1​

Internalized colonialism and lateral violence

Internalized colonialism (or internalized oppression) describes what happens when the methods and narratives of the colonizer are turned inward, against oneself, one’s family, and one’s own community. Negative stereotypes and shame about identity become woven into everyday life, contributing to self-destructive behaviours, family violence, and lateral violence between members of the same oppressed group.saskoer+1​

This is a crucial mechanism of mind control: once people see themselves and each other through colonial lenses, the system reproduces itself with minimal external intervention. Control is achieved not just by guns or laws, but by shaping what people think is possible, desirable, or even thinkable.wikipedia+1​

Institutional techniques of psychological control

Analyses of both external and “internal” colonialism (colonial patterns reproduced within a single state) emphasize recurring techniques of psychological control. These include:ebsco+1​

• Controlling education and language to normalize the colonizer’s worldview while erasing or belittling Indigenous knowledge.fncaringsociety+1​

• Using media, policy, and religious or scientific discourse to portray colonized peoples as deficient, needing guidance or “civilization.”tandfonline+1​

• Separating children from families (e.g., residential or boarding schools) to break intergenerational transmission of culture and embed colonial norms early.campusmentalhealth+1​

Mind control here is diffuse and structural: it works through schools, churches, bureaucracies, welfare systems, and “helping” professions that frame compliance as progress and resistance as pathology.fncaringsociety+2​

Decolonizing the mind

For Fanon and many Indigenous and anti-colonial thinkers, liberation is impossible without undoing this psychic colonization—“decolonizing the mind.” This involves conscious critique of inherited narratives, active reclamation of language and cultural practices, and building new collective identities not defined by colonial hierarchies.cbc+4​

Because psychological and material domination are intertwined, decolonizing the mind is not a purely personal exercise in self-esteem; it is bound up with struggles for land, resources, political power, and institutional transformation. In this frame, colonialism is best understood as a system that works on bodies, territory, and consciousness at once—and mind control is one of its foundational tools rather than a side effect.wikipedia+1​

1. https://www.philosopheasy.com/p/fanon-decolonizing-the-mind-the-psychology
2. https://www.saskoer.ca/indigenousvoices/chapter/internalized-colonialism/
3. https://fncaringsociety.com/sites/default/files/mind_control_and_colonization_info_sheet_1.pdf
4. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2243908
5. https://campusmentalhealth.ca/toolkits/anti-oppressive-practice-part-2/colonization-and-colonialism/
6. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/political-science/internal-colonialism
7. https://www.journalofglobalindigeneity.com/post/2764-psychological-warfare-just-doing-their-job
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_mentality
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_oppression
10. https://taylorraeroman.com/newsletter/internalized-colonialism-amp-lateral-oppression
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_colonialism
12. https://fncaringsociety.com/fncares/mind-control-colonization-escaping-undue-influence
13. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/decolonizing-the-mind-the-life-and-work-of-frantz-fanon-1.6609671
14. https://www.palestinenature.org/research/B46-QumsiyehandAmr.pdf
15. https://mronline.org/2022/02/04/the-struggle-to-decolonise-the-mind/
16. https://themazaj.substack.com/p/colonisation-is-a-psychological-project
17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXy-DHVPHBQ
18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYHuBgR-Otk
19. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953623006482
20. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11591433/