This process should be familiar to anyone who has ever tuned into internet discussions in which the red pill/blue pill motif from The Matrix (1999) is invoked. Today’s reactionary appropriation of righteous, anti-imperial victimhood - the sense that white men, in particular, are somehow colonized victims fighting an insurgent resistance against an oppressive establishment - depends on a science fictional logic that achieved dominance in imperial fantasy during the 1960s and has continued to gain momentum ever since. Yet by some alchemy, even anti-colonial tales can serve the purposes of the alt-right. Heinlein, whose Starship Troopers (1959) flirts with fascist ideas, was liberal on many issues, including race and gender equality. Narratives of reversal can have different aims, including inviting those in power to feel compassion for others, but Higgins is particularly interested in cases in which “modern reactionaries have mobilized powerful political sentiment by identifying as victims and framing themselves as revolutionary insurgents struggling to achieve heroic liberation against overwhelming odds.” His core examples are not themselves reactionary - even Robert A. What is reverse colonization? Higgins offers several formulations of the term in different contexts, but essentially it is a form of projection in which those who have inflicted colonial rule on others imagine that they are victims of the same injustice. Ballard, and then shows how these and their contemporaries provided the imagery, language, and narrative tropes that continue to mold behavior and set terms for debate. Dick, the heroic illusions of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), and the crumbling empires of J. His choice of decade might seem unnecessarily limiting - why not go back to the Gothic origins of science fiction or forward to survey the contemporary scene? - but it makes perfect sense as he guides us through the paranoid visions of Philip K. Higgins traces the origins of a set of powerful tropes in print science fiction from the 1960s and early 1970s he then follows their spread through media and electronic culture as well as their uses in political rhetoric and advertising. Higgins examines a particular cluster of narratives about power and identity, a cluster that is nicely described in his title: stories that use the iconography of science fiction to express fear of the other and resentment of loss of power, thus giving a boost to a number of reactionary movements, from Brexit and the cult of Trump to anti-feminist internet trolldom. Higgins offers a fascinating look into the process by which such stories are generated and transformed into cultural references and societal roadmaps. In his new book, Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood, David M.
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BOTH POLITICIANS AND political scientists know the power of narratives: there is much talk about who controls and how to alter “the narrative.” But neither group tends to ask where these narratives are actually, you know, narrated.