We live in an age of cognitive clutter. Our minds, once colonized by the imposed languages and histories of empire, are now bombarded by a new invader: the algorithmic chaos of social media. Far-right conspiracy theories, climate denialism, and xenophobic lies spread faster than facts, their toxicity amplified by platforms designed to profit from our outrage. This isn’t just “fake news”—it’s digital colonialism, a 21st-century extension of the mental subjugation Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o warned us about in Decolonising the Mind.
The parallels are uncanny. Colonial powers weaponized education and language to erase Indigenous cultures; today’s tech empires weaponize engagement algorithms to erase critical thinking. Where missionaries once burned sacred texts, influencers now peddle hashtags that reduce complex truths to memes. But just as Ngũgĩ urged Kenyans to reclaim Gĩkũyũ storytelling, we too can resist this new frontier of mental colonization—by decluttering our minds, recalibrating our attention, and rebuilding our relationship with truth.
The Colonial Playbook, Repackaged
Colonialism was never just about land or resources. Its most enduring violence was epistemological: the systematic erasure of local knowledge, languages, and ways of seeing. British colonizers in India burned Sanskrit manuscripts, dismissing them as “primitive.” French colonizers in Algeria replaced Arabic with Parisian French in schools, framing Berber traditions as backward. These acts of cultural arson weren’t incidental—they were strategic. A people stripped of their stories, Ngũgĩ argued, become prisoners of someone else’s narrative.
Today, the arsonists wear hoodies and work in Silicon Valley. Social media platforms, like colonial schools, are factories of mental conditioning. They don’t burn books; they drown them in noise. Algorithms feed us a diet of sensationalism and spite, privileging lies that provoke over truths that heal. A 2023 MIT study found misinformation spreads six times faster than factual content—not because we’re gullible, but because platforms reward emotional virality, not accuracy.
The far right understands this better than anyone. White supremacists repackage colonial myths like the “Great Replacement” theory into TikTok skits. Hindu nationalists flood WhatsApp with AI-generated voice notes vilifying Muslims as “invaders.” These lies aren’t random—they’re modern-day cultural bombs, detonating solidarity and rewriting history in real time.
Ngũgĩ wrote that colonialism sought to “control… the entire realm of the imagination.” Today, that realm is your Instagram feed. Tech giants mine our attention like colonial powers mined gold, extracting data to fuel an economy of outrage. The average user scrolls 300 meters of content daily—a cognitive marathon where truth competes with celebrity gossip, partisan rants, and ads for weight-loss tea.
This isn’t an accident. It’s by design. Colonialism thrived on fragmentation; so does the attention economy. When our focus is fractured, we lose the capacity for nuance. We share headlines we haven’t read, retweet threads we haven’t fact-checked, and absorb narratives crafted to keep us addicted. The result? A populace too overwhelmed to question why Facebook allowed Myanmar’s military to incite genocide—or why Elon Musk reinstated 61,000 banned accounts, many tied to extremism, within weeks of buying Twitter.
Decluttering the Mind: A Survival Guide
Decolonising the mind in 2025 isn’t about burning your smartphone or swearing off English. It’s about rebuilding cognitive sovereignty—the right to choose what occupies your mental space. Here’s how to start:
Audit Your Information Diet
The parallels are uncanny. Colonial powers weaponized education and language to erase Indigenous cultures; today’s tech empires weaponize engagement algorithms to erase critical thinking. Where missionaries once burned sacred texts, influencers now peddle hashtags that reduce complex truths to memes. But just as Ngũgĩ urged Kenyans to reclaim Gĩkũyũ storytelling, we too can resist this new frontier of mental colonization—by decluttering our minds, recalibrating our attention, and rebuilding our relationship with truth.
The Colonial Playbook, Repackaged
Colonialism was never just about land or resources. Its most enduring violence was epistemological: the systematic erasure of local knowledge, languages, and ways of seeing. British colonizers in India burned Sanskrit manuscripts, dismissing them as “primitive.” French colonizers in Algeria replaced Arabic with Parisian French in schools, framing Berber traditions as backward. These acts of cultural arson weren’t incidental—they were strategic. A people stripped of their stories, Ngũgĩ argued, become prisoners of someone else’s narrative.
Today, the arsonists wear hoodies and work in Silicon Valley. Social media platforms, like colonial schools, are factories of mental conditioning. They don’t burn books; they drown them in noise. Algorithms feed us a diet of sensationalism and spite, privileging lies that provoke over truths that heal. A 2023 MIT study found misinformation spreads six times faster than factual content—not because we’re gullible, but because platforms reward emotional virality, not accuracy.
The far right understands this better than anyone. White supremacists repackage colonial myths like the “Great Replacement” theory into TikTok skits. Hindu nationalists flood WhatsApp with AI-generated voice notes vilifying Muslims as “invaders.” These lies aren’t random—they’re modern-day cultural bombs, detonating solidarity and rewriting history in real time.
Ngũgĩ wrote that colonialism sought to “control… the entire realm of the imagination.” Today, that realm is your Instagram feed. Tech giants mine our attention like colonial powers mined gold, extracting data to fuel an economy of outrage. The average user scrolls 300 meters of content daily—a cognitive marathon where truth competes with celebrity gossip, partisan rants, and ads for weight-loss tea.
This isn’t an accident. It’s by design. Colonialism thrived on fragmentation; so does the attention economy. When our focus is fractured, we lose the capacity for nuance. We share headlines we haven’t read, retweet threads we haven’t fact-checked, and absorb narratives crafted to keep us addicted. The result? A populace too overwhelmed to question why Facebook allowed Myanmar’s military to incite genocide—or why Elon Musk reinstated 61,000 banned accounts, many tied to extremism, within weeks of buying Twitter.
Decluttering the Mind: A Survival Guide
Decolonising the mind in 2025 isn’t about burning your smartphone or swearing off English. It’s about rebuilding cognitive sovereignty—the right to choose what occupies your mental space. Here’s how to start:
Audit Your Information Diet
Treat your social feeds like a colonial archive: question who controls the narrative. Unfollow accounts that traffic in perpetual outrage (e.g., “THEY’RE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY!”). Mute keywords hijacked by extremists (“freedom,” “tradition”). Follow historians like @NataliaNatalia7 (Indigenous climate justice) and @BlackAtlas (African diasporic history).
Relearn How to Read Slowly
Colonial education prized rote memorization; decolonized thinking prizes critical interrogation. When you encounter a viral claim, ask Ngũgĩ’s questions:
- Who benefits if I believe this?
- What voices are missing?
Reclaim Oral Traditions
Before colonizers imposed written languages, communities relied on oral storytelling—a practice that demanded dialogue, not passive consumption. Revive this digitally:
- Join a virtual “truth circle” to dissect news stories.
- Listen to podcasts like The Red Nation(Indigenous perspectives) or Echoes of the Ancestors (African epistemologies).
Starve the Algorithms
Engagement is the currency of misinformation. Break the cycle:
- Use ad blockers to defund clickbait farms.
- Spend 10 minutes daily on apps which prioritize depth over dopamine hits.
- Boycott platforms that amplify hate (e.g., Truth Social, Gab).
Decolonisation is not a one-time purge but a daily practice—a commitment to nourishing our minds with stories that heal rather than harm. This means amplifying the Palestinian poet who tweets her resistance in Arabic, the Māori elder who streams land rights lectures on Twitch, and the Dalit feminist who counters casteist lies with Substack essays.
It also means demanding more from tech giants. Why does Instagram flag #StopGenocide posts as “sensitive” while promoting anti-vax memes? The answers lie in the same power imbalances Ngũgĩ exposed: colonial logic, repackaged as code.
Ngũgĩ’s greatest lesson was that decolonising the mind is an act of love—love for languages silenced, histories erased, and futures stolen. Today, that love requires us to log off autopilot and rewire our digital lives.
Imagine a world where we curate feeds as intentionally as we curate playlists. Where we measure our worth not in likes, but in our capacity to hold complexity. Where we reject the junk food of misinformation for the slow-cooked truths of our ancestors.
This isn’t naivety; it’s resistance. As Ngũgĩ wrote: “The oppressed, having lived through a history of humiliation, have a collective memory to reclaim.” Let’s reclaim it—one scroll, one fact-check, one story at a time.
Further Resources
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble – Exposes search engines’ racial biases.
The Right to Be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier – Inuit wisdom for the climate crisis.
Twitter and Tear Gas by Zeynep Tufekci – A blueprint for digital resistance.
Turn your attention into action. The mind liberated is the first frontier of revolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment