Colonial Damage Is Far Greater Than Thanksgiving

But it endures as a symbol of colonialism, romanticized, yet rooted in the very foundations of settler colonialism.

There’s no greater paradox on earth than the week(end) of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday in America. It’s an unparalleled showcase of the nation’s essence, steeped in hypocrisy, morbidity, and violence. Nowhere else does the contradiction emerge more starkly than on a day meant for giving thanks and reflecting on gratitude, only to give way, as the weekend comes, to a chaotic celebration of consumerism and excess.

This year’s Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday feel especially jarring in the shadow of two years of genocide, displacement, and deliberate starvation unfolding on our phones — followed by a fake “ceasefire” and a mainstream media apparatus actively creating cover so those violations can continue.

We’re celebrating a day, a weekend, a holiday rooted in deliberate misinformation and the genocide of Native Americans — right after witnessing two years of a livestreamed genocide unfold on our phones, followed by a so-called “ceasefire” that ceased no fire, during which 342 Palestinians were killed, including 67 children, and 875 were wounded.

It’s hard to watch the Thanksgiving parade, and all the attempts to rewrite history with gratitude lists or “land acknowledgments” over turkey — the “friendly feast” narrative, designed to whitewash colonization, violence, and mass murder into a peaceful, benign story.

As if that weren’t enough, while the compassionate, clear-minded world supports the BDS, Thanksgiving is followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This consumerist frenzy stands in stark contrast to Native American spirituality, reverence for creation, environmental stewardship, and our basic human need for communion with nature and with one another.

Colonial damage is far greater than Thanksgiving.

But it endures as a symbol of colonialism, nauseatingly romanticized, yet rooted in the very foundations of settler colonialism. It’s not the primary act of colonialism, but it perpetuates a distorted view of history, obscuring the true scope of colonial violence.

The American settler-colonial model has served as a blueprint for other colonial powers. Its unprecedented success in establishing a settler society while marginalizing Indigenous populations is unmatched in scale. Now, Israel, in a cynical attempt to avoid scrutiny, argues that if America could do it, why can’t they?

We’ve witnessed two years of the first livestreamed genocide unfolding before our eyes, as ICE raids and state-sponsored terror crept into our reality. Our Western governments and their propagandists lie, fund, support, and justify atrocities at home and overseas. The history told by the West, from its very beginning, is a series of distorted, whitewashed, and romanticized lies.

We have to keep telling these truths.

Whether it’s the past or present, the only path forward is through unapologetic, radical truth, repeated relentlessly. We must expose lies, share them, and open as many eyes as possible. The education system is rigged in favor of the establishment, and history books reflect the bias of the victors. As Julian Assange warned, social media has the power to change these narratives, which we have proven with our relentless posting about Palestine:

“Working against corrupt, powerful organizations who are producing a distorted perspective through mainstream media vehicle — has been the internet. It has allowed one person with one truth to speak to every single person who wants to hear that truth.”

The livestreamed genocide in Gaza and the unspeakable horrors inflicted on a civilian population, funded and justified by the entire West, have laid bare the corruption, insincerity, and manipulation of our governments. The situation is so dire that we no longer resemble a functioning society, but a “transnational security elite that is busy carving up the world using our tax money” — another classic Julian.

Today, we are WikiLeaks.

Instead of living in a humane, civilized, and democratic society, we find ourselves forced to take on the responsibilities of our government, police, and media, much like the people of Amsterdam, exactly a year ago, who had to step in and defend themselves from Israeli football thugs rampaging around their city — while Dutch authorities failed to protect their own citizens.

Julian, again, explains this concept:

“To combat the elite we must not petition, we must take it over, we must form our own networks of strength and mutual value which can challenge those strengths and self-interested values of the warmongers.

When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies peddled to the British public the American public and the public all over Europe and other countries, then who are the war criminals? It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists.

Journalists are war criminals. While one might think that should lead us to a state of despair, that the reality around us is constructed by liars; it should also lead us to an optimistic understanding — because if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by the truth.

So that is our task, and it is your task — go and get the truth, get into the ballpark, get the ball, and give it to us, and we’ll spread it all over the world.”

Let’s start with debunking Thanksgiving myths.

Children in schools have been taught a Thanksgiving myth: friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, share a meal with them, and then disappear. They handed off America to white people so they could create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity, and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit.

That’s the story — a tale of Native people quietly conceding to colonialism. It’s a bloodless narrative and an extension of Manifest Destiny, the belief that white Americans were divinely ordained to expand across North America. This ideology justified westward expansion and fueled policies like the Trail of Tears, forced relocations, violent conflicts, and the systematic destruction of Native cultures, all cloaked in the language of destiny and divine right.

Manifest Destiny / We Are The Chosen People?

In 200-300 years, when all of us eyewitnesses are gone, along with our children to whom we’ll pass down the stories of the first live-streamed genocide in history, will Israelis invent warm, fuzzy tales about sharing falafels with Indigenous Palestinians in Gaza, before the latter peacefully decided to leave, so Israelis could create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity, and Zionism, for the rest of the world to profit?

The history of the West repeats itself, over and over. And it continues to do so, even in 2025, because we’ve grown complacent. We don’t confront power as fiercely or as consistently as we should; we’ve absorbed their gaslighting, their narratives, and the consumerism designed to keep us compliant. Instead of speaking radical truths whenever and wherever they’re needed, we’ve let ourselves be muted.

The people of Palestine have woken us up from this propaganda-induced coma, a term coined by Caitlin Johnstone, a much-needed voice tirelessly working to lead us out of the matrix. She also chose these apt, albeit fighting, words:

“The deck is stacked so heavily against truth, peace, and justice. You will watch powerlessly as your government backs genocides, starts wars, and unleashes nightmare after nightmare upon the global south.

We live in a tyrannical dystopia that’s driving humanity to its doom, and we need to wake up from the propaganda indoctrination and egoic delusions which keep us complying with the status quo so that we can use the power of our numbers to overthrow our oppressors and create a healthy world.”

A radical truth at every turn must become everyone’s mission.

The “First Thanksgiving” didn’t unfold as history tells you. The Wampanoag tribe taught the English settlers (Pilgrims) how to grow crops, leading to a successful harvest. However, the Wampanoag weren’t invited to a “peaceful feast”, otherwise known as the First Thanksgiving. In fact, 90 armed Wampanoag warriors arrived at the feast after hearing gunshots, coming not to celebrate but to protect their people.

This occurred only months after the Pilgrims had robbed their graves and stolen food meant for Native families. The so-called “First Thanksgiving” marked the beginning of violent conflicts, with the colonists later seizing land and imprisoning, enslaving, and executing Native people.

While the legacy of colonialism spans centuries, Thanksgiving perpetuates a narrative that oversimplifies and sanitizes the violence and dispossession endured by Indigenous peoples. Are you even aware of the scale of devastation the European settlers inflicted on Native American populations? It’s one of the most depraved, evil, and violent crimes in history. And what stings the most — it worked. It was successful.

Look at the numbers:

While Americans celebrate and indulge in turkey feasts, Native Americans mourn this day. Since 1970, many Native Americans have participated in the National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving Day, often held at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, to commemorate their ancestors and advocate for indigenous rights.

For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of their oppression, the loss of their land, and the erasure of their culture.

Witnessing a livestreamed genocide for two years, with daily massacres landing on your phone as soon as you open your eyes in the morning, and the reality that America’s past violence mirrors what Israel is currently attempting, makes Thanksgiving and its associated history feel even more nauseating to participate in.

I saw Native Americans at every anti-genocide protest I attended. I’ve seen pictures of them standing in solidarity, in other cities across America. There is a unique bond between Native Americans and Indigenous Palestinians. They understand the pain of cultural erasure, having witnessed it firsthand, while the same attempt is now being made against Palestinians. The parallels are unavoidable, especially since the erasure of Native Americans succeeded, whereas, for 77 years, Palestinians have miraculously resisted erasure.

“We are not Red Indians.”

In his last interview in 2004, Yasser Arafat reflected upon his achievements. Among them was the fact that “the Palestine case was the biggest problem in the world” and that Israel had “failed to wipe us out.” As a final mark of that success, he added the declarative, comparative, and final point of distinction: “We are not the Red Indians, we will not go into the museum. We are a live people with a live cause, that we will carry with us until the end, until victory.”

Twenty years later, Palestine is still the moral center of the world.

For 77 years and counting, the plight of the Palestinian people has remained at a standstill, and that’s purposeful, as maintaining the status quo is necessary for the existence of the state of Israel.

But what’s truly fascinating is that Yasser Arafat got his wish: “For our movement, armed struggle means waging a mass revolutionary war. Therefore, the first stage of our work is to attract the masses. The first thing is to attract the masses of our people and make them live in a revolutionary atmosphere.”

As The Guardian pointed out ten years ago, on the 10th anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death: “He saw himself as part of a global movement and as a member of an international revolutionary fraternity against injustice — part of the global struggle of oppressed peoples for freedom and liberation.”

Keffiyeh Arafat wore came to symbolize revolution, not just the Palestinian struggle.

And it’s up to us, the global community, to never let the Palestinian people go into the museum. The struggle for Palestinian liberation is a fight against all forms of oppression.

Just as Thanksgiving has been rebranded into a “friendly feast” narrative, whitewashing colonization, violence, and mass murder into a benign story, Israel has spent 77 years attempting the same erasure of the Palestinian people, their culture, identity, sovereignty, and their land. We must resist the distorted version of history that allows Israel to claim the mantle of the “only democracy in the Middle East” and the “most moral army in the world,” obscuring the full scope of their shocking, barbaric violence toward the entire group of people whose land they covet.

We are a live people with a live cause, that we will carry with us until the end, until victory.” — Yasser Arafat