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Concept in political science

The imperial boomerang is the theory that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. This concept originates with Aimé Césaire in his 1950 work Discourse on Colonialism, where it is called the terrific boomerang to explain the origins of European fascism in the first half of the 20th century.^[1]^[2] Hannah Arendt agreed with this usage, calling it the boomerang effect in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).^[3]^[4]^[5]

According to both writers, the methods employed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany were not historically unique when viewed from a global perspective. Rather, the violence was an extension of the logic of European colonialism, which had resulted in the deaths of millions across the Global South for centuries. As such, the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities were only categorized as "exceptional" because they were applied to Europeans within Europe, rather than to colonized populations in Africa, Asia, or the Americas. This framework posits that the techniques of mass surveillance, forced labor, and genocide, previously perfected in colonial territories, were "boomeranged" back to Europe.^[6] It is sometimes called Foucault's boomerang even though Michel Foucault did not originate the term.

According to Césaire, fascism resembled the cruel machinery of European colonization of Africa in the 1890s.^[7]

Aimé Césaire in 2003

In 1950, Aimé Césaire coined and described the term through his analysis of the development of violent, fascist, and brutalizing tendencies within Europe as connected to the practice of European colonialism.^[8] Césaire wrote in Discourse on Colonialism:

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind—it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950)

In the original French, Césaire did not use the term "boomerang" and instead wrote un formidable choc en retour—which can be translated literally as "a formidable shock in return".^[9] In previous English translations, the phrase "terrific reverse shock" is used.^[8]

In his 1976 lecture Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault repeated these ideas.^[10]^[11] According to him:

[W]hile colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.

Foucault's association with the concept has led to the term being referred to as Foucault's Boomerang, even though he didn't originate the term.^[11]

Historians and social scientists have applied the concept of the imperial boomerang to analyse the transnational formation of security apparatuses, focusing on the effects of the United States' overseas empire. The imperial boomerang has been invoked to explain the ongoing militarization of police and their domestic deployment in response to political protest in urban centers.^[12]^[13] Such deployment has proliferated worldwide,^[14]^[15] considering that the globalization of militarized policing continues to be a crucial aspect of contemporary foreign policy of Western colonial powers such as the United States, whose early experiments with developing comprehensive coercive state apparatuses and counterinsurgency techniques began during the American colonization of the Philippines.^[6]^[16]^[17] Focusing on how British and American colonial agents and dispatched military officials transplanted overseas counterinsurgency and police technologies back home, sociologist Julian Go argues:

We can better see how the history of policing is entangled with imperialism and recognize that what is typically called "the militarization of policing" is in an effect of the imperial boomerang—a result of imperial-military feedback.^[18]

Some scholars suggest that the directionality of the imperial boomerang needs to be re-evaluated. Political scientist Stuart Schrader argues for a colony-centered explanation to the boomerang effect, especially in the case of the United States where imperial and racial violence predates the heyday of the American empire.^[19] In her comments on Schrader's work, political scientist Jeanne Morefield writes:

Schrader's analysis goes a long way toward explaining the seemingly acephalic quality of American imperialism, a quality which contributes to its ongoing obfuscation. Behind the logic of "liberal hegemony" lies counterinsurgency and professionalized policing, modes of racialized power that structure the everyday lives of people in America and throughout the world while deflecting attention away from that power at every level.^[14]

^ Chowdhury, Tanzil (June 2022). "The "Terrific Boomerang"". Goethe-Institut. Archived from the original on 17 July 2025. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
^ Cesaire 1978, p. 20. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCesaire1978 (help)
^ King, Richard H.; Stone, Dan, eds. (2008). Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Nation, Race, and Genocide. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN .^{[page needed]}
^ Owens, Patricia (2007). Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}
^ Rothberg, Michael (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}
^ ^a ^b Woodman, Connor (9 June 2020). "The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis". Verso Books. Archived from the original on 29 March 2023. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
^ CHRISMAN, LAURA (2003). Postcolonial contraventions. pp. 21–22.
^ ^a ^b Cesaire 1978, p. 14. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCesaire1978 (help)
^ Césaire, Aimé (1950). Discours sur le colonialisme [Discourse on Colonialism] (in French). Paris: Présence Africaine (published 1955). p. 7.
^ Graham, Stephen (14 February 2013). "Foucault's boomerang: the new military urbanism". openDemocracy. Retrieved 23 July 2024.^{[dead link]}
^ ^a ^b "Stephen Graham, Foucault's Boomerang: the New Military Urbanism (2013)". 27 January 2014.
^ Graham, Stephen (2011). Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism. London; New York: Verso Books. ISBN .^{[page needed]}
^ Go, Julian (16 July 2020). "The Racist Origins of U.S. Policing". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
^ ^a ^b Morefield, Jeanne (June 2020). "Beyond Boomerang". International Politics Reviews. 8 (1): 3–10. doi:10.1057/s41312-020-00078-7. PMC 7399584. S2CID 220962507.
^ Schrader, Stuart (Fall 2020). "Defund the Global Policeman". n+1. No. 38. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
^ McCoy, Alfred William (2009). Policing America's empire: the United States, the Philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state. New perspectives in Southeast Asian studies. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}
^ Makalintal, Joshua M. (May 2021). "Dismantling the Imperial Boomerang: A Reckoning with Globalised Police Power". State of Power 2021 (Report). Transnational Institute. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
^ Go, Julian (2023). Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 17. ISBN .
^ Schrader, Stuart (2019). Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. Oakland, California: University of California Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

Césaire, Aimé (1972). Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Pinkham, Joan. New York: Monthly Review.

[1] Chowdhury, Tanzil (June 2022). "The "Terrific Boomerang"". Goethe-Institut. Archived from the original on 17 July 2025. Retrieved 23 July 2024.

[FOOTNOTECesaire1978[httpsarchiveorgdetailsdiscourseoncolon0000unsepage20mode2upqboomerang_20]-2] Cesaire 1978, p. 20. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCesaire1978 (help)

[3] King, Richard H.; Stone, Dan, eds. (2008). Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Nation, Race, and Genocide. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

[4] Owens, Patricia (2007). Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

[5] Rothberg, Michael (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

[Woodman-6] Woodman, Connor (9 June 2020). "The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis". Verso Books. Archived from the original on 29 March 2023. Retrieved 23 July 2024.

[7] CHRISMAN, LAURA (2003). Postcolonial contraventions. pp. 21–22.

[FOOTNOTECesaire1978[httpsarchiveorgdetailsdiscourseoncolon0000unsepage14mode2upqterrific_14]-8] Cesaire 1978, p. 14. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCesaire1978 (help)

[9] Césaire, Aimé (1950). Discours sur le colonialisme [Discourse on Colonialism] (in French). Paris: Présence Africaine (published 1955). p. 7.

[10] Graham, Stephen (14 February 2013). "Foucault's boomerang: the new military urbanism". openDemocracy. Retrieved 23 July 2024.^{[dead link]}

[Foucault-11] "Stephen Graham, Foucault's Boomerang: the New Military Urbanism (2013)". 27 January 2014.

[12] Graham, Stephen (2011). Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism. London; New York: Verso Books. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

[13] Go, Julian (16 July 2020). "The Racist Origins of U.S. Policing". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 23 July 2024.

[Morefield-14] Morefield, Jeanne (June 2020). "Beyond Boomerang". International Politics Reviews. 8 (1): 3–10. doi:10.1057/s41312-020-00078-7. PMC 7399584. S2CID 220962507.

[15] Schrader, Stuart (Fall 2020). "Defund the Global Policeman". n+1. No. 38. Retrieved 23 July 2024.

[16] McCoy, Alfred William (2009). Policing America's empire: the United States, the Philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state. New perspectives in Southeast Asian studies. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

[17] Makalintal, Joshua M. (May 2021). "Dismantling the Imperial Boomerang: A Reckoning with Globalised Police Power". State of Power 2021 (Report). Transnational Institute. Retrieved 23 July 2024.

[18] Go, Julian (2023). Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 17. ISBN .

[19] Schrader, Stuart (2019). Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. Oakland, California: University of California Press. ISBN .^{[page needed]}

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