Trump Wants To Disenfranchise Canadians

Colonialism is bad.

As several commenters have pointed out, it’s hard to know how to react to Trump’s recent threats to conquer Greenland and/or Canada and/or Panama by force and/or economic coercion. Is this actually a plan? Is it a weird phantom his rage-calcified synapses produced when the microphone got thrust in front of him? Does taking it seriously lend it credence it shouldn’t have? Does mocking it downplay the danger?

World leaders are in fact taking it seriously; France and Germany both warned Trump not to attack the borders of the EU. On social media, as you’d expect, people have taken a more mocking tone. One commenter joked that they would accept annexing Canada if every province got two senate votes.

Fwiw, I very much doubt that Trump will actually try to annex Canada or Greenland. I fear that some sort of military intervention in Panama is a good bit more likely, given Trump’s racism and the long history of US presidents stealing shit from Latin America whenever they feel like it.

But whether or not Trump implements any of his imperial schemes, I think it’s worth thinking through what conquest of Greenland, or Panama, or Canada would actually mean. Trump may not pursue this particular evil plan, but it’s worth explaining at least briefly why it’s evil, if only as a reminder of just how ugly Trump’s disdain for democracy is.

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Disenfranchising millions

The quip about Canada electing Democratic Senators is telling I think, because it underlines a central problem of colonialism in democratic polities

That problem is that, in theory, claiming more territory is also claiming more voters. If you engineer a hostile takeover of a territory, you’ve just added an electorate which hates you. If Canadians or Panamanians are allowed to vote in US elections, they will generally vote to regain independence first and foremost. At the very least, they are likely to vote against the asshole that launched the invasion.

This is not a new or unique problem. Colonial representation, or the lack thereof, was the cause of the American Revolution; Britain wanted control over the colonists, but it did not want to give them votes in Parliament. Or, as another example, there’s Israel—a “democracy” only if you ignore the fact that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote, because if they could vote they’d quickly demand an end to the occupation and control over their own territory and lives, which Israel’s government does not want to give them.

Trump is a fool, but he does have some sense of who votes for him and who doesn’t. And he’s consistent in saying that people who don’t vote for him should not be allowed to vote at all.

Any annexation of Canada, or Greenland, or Panama, would be done on MAGA terms—which means that the people in those countries would be disenfranchised. Remember that Puerto Rico and other US territories still don’t have full US voting rights! Trump would absolutely not let Canadians vote for Democratic Senators. MAGA would say that Canadians needed time to learn the ways of American democracy, or he would say they were not loyal, and demand that anyone who wanted to vote had to swear an oath to the US, and to Trump personally. You might then get Senators from Canada—elected by an all pro-Trumpist far right rump electorate.

Colonialism is bad

Trump has of course claimed that Canada/Greenland/Panama would be better off under MAGA. The pretense is thin though; it’s obvious that Trump wants additional territory because he thinks it would make the US bigger and more powerful, and perhaps just because he likes the idea of taking stuff by force.

This duplicates the historical disconnect between colonial rhetoric and colonial policy. Colonizers always say that they are working for the good of the colonized. Rudyard Kipling famously encouraged the US to invade the Philippines for the good of the Filipinos; “Fill full the mouth of famine/and make the sickness cease.” Walter Rodney in his classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) notes that “colonial apologists” claim that colonial rule was responsible for “economic modernization” and “political uplift and emancipation.”

Rodney puts a wrecking ball through those pro colonial arguments. He points out that European development in Africa was all aimed at extracting resources for the benefit of the colonizers, not the colonized. Europeans only built roads where they needed to get goods from the interior to the coast; they did not invest in infrastructure to allow Africans to travel in their own countries, or between two countries. When Africans wanted to learn new technologies and build new industries, they were systematically stifled; the British made it illegal for Ugandans to own cotton gins, for example.

Similarly, colonial support for education was almost nonexistent; Rodney points out that in Kenya in 1946, only 2.26 percent of the taxes collected from Kenyans went to schools. While colonial cheerleaders argue that European nations invested in Africa, Rodney points out that money, goods, and the value of labor flowed from Africa to the metropole; Africa was essentially forced (often at literal gunpoint) to invest in the advancement of Europe.

Trump wants your stuff

Invasion of Canada, Greenland, and Panama wouldn’t just mean that Canadians, Greenlanders, and Panamanians become US citizens. When Trump talks about taking over other countries, he’s talking about violent political subjugation in the name of making those people over there weaker and less wealthy so he can make himself (and some MAGA buddies) stronger and richer. Trump wants to end self-determination for others so they can’t resist when he humiliates them and takes their land, their wealth, and even their bodily autonomy. (People in any territory administered by the federal government right now are going to be in serious danger of losing abortion rights.)

This is all in line with how Trump governs the US itself of course; he treats the country as his piggy bank, oinking happily as he overcharges taxpayers to put up the Secret Service in his hotels, or raking in open bribes from billionaire donors for his inauguration party. Colonial violence and discrimination has always mirrored domestic violence and discrimination—just on a broader scale and with even more cruelty, since people in colonies generally have no political recourse and no way to hold their conquerors accountable.

Why aren’t you laughing?

Again, it feels ridiculous to talk seriously about what an invasion of Canada or Greenland or Panama might mean practically. It’s not going to happen. Why talk about the consequences for democracy, or the potential for exploitation and cruelty, or the consequences for reproductive rights? It’s all silliness. It’s just Trump babbling.

The thing about Trump babbling, though, is that he is in fact president, and while he may not push through (or even try to push through) most of his nonsense ideas, he will probably push through some of them.

More, when the president of the United States starts shooting his mouth off and talking about how he would like to disenfranchise and plunder the wealth of some 45 million people, I think we can at least take a moment to make it clear that what he is blustering about is in fact the disenfranchisement and plundering of 45 million people. Trump is laughable, and it’s not wrong to laugh at him. But he is also genuinely committed to hurting people. Even when he spews nonsense, we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

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