The primary driving force of the Colonial Model is the “fear of the future,” originating from a desire to keep the conquered nation weak over the long term. In this model, the perpetrators are a colonial or occupying power, whose primary aim is to structurally maintain economic and political dominance over the subjugated nation. When the ruling power realises that its military dominance is declining and that nationalist resistance is being led by an organised intellectual leadership, it strategically plans to eliminate the “brain” of the nation—the intellectual leadership itself. This strategy is not an immediate act of revenge, but a long-term, strategic military and political measure, functioning as an intellectual parallel to a “scorched earth” policy. The main goal of this model is to destroy the moral and intellectual foundations of self-reliance and self-governance in the emerging independent state, ensuring that the nascent nation struggles due to a lack of intellectual resources and becomes economically, politically, and intellectually dependent on external powers, thereby enabling post-colonial dominance.
Two historical events exemplify this strategy under the Colonial Model. These are the 1940 Katyn Massacre by Stalin’s Soviet Union in Poland and the 1939 “Intelligenzaktion” carried out by Nazi Germany. In Katyn, the Soviet secret police (NKVD) took approximately 22,000 Polish officers—including numerous teachers, engineers, and lawyers—out of detention camps and executed them with gunshots to the back of the head in the Katyn Forest and other secret locations. The rationale was that this class embodied Polish national consciousness. Similarly, after occupying Poland, Nazi Germany’s SS and Einsatzgruppen arrested and executed teachers, priests, and doctors according to predetermined lists. In both cases, the objective of the killings was to reduce the Polish elite to a subjugated labouring class and permanently eliminate their future capacity for resistance. The ultimate aim was to ensure the long-term stability of colonial rule.
