The right and left may disagree about content, but the structure is identical.
By Relentless Indigenous Woman / 2026
Sometimes I go on a little field trip to the right-wing side of social media. A type of field research, if you will. Here’s what I notice:
- They speak the same way about the left as the left does the right.
- Both sides posture as liberators, but both remain bound to the same colonial script: divide the world into binaries, declare who owns “truth,” and treat the other as incorrigible.
Both sides cast the other as:
- Emotionally broken
- Intellectually dishonest
- Beyond hope
Political psychology calls this mirror-image perception. This mirror is intentional, shaped by colonial logic. The right and left may disagree about content, but the structure is identical:
- One side possesses truth, the other denies it.
- One is enlightened, the other ignorant.
This is the colonial binary at work. The same binary that once justified empire—civilized/savage, rational/irrational, good/evil—now replays itself in partisan politics. Both sides are still standing on colonial ground.
When we accept the mirror, we inherit the colonial script. We start to believe that the struggle is about who is right instead of how colonial violence continues unchallenged. The right is not interested in equal ground—it seeks domination. The left, meanwhile, often mistakes inclusion within colonial systems as liberation. Both positions leave the system intact. Both drain our energy into a hall of mirrors.
True liberation requires a refusal to keep playing by colonial rules of debate and recognition. Here are 4 ways to refuse the colonial game:
- Refuse the binary: Stop performing inside colonial categories of light/dark, civilized/savage, rational/irrational. Our truths are not possessions to wield against others; they are relations we live into.
- Reclaim relational ground: Center worldviews where knowledge is carried through story, relationality, kinship, and accountability, not through conquest of an opponent.
- Stop feeding extraction: Debating people who deny our humanity is not liberation. It’s depletion. Your precious energy belongs in building.
- Build forward: Our compassion is not owed to those who weaponize denial. It belongs to our own people and to those willing to walk in real solidarity. Compassion here means refusing to let colonial rage shape our direction.
The right and left may hurl the same insults, but neither offers a way out. One clings to domination; the other polishes recognition.
Both are still colonial politics. Our energy is being used as currency right now. Every reaction and defense pulls us into their mirror; our energy is extracted and redirected to sustain the very system we resist.
Decolonization means refusing that extraction and being conscious of where you’re placing your energy. Because as we continue on the path of resistance, your energy matters: Don’t let colonial politics distract you. Don’t let them drain you. Step away from the mirror. Refuse the binary. Place your energy where it multiplies: into relation, resistance, and futures built on our own terms.
Truth is not something they can own.
It is something we live.
