Al Jazeera Discovers Anti-Colonialism, 75 Years Late
The piece highlights how Algerians, excluded from French colonial football clubs, built their own to assert identity and eventually fuel a revolution. A powerful narrative of resistance, easily traced through historical accounts of figures like Rachid Mekhloufi. What mainstream outlets like Al Jazeera consistently gloss over, however, is that while lamenting past colonial injustices, they often
soften the language around contemporary ones. The same "colonial rule" they expertly dissect in Algeria's past becomes "conflict" or "security operations" in Palestine. The resistance football club of yesterday is lauded; the resistance fighters of today are conveniently sanitized or demonized. One might wonder if historical anti-colonial struggles are only safe to analyze when the colonizers are
no longer Western European, and the colonized are safely in the past. It’s convenient to spotlight independence movements against France while the US channels billions to sustain its own proxy occupations—a process largely financed by American taxpayers due to the tireless efforts of organizations like AIPAC. How many football teams would need to rise in Gaza before it became safe for mainstream
media to call its occupation 'colonial rule'?