Julian Go

The 'Imperial Boomerang' Explains Why We've Seen What ICE Is Doing Before The boomerang is already in flight in the U.S., a sociologist says.

I spoke to @juliango.bsky.social about the imperial boomerang and how US war tactics abroad are being employed at home by ICE

"America’s cities are treated as colonial zones of conquest and imperial borderlands because that’s all ICE knows. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

In today's La Presse (Montreal)

Brilliant talk by @juliango.bsky.social

To sum, those atrocities committed in faraway lands always come back home.

www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/vi...

I'm looking forward to returning to Glasgow to deliver the 2nd Annual Racial Justice Lecture following Patricia Hill Collins inaugural lecture last year. It’s great that @glasgow.ac.uk is open to discussions of racial justice when in the US it has become a taboo topic.

From 2014. Longstanding tactic.

www.thenation.com/article/arch...

The conditions for this have been set for a while: growing economic inequality within countries and growing economic multipolarity globally. And I fear Trump 2.0, without worrying about reelection and just interested in smashing and grabbing, is the final trigger. 7/7

I have been fretting about this ever since I started researching and writing about the history of empires (culminating in my 2011 book, Patterns of Empire). And it is keeping me awake at night. Which sucks for me :) 6/7

This is not hyperbole. It is history. It is how the world wars of the 19th century erupted (the Napoleonic wars). It is how WWI and WWII happened (they were really just 1 long world war). And I fear what we have in our future. 5/7

Rival regionalisms form; geopolitical blocs are created and hardened; mercantilist imperial networks replace global free trade. Then the only way the global field can withstand this instability is the final outcome: world war. 4/7

This only serves to do one thing: anger and embolden geopolitical rivals to get more aggressive too. More imperialist machinations by all parties ensue, some subtle or covert, others more open and violent. 3/7

In the past, declining hegemonic powers (or rising ones) - like Britain or Germany - tend to enhance their imperialistic aggression. Desperate to regain ailing power & wealth, they turn away from market mechanisms/free trade & instead use their only hand: military might. 2/7

No doubt about it: Trump's new imperialism re Venezuela & its unabashed discourse of aggression is exactly what desperate empires do as they fall, and it is exactly what has led to revived imperialism and world war in the past. It's all so predictable & and also so dangerous 1/7

note too the photo from Trump's war room basically trying to imitate the pics of when Obama witnessed the mission on bin Laden. The attempt to copy is so sad. The unoriginality laughable 6/6
x.com/jgo34/status...

Many other precedents to Trump's new imperialism (which he himself boasts about) incl the Monroe Doctrine. 5/6

For more see my "American Decline and Performative War, or How to Do Things with Force" (2020) in Frederic Merand, ed., Coping with Geopolitical Decline. 4/6

In other words, while the attack was meant to demonstrate American greatness, it was little else than an admission o f American weakness, desperation and decline. 3/6

It was a "performative war" meant to ward off criticisms of the Reagan admin & deny American decline through spectacular feats of military power in the name of freedom and anticorruption. 2/6

Trump War Room on X: "America is back 🇺🇸 https://t.co/clnZQXHxWF" / X America is back 🇺🇸 https://t.co/clnZQXHxWF

One of the pathetic things about Trump's new imperialism is that it isn't even original. When Reagan invaded Grenada in 83 the admin boasted it meant America was back & had gotten over its "Vietnam syndrome." But this was an expression of weakness not strength 1/6
x.com/TrumpWarRoom...

Do those folks critical of dems and say Dems are the same as Trump actually believe that Harris would have also sent in the US military to Venezuela to capture Maduro? She might have used other means but this blatant empire-ing is surely more of a Trump/Repub thing.

Falling empires do not behave well. #trump

Fanon, Gaza and the anxieties of empire - ROAPE This radical supplement to the editorial of ROAPE’s Fanon special issue raises awareness of how Fanon’s ideas, in the year of his centenary, continue to provoke fear and anxiety within the Western imp...

“For Fanon, anticolonial violence was never a celebration of bloodshed…It was a diagnostic category, a way of naming the fact that colonial domination had already made violence the organising principle of everyday life.” hate that we have to keep clarifying this to dolts
roape.net/2025/12/21/f...

Wrote a thing on racial capitalism in the French journal Marronnages. Some commentators - Malcolm Ferdinand, Diamond Ashiagbor - commented. Then I wrote a comment on their comment.

marronnages.org/index.php/re...

Network U: Postcolonialism and Legacies of Empire | SASE Networks Network U is devoted to engaging the connections between imperialism, colonialism, racism, slavery, and capitalist expansion and global socio-economic development.

Reminder that 12/16 is the deadline to submit to @sasemeeting.bsky.social in Bordeaux 2026. Be sure to submit to our Network on Postcolonialism and Legacies of Empire:

sase.org/networks/u-p...

I’m glad you’re finding it worthwhile!

In Social Science History 49(1), “Vision and method in global historical sociology” by Julian Go and George Lawson has received significant attention. Check out the article: shorturl.at/ztego #history #sociology #Haiti #France #transboundary

Racial Justice Lecture: Policing Race Professor Julian Go delivers the second University of Glasgow Racial Justice Lecture.

Sign up below to hear @juliango.bsky.social giving the next Racial Justice lecture on January 21st, 2026. Prof. Go will be asking 'How and why have the police in liberal democracies become militarized?'. The answer, he will argue, is to be found in imperialism past and present.

Why are today’s police forces so militarized, and what does empire have to do with it?

Sociologist @juliango.bsky.social (University of Chicago) explored this in his AISSR Lecture on policing, imperialism & racialization

🎥 Full lecture & aftertalk with Rivke Jaffe ⬇️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXtO...

It’s all ‘Mesearch’ - DRB Imperial policing, extreme force and the supposed perils of ‘mesearch’

Puff Daddy, the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion, knowledge hierarchies and the militarisation of policing... I am over the moon to see this essay published. Thank you so much to the Dublin Review of Books and to @juliango.bsky.social for writing such a thought-provoking book. drb.ie/articles/its...

How and why did police in liberal democracies become militarized? Drawing on colonial history, our video of the week shows how methods honed during empire were imported into domestic policing through an “imperial boomerang.”

Feat. @juliango.bsky.social at @aissr.bsky.social

buff.ly/pFAv0pr

2026 Bordeaux - SASE

Please consider submitting papers to our Network on “Postcolonialism and the Legacies of Empire” for the Annual Meeting of @sasemeeting.bsky.social, to be held in Bourdeaux, France, in July 2026. Deadline: December 12. sase.org/events/2026-.... Specify you are submitting to our Network