You Tube Theology

This exchange between Journalist Mehdi Hasan and Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar, is a textbook example of how Britain, and the West more broadly, seeks to rhetorically manage and minimise its colonial crimes.

Biggar dismisses inherited guilt but accepts inherited pride, even if he calls it “admiration,” for Britain’s role in ending slavery or defeating Nazism. This imbalance is deliberate. Western societies are quick to claim credit for parts of history that make them look good, but they avoid responsibility for crimes that expose violence and exploitation. As a result, colonialism, slavery, and extraction are treated as regrettable but distant events, cut off from today’s inequality and global power gaps.

At a deeper level, this exchange shows how the West often strips politics out of history. Colonialism is reduced to a moral or philosophical debate instead of being understood through its real-world impacts. This shuts down serious conversations about reparations and accountability before they can even start. They deliberately move attention away from what happened, who gained from it, and who is still paying the price, and redirect it into word games about guilt versus responsibility. This is how empire continues to protect itself: by removing any sense of duty, consequence, or obligation to repair the harm.