Professor Watchlist

Ramon Grosfoguel is an associate professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. According to his university biography, Grosfoguel also specializes in decoloniality and the study of Islamophobia.

Grosfoguel is notable for his vocal opposition to the state of Israel and support for BDS. In an interview with the Islamic Human Rights Commission during Al-Quds Day (an Iranian holiday dedicated to the destruction of Israel) not only did he claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, but that Israel is a threat to peace across the world. Grosfoguel claimed that Israel is infiltrating nations and aligning itself with openly fascist organizations in order to strangle freedom of speech.

Grosfoguel also claims that Jews cynically use the Holocaust to elicit sympathy from the world in order to commit atrocities against Arabs;

“The simplistic identity politics of the Holocaust hegemonic narrative that essentialized Jewish identity as homogenous eternal victims and always intentionally innocent ended with Gaza.”   

“These simplistic and reductionist narratives about the Holocaust and Jewish identity were exploited by the Zionists for the last 60 years to legitimate their fundamentalist Jewish state built upon the practices and methods of settler colonialism against the Palestinians.”                  

“Hitlerism as a continuation of colonial racist ideology came back to hunt Palestinians this time at the hands of European Jews who ironically were escaping from the Nazi Holocaust.” 

“…the Holocaust was always manipulated, abused, and institutionalized by the Israeli settler colonialist state from its foundation in 1948 until today to justify its colonial domination, expansion, and terror.”

        

Grosfoguel specializes in anti-colonial rhetoric. Rather than a past vestige, Grosfoguel maintains that colonialism is an ongoing attempt by Western nations—particularly Israel and the United States, to maintain dominance throughout the world. Grosfoguel lectures that the capitalistic, Christian-centered West is able to bleed poorer nations dry to maintain their wealth. He claims that Christianity itself has given rise to genocides around the world, as “pre-modern” societies were far more peaceful than modern, Western nations.

To Grosfoguel, the concept of human rights is a Western farce that is used to justify foreign invasions. He has claimed that America is a “rogue state” that has murdered upwards of 70 million people.

“Here comes the quintessential rogue state in the world, USA, calling other nations rogue states….This is really amazing, because this country, the last 60 years, has killed more than 70 million people.”  

In the same lecture, he held nothing back when grotesquely claiming that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield should have been put to death alongside Sadam Hussein for his crimes as an imperialist:

“So Donald Rumsfield should have been sitting alongside Sadam Hussein and been judged, ok? And been hanged together with him.”  

Grosfoguel travels frequently to speak about his views on decolonization and is renowned among the Left for his views on the subject. In 2018, he was invited to deliver opening remarks addressing this topic at a Caracas-based conference hosted by Nicholas Maduro. Grosfoguel was well received at the conference and can be seen warmly greeting the dictator below.