It wasn’t rhetorical, it was meant to encourage you to question the current conditions the EU exists under because imperialism never ended despite the European assertion that everything is fine now because they feel bad about it. Yes, colonised people are part of the EU as they are part of ever fucking nation on this planet because of the scope of effect that trajectory of colonialism achieved. You’ll notice that Irish people are far more vocally decolonial than French or German people, how curious.

I do not care who was the naughtiest imperialist in the past – though that history teaches us a lot about how this system developed – because the EU is still fundamentally a colonial system. The dissonance many Europeans on these threads express is that their understanding of colonialism is conveniently drawn at the borders and exists on the scale of severity you described above. Notice how this understanding also positions the violence in the past, as though it functions to obscure the continuance of that violence. EU states invest in colonialism directly and foster corporations – which are also conveniently imagined as separate from formal organising despite neoliberal policies – that engage in colonialism. Pick any commodity around your house, and look up who owns the resources that built it. Where does your phone battery come from, the fish you eat, the oil that fuels your cities.

The world extends beyond your doorstep.