The Clash of Western and Non-Western Realities

In The Battle of Algiers, we obviously encounter an array of characters whose involvement in the film color our understanding of their identifying group. Of these groups, one in particular stood out to me as needing to be discussed; the French citizens living in Algiers.  Aside from the common racism towards native Algerians, there were two scenes which really drew my attention. The first was when, prior to the initial bombing, a seemingly innocent Arab Algerian is singled out by the local population following an attack on a police officer.  He is eventually caught by the police despite having no involvement in the crime, and his home is later bombed in retaliation.  The second scene was after the track bombing, when an Arab vendor, a child, is attacked by a mob of angry white French citizens.  One could point to both scenes as examples of the fear and anger which occur after attacks on a nonmilitary population occur, and this would certainly be accurate.  Yet it hides an underlying concept that the ‘settler’ population is responding not as an occupier who has been attacked but as someone who has been attacked in their home.  They see no issue with their presence in the first place, and view themselves as innocent bystanders.  We know this to be untrue, that their very presence is in part what is inciting the violence as it represents and perpetuates centuries of colonizer ideology which views the subjective Western experience as objectively true, therefore making the native experience, culture, history, etc necessarily untrue. What is most surprising is that the movie takes place in the modern era, and we see that while the ‘civilizing missions’ have long been renounced, the ideologies which justify them and which are the cause of not just the physical but cultural subjugation of native peoples are still very real.  This begs the question of whether or not we (the West) have ever shed these ideas, that our history, culture, and very existence is somehow more real than that of colonized peoples. Unfortunately while we as individuals may have become more enlightened than our predecessors, the actions of our leaders and policies of our countries and companies seem to imply that our institutions still embody these colonial ideologies.