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Decolonial theory has critiqued Western epistemology for presenting itself as neutral and universal – as from a God’s eye view –, exterior to the relations which constitute the modern world system. As argued by Grosfoguel, the appearance of neutrality obfuscates the ego-politics inherent to Western secularism which enabled the colonial control and exploitation of the globe. This raises a question: how does Decolonial theory ground its own position? Endorsing an epistemic relativism, Mignolo has argued that Decolonial theory is only one option. In this framework, the decolonial position could be a perspective, or standpoint, designating a certain social location and experience. I am sceptical of these claims, because, despite the argument to be “de-linking,”Footnote5 Decolonial theory articulates these claims in a moral, universalising axiology that presupposes neutrality, which turns on the injunction to produce subaltern epistemology. Before addressing the self-defeating nature and incoherence of epistemological critique in Decolonial theory, it is essential to reiterate its central, yet contradictory claims. The thesis that knowledge is relativistic, as it is a perspective reducible to the lived experience (Erlebnis) of a subject situated in a geo-political locale. Consequently, all epistemic traditions are of equal standing, with each aspiring to be the planetary centre. Thus, each tradition attempts to articulate its “particular” perspective as universal (Mignolo and Walsh Citation2018, 194). The secular West is the only epistemic tradition which has violently imposed itself as universal, employing a rhetoric of neutrality in order to obfuscate the ego conquiro, an ideal of subjectivity, which is primarily concerned with conquering and controlling the planet: consequently, all Western disciplinary knowledge is reducible to ego politics, the coloniality of knowledge and the colonial matrix of power (cmp) (Grosfoguel Citation(2007) 2010; Maldonado-Torres Citation(2007) 2010; Mignolo Citation2011a, 6; Walsh Citation(2007) 2010). An ontological thesis that Decolonial theory has conceptualised as the coloniality of being. This ontological distinction separates the lived experience of the planet and consequently knowledge production into two halves defined by colonial difference: salvation (the coloniser) and damnation (the colonised). Decolonial scholars lament the fact that many colonised scholars have become mentally colonised by using Western frameworks and concepts. Although it appears that all knowledge is reducible to lived experience, Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s analysis of Mamdani is critical of epistemic reductionism, as it presupposes that non-white scholars have the capacity to choose, presupposing neutrality, which side of the racialised power spectrum (or epistemic colonial difference) they write from. The same is not the case for white, Western men (apart from Mignolo and Grosfoguel) who, it appears, can only write from one side from the colonial divide: a structural and systemic argument. Despite this emphasis on the systemic, Decolonial theory’s position is undermined by the claim that the West is morally at fault for constituting the colonial matrix of power: the essential principle here is the ego conquiro. Although decolonial scholars have presented all knowledge as relativistic, its practitioners have agreed on a unitary, factual or objective account of colonial reality and a stereotypical conception of European identity over 500 years meant to incentivise virtuous de-linking. For the decolonial project to even considered to be an option, would it not rely on an objective or truthful account of colonialism? Furthermore, is it an accurate account of epistemic relativism? This account relies on two notions, coloniality and the ego conquiro. The concept of coloniality falsely elevates a particular experience of the colonial condition, epistemic violence as forced assimilation and direct rule, into a universal analysis of our global present. As a historical concept, it unifies vastly different practices, discontinuous ruptures and singular modes of human differentiation into continental racial geo-political stereotypes. Instead of challenging the historical logic of colonial discourse as historicism, it conceives of modern history as a white mythology, treating the West as the systemic subject of a continuous unilinear history (Young Citation2004, 1–32). It does not transform Dussel’s critique of historical developmentalism, but merely inverts it. The only difference is that this subject is conceived negatively, as the evil ego conquiro. Friedrich Nietzsche argues that morality presupposes that the consciousness or intellect can abstract itself and adopt a neutral position, that is free will, from the sensuous relations of power which define the natural world (Nietzsche Citation[1886] 2010, 19). He claims that, instead, there is only deed or action. Although this idea seems controversial, following Kant’s response to the success of the natural sciences and mathematics, any event or phenomenon is subsumed in a series of conditions. The attempt to articulate an unconditional agent (unconditioned) in the form of the ego conquiro is, in Kantian terms, the attempt to articulate a condition that is not conditioned. This condition, the ego conquiro, is an attempt to provide an objective account of colonial reality by taking recourse in a transcendental illusion, contradicting Decolonial theory’s claim to only be providing a relativistic or partial perspective (Kant Citation[1781] 2003, 156–180). As an unconditioned agent, the ego conquiro can be read as a transcendental signified, an ancient principle within the Western metaphysical tradition dating back to Plato. It is an organising agency that engenders structures, such as the colonial matrix of power, but remains unaffected by the structuration of the structure– – a metaphysical principle that Heidegger identified as ground, for which there have been many terms “God, consciousness, man,” and so on (Derrida Citation[1967] 2001, 353). Demonstrating how the West has been misled by grammar, Nietzsche and Foucault’s genealogies diachronically exhibit how Christian and moral culture separate agent from action, creating immoral figures like the sinner or criminal (Foucault Citation[1977] 1991; Nietzsche Citation[1887] 1989). The explication of social phenomena as conditioned has been an important part of refuting and transcending the pre-scientific religious and moral metaphysics of the pre-modern Western tradition: it was essential to overcoming the superstitious and animistic problem of evil. Twentieth-century anticolonial politics relied on a conception of an essentially good black subject, which provided much of the impetus for the strategic essentialism of the decolonisation struggles around the globe (Hall Citation1996). For postcolonial scholars, the fatwa that was declared against Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran on February 14 1989 was the major turning point, which led to a critical problematisation of the trajectory of postcolonial nation states: a practice Said had hitherto dubbed secular criticism (Said Citation1983, 2–30; Citation1994, 89).Footnote6 If Mamdani is the exemplar of intellectual de-linking, then Rushdie is arguably its antithesis – the figure that transformed the postcolonial intellectuals’ attitude to’ The Wretched of the Earth. It is not only poststructuralism that divides postcolonialism and Decolonial theory, but also the problem of secular identity and its relationship to de-linking. In this context, Hull’s notion of the epistemic comprador (Hull Citation2022, 141) perfectly applies to the case of Rushdie who was born Muslim (E1), but now “describes himself as a wholly secular person” (E2) (Bradley and Tate Citation2010, 13–14). In the postcolonial world, being a comprador can have deadly consequences, for prior to Rushdie’s fatwa the Iranian state executed students, communists and any opponent to its theocratic regime (Ahmad Citation2000, 34). More recently, this includes the murder, torture and internment of many women who protested the compulsory wearing of the Hijab. Interestingly, in Mignolo’s latest book, The Politics of Decolonial Investigations (2021), he treats the Iranian state as an exemplar of de-linking from the colonial matrix of power and spends a confoundingly large proportion of the text defending Iran’s policies from Islamophobia (Mignolo Citation2021, 107). The question is, can Iranian state policy be considered subaltern epistemology? How is Iran’s theocratic persecution of its internal dissidents and minorities any different form the decolonial depiction of totalitarian colonial states during the formal colonial period? Because Decolonial theory has stereotyped the West as the singularly, evil sinister force in human history, it becomes incapable of addressing the religious, gendered and economic violations of human dignity in spaces that are morally anti-Western. I conclude by suggesting that Decolonial theory’s exclusive and moralistically exclusionary anti-Westernism begins mirroring the rightist tendencies it sought to locate solely within a fabricated Western essence. It is merely an inversion of the moral imaginary of colonial discourse and in Nietzschean terms presupposes a neutral position that can only be exterior to the colonial matrix of power, a contradiction that is ultimately incoherent and self-defeating.