The imperial boomerang is the concept that repressive techniques to control colonial territories by governments will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. This concept originates with Aimé Césaire in his 1950 work Discourse on Colonialism, where it is called the terrific boomerang to explain the origins of European fascism in the first half of the 20th century. Hannah Arendt agreed with this usage, calling it the boomerang effect in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).