Trump and Africa: Don’t Kid Yourself
I implore everyone who reads this, European or African, North American or Asian, to see things as they are and that once again, we are on an inevitable road to confrontation, another battle to decide if the world should be ruled by criminals and billionaires or made safe for the most vulnerable.
Notice that the side who likes money doesn’t talk much about empathy. But solidarity starts with empathy. It will be, indeed must be, one of our most important weapons in the fight ahead.
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If anyone’s out there planning a new demonstration in Washington (or Toronto) for the persecuted Amhara people in Ethiopia or for a free Ethiopia in general, I sincerely hope you come to your senses and realize you are wasting your time.
For months now — as the Biden/Kamala Harris Democrats did a wonderful job of sabotaging their own efforts to get elected — diaspora communities dutifully came out for the pointless zombie walks in front of the White House (or at major sites in other cities) for which they earned no useful attention — certainly next to no media coverage.
Their desperation was clear to see in the way that they welcomed hypocritical warmonger and Republican slimeball Jerry Torres without doing any due diligence on his disturbing background. And for their support, they were promptly rewarded with the creep dropping the cause in public, going silent, and moving on.
Their desperation was on display again, yet in a more understandable way, as they cheered on Trump’s torpedoing of USAID. It’s fascinating to watch the Western media’s handwringing over the agency’s fall — ignoring the fact that a good portion of Africans, especially Ethiopians, hate USAID and with good reason. So do I. Either these journalists are stunningly ignorant or willfully blind to how USAID was used as a front for political operations, in the same way that the National Endowment for Democracy has been a CIA front (the NED being another Elon Musk target for chopping).
USAID is a case of hypocrisy all around. While MSNBC and CNN treat Trump’s purges as if politicizing government operations is a new thing, Samantha Power demonstrated time and again how an aid operation could be weaponized for realpolitik. Funny how the networks forgot that during the war started by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that Power “asked about ways to embarrass the Ethiopian government” (which, as every Ethiopian now realizes, doesn’t need help). Given that in 2021, I and others saw for ourselves in person that USAID did nothing to help thousands of Amhara and Afar internally displaced persons, sometimes brazenly working with the TPLF, I am happy to say to many agency workers, Screw you, I have no sympathy for you.
But this doesn’t make Trump a potential ally for Ethiopians wanting their nation liberated. Or Amhara sick of persecution. Or Africans on the rest of the continent.
And again, yes, some diaspora folks can be somewhat forgiven for feeling optimistic after Marco Rubio was made Trump’s Secretary of State, a man who has met with political activist Eskinder Nega, and who at least presumably has some understanding of the issues involved with the ongoing Amhara genocide.
But their faith is misplaced, and so is that of any African who thinks Trump’s regime will be a vast improvement over Biden, or for that matter, Obama’s administration. Just as it boggles my mind that I have to remind people Zecharias Zelalem is still the opportunistic little creep who peddled the TPLF victim narrative before he saw the writing on the wall and began “reporting” on Amhara victims, so we shouldn’t have to remind people that only five years ago, Trump suggested that Egypt bomb GERD.
Why would you embrace a man who refers to nations on your continent as “shithole countries?”
Why would you think a man who once was sued by the U.S. federal government for discriminating against Black tenants will be your friend?
Why would you think a man, who with his lackeys, wants to erase a good portion of history for Black people, as well as their civil rights protections, will cut your African nation a break?
I had an interesting exchange on X with an anonymous follower when I tried to point some of this out. “At least [Trump] is not hiding behind democracy and human right we know our enemy [sic].”
True, but it’s hardly helpful. I get it. It’s the same modicum of respect that all fascists earn in the beginning because they appear to be “talking straight” and don’t pretend to be altruists. But that hardly makes them your friends. The person who says he’s going to kill you and gives you a timetable is not much of an improvement over the two-faced bastard who promises to bring in aid and then sneaks in drones to undermine your country’s stability. An argument can even be made that the sneaky creep who tried to hide his plans can (hopefully) be shamed out of trying to pull off his con.
Not so the fascist. If he tells you he’s fine with invasion, there is no moral high ground to debate. Might is right, winning is everything. And we are unfortunately now living in an era where casual cruelty has become fashionable, where admiring, endorsing or cozying up to the most despicable human beings is okay as long as we think they reflect our temporary interests.
How else to explain veteran South African broadcaster Sophie Mokoena retweeting the sick musings of Andrew Tate, an accused rapist, sex trafficker and self-described misogynist?
How did we get here? In part because of hypocrisy. The infuriating hypocrisy of Democrats and lying vampires like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch who will exploit any African tragedy for donations, who played favorites and lied right to journalists’ faces about what happened in Ethiopia. The hypocrisy of organizations like USAID, like the World Food Programme, which has done a lovely job of pretending to help Africans while keeping them out of its own upper management.
The hypocrisy of European nations who keep pretending they’ll leave Africa alone yet have to be told point blank to get out — and who have tried to keep the African continent a virtual gulag for its citizens.
Who wouldn’t want to find an alternative to the doubletalk, the sanctimony, the smarmy condescension and lectures endured for years while Africa gets looted by powers who never really stopped being colonial and who never really left? But Trump is certainly not the alternative for Africa to welcome.
And if you don’t find his coarse racism and bigotry, his open contempt for African countries, enough, if you somehow think he’ll be “all business” or “more statesmanlike” when it comes to international relations with African countries, let me tell why Ukraine makes that unlikely.
Three years ago, I tried to warn my followers over Ukraine. I made a keynote speech on the anniversary of the Battle of Adwa in 2022, in which I scolded folks who sided with Russia, employing this idiotic argument that Russia was “provoked” by NATO into attacking. I don’t give a shit if economist Jeffrey Sachs has tried to sell that line, I think it’s cowardly rubbish, and if you want to read a good refutation of his arguments, you can find one here.
For those who don’t know, I grew up in Winnipeg. I walked city streets that had beautiful onion-dome Orthodox churches for the very large Ukrainian-Canadian community. My maternal grandfather was ethnically German, yet he was born in Zhitomer, which on his birth certificate listed the town as in “Russia” in the last century, so no, you don’t have to tell me that Russia and Ukraine’s history is interconnected and very complicated, and if you want to square that circle, I direct you to Orlando Figes’ excellent The Story of Russia.
But more importantly, as I pointed out years ago, buying this “oh, they were provoked” Russian talking point is TPLF logic. It’s the same bullshit the TPLF tried to use after its mouthpiece Sekuture Getachew bluntly came out and admitted on regional television that the rebels attacked the Ethiopian army first.
Nevertheless, my arguments back then went over like a lead balloon. There was so much well-justified animosity towards the U.S. government at the time that no one wanted to think it could be right on this issue. It sure as hell didn’t help that Ukrainians themselves treated Africans and people of color shamefully in early 2022 as they tried to flee the Russian invasion.
Three years later, and now Trump is determined to abandon Ukraine and let it be gobbled up by Putin. As others have pointed out, like some Mafia thug, his idea of “help” is to try to exploit a country at its most vulnerable moment to suck out half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. His word — like Putin’s — is worthless. There is no real guarantee that Putin will not circle around half a year later, or a year or two years, to take more of what he wants.
Trump is not “appeasing” Putin. He is, as some have argued, at worst a Russian asset and at best a fellow oligarch. What rarely gets discussed these days when commentators bring up the appeasement of dictators from the 1930s is that the word “appease” is misleading. Officious jerks like Britain’s Neville Chamberlain who sold out Czechoslovakia and France’s Pierre Laval who bent over backwards to sell out Ethiopia to Mussolini knew exactly what they were doing. They weren’t “intimidated” by Mussolini or Hitler, they weren’t really scared of them — they just didn’t give a damn. They were happy to do business with despicable people, especially if the little people being crushed weren’t inconvenient for them.
The problem is that cruelty can be a pandemic of an era. As much as Covid or the flu. A broadcaster who thinks it’s okay to casually muse over the assassination of a president fighting to save his country. People who recognize that Christians are being targeted for hateful attacks in Africa, but if you asked them to spare compassion for gays and lesbians, they would look at you as if you were a degenerate yourself.
And so, humanity is stuck fighting the same stupid, wasteful conflicts over and over and over.
The rich getting what they want and persuading idiots that those in mansions actually have the best interests at heart for those who have to sleep in gutters.
The idea that a Black person is not entitled to champion his own history or that an African should be presumed to be a criminal when she gets to an airport gate, that she shouldn’t have the right to travel and live where they want.
I implore everyone who reads this, European or African, North American or Asian, to see things as they are and that once again, we are on an inevitable road to confrontation, another battle to decide if the world should be ruled by criminals and billionaires or made safe for the most vulnerable.
Notice that the side who likes money doesn’t talk much about empathy. But solidarity starts with empathy. It will be, indeed must be, one of our most important weapons in the fight ahead.
Most of my followers know me because I wrote Prevail, my book about the Italian-Ethiopian War. In the book, I retell the story of the Italian Fascist bombing of the open city of Harar. The reporter George Steer, who loved Ethiopia and Ethiopians so fiercely that he fought for them both as a journalist and as a British officer, tried to warn his fellow Ethiopians that Harar was a lesson for Europe. The bombing of civilians in Africa was a “practice run” for Europe — six months later, the Nazis bombed Guernica for Franco’s Fascists.
Time and again, white bloodsuckers have used Africa as their test ground for atrocities to be committed elsewhere, whether its concentration camps in South Africa or the German genocide or the unforgivable conditions of the Belgian rape of the Congo.
Ukraine is that practice run flipped. No one should doubt that Trump will be happy to do business with Abiy Ahmed or Ethiopia’s enemies — it makes no difference, as long as African resources get plundered again out of a “shithole country.”
And when he’s done squeezing Panama and possibly humiliating Ukraine, where do you think he’ll look next? He may think your countries are shitholes but there are still enough brains among the sycophants to inform him that Africa sits on more food, more minerals, more wealth than he ever imagined.
Where then should Africans turn? I won’t make the argument that African countries should steer clear of any alliance or project collaborations with Russia or China. It’s a stupid, pointless debate that presents a false “either/or.” I think it’s incredibly condescending to suggest to Africans they might get “duped” by Russia after Putin has already made Trump his lapdog and after American Democrats have cynically exploited parts of Africa for decades. I’m not Tibor Nagy, who believes with breathtaking arrogance and sanctimony that Africans should shut up and never criticize the handouts they get from the U.S and has posted this suggestion several times on X.
Besides, Putin will eventually fall, and when he does, whatever regime replaces him will no doubt turn off the tap for aid, military or otherwise. I have lived long enough to see the downfall of Muamar Gaddafi — a cretin who jailed countless numbers of his fellow Africans — Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, the Shah of Iran and others. Mengistu slipped away with American help, but he’s at least gone.
No, there is no point in trying to argue for what African governments should do. I’ve had little to no faith in Canadian and American governments so why expect ones in Africa or Europe to be any different? The very fact that we are headed towards another climactic showdown with fascism, backed up as usual by capitalism, is because our democracies have failed us.
What’s mildly frustrating is that the same commentators are used again and again, appearing on news websites and chat segments of networks, and many miss the point. Our democracies failed to fix the problems of growing Tech Bro influence, of oligarch expansion, of exploitation of the global south — because they didn’t see these as problems in the first place. Until duh, the easy revelation broke through the clouds. These bandits don’t respect your democracy, never did, and will cheerfully work with thugs. The bastard who just loves to exploit Africa and call it charity like Bill Gates is happy to exploit anyone, especially you in your “developed” global north.
It’s why even though Musk managed to push himself forward, we still saw Zuckerberg and Bezos kiss the ring.
For those who wonder how I can be so sure about this “inevitable confrontation,” it’s because I share the optimism of media critic Kat Abu, who was interviewed by Rachel Gilmore on her podcast, Bubble Pop (I am a huge fan of both Abu and Gilmore and loved seeing the team-up). “I also say this,” remarked Abu. “Fascism is antithetical to the human condition… That can’t happen forever. As scary as that thought is, that can’t be our reality because human beings just won’t let it.”
This is where we must put our faith in individuals and grass roots people movements because our institutions and governments have failed us.
Yet as much as the slogan, “African solutions for African problems” may be very catchy, it’s sometimes also used by home grown con artists trying to sell Africans on libertarian schemes and more con jobs, and in this day and age, exploitation is global.
Beware their come-ons and pitches and beware the sleazoid who gets interviewed by Jordan Peterson and recycles the buzz words of late economist George Ayittey. As I reported before, this individual is tied in with one of the most sinister right-wing operations in the United States, sponsoring hundreds of neoliberal think tanks.
But there is still an opportunity here for great African thinkers — activists, professors, economists and creative artists — to step forward onto the world stage and lead the way, advancing a new ideology for the globe, and not just for the global south. Even if it incorporates elements of old doctrines, if it is an anti-capitalist belief system that champions human rights while advancing effective ways of critically solving problems — from using innovative African architecture to protecting endangered traditional farmers and their crops, from taking what works best from social democracy while respecting cultural values — it’s already a step in the right direction.
Back in the 1960s, Black activists in the U.S. looked to Africa for inspiration. How leaders of newly independent African states navigated challenges — from Kwame Nkrumah’s successes and missteps to the tragic, brief career of Patrice Lumumba — helped light the lamps for Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
So, if it still isn’t clear, there’s no more point marching with placards in front of the White House anymore, waiting to get Marco Rubio’s ear. Stop deferring to what he thinks or what Trump thinks or believing that either or any of these idiots in DC will help.
You’re long overdue to declare your new ideas and make your new art in ways that capture attention organically… and in ways so persuasive and so compelling that you don’t need a politician or CNN, you have a crowd anxious to see you. And from there, recruit our army to help take back the rights of people everywhere.
For weeks now, I have had to put up with TV commercials for the nauseating, self-congratulatory white savior musical about Band-Aid playing in Toronto’s theatre district, the one that spreads the lie that rock stars saved Africa (no surprise, the commercials don’t even mention what country they “helped.”)
We’re in big trouble right now, and instead, I want to see Africa save the world.
