As a Brit, perhaps excuse me these issues. They're not new.
The idea of an 'anti-imperialism of fools' is decades old (and behind an effin firewall on a magazine laughingly called 'Dissent').
Fortunately we have Nick effin Cohen via the hyper-capitalist Spectator *for free* to say:
In his Tyranny of Guilt, the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner emphasised the colonial mindset of ‘anti-imperialists’. The West may no longer dominate the world. (We are the first ‘imperialists’ without an empire.) But they can maintain that the West still matters because it is the root cause of the world’s ills. Psychologically, such narcissism is just about understandable as a compensation for decline. One day a cultural historian will notice that the explosion of chest-beating and garment-rending in the West coincided with the shift in economic power to east Asia. But as principled politics, the denial that there are reactionary movements and regimes in the world with motives of their own is a disgrace.Thus may we view the fact of the New York Times blaming the US State Department for the persecution of gay men in Africa.
For the past few years the US has spoken up for LGBT rights, albeit selectively, worldwide and it has a small, funded support program. For most people this is progress and small beer, for others ... it is the 'Empire' doing its evil thing and promoting 'homocapitalism'.
The context from the Chomskyite left is of Glenn Greenwald telling Malians: 'I don't care what you f&cking think about an Islamist invasion, I know best.' (Which is what he actually did.)
IOW - and we already had a sense from their treatment of Muslim dissenters - it's tinged with racism, we Western lefties know best. 'Pro-gay'=pro-imperialist, in their minds. So of course the Times piece was gloatingly welcomed.
But the voices of actual gay Africans on US engagement with them wasn't heard (as it wasn't, shockingly, in the Times piece). Now they are speaking out.
Jay Michaelson writing in the Daily Beast:
Davis Mac-Iyalla, a Nigerian activist who founded the LGBT Christian organization Changing Nigeria in 2005, is one such person. “Obama raising the LGBT issue was marvelous,” Mac-Iyalla told The Daily Beast. “The African LGBT struggle could not have come this far without the support of the West.”Here's what the Times handed to African LGBT opponents and the Obama hate crowd:
Mac-Iyalla also points out that the real turning point in terms of African perceptions of homosexuality as “Western” resulted not from U.S. foreign aid, but from the Anglican Communion’s evolution on the issue, beginning at the 1998 conference in Canterbury and culminating in the 2003 ordination of the first openly gay bishop, Bishop Gene Robinson.
Finally, the Times article radically overstated the amount of U.S. spending in the area, citing a figure of $700 million. That claim was duly repeated by anti-gay organizations like the Family Research Council (which, in a nice leftward turn, accused the U.S. of “cultural imperialism”) and websites like Breitbart.The $700m figure is BS. And that BS still isn't corrected on the piece.
But that figure includes the total amount spent on all “vulnerable populations” for public health purposes, not just LGBT people. According to Andrew Park, director of International Programs at the Williams Institute, which studies issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity, the actual figure is closer to $7 million—two orders of magnitude off.
In fact, the only thing the Times got right was its impersonation of African anti-gay activists, who routinely say that homosexuality is a Western invention, a Western sin, or a Western value. They are the ones who link the justified rage at 300 years of Western depredation of Africa with opposition to contemporary Western policies. In what is now a series of articles, the Times has endorsed this view.
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| Adrian Jjuuko, executive director of HRAPF |
“I read the article … with a lot of disbelief,” says Adrian Jjuuko, veteran Ugandan activist and executive director of the Uganda’s LGBTI-friendly legal organization, the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF). The article described “a very different reality from what I as an activist … have experienced,” he says.Why should anyone be unsurprised that Africans are upset at a Times piece which quotes Obama critics but not fans?
“The US support was always done in a respectful way and after consultations with activists on the ground,” Jjuuko writes in a letter to the editor of the New York Times.
In addition to Jjuuko, critics citing the Times article’s inaccuracies have included:
- Tom Malinowski, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of State;
- Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda;
- Andrew Park, director of international programs at the Williams Institute in Los Angeles;
- Kikonyogo Kivumbi, who represents key HIV-affected populations on the Global Fund’s Uganda Country Coordinating Mechanism health policy panel;
- Nigeria’s Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights; and
- This blog, in its Dec. 24 article, “Nigerian activists protest harmful, flawed N.Y. Times coverage.”
Those, of course, who value Western criticism above African opinion.
And, oh look, it just happens to exactly match that coming from the US far right. Funny, that.
#facepalm
See Also:
There has been another massacre in Northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, the ISIS aligned Islamist terror group. At least 150 Muslims, including small boys, machined gunned during Ramadan prayers.
Andrew Coates notes the past history of reaction to calls for Britain to support efforts against Boko Haram by the likes of Stop The War UK (cf 'Stoppers'). Many people regard STWUK as a front for the notorious Socialist Workers Party. The Stoppers include MPs Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn and have the ear of much of the left as well as celebs like Brand and Boyle as well as foreign allies like the 'journalist' Glenn Greenwald. They have influence.
Coates notes that when Boko Haram's kidnap of 200 girls made international headlines that the Stoppers reaction was that "the "'free press' have exploded into a fit of pro-interventionist hysteria." Rather than the group's rise being due to insufficient Sharia law in the North of Nigeria - what the group actually said - the Stoppers knew better and reckoned it was "a response to severe economic inequality."
This is Stopper boilerplate. It writes itself.
So how about this when next you are hearing the persistent, mosquito-like Stopper drone .. recall the cries about how the French intervention against Islamists on the march in Mali would backfire. How it was ALL because of the intervention of the West in Libya. How it was ALL EVIL OUR FAULT BAD US FLAGELLATE FLAGELLATE.
Whilst you're recalling those events note how this news has seemingly been missed.
Mali: Peace Deal Raises Hopes of Stability
19 June 2015
- http://allafrica.com/stories/201506200015.html
The article quotes a survey of Malians expressing disappointment with the UN peacekeepers. Why? Because "people thought the rebellion could be put down immediately and permanently." There are still some attacks by Islamists going on in the North and, as Jean-Hervé Jezequel notes, the deal has flaws and "risks collapse as international interests shift to other hotspots." Peace deals are inevitably imperfect.But the survey's results should not be surprising considering the numerous reports at the time, even in the righteous Guardian, that the French paratroopers were being welcomed by ordinary Malians with open arms.
So as we await another drone from the Stoppers on Boko Haram let us also recall that time that Glenn Greenwald launched an anti-French tirade in the Guardian just when French troops were being welcomed to halt the Islamist advance. And that he was also saying that even if surveys showed Malians wanted the French troops he would still not support intervention.
Gary Brecher wrote about his Twitter scrap with Greenwald at the time, which ended with Greenwald saying that he could not give a toss for Malian opinion.
Greenwald wrote in the Guardian that the Mali intervention "will obviously provoke even more anti-western sentiment." Well obviously La Greenwald was W.R.O.N.G.
Will the Stoppers reflect that maybe they were wrong that one time about Mali? That actually the Malians were right to ask for and get French help? That maybe the Sierra Leonians asking 'war criminal' Blair for help 15 years ago might also have turned out to be a good thing? Or how about that a bit more intervention might have helped save some from the Rwandan genocide maybe?
Will they heck because the arrogant bastards know better than some black Africans who, as Greenwald makes clear, should know their place – isn’t that the sum total of these people's worldview?