Oddbean

While Africans argue about which of the African-resource-evacuation/Lobito-Corridor parties in DC to support in November (because the U.S. is really a militarised 1-party state divided only on issues like pronouns, Algerian Olympic boxers, and fictitious cat-eating Haitians), consider this: US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken yesterday accused African Stream of being part of a global "Russian propaganda network" while announcing new sanctions against RT. African Stream's YouTube channel, on which I was scheduled to begin hosting a new podcast from next month, has since been suspended by Google. It is the latest in a tried-and-tested American habit of giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. In the 19th century, Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright from Mississippi theorised that Africans escaping from slave plantations must be afflicted with a mental problem because slavery was such an elevation from the natural status of an African that any African seeking to be free must be mentally ill. He called the proposed mental illness "Drapetomania," and he published multiple papers suggesting corrective treatments for "Drapetomania." A century later, during the Cold War, the US State Department and CIA began doing something similar whenever they decided to carry out an assassination or regime change. The CIA accused Patrice Lumimba of being a Soviet-linked Communist, and he was subsequently captured, tortured, murdered and dissolved in sulphuric acid by their Belgian proxies. The same people also accused Kwame Nkrumah of being a Soviet-linked communist, and the 1966 coup in Ghana was the result. Whenever any African leader emerged with a vision for national or regional growth and independence, the immediate accusation that followed was "The Russians are sponsoring him." It is a core tenet of American propaganda that Africa is fundamentally not supposed to have ideas, ideologies, thinkers, voices and leaders of its own - the continent exists for mining cheap resources and sending them to the coasts to be shipped to the Places Where Human Beings Actually Live. Africans, you see, are apparently far too stupid and unevolved, with our behind-the-bell-curve gorilla brains, to actually come up with ideas, voices and plans for our own future that do not coincide with the Western model. So when we do come up with these things, there is only one explanation - the Russians did it. Every single African liberation movement was accused of being Communist Russia's creation because Africans wanting to be free, independent, and economically prosperous must be a symptom of Drapetomania. Even Nelson Mandela, prior to his rebranding as Jesus Morgan Christ Freeman, was also accused of being indoctrinated and sponsored by the Russians. Unfortunately, the Lobito Corridor People are not capable of changing their worldview or adopting new tactics, because here we are in big 2024 and Blinken is here accusing me and the guys in Nairobi of being Russian government cutouts. This tells me 2 very important things: 1.) The work that African Stream and others in the non-western-controlled African media space are doing is having a real effect in cutting through decades of foreign propaganda and raising the independent consciousness of the new generation of internet-savvy young Africans. The US state propaganda machine cannot keep up with social media, and so it is lashing out with petulant stunts like holding a press conference falsely accusing an independent media platform in Nairobi of being "run by RT" WITH ZERO ATTEMPT AT PROVIDING ANY EVIDENCE FOR SUCH A CLAIM. 2.) Washington DC's Lobito Corridor government is planning to go to war in Africa. The first act in war is controlling the narrative. This is an attempt to destroy sources of alternative viewpoints so that Africans can once again go back to having only "America, woo woo!" as our news. When the information war is won, then the shooting war will commence. Dear African, you are under direct attack! https://m.primal.net/KrXr.mp4