Re:The Foundations of Liberia
by Mediterraneo10 on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @03:13AM
(#24695396)
> Africa was a heavy source of anti-colonial radicalism during the cold war.
However, the political problems and impoverishment that accompanied the most drastic efforts to throw off colonial ties, did scare some other countries into not going that far. For example, after other West African countries saw Guinea become the first nation to completely end French ties, but then fall into poverty and have no one to turn to but Maoist China, they reflected that perhaps France’s role in the region was not so bad after all. At present, it is not at all unusual to hear a Senegalese person expressly point to Guinea-Bissau as an example of anti-colonialism gone wrong.
You have to blame a lot if not most of this on a lot of wholesale slaughter during colonialism of the elements who resisted it, and a lot of the elevation of particular ethnic groups into elite classes to serve as local middlemen for foreign business concerns (mostly extractive industries.) The elites of those countries are the people we see on youtube. Their families did pretty well under colonialism, and they think of the people who complain about it (in their home countries probably other ethnic groups, or non-Christians, or Sunnis) as Luddite terrorists who need to be killed.
Africa was a heavy source of anti-colonial radicalism during the cold war, and those sentiments still exist. Those are just not the elements we elevate. They, like black Americans, are usually the subject being discussed, not the people who get to be part of the conversation.
This isn't unique to Africa.