“the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be”
by zunguzungu
Alex Perry is a truly world class buffoon, but his idiot racism has given my dissertation the above phrase; it’s a too-good-to-have-written-it-myself illustration that the savage whose claims to “distant kinship” strikes Marlow as almost too ugly to acknowledge in Heart of Darkness still beats his tom-tom in the psyche of white people too ugly to realize they see themselves when they look at “Africa.”But this, truly, is the kind of world class racism that Time magazine hasn’t really produced since the 1960′s:
If you want to see what’s wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 32 years impoverished his people while traveling the world in a chartered Concorde. His death in 1997 ushered in a civil war that killed 5.4 million people and unleashed a hurricane of rape on tens of thousands more. Today AIDS and malaria are epidemics.
As Julie Hollar of FAIR pointed out:
…if you’re going to charge Congo with being “what’s wrong with Africa,” you’d better give credit where credit is due. Independent Congo didn’t give the world Mobutu; that gift belongs to the U.S. and Belgium, who supported the overthrow and assassination of democratically-elected Patrice Lumumba and helped prop up the horror that was Mobutu for decades afterward.
Prompting Perry himself to show up in comments and issue some of the most delightfully self-righteous nonsequiters attacking Hollar and the other commenters who found him to be a racist buffoon (among which, for example, we have: “The idea that the US created Mobutu and maintained him in power belittles Africans and is typical of the kind of racism that dogs analysis of Africa”). A Tiny Revolution has really done good work here demonstrating that pretty much everything Perry says is not only demonstrably false but easily demonstrated, as has Africa is a Country.
I love this classic move:
“The idea that the US created Mobutu and maintained him in power belittles Africans and is typical of the kind of racism that dogs analysis of Africa”
Yes, the true racists are those who point out the actual facts of history that have bearing on the present, thereby denying Africans agency. Brilliant.
Yes, exactly; racism doesn’t exist until someone accuses someone of racism, therefore those who make the accusations are the ones who create racism. QEWTF.
Also, now Taibbi has gotten into it:
When other commenters chime in, Perry starts whaling away at them, too. At one point he takes on a negative comment written by someone named Kambale Musavuli — who strongly hints in the comment that he’s African — by saying, “Bravo, old boy… Such erudite depth. Such spelling.” It really doesn’t get any better than a Western reporter lashing out at an African by calling him “boy” and picking on his spelling. In his place I probably would have avoided using the “kitchen” metaphor when attacking a female journalist, too, but that might be being picky.
I also found it pretty hilarious that he originally claimed that Congo gave “the world” Mobuto. Even if you buy into the “Congo gave” part of it, which is of course absurd, the only people they “gave” him to was themselves.
So reality is actually a complete mirror of what he said: “The world gave Congo Mobuto” is far more accurate.
err, not to defend Perry (whats the deal with hearts and Africa?), but Mobutu woulda gotten his hands on and killed Lumumba even without the Belgians, and to a lesser extent, the yanks (my own private tally of ‘blame’ is as follows: 50% Congolese, 30% Belgian, 20% US, because Belgians were actually present and directed a lot of stuff while the US was a lot vaguer… and the fact that the Congolese woulda done him in regardless). Lumumba wanted the UN to invade Congo a la Korea (which was a non-starter after the breakup) and go to bat for him. The best the UN could do was send troops to protect him and put him under house arrest while a LOT of factions were fighting over the country. He escaped and got caught by Mobutus people. All he had to do was stay in his compound and try to get a force unified behind him (and for all the belief that ‘the West’ would never have allowed that to happen, the US and Belgium wouldn’t have done crap against the defacto leader of a pan-African army, which in the days of the Katanga secession was not that far off). When Mobutus people got him, it was over. Mobutu was shifty enough that it didnt matter who was backing him, he would come out on top.
Now, Perry obviously doesn’t know this stuff, but you could hypothetically make an argument saying that Mobutu was as Congolese as Lumumba. I do not care one way or another. The thing that is freaking unacceptable is Perry’s descriptions of Comgo as a hellhole.
No paved roads? wtf?
Where were YOU when the war started perry? I was telling friends when the death toll hit a mil, but if you ever gave a damn you woulda gotten off your ass 10 years ago and written some stuff. The conflict is so big and messy that assigning ownership (or blame) is not going to lead anywhere, but this has been ‘THE’ HUMANITARIAN CRISIS OF THE PAST 20 YEARS. Where the stuff of nightmares happened, and its not because of some ‘africanness’ but some typical human bullcrap that evaded interest because it happened to a bunch of poor black people for so long.
Eff Perry.
That “How can you be so condescending to these people as to suggest that they’re not to blame for their country’s problems” argument is pure Bernard Lewis.