Whats /leftypol/ take on President of Burkina Faso Ibrahim Traoré?
Is he a credible anti-imperialist actor?
93 posts and 37 image replies omitted.>>2475772>Critiquing anarchists <Easiest shit imaginable>Critiquing BordigaReminder Gramsci strategy ended with him dying in a prison cell alongside all his comrades
Bordiga got to live to see the end of fascism
>>2475733argument against what? the retard seething that some people think he is progressive in his country despite doing some anti gay shit? they dont have any real arguments, so we dont need any either, we can just respond to their insults with our own.
>>2475810I think freeing yourself from neocolonial yoke, recognizing sankara as a national hero (and putting a sankarist at the head of a transition government at first), nationalizing resources and key companies, trying to build up your state infrastructures and giving it sovereignty are good moves, and the anti lgbt shit is a bad populist move. Overall it seems largely positive. I dont need him to claim to be socialist to recognize good policies. If anything he reminds me of Baath movements
Tomatoes are red. Coincidence? If you think so i've got a rope bridge to sell you.
>>2475969>and the anti lgbt shit is a bad populist move.This was from at least years ago and it was feedback after doing policy inquiries in local communities.
I'm not defending it but weird how all you lot here are hyper-obsessing over this one thing, seems like glowshit.
>>2476261At best this is just muh generational trauma shit that liberals often parrot to justify abusive relationships. How exactly is targeting homosexuality when it wasn't being targeted before supposed to be some anti-colonialist win? Unless you genuinely think that homosexuality is something only associated with "le decadent west" you cant really square the circle on this.
For what it's worth I do believe Traore and this military junta is at least marginally better than what came before it and I'm always pleased to see neocolonialism and especially the French take L's. I just fail to see how criminalizing homosexuality helps any of that
>>2476291I haven't posted about that much, but I find it interesting that JNIM – the area ISIS branch that these juntas are fighting – believes pretty much the same thing. The difference is that the juntas attack homosexuality on identity grounds rather than religious grounds. It's un-African rather than un-Islamic.
I was quoting the Nigerien intellectual Idrissa earlier and he also wrote this in an essay about secularism, religion, and liberalism in the Sahel.
>In the Western context, the values of emancipation and progress have become commonplace through the culture of liberalism, which has made tolerance, living and letting live, respect for science and rational discussion, ordinary virtues, low temperature … But sometimes Western liberals are awakened from their pleasant dream of "liberalism, only game in town" by events like the election of Donald Trump, brought to power by a tide of anti-liberals: social conservatives, religious fundamentalists, plutocrats and economic egoists, ignorant and conspiratorial crowds, phallocrats and screaming homophobes, groups of racists and xenophobes. Those whom Hillary Clinton named, in a memorable phrase and who became the symbol of liberal arrogance, "basket of deplorables" ("a bunch of deplorable people"). However, if we look at the African public scene, this assortment of "deplorables" clearly dominates it. If human advancement or other such policies had achieved significant results, Sahelians would not necessarily have become liberals, since liberalism is the result of a long social history that has not taken place in their countries, but many of them would have become analogous to Western liberals. This is probably my personal case – emphasizing that we should not understand liberal in the economic sense. These policies have failed and have little chance of being revived in an atmosphere dominated by preachers in search of clericalism, authoritarian politicians in search of populism, and identity intellectuals (either ethnic or "African") in need of culturalism. Liberal (and secular-minded) people exist, but knowing they are in hostile territory, prefer to confine themselves to cautious silence and behind-the-scenes actions.
>The leaders of independence knew that the republic was created against the old regime, that is to say, in the Sahelian context, against the domination of former lords and religious leaders with clerical tendencies. The current leaders are allowing the old regime to reestablish itself, and are even lending a hand to it, for lack, if I may say so, of secular and republican faith and piety. But he who does not believe is necessarily defeated by he who believes. This is not a religious truth, it is a political truth.[…]
>In the West, Salafists, like Protestant fundamentalists, understand this in their own way. The diabolical trinity, in their eyes, is Marx, Freud, and Darwin, whom they treat as a kind of prophets of deviation. Clericals do not read these henchmen of the devil and adapt "clichéd" aspects of their thinking to their own visions. Marx is thus reduced to the role of propagandist of atheism, Freud is presented as a promoter of incest, and Darwin is the madman because of his use of the myth of Oedipus. In the Boko Haram manifesto, it is also about Plato. This man who, in Athens, was obviously a supporter of the aristocratic faction hostile to the democratic regime, appears as the thinker par excellence of democracy – that is to say of this impious regime where the law is made by men, not by God.https://rahmane.substack.com/p/les-laics-et-les-deplorables-215 >>2476344No one said this is happening because anything is gained from it, you fucking idiot. It's about a realistic unfolding given the context in which people are socialized.
Burkina Faso was prior to colonialism not prevalently homophobic. The French under colonialism implemented an economy based on resource extraction and a Western style heteronormative patriarchy that aided in coordinating and maintaing this system. After the official end of colonialism the French regained control over Burkina Faso in less explicit ways (neocolonialism) mainting an economy based on resource extraction and the accompanying superstructure in which people like Traoré have been socialized in, turning him into a homophobe as a product of his environment.
To answer your question as to why anti-gay laws didn't exist prior, it's because not everyone is extremely homophobic. Just like how the West is overall racist, not everyone is a Nazi. There is a distribution with many moderates sitting in the middle and extremists on the margin. If Nazis so happen to take over one day the West will put explicitly racist laws in place. That doesn't mean that prior to that the West wasn't racist if it wasn't ruled by Nazis. Likewise, Burkina Faso under neocolonialism was homophobic but more extreme homophobes at the margin of the distribution curve managed to come into power and implement explicitly homophobic laws, but both the moderately homophobic people and the subsection of extremely homophobic people are the product of the same superstructure, that spits out an uneven distribution of homophobia, with the more homophobic section having managed to come into power.
Either way it was unrealistic for you to assume that a national liberation struggle in a place like Burkina Faso would have been queer friendly. If you actually had a materialist understanding then you would know that Burkina Faso overcoming neocolonial relations and becoming capitalist would eventually lead to the deterioration of the patriarchy and subsequently homophobia. But you don't know that because you are an idealist.
>>2476395I don't know actually.
>>2476415>Burkina Faso was prior to colonialism not prevalently homophobic. Homosexuality was decriminalized during the French Revolution (and also implemented by Napoleon!). But that didn't stop large sections of French society from seeking other ways to try to persecute gays. France was unusual in this regard in Europe for a long time because the state was much more tolerant and "liberal" than the society. In French-speaking Africa, the state also inherited these laws. Most of the former French colonies didn't criminalize homosexuality for a long time while most former British colonies did criminalize it because the French colonies inherited French laws. Senegal apparently did try to criminalize it in the 1960s and had to hunt around for legislation enacted by Vichy France.
But in many French-speaking African countries, the elites and intellectuals were generally progressive in their attitudes. That would be 1960s. Tihs is Idrissa:
<The law criminalizing homosexuality envisaged in Niger is one of the many signs of the path taken by current African elites, within the framework of what I call our “neonationalism” (this will be discussed in another post), to move in the direction of an identity “restoration” of our “traditional values” which therefore no longer has anything to do with the progressivism and emancipatory liberalism of their predecessors of the 1960s. We will see that neonationalism (I'm spilling the beans a little) is a phenomenon, in certain hysterical cases, in other more sneaky cases, which falls into the same category of political orientation as the movements at the head of which are placed characters like Narendra Modi in India, Jaïr Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Éric Zemmour in France (a man who also fascinates French-speaking African neonationalists) — or Putin in Russia (an idol of Zemmour before French domestic realpolitik forced this politician to participate, moreover half-heartedly, in condemnation of his war against Ukraine). Everyone wants the same type of society, an ultra-conservative universe, rigidly gendered, stilted, double-locked, and dominated by the heterosexual male. In Africa, this orientation is promoted by arguing that it defends “African values” against Western imperialism, but in reality the West has its share of people who think exactly like them. There, they say they reject “wokism” (before, it was “political correctness” or “right-thinking” that were targeted by these moral brutes). These are all, in fact, activists from closed societies. The lack of criminalization of homosexuality is part of open society legislation and these people therefore want to remedy it in the Nigerien context. If in the West such an effort has become unthinkable, it is very easy in political societies like those of Niger where legislation very rarely involves any socio-political process; and where, unlike what happens in the West, homosexuals do not represent political force and do not even have a voice in the public arena. These are people who can be suffocated without even complaining: the ideal victim.
<What will happen if the penal code is revised to criminalize homosexuality? Which happens wherever such an act is performed. Unless we budget for a police force whose mission would be to “repress” (as closed society activists say for what, in reality, is the persecution and proscription) of homosexuals by giving them material and financial means of detection (which should be of totalitarian scope to be able to penetrate private space) and missions of surveillance of public space to identify traces of homosexual behavior or “crime”, the clause will remain almost a dead letter on the side of the public force. And I can't see Niger, in a state of generalized shortage, opening budget lines dedicated to such a stupid and unhealthy task. Therefore,we will be able to witness the development of two phenomena: the hunt for homosexuals, implemented sporadically by groups of “vigilantes,” mainly targeting “visible” (effeminate) homosexuals and which can lead to assault and battery, or even worse; and blackmail into denunciation, which is a highly developed criminal activity, quasi-industrial (but invisible) in all African countries that have criminalized homosexuality. These two phenomena are obviously criminal —this time in the objective sense of the term (“there is crime where there is victim”). In short, the criminalization of homosexuality is… criminogenic!
<Law and justice are not the same thing, and there are laws that deserve to be trampled underfoot: none more than those that generate crime. But what is sad, above all, is that, in a country like Niger, which is already groaning under the weight of immense social misfortune, there are people — elites, no less! — who want to add one more misfortune to this already overwhelming lot. Indeed, the persecution of homosexuals will not add another dose of happiness to the members of society (apart from the sadistic pleasure that it can give to certain ill-tempered individuals): on the other hand, it will further increase the already very sensitive of these most marginalized of the marginalized that are homosexuals.https://rahmane.substack.com/p/une-petite-clause-scelerate-au-niger >>2476487That might be part of it.
>>2476506>A society isn‘t homophobic only once it implements anti-gay laws.I agree.
>The culture that France has implemented brought about homophobiaI think that's probably overstated in the case of the Sahel and the French didn't change much. They created some (very weak) state institutions but didn't have as much cultural influence compared to coastal countries like Senegal or Cote d'Ivoire.
At least going by Idrissa. His view is that in the 1960s there were elites in the Sahel with generally progressive views and they tended to orbit around Marxism-Leninism, which combined a critical stance towards their own traditional past with anti-colonialism / national independence. But these tendencies diverged. The critical types became "open society" types, while the national sovereignists reflect a more right-wing phenomenon today as they take an uncritical approach towards their traditional culture (i.e. Modi).
The rule-by-military chiefs is also not an import from French colonialism but the traditional pre-colonial pattern going back to the Songhai Empire where political legitimacy was not based in a bureaucratic civil service (very French!) but warriors, cavalry chiefs, and military aristocracies. This is one reason why coups in the Sahel have been genuinely popular, they are "popular putsches" as popular mass demonstrations are actually the signal for the military to oust whoever is governing these countries. There's an older (precolonial) logic going on here.
But the takeaway is that these regimes may be anti-imperialist (at least in rhetoric) but in terms of their actual practices they are conservative restorationist projects. Reactionary in comparison to Sankara in the 1980s at any rate. Okay that's whatever / who cares / not my business anyways, but while very anti-French it's not so incompatible with maintaining stable relations with other conservative forces in the world including the U.S. government
>>2476242 and U.S. military. Then there's another issue whether such regimes are able (in a structural sense) to reform or transform their states and societies to defeat the jihadi threat. Idrissa is skeptical of that, and they rely more on this mystical soldier-savior ethic, but it's kind of a bamboozle. Maybe it buys them some time but I think people need to be skeptical of people who simply borrow the aesthetics from 20th-century leftists and then declare that what they're doing is progressive (but they don't even really claim that).
Idrissa uses the term "illusion of rupture." The coups present themselves as a break from the past by overthrowing the government, but in reality they reproduce older patterns of rule. Also, BTW, coups and putsches are not a radically new thing in the Sahel. It's part of the normal rhythm of politics in these countries although people (at least in the beginning) think something new is happening. Then it turns out that they're back under the same ol' thing (rule by military chiefs) and that's when the disillusionment and apathy sets in, but too bad / so sad and the paratroopers in charge will put a boot up your ass if you complain about it.
>>2476596>is that these regimes may be anti-imperialist (at least in rhetoric) not, it is that they ARE anti imperialist, in practice
>terms of their actual practices they are conservative restorationist projectsculturally maybe (if you consider a return to pre colonial culture conservative, which is debatable), but economically they're definitely progressive, again, in practice
>The coups present themselves as a break from the past by overthrowing the government, but in reality they reproduce older patterns of rulebut they dont? the old pattern of rule was completely intertwined with the neocolonial franceafrique, you simply cant remove it and pretend nothing changed
reducing the sahel changes to "oh they're just soldiers doing coups so its always the same" is just obfuscating what actually happened (a radical departure from the neocolonial model that was in use)
>>2476705>not, it is that they ARE anti imperialist, in practiceWell they're anti-French, but just saying it with more emphasis doesn't make it more convincing.
>culturally maybe (if you consider a return to pre colonial culture conservative, which is debatable), but economically they're definitely progressive, again, in practiceAgain, how? What has really changed? This is something where I think the situation is more understandable because they're at war and large areas of these countries are outside of the control of the government.
>but they dont? the old pattern of rule was completely intertwined with the neocolonial franceafrique, you simply cant remove it and pretend nothing changed … reducing the sahel changes to "oh they're just soldiers doing coups so its always the same" is just obfuscating what actually happenedOf course, they have objective grievances with France, but I don't think it's adequate to just be anti-French, the program these military officers have been putting up is "blindly trust the military." What are the the concrete solutions that they're proposing or implementing? Maybe there are some, but if the grievances are more subjective, then that's a problem. France is gone. But the situation is still going to hell. However, Traore can give a bombastic speech for two hours talking about Western imperialism (while taking money from it at the same time), which is a kind of non-thinking.
>>2476898>Well they're anti-Frenchwhich is, in practice, anti imperialist, not sure why you need more to be "convinced". They also nationalized some british companies, not only french ones. The US aid was suspended after the sahel coups, but reinstated after some time, prolly because having them straight up hostile rather than simply safeguarding their sovereignty wasnt worth it (they also aid niger despite getting kicked out from their military base there).
>What has really changednationalized mining (especially gold), transport and construction companies, started working toward a nuclear power plant (and building regular power plant), built a generic drug plant slashing average medicine price in half. You know, using national resources to build up the country rather than simply sending the raw resources to the west
>but I don't think it's adequate to just be anti-Frenchnational sovereignty is more than just "anti french", even if of course the focus is on them
then again, im not burkinabe or know any, but from where I am, they certainly seem to be better than what was there before
>they dont care about western secular religion? they must be nazisWhy are westoids like this?
>>2477975this
>>2478063>They slaughter and imprison proles for arbitrary reasons, they must be Nazis Sounds about right
>>2477975>Hey it just takes the proletarian state decades to realize murdering proles for nonsensical reasons is, like, wrongWhy aren’f arguments like this a good reason to just shoot an ML on sight though? Considering you believe waving a red flag is the prerequisite justification for, like, lynching a gay guy
>>2478865I think you should be hanged for shilling for some nationalist junta criminalizing proletarians for arbitrary reasons and calling yourself a communist
>Free the proletariat except unless of course the military dictatorship decides to toss the degenerate faggots in jail of coursePeople like you genuinely deserve to see your family taken away to prison camps to finally understand, vile honkie fuck
>>2478878Democracy should be shot in its fucking cradle, I’m a communist, hang every last democrat
The fact that “genociding proles” is a potential outcome of democracy is enough of a reason to abolish it, die with your family
>Also bourgeois dictatorship + representation = le demosYou should be shot for the crime of liberalism
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