Whats /leftypol/ take on President of Burkina Faso Ibrahim Traoré?
Is he a credible anti-imperialist actor?
>>2401945Getting killed by another
** isn't getting "gaddafie'd"
>>2401873lol more than half of that shit isnt even coming from the burkinabe government its just random african instagram accounts posting shit
>>2401787far superior to the french neocolonial government that came before. its nice theyre finally officially honoring sankara but thats just my sentimentality. besides that it is very hard to reliably get accurate news out of burkina faso without reading french and i cant read french
>>2402059Mumbai click farmers found engagement by presenting Traore as like Mr. Beast if he was a paratrooper who seized power in a coup, and there's a lot of stuff about how he's going to make Afro Money, but I don't know if he actually said that. People just post a picture of him and things they claim he said. Some account will say he turned down IMF loans, however:
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/06/14/pr24219-burkina-faso-imf-exec-board-completes-1st-rev-ecf-arrangement-concludes-2024-art-iv-consultThere are A.I. slop accounts of R. Kelly and Rihanna singing "God Protect Ibrahim Traore." It's incredible.
Not knocking tomato processing factories, but the reason why those accounts are getting such engagement on it is an interesting question. I tend to think it results from some feeling of enervation. A lot of people are dealing with inflation.
>>2401787>Is he a credible anti-imperialist actor?Yes.
"beacon of hope and defiance for the emancipation of the African continent." -CPMK
>>2401787Thorn in the side of French Imperialism, and improving infrastructure and nationalising resources/ economy is a good start.
Complacency with some more reactionary elements in his cabinet (the ones that tried to pass anti LGBTQ laws) fucking sucks though.
Overall, he's no Sankara or EFF member, but helping the AES industrialise and modernise when they've had a history of deliberate under-development at the hands of European/American imperialists is a good step in the right direction.
>>2401787Yet another commie shithole violates lgbt basic humans rights, freedom and dignity
Daily reminder only under western capitalist liberal democracies LGBTs not only are free, but protected from discrimination and violence by strict laws
>>2458371>Implying I'm a zionistNo, I do not support XIX century genocidal colonial ethnostates because they're ""queer friendly"", Israel is an abomination to everything liberalism stands for
That doesn't make the theocratic shitholes it borders any better whatsoever
The ultimate victims here are the palestinian gays who are being thrown off rooftops by their racial brethen and being shot at by zionists, Europe should accept LGBT palestinians as refugees but ONLY them as they're the ultimate victims here, the rest can rot and die for all I care
>>2458630IMO the most important element is the common economic life
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm .
As social outcasts often forced into the reserve pool of labor, precarity, prostitution and other menial work queer people are typically not citizens of the nation. IMO whether or not queer people constitute a nation within a nation depends on the level of social development. IMO sex work typically takes on a semi-feudal form of labor more akin to serfdom than wage labor. Gay prostitutes are not fully free to sell their body, so they are more like serfs than wage workers. IMO it is only with mass communications and new media (so newspapers, film, Craigslist and so on) that a hidden but real subsumption of prostitution has begun to take place. In the developed world with Craigslist and so on, prostitutes are slowly becoming more like Uber and gig work workers than serfs. I would say that queer people constitute a nation within a nation inside the imperial core and largely not within the imperial periphery though the situation is still changing. This in no way makes state killing of queer people good.
>>2458630>>2458688I don't see how we could constitute a national group though. Like a gay nation with its own language and armed forces and propaganda billboards declaring that the population "better werk."
Anyways here's a critical article of Traore from a Nigerien historian:
<You’ve described Traoré’s leadership as presenting itself as a ‘revolution’. Is this a genuinely revolutionary process, or is it simply a consolidation of authoritarian rule?>It is an authoritarian revolution, the opposite of a democratic one. In October 2014, the Burkinabès revolted against the despot Blaise Compaoré. A year later, a military loyalist made a coup against the interim democratic government in an attempt to restore Compaoré. The population rose up again and stopped him. In none of these episodes did the army play a role. So the people called it a revolution. The term is excessive, since the political conditions were not changed, but it was understandable. When the leaders of that popular movement wanted to commemorate its anniversary in October 2023 (as they had done before), the machete-wielding supporters of Traoré, known as Wayiyan (‘Get Out!’), threatened to attack anyone who organised such a ceremony. Needless to say, it did not happen. Since then, all of the leaders have been either arrested — with no known charge — or fled the country. In Traoré’s Burkina, one is either behind him, and thus a patriot, or against him, and hence an apatride (French for ‘without a fatherland’, or a stateless person).
<Understanding the difficult economic and political situation facing Burkina Faso, what is Traoré doing differently from the corrupt and compradorist leadership of the past? What are the ordinary people of Burkina Faso experiencing on the ground? What concrete policies is he advancing to overcome underdevelopment and the extreme poverty facing the majority?>RI: It is a bit surreal to speak of development in a country, half of which is basically an ungoverned war zone. Traoré is prodigal in symbolic decisions, but many of these are in fact old projects that he takes up and tries to push to an extreme that would garner the plaudits of the hero-worshippers. One example is to make education free from primary school to university. Free education was legislated some years ago, though implementation is difficult, given the puny state budgets. Traoré extends it to the university. This is a decision that was not preceded by any debates about how to fund it and make it work, what good it would do, etc., especially since the fundamental problem is the quality of the education, not its cost. In any case, free debate is verboten in Traoré’s Burkina. The sensible types who, for some reason, support him are a bit schizophrenic for that reason. I have mentored a Burkinabè think tank whose members want to believe in Traoré, but who find it extremely difficult to do their work — which is about development — because everyone is keeping their head down. No one wants to speak or share any information. There is neither law nor political patronage, only one man’s rule.
<Traoré’s government claims to be fighting Islamist insurgents. Has his regime made any meaningful progress with this? How is his legitimacy being maintained among ordinary Burkinabè?>Traoré is failing, like the two other Sahel juntas, though in his own peculiar way. This involves a degree of violence against civilians of Fulani origin that is so great that some call it genocide. It is more of a vendetta. Of course, the Islamists are also very violent. But their violence is increased by the state’s violence. It’s a bloody cycle. In any case, Burkina is where the Jihadists are making the most progress today, and that worries the Nigerians. Without saying it publicly, they resent Traoré’s anti-Fulani animus, since it radicalises the Fulani on their side of the border too.
>I find the word legitimacy irrelevant in this context. We basically have two Burkinas: one which worships Traoré and another which hates him. It is hard to say which one is the majority; maybe it’s a third one — the Burkina of those who have resigned themselves and sigh, ‘Allons seulement’. This is a phrase whose words are French but whose meaning is African. It means, ‘let’s carry on since there’s nothing we can do.’ In any case, the Traoré worshippers and followers are the only ones you would hear in Burkina, since the public square has been turned into a platform for them. The others are silenced or in exile.[…]
<To what extent does he draw on the legacy of Thomas Sankara? Would you characterise him as socialist in orientation?>No, the times are not the same. Sankara came of age in the seventies, at a time when socialist literacy was very high in Africa and people actually read, thought/debated, and wrote profusely. I remember reading Marx in secondary school! Traoré is the voice of a more recent mood of sombre Pan-Africanism that is built on historical resentment, identity obsessions, and conservative views of society — patriarchal, religious, and homophobic. (Burkina, like Mali and Niger, has criminalised homosexuality, to the plaudits of the masses). He is persecuting social progressives and relies on the support of religious leaders, customary authorities, and cultural fundamentalists. This does create some disciplinarian rallying in support of things like pride in ‘Burkinabè cultures’ and things like that. But this is closer to the stilted cultural mobilisation in support of the leader, seen under previous military dictatorships, than to the sunny expressiveness that suffused the Maison du Peuple in the time of Sankara.https://links.org.au/burkina-fasos-ibrahim-traore-conservative-anti-democratic-despot-or-anti-imperialist-hero >>2458741> Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is a journal for a post-Cold War left. It is a journal that rejects the Stalinist distortion of the socialist project; takes into account ecological questions; is committed to taking steps to bring together the forces for socialism in the world today; a journal that aspires to unite Marxists from different political traditions because it discusses openly and constructively.It's not impossible for Trotskyists to do good work but it is sus.
IDK I need to read into this guy's background a bit more before I think about his opinions.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/rahmane-idrissahttps://www.theafricainstitute.org/institute-team/abdourahmane-idrissa-fellow/ >>2460079really, the western leftist is desperate for national socialism of the SA kind (make the capitalists share with the working man!!!), but they're in an awkward position because nazism hasn't yet been FULLY normalized, and it's a "right wing" thing anyway
but in a decade these contradictions will resolve themselves, and both the populist right and the populist left in the west will unite under the ideology of bourgeois socialism. both have the same material conditions after all, being comprised of precarious PB / Middle class
i mean that's basically what happened in germany lmao
>>2460079>>2460082Funny as fuck to read this from a pair of honkies that are trying to project “socialism” onto an impoverished tiny military junta all because of the imagine ideology of the leader of the coup, just so these same western leftoids (yourselves) that pretend to be better than all the West can feel empowered by a purely imagined connection to yet another nationalist bourgeois dictatorship lmao
God MLoids are lower than the worms in my dog’s shit
>>2475400Let me have a crack at it before the inevitably immeasurably retarded reply. He's:
Orthodox (attention-whore) aka The one True Marxist
>>2460079>Explain why leftoids worship third world hitlers<Immediately turn it into guilt mongering for anyone that dares not spit shine Third World Hitler with their esophagus >>2475400>Have you considered you critique MLism (aka Lesser Hitlerism) because you are an anarchist and don’t understand my retarded Strong Man ideology enough?I understand Stalinists plenty fine, and it’s ironic that Stalinists dare insult anarchists. The fuck makes you different from an anarchist? Because you worship Marx like a prophet despite not reading him? Same as Lenin? Is it that you worship people with an actual bodycount unlike anarchoids? The greatest thing about anarchists is that they don’t pretend to be Marxists. The worst thing about MLs is that they do.
>Are you a Maoist?Why is being a Marxist structurally impossible in your brain? Is it internet poisoning? Too much interaction with overly emotional sentimentalist white guilt freaks on the internet to comprehend the theories of Karl Marx?
And of course the answer remains the same always. I would never expect anything else.
Let us turn to my favorite thinker, myself
>It's a Sisyphean exercise to try to make anti-politics thinkers into something else by persuading them of the argument and the "salience of reality". For "real change" you gotta wait for reality to bite them in the ass. It's like talking to the common liberal. It'll be something like, they heard about authoritarianism, undemocratic behavior, oppression and what have you. Then you may try to tell them how we have much the same in our own country and it isn't that simple and what have you. They will agree with you, nod their head but never really get it. The urge to put things into the authoritarian / democratic boxes is too strong with them. And their own country can do no wrong, oh sure it does wrong (here and there, but you know, they are real people with hopes and dreams, not like those impure darkies) but their evil is never of the same quality as the others. It is not "real evil". It is just different, they know. Why? How? Who knows.
>>2475404>Too much interaction with overly emotional sentimentalistI don‘t think you are in a position to speak.
So you are an orthodox Marxist.
>>2475425>Third World HitlersThere are also white people who live in the USA that worship third world hitlers and despise actual gay africans that don’t want to die lmao
They tell those Africans that they are degenerates brainwashed by the West and need to be shot in their skulls and massacred because sucking a cock = national suicide
These same american honkies, that usually want to kill every other honkie in their country out of guilt, are also staunch ultra-nationalists for these countries, usually arguing that anything from mass imprisonment due to sexuality or ethnic cleansing are justifiable if they (essentially) “own” the West (as if the West gives a flying fuck about a dead homo in Africa)
> who openly display their racism and hostility when an underdeveloped region of the world turns out to be underdevelopedWhy didn’t Burkina Faso criminalize homosexuality in its entire history until a military junta decided to?
Furthermore, why would I, as a communist, give a flying fuck about what justifications for oppressing the proletariat people like you can conceive of? Or are gays not proletarians? If I put a gun to your head would you cease to be a proletarian while I decide whether or not to send you to Hell?
> Pre-colonial Burkina Faso was a congregate of societies that did not discriminate against homosexuals. It was the implementation of Western style patriarchy under French colonialism as a superstructural measure to more easily coordinate the exploitation of the country, and surprise surprise this has impacted their society long term. But sure, keep ridiculing that claim while calling them Hitlerites when you can barely conceal your racism as you‘re crashing out in this thread.So the French, who did not criminalize homosexuality, are why Burkina Faso brutally oppressing proletarians right now is justified?
Ngl buddy
You genuinely deserve to have your life taken from you
>>2401787Depends on whether he is building commie blocks or not. Dense cities = industrialization of domestic labor = breakdown of the bourgeois family = gay rights.
Commie blocks are the real movement of the LGBT.
>>2475500I’m a uyghur myself if that makes you race obsessed freaks feel better
It’s a racialized crashout to recognize that honkie americans openly launder their own white guilt to justify their cultish support of third world dictators they have never met nor will ever suffer under?
Do you cease being a proletarian when you suck a cock or work the shaft? What specifically justifies this so that putting proles in prison camps for being gay = not hitlerite but criticizing this move and calling out westoid leftoids for obviously laundering white guilt into a worldview = hitlerite?
>>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
>>2479642I never said that it was incompatible? I said I don't think Burkina Faso should have criminalized homosexuality, but was pointing out that your overly emotional response that was to "shoot an ML on sight" for "slaughtering and imprisoning proles for arbitrary reasons" and implying that somehow makes them nazis, is pure idealism and a vindictive fantasy based on assumptions.
As an aside, there is nothing "ML" about Burkina Faso, and there are many african countries which already had homosexuality criminalized, and yet completely unenforced, so although regrettable in any event, it could be possible this wouldn't even lead to any arbitrary arrests, and is just virtue signalling on behalf of a bonapartist regime.
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