A dangerous mentality at large in the West … and what could be done about it

“I think it’s more of a spectacle than anything,” said John Skvarek, 43, attending a huge concert in Philadelphia yesterday, one of the so-called Live 8 concerts being held around the world as part of a movement to generate increased Western financial aid to Africa. “I don’t know if having a whole bunch of people show up for a free show is going to save the world.”

Eliminating world poverty

No kidding. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what the organizers, performers, and supporters of Live 8 believe. Hysteria drives and surrounds this absurd movement. A couple of days ago, a full page ad running in a number of papers cried: “Tell our leaders you want extreme poverty to end. WE HAVE SIX DAYS.” Quoted in the ad is a speech Nelson Mandela gave in Norway on June 11:

In less than three weeks time the leaders of the G8 nations will meet in Scotland. They will face perhaps the most critical question that our world has had to face: how do we remove the face of poverty from our world. [Emphasis added.] So much of our common future will depend on the actions and plans of these leaders. They have an historical opportunity to open the door to hope and the possibility of a better future for all. History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks. We urge them to save the lives of our children let every child be a healthy child. We have this within our grasp. We know what to do and what it will cost. We now need leadership, vision and political courage.

The notion that Western countries are responsible for African poverty (whether “extreme” or normal) and, by writing enormous checks, can remove it just like that, and that this is the decisive moment to do so, suggests a Camp of the Saints-type mentality, a kind of collective psychosis. The same mass irrationality could be applied to demands that the West open its doors to millions of starving immigrants.

However, my criticisms don’t address the question, what should we do about Africa? I have an answer to this, but a commenter at Lucianne.com beat me to it:

The only thing that could possibly “fix” Africa is if we went in and imposed Western standards of rule of law, property rights, government, religion, marriage and fairness. But we can’t because libs would say we’re “insensitive and culturally imperialistic.” So Africans are left to starve and hack each other to death and get malaria under brutal, tribal dictators with twenty wives, and we’re stuck with idiot court jester singers and actors asking us to join them in fantasy land. Pax Americana is the only way.

My only disagreement is that such a Western re-involvement in Africa cannot be only or mainly the work of the U.S. (which of course has had no historical presence in Africa), but, primarily, of the nations of Europe. This would kill two birds with one stone. The Europeans are currently bereft of any spiritual or civilizational purpose, except, as an attempt to fill that vacuum, the EU project. But the EU project, by integrating the nations and peoples of Europe into a single bureacratic structure, means the abandonment and ultimately the dissolution of the national will and personality of the respective European peoples, and thus civilizational death. At the same time, Europeans feel guilty about the horrendous poverty of the Third World and of Africa in particular, and keep adopting counterproductive ways of alleviating it, even as Africa continues to slide into the abyss.

The solution to both problems is the European re-colonization of Africa. Taking over effective control of disfunctional African countries, establishing administration, laws, infrastructure, roads, schools, medicine, and so on, and thus providing the Africans with a decent existence, would give the Europeans the very thing they currently lack: a larger collective purpose, while it would also resolve their liberal guilt. The catch is that in order to fulfill these ends, Europeans (and Americans) must give up their liberalism and leftism. They must see that their respective countries have something positive to offer Africa which the Africans are not capable of providing on their own, and that extending this help requires that the Europeans exercise authority over Africa. In other words, the help would not consist of guilt-ridden, self-absorbed, liberal gestures (as with this ridiculous Live 8 business), but of guidance extended by Europeans to (as Albert Schweitzer put it) their African “younger brothers.”

Even more fundamental benefits would accrue to Europe from the neo-colonialism suggested here. First, the opening of career opportunities in the colonial service would produce a demand for a higher European birthrate, thus addressing Europe’s deadly demographic decline. Second, European nations exercising such a renewed leadership role, with the confidence and self-respect that it would bring, would believe in themselves once again, and would no longer be nihilistically seeking their own destruction through EU unification on one side and through Moslem and other Third-World immigration on the other.

In response to the above, a physician writes from England:

I agree with all you have said about Africa and the ridiculous Live 8 concert which has swept up mass hysteria in London and elsewhere. Having recently worked with and taught many African doctors (supposedly the cream of African brains), they themselves agree that Africa was better under European rule and would be better recolonised. They say that it is simply pride which stops them from asking for it. However they do accept that their quality of life and standard of living was much better before Independence when there was rule of law and stable institutions.

Since African states achieved independent government they have all deteriorated. Africans attribute this to mismanagement and corruption. Westerners attribute it to colonisation and exploitation. I know which ones are right, the Africans. They know that they cannot run stable advanced industrial democratic states, cannot invent things or manufacture complicated products. In reality they are happy to be led by whites. It is just the white liberals and a few of the intelligent blacks who seek to apportion blame to the European colonialists, prompting this mega donation of aid. The African politicians must have opened new Swiss bank accounts in preparation. Every institution runs by blacks descends into tyranny, chaos and corruption. It is difficult to see how any amount of aid or debt cancellation can make any difference.

What is the solution? Recolonisation? But this is also costly for the European countries. Leave Africans to sort out their problems? The Kenyan Nobel peace prize winner had a point when she said “Africans should find the answers to their problems within themselves”. However as many of their professional class are also lazy, corrupt and undisciplined it is difficult to see how this could happen.

My reply:

I see two possibilities that make sense. Something like the re-colonization I propose, or complete non-involvement of the West with Africa. The half-way, liberal approach, such as we have at present, makes no sense, because the half-way approach leaves Africa in its mess, while making us responsible for and guilty about that mess but denying us the means of fixing it.

Another VFR reader writes:

I don’t mean this to sound harsh, but the only solution is to leave Africa to the Africans and let them return to their natural state. European involvement will inevitably lead to the corruption of both the Europeans and the Africans, akin to what slavery did to our country. As you know, we are still feeling those repercussions today. There cannot and should not be contact among unequals. It will only lead to misery, guilt, and failure. Europeans will have to find meaning in their lives in other ways. The African population will undoubtedly decrease during a period of withdrawal of aid, but ultimately they will lead lives in accordance with their capabilties and the continent (and its wonderful animals) will return to a more healthy state.

BTW, if you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read Paul Theroux’s book about Africa. Although he is a liberal, his travels around the continent conviced him that this was the only way to deal with Africa.

LA to reader:

You may well be right. In a response to another reader, I said the only option other than re-colonialism is total non-involvement with Africa.

However, I think colonization is worth discussing. Even if it is never done, because the West lacked the energy for it, or couldn’t approve of such a non-liberal course, discussing it as a possibility demonstrates, by contrast, the total hopelessness of the liberal “foreign aid” paradigm that we have now. Then the only remaining option becomes the thing that you propose.

The same reader writes back:

The discussion of the colonization option would be defensible if there were a clear consensus as to the huge capability and sensibility differential between Europeans and Africans. If this were not acknowleged to begin with, you would just be setting up people to fail since all programs would be based upon a false premise. This would give the left an enormous opportunity to do what they do best—weave conspiracies, attack the high, criticize our motives, etc. Isn’t this akin to our attempt to constantly improve black children’s performance in this country and, of course, contantly being blamed for the inevitable failure.

LA to reader:

You and I are on the same page, I just didn’t communicate clearly enough what I meant.

When I referred to Schweitzer’s idea of the Africans as our “younger brothers,” my meaning was that we would not be indulging in false notions of equality. My colonization proposal is based on the explicit rejection of the liberal belief in racial equality of abilities and outcomes.

Furthermore, a complete non-involvement of the West with Africa would not be as simple and “neat” as it may sound. It is a very radical proposal, as it would require that Africa be literally cut off from the rest of the world. Why do I say this? Any trade, or any diplomatic relations, or any accessing of African resources, or any traveling to view and study those wonderful African animals, would require interaction between Westerners and Africans, and interaction between such total unequals would inevitably lead to Western influence and control over the Africans. And then we’d be right back where we started, veering back and forth between colonialism and liberal guilt. So, to escape that trap by letting Africa “return to its natural state” would mean literally letting it become the Dark Continent again—unknown, unseen, untouched by the feet of non-Africans.

However, even if the West steeled itself to such an unimaginably extreme step, it might not be practicable to do so, for strategic reasons. If the West withdrew completely from Africa, other civilizations, such as the Moslems or the Chinese, might rush into the breach. Would we want our adversaries to gain a power base in Africa?

Before people propose a complete Western withdrawal from Africa, they need to think through its implications.

The same reader writes back:

I don’t see the problem if the Muslims and China have a greater role in Africa and our role diminishes. What benefit does Africa offer as a strategic area? Their resources will always be available on the open market. We can also develop alternate sources. If we continue with our involvement in Africa, their concerns continue to be our concerns. Let the Muslims and Chinese expend their energy on trying to control this unforgiving continent. Given the enormity of this task, I don’t see this as being desirable. It would only weaken them. Did France and England really benefit from their adventures in Africa? Didn’t the U.S., free of this burden, thrive and prosper without African colonies? These adventures hold countries back, they do not enhance. Is it desirable that we be nurses and doctors to the poor for some perceived economic and strategic benefit?

On Monday night, July 4, another reader offers these tough-minded thoughts:

I agree the only way to lift up Africa is re-colonization, but this would require Western nations to fight brutal wars that most are unwilling to fight (for more than a few months anyway). Specifically, it would mean much more than saying “We are taking over, let us help you.” It would entail marching into a country, publicly whipping and hanging the war lords, marching down the street with their head on a stick, inviting their supporters to riot, and then slaughtering anyone that depended on the war lords for their patronage. One would have to litter the streets with corpses and soak them in blood in order to get to the point where help could be administered.

In short, the entire ruling class of a country would have to be either executed or forced to sit in the corner and accept impotence and poverty forever, while their populations instituted government structures, without giving them even a seat at the table or any hope of ever holding a position of responsibility. Furthermore, in order to send the right message to the rest of the continent, the defrocked war lords would not be allowed to leave the country in exile (or Switzerland), but would be thrown into holes deep underground to serve out their remaining days in starvation and humiliation.

This is necessary, but I doubt there is any way that the West is ready to adopt these measures. Most are either 1) liberals who feel that guilt and empty gestures are required, 2) conservatives who worship at the altar of the god of “stability”, or 3) moderates who give money to assuage their own guilt, not knowing or caring if that does any good. In fact, for the moderate, giving money solves the problem, because for the moderate guilt is the problem and feeling better about himself is the solution to the problem.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 03, 2005 01:30 PM | Send