The imperialist powers are bent on exploiting the labor and looting the mineral wealth of as many poor, underdeveloped countries as they possibly can.
Britain, France, Israel, Germany, and the U.S. conduct joint military action against Africans—acts such as the invasion of Grenada, a country of 110,000 African people and the invasion and destruction of Libya. The imperialists are further intensifying their use of military “proxies” within Africa against other parts of Africa not to defend the interests of Africa but to further the interests of capitalist-imperialism.
No small or isolated group of Africans can defeat imperialism, no matter how good their intentions. Only the working, struggling African masses can do it. But to do so, we must be organized and bound together by a common goal and guided by correct ideas. In other words, the masses must be correctly organized!
U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle
Dr. Gerald Horne is the author of over 30 books, among them most recently would be The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering and the Political Economy of Boxing and The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. He currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moors Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He is considered by many to be the gold standard for radical historians and the go-to scholar for alternatives to neoliberal political and historical narratives. We spoke with him about a wide variety of issues around our work concerning Africa.
AWB: Counterterrorism was the espoused pretext for the development and installation of US AFRICOM onto the African continent which now exists in 53 or the 54 countries. Can you talk about how terrorism is used today compared to how Communism once was, and has it indeed surpassed communism as the go-to pretext for U.S. imperial interventionism projects?
GH: A central problem with "Terrorism" as a lever for imperial intervention in Africa is the dearth of self-criticism. That is, during the Cold War, Washington collaborated with religious zealots and fanatics, not least in Afghanistan, not least with the rulers of certain Gulf monarchies, in order to weaken various socialist projects. Now like a perpetual motion machine, imperialism has now decided—at least on the surface—to target this phenomenon. I say "on the surface" because there is still collaboration with, e.g. Saudi Arabia and the vulturous regimes who signed the so-called "Abraham Accords" in September 2020 in order to weaken Palestinian resistance. Of course, today this phenomenon is now wreaking havoc in northern Mozambique.
AWB: You have done a great deal of comprehensive work on liberation struggles on the African continent. Unfortunately, your analysis is not the center of U.S. curriculums. What steps can be taken to change that reality?
GH: I think that work should be done in league with the Zinn Project, which seeks to inject progressivism in educational curricula. This would also include the two major unions—the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. This would also include fierce fightback against current legislative efforts to circumscribe "Critical Race Theory," which detractors could hardly describe or define, if pressed.
AWB: Israel has been making strides in establishing partnerships with several African countries despite its continued maintenance of an apartheid state and oppression of the indigenous Palestinian population. To what degree do you attribute this pattern of African countries turning a blind eye to Israeli human rights violations so short of a time after the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa?
GH: With the erosion of the socialist bloc, post 1991, African nations—and indeed the entire global left—has faced difficulty in standing up to U.S. imperialism and its proxy: Israel. On the other hand, this is nothing new, for even pre-1991 nations e.g. Morocco stood alongside imperialism. (Parenthetically, in my 16th-century book I pointed out that a gigantic step forward for the acceleration of the African Slave Trade took place in 1591 when Rabat collaborated with London in destabilizing the Songhay Empire; today, Rabat continues to suppress the liberation of "Western Sahara".) The struggle continues...
AWB: What will it take for Black evangelicals, be they in Africa or the Diaspora, to rethink their unconditional support for Israel?
GH: In order to force the "Black Evangelicals" to move, we will have to heighten our own struggle and then they will find the ground beneath their feet moving. There are already signs of rifts between BE and Israel and I do not envision this trend dissipating any time soon.
AWB: Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture are among the Pan Africanists who tied African American progress to the liberation of Africa. How can we grow the number of Black folks in America to this line of thinking?
GH: We must continue what we have been doing—with more. We must organize more picket lines and study groups. We must make more media appearances. We must launch more documentary projects. We must establish a presence at the African Union in Addis Ababa and CARICOM too. We must picket the OAS headquarters in Washington, DC, especially re: the crisis in Colombia. We must **organize.**
AWB: Thank you for your time and revolutionary analysis!
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Africa Day 2021: The Need for a Continental Response to the Global Crisis
Until Africa has a categorical break with these imperialist governments and their military institutions, genuine independence and sovereignty will remain elusive.
June 2, 2021 by Abayomi Azikiwe
Voices With Vision - June 1, 2021
This episode features a deep dive into the U.S. backed Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s war of secession from Ethiopia and its invasion of Eritrea.
June 1, 2021 by Craig Hall and Netfa Freeman
How foreign meddling destabilizes the Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is volatile and often the scene of violence, and its countries are victims of international interventions and interference that has played a destabilizing role.
May 29, 2021 by BreakThrough News
Mali is Just the Latest: US Africa Command Trained Troops Behind at Least Seven Coups in 13 Years
Since it was created in 2008, troops trained by AFRICOM have been directly responsible for at least seven successful coups d’etat in Africa.
May 28, 2021 by Morgan Artyukhina
African Financial Independence is a Threat to Imperialism
Many think that the West is pouring money into Africa through foreign aid and other private-sector flows. Actually, Africa has been a net creditor to the rest of the world for decades.
May 27, 2021 by Otobong Inieke
Africa Needs Unity Now and the Time Is Running Out, It’s a Choice between Life and Death
Without genuine African unity, the continent will remain at the mercy of imperialist domination and exploitation.
May 19, 2021 by Mafa Kwanisai Mafa
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Banner photo: U.S. AFRICOM soldiers conducting an operational and logistics assessment in Mali earlier this year. (Staff Sgt. Zoe Russell/U.S. AFRICOM)