Most propaganda is so well engineered that it blends into society’s awareness so seamlessly that its presence is only detected in its effects.

A review: of the propagation of the message „Starving Children in Africa“ & how it is still relevant to what is happening now in historic Palestine, Congo, and Sudan alike.

INTRODUCTION

Having recognised that the current media circus of the West is shamelessly lenient to its militant and colonial foreign policy, totalitarian state regulations and ever diminishing freedoms even for its own citizens, despite the rising media literacy of upcoming generations that refuse to be complicit, it is valid to wonder what will be the future of state propaganda. In most recent memory, they targeted immigrants, the victims of their political wars who are blamed for consequences of wealth disparities and class inequalities, and I wonder who will be the next target?

HOW THE WEST RE-WRITES HISTORY

History books of the West and its ally states will surely remain determined to steer the perception of history into a well-known colonial dogma of its honourable place in history, whose hands are clean, and above all giving to the “poor” that are in truth ravaged by famine, poverty and disastrous consequences of wars, political and economic instability, but by whose hand and at whose gain? I’ll tell you this much, not for gain of the average working citizen in the West. Propaganda is efficient when it does not pose the question of who is responsible and in which way do the responsible continues to add to the problem that originated from its source. Propaganda messaging is therefore always partial in the portrayal of the issue and often shifts blame onto actual victims of its regime.

I imagine great efforts and resources will be put into conveying the messages of future propaganda campaigns. Perhaps, another generationally prevailing phrase similar to that of the “starving children of Africa”. There is no denying that famine and conflict that had its infancy in colonialism continue to be an immanent threat to the lives of countless citizens in parts of Africa. However, Africa is a vast continent with equal social, political and cultural diversity as any other continent. The point that I am trying to illustrate is that we take for granted the efficiency and effects of a good crafted messaging that despite being coined generations ago, stood to outlive its creators, and still today the global majority subscribes to the world view of three separate worlds that exist simultaneously but separately and not intertwined in histories.

EFFICIENT PROPAGANDA MESSAGING

Historically accurate sentiments such as “Sudan still at war due to British rule” or “Belgian colonial regime to kill record numbers of newborns in DR Congo as a consequence of intense enslavement and sequential civil war” have a noticeably different ring to “Starving Children in Africa”. The Kingdom of Congo in its existence controlled a significant portion of western and central Africa, including parts that are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, from the 14th century up until the early 19th century when it was brutally colonised by the Belgium King Leopold II, when it was ironically renamed Congo “Free” State. Now, just because it is said the colonizer was a king or a queen does not dispute the fact that many Belgians, English, and Americans alike participated in the massive machinery of what was the Atlantic slave trade.

Even though the historically accurate versions are perhaps not as catchy, “Starving Children in Africa” surely is. The messaging hides the responsible, it shifts blame, it poses the problem as a passive occurrence that’s the result of an underdeveloped industry, and as you’ll notice it does not specify where in Africa, which once again diverges from further inquiry into the history. Rather, it groups an entire continent as a dehumanised monolith, positioned at the very bottom of the world hierarch imagined by the colonial West.

In addition, it conveys a message of care for the humanity of those affected by famine though in reality it is quite sinister. When taken in consideration that the colonial propaganda hides that the western nations themselves are responsible for the famines and the conflicts. Congo is one of the most resource dense parts of Earth, as is the African continent as a whole. This virtue has been exploited for over a century in varying degrees of direct or indirect “business practices”. The crude extraction of resources amongst which most notably the human resource, built many of the world’s empires. The sinister reality comes down to the continuation of not only the use of this phrase but as well the exploitative chain of the production of goods that is accurately described as modern-day slavery.

ISLAMOPHOBIA

The Islamophobic ideology has been pervasive in the recent decades in the West. As a result, there is a rise in racial profiling, hate crimes, and an overall animosity to the symbols of Islam. This worked in favour to the demonisation and dehumanisation of the Palestinians, to such a degree that it erased the religious diversity of ethnic Palestinians. This exemplifies how messages work to create a continual and gradual rising of dismay and ever diminishing understanding of an ethnicity, a race or a religious group. Another natural consequence of the propaganda machine is social disarray in which displeased citizens take it upon themselves to reinstill “order” by exiling Islam from the West.

The once-rich historic nation of Palestine held quite the authority in the proceedings of world economics as exemplified during the events of Arab oil embargo in 1973. However, under the illegitimate and brutal rule of Israel, a Western ally, its global presence has nearly been eradicated since. The Zionist propaganda machine has not only been invented in cahoots with the West who founded Israel not long after the ending of the second world war under the rhetoric of “A land without people for people without a land” but just earlier this year the leader of the free world doubled down despite the ongoing genocide and confirmed that in those years it was a necessity to “give the Jews their ethnic state” and it is still necessary for the State of Israel to reserve their right to territorial expansion.

However, that arranged deal of an ethnic state happened to be placed on top of a booming and very much inhabited territory. From that point, one conflict followed another in efforts to expel the Palestinian population. The same territory was then illegally occupied, the native population remained expelled on the outskirts and unable to return, while those that remained were internally displaced in refugee camps and subjugated to political apartheid, a string of merciless terrorist attacks and ultimately a genocide that strikingly resembles the Nazis “Final Solution”.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

There is a sociologically interesting happening of a social division between rising right leaning, or rather swinging, radicalised youth and those that are disillusioned by the dream of the west empirical force. The new generations in the West are beginning to be disillusioned as even they suffer the consequences of the crumbling of the dream of democracy. Societies in the West suffer as a result of a string of crisis though not as extensive as before mentioned examples, the dream of a civil society that ensures meritocracy in a society of equal opportunity, and freedom for all has become questionable at best, and completely inapplicable at worst.

The problem the empire faces is that it is, as I have heard once, “a snake eating its own tail” as every new piece of technology it produces disservices its ideology by revealing its production cost on Congo for example, and human impact.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, colonialism is not a relic of the past, it never left us. We have been raised on the diet of „starving children in Africa“ as just one of many generationally prevailing propaganda messages. The sectoring of the world regions into thirds while failing to report on the once thriving nations, the most resource-enriched continents that served as a foundation, a gold mine, on which began the world leading nation’s economic developments is a Western fabrication of history.

In reality we can not anticipate what the next great propaganda campaign might be, we can only understand the mechanisms that go into creating such messages, and prepare our thinking caps. Most propaganda is so well engineered that it blends into societies awareness so seamlessly that its presence is only detected in its effects.