Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once asked the African Union for permission to speak to the members of the bloc, after noticing the majority of African states abstain from voting on resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) concerning Vladimir Putin's invasion of his country. Some African netizens have denounced Zelensky, arguing that he wants them to treat Putin as their enemy, as they were sticking to their "your enemy's enemy is not my friend" stance.
Ironically, they are into supporting the Russian dictator. Reason? Simply because he's anti-West, that he is challenging Western hegemony. They also belittle the influence of the Russian state on African affairs, and dismiss freshly-done crimes Russian forces have committed in the continent.
Criticism of Ukraine has become a trend among many critics of Western imperialism who are foolish (read more), judging Zelensky's administration as a puppet, either a victim of the West or a neo-Nazi regime. Accompanied with the condemnations are praises for Putin; he enjoys significant support from third-world countries (take Indonesia for instance). They are right to denounce the West's hegemony, but treating its rivals like Putin as never erring? That kind of thinking is prejudicial.
There are two kinds of perception of a common enemy: one is in the form of the likes of support for Ukraine among Syrian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Iranian and Belarusian peoples. Syrians (instance) and Belarusians acknowledge Putin's atrocities similar to their experiences: obliteration of towns and disinformation in the case of Syria, and prospects of annexation and Putin's disregard of national identity in the case of Belarus. Shared experiences connect these peoples with Ukrainians, and this is where they pull their solidarity out.
The other kind is in the form of "anti-imperialist" support for the West's opponents who happen to be its fellow imperialists (Russia, China, Iran). Many African and South Asian, and some Southeast Asian and Latin American, netizens claim the West can no longer fool them. Some of them would treat its enemies as balancing or redeeming forces, after observing Western atrocities from the period of colony expansions to protection of right-wing dictatorships to half-baked interventions. Shared experience distinguishes the former from this form; these are enslaved peoples misled by and therefore backing imperialist forces. Take note of Mali, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso: Mali and Burkina have French forces stationed, and the populaces do not feel the effects of their intervention in Islamist insurgencies (thus coups last year occurred), whilst Ethiopia got denounced by Western powers during its war with the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), it then went from blasting them to as far as accusing the former from aiding the Tigrayan rebels it treats as terrorists.
This kind of sentiment viewing the West's enemies positively of course emboldened them, putting regions like Africa in the geopolitical spotlight as their interest on these grew, seeing they would be welcomed by the regions' peoples. This thus marks the beginning of the appearance of their crimes towards the masses they deceive. I have put the effects of PR China's interference on Africa in one article, while concerning Putin, two crimes involving the private military company Wagner Group, widely believed to be operated by his "chef" Yevgeny Prigozhin, took place on African soil: one in the Central African Republic, with the United Nations investigators blaming the PMC; and another in Moura in Mali, in cooperation with the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) and under the guise of an anti-terror operation.
Time is running out for these peoples to be saved from the powers they gullibly support. There are two ways for them to discover they are being deceived: get lectured by the international community, or experience the forces' atrocities and not entertain disinforming claims. Do they need discipline to reach to a bloody point? If they are truly into battling imperialism, they have to shift their support because they need to be consistent in their beliefs.
And the truth will set them free.
Article posted on 24 April 2022, 18:55 (UTC +08:00).
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