By Mark Sleboda, REAL POLITICK Dec 9
The collective West is in their own twisted version of an anti-Russian Cultural Revolution rabidly vilifying and demonizing Russia to an extent never even dreamt of in the first Cold War, with Russian citizens being banned from international sporting and music events held in the West for the crime of being Russian, the attempt to cancel Russian culture to the extent that Russian composers and literature are being censored out of university curriculums and performances, and absurdly enough even Russian-breed cats and trees being excluded from competitions and Russian salad dressing (which has nothing at all to do with Russia) being renamed.
Meanwhile something very very different is going on in Africa and the rest of the Global South.
To the shock, dismay and outrage of the West – Africans and people elsewhere in the global South are literally raising up the Russian flag in protest.
The phenomenon has been reported in the Central African Republic, Burkino Faso, Mali, and Ethiopia, as well as Haiti in the Caribbean and even in the middle of Europe in Serbia.
But its far more than just raising the Russian flag – African states and the rest of the Global South have refused to implement Western sanctions against Russia.
What’s more despite Western sanctions weaponizing their control of the global financial and banking infrastructure, making transactions with Russia extremely difficult, trade with Africa is booming in grain, fertilizer, energy and arms deals, and more.
According to Dr. Mustafa Mheta, a fellow at the Johannesburg-based think tank Media Review Network (MRN),“Many countries across Africa are signing deals with Russia. It’s for the simple reason that Russia, like China, does not interfere in the affairs of its clients and treats them as equal and sovereign partners.”
The Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni declared, “We want to trade with Russia. We don’t want to fight other people’s enemies” and “An attack on Russia is an attack on Africa!”
Russia has gone another step further to win the hearts and minds of the people of Africa and donated enormous quantities of grain and fertilizer to needy African states for free.
Conversely African states have been giving the Kiev regime in Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy the cold shoulder, with only 4 out of 55 African Union leaders attending a video conference with Zelenskiy pushed by the West in June.
Africans in Ethiopia and several other African states actually massed in large queues outside Russian embassies immediately after the Russian intervention was launched, after hearing (false) rumors that Russia was signing up African volunteers to fight in Ukraine.
Several African states, including the Central African Republic, Mali, Madagascar, Sudan, and Mozambique, have turned to the Russian PMC Wagner for security services, often sending packing Western troops, particularly the former colonial power France, in the process.
Macron has blamed French troops being kicked out of their former colony Mali on a “predatory” Russian influence project and “disinformation”.
But it seemed that the government of Mali was far more concerned with the perniciousness of French influence operations and also banned French NGOs.
Across the board, Western media and govts are screaming in alarm about growing Russian influence in Africa, even as their own is waning.
The reason for all this is simple.
African states remember well the depredations of their former European colonial masters and the support that the USSR gave in assisting their struggles to escape from that Western colonial yoke.
And today, Russia as the Soviet Union’s geopolitical heir, is once again assuming the same role and helping them escape from the West’s neocolonial grip.
They aren’t stupid. They know how the current regime in Kiev seized power in an openly West-backed Putsch, launched a bloody civil war to subjugate its own people in the east to the seizure of power in Kiev, and made Ukraine into a complete client state of the West.
Africans simply don’t buy the Western narrative about the conflict being some Ukrainian anti-colonialist struggle against Russia but see it properly as a Western provoked proxy war on Russia.
Ordinary Africans and other people in the Global South are raising the Russian flag because they increasingly see Russia as standing up to the West –
they see the Russian flag as a symbol of defiance and resistance against US-led Western global Hegemony, and as a symbol of hope for a multipolar world.
This is a heavy burden for Russia to bear, raising the stakes of the conflict with NATO in Ukraine, beyond merely Russia’s own parochial national and security interests.
Many around the Rest of the world are now pinning their geopolitical hopes and prayers on a Russian victory over the West.
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