The New Republic has a sharp polemic against the left for ignoring Africa.
As the preeminent umbrella organization of the hard left, ANSWER directs its outrage across the globe. This September, for instance, it plans “International Days of Protest against Occupation and Empire, from Palestine to Iraq to the Philippines to Cuba and Everywhere.”
But, as [Salon’s Laura] McClure found out, “everywhere” does not include Congo. In fact, it doesn’t include Africa at all. answer has organized no protests and issued no statements on Africa’s four most ravaged countries–Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe–although they contain exponentially more oppression and suffering than the four targeted by the group’s “International Days of Protest.”
In all fairness, Africa has been ignored across the American political spectrum, even among the liberals the New Republic applauds. And ANSWER is not all of the Left - in fact it is a reductively Leninist cover group. Still, in its worthwhile attempt to critique and fight US imperialism, the left in general has become blind to other problems and other modes of analysis.
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