After a bit of comparing and contrasting French colonialism with the British type, Dave tells us about the French Foreign Legion; Then we’re on to a key piece in France’s Scramble for Africa, the theft of Tunis from the Bey, Muhammad Sadok. In the process, the French colonizers insisted they were saving Sadok Bey from a threat from local tribes. He insisted he didn’t need the help, but in the end, Tunisia became a French protectorate.
Author: Justin Podur
Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction.
AER 105: Are your favorite academic theorists really CIA spooks? With Gabriel Rockhill
Talking to Gabriel Rockhill, professor and director of the Critical Theory Workshop. Ever wonder why the CIA thought it was worthwhile to sponsor European left-wing academic theories? We talk about Derrida, Foucault, Arendt, and why even if you think obscure academic theory isn’t important, you might be mistaken. Author or editor of nine books, Rockhill is currently working on a book tentatively titled The Intellectual World War: The CIA’s Failed Attempt to Kill the Idea of Communism.
Scramble for Africa 13: France in the Scramble – the Algeria Precedent and Abdelkader’s Resistance
We talked about France’s colonization of Algeria back in Civilizations Episode 15 (in August 2020). We revisit it now, as France’s entry point into the Scramble for Africa. Algeria was France’s template for colonizing Africa and many of the dynamics of France’s African colonial crimes can be seen developing in Algeria. We end up focusing quite a bit on Abd el Kader’s Resistance to colonization. And the depopulation of Algeria under colonialism: between 1830-1872, the country’s population went from 3 milion to 2.125 million, by one estimate.
Scramble for Africa 12b: The British Sack Benin in 1897
Using Dan Hicks’s 2020 book The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, Justin tells the story of how the British destroyed Benin, stole their stuff, and put it in museums. It’s part of the story of the British Scramble for West Africa, but we give it its own episode to show you Hicks’s research.
AER 104: Will Ukraine be Putin’s Afghanistan? With Scott Ritter
I interviewed Scott Ritter, former Marine, weapons inspector, and current author and writer about the war in Ukraine. We start with his experiences as a young member of the US military studying the Soviet Union and preparing for war with Russia; then talk about the surprises when he actually met Russians under conditions of detente. I asked him, since everybody seems to be an armchair military analyst, how we could be better at it. Then we talk about Russia’s goals, the situation in Ukraine, how Russia’s conducting the war so far (we talked on Day 9), and the prospects for Ukraine becoming “another Afghanistan”.
AER 103: Vaccine Mandates and Dispersed Convoys
I’m joined by AER’s favorite doctor Tarek Loubani and by another doctor (this time a doctor of history), Dorotea Gucciardo, a lecturer in the history of medicine. I ask Tarek why he believes vaccine mandates work; I ask Dorotea how, as a non-scientist, she evaluates medical information. Then we talk about the Ottawa convoy, which has now dispersed to Canadian cities, and local efforts to prevent the convoys from preventing medical workers from doing their work.
AEP February newsletter: Peace is the priority
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Dear friends,
I don’t have a February article to share (my China-Africa article came out in FAIR on Jan 31) but I have had inquiries about what someone who runs a site called the “Anti-Empire Project” has to say about the war in Ukraine.
I have been tweeting about it and today what I mainly had to say was expressing hope that the negotiations yield something. I’ve been told they’ve already broken off and amounted to nothing, but I can’t verify that and anyway that’s how negotiations go – they yield nothing until they yield something.
You can look back at the archives on my site and see that Russia and Ukraine aren’t areas that I cover extensively – though of course as an antiwar activist you’ll find a few items on it – like this interview from 2017 with academic Halyna Mokrushyna from the early days of the podcast (can’t say much about the audio quality, but Halyna was insightful if you’re looking for background). But it’s impossible to not pay attention to this so instead of claiming any instant expertise that I do not have, let me say a few things about my approach to these situations and then a few things that I’m reading.
Sources: You will have figured out that there is an “information war” happening as part of the actual war. When you see a claim about something that happened in the war, you have to apply the usual tests – what are the interests of the source? Does the information fit the source’s biases or run against them? What is the source’s past record – what were they working on and doing before this current conflict started? Not just what kinds of things, but how accurate were they? Do they have good academic practice (do they reveal their sources and research methods so that you can follow their trail)? Start with the CRAAP method (Currency, Relevance, Accuracy, Authority, Purpose) and go from there. Know that during wars there is 10x more disinformation than usual and there’s a lot in normal times.
Analysis: At the risk of having some of you new subscribers flee, you should know that my point of view is that there is only one empire in the world today. That’s why this site isn’t called the “Anti-EmpireS Project”. There are many relationships between states and there are big states that exert disproportionate influence on their smaller neighbours. But when you hear me talking about “the Empire”, I’m referring to a whole background of the events of the past 250 years or so, when first the British Empire and now the American Empire ruled (and a pretty smooth transition between these two). If you’re skeptical about this, I doubt I’ll be able to convince you in one paragraph of a newsletter but I am planning to do at least a podcast episode on this topic some time soon. The point here though is that I do understand the context of this to be NATO expansion and the US desire to prevent any rivals from presenting any challenge to its influence, and to try to ensure that the only power that can set red lines is the US.
The only other point of analysis that I’d suggest is that you reject any personal, psychological or pseudo-psychological, explanations of the situation (e.g. “Putin is a madman”). These are a substitute for hard thinking and information, and get you away from thinking about political and economic issues that are key to understanding the problem and its solution. The same goes for demonization, and though you know I am no fan of “both sides” type analysis, this is a case where demonization should be strictly avoided, on “both sides”. Nazi-type parties polled around 2% in the 2019 Ukraine election, despite their high visibility. Ukraine and Russia are neighbours and will have to live as neighbours when this is over. It would be unhelpful to that future to do demonizing if you lived there. To do demonizing from elsewhere is reprehensible.
Peace is the priority: If this is an anti-empire project, one premise is that war has a pro-empire bias and peace has an anti-empire bias. I know that you could read the whole history of wars of national liberation otherwise – but even wars of national liberation end with peace agreements and it’s my belief that the faster and less destructive the path to a peace agreement, the better. Another related point is that, as many have said, peace deals are made between enemies, not friends – the right people to talk are the people who are fighting and the right time for a peace agreement is yesterday if possible, but right now will do.
Alright. Some readings:
-Michael Hudson, America Defeats Germany for the Third Time – the author of Superimperialism explains some of the economics.
-Ivan Timofeev, Ukraine: Three Scenarios – a Russian writer outlines three scenarios a month ago, and we are in scenario 1.
-MA Bhadrakumar – an Indian ex-diplomat runs a well-informed blog, Indian Punchline, on world events with lots of information on Ukraine-Russia right now.
-I’d also recommend watching the US-based, well-connected John Meirsheimer’s lecture from 2015, “Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault?” and his updated talk from last week, given to a university audience in London over Zoom.
There is more, but I’ll leave it there. I’d be happy to hear from you what you’re reading and thinking about this, and whatever you think could help nudge the situation towards a peaceful resolution.
-Justin
Scramble for Africa 12: The British Scramble for West Africa
We start this episode with a few minutes of reading reviews – from fans and not-fans! Perhaps this will inspire you to review us too. Then we’re on to the British Scrambling for West Africa. Some of the Africans who fought back, of course, notably Bai Bureh and Yaa Asentewaa. Lord Lugard’s ideas of the Dual Mandate and the debate on indirect rule. The trickery and wars that led to the consolidation of Nigeria into a British colony. Some tales near the end of the incredible missing imperial records — too many to be coincidental.
AER 102: Are we in a multipolar world? And the trucker convoy, with Ben Norton
Ben Norton of the new site multipolarista.com joins me to talk about a wide range of anti-imperialist topics, from Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to Ortega and Maduro. We end up trying to figure out “patriotic socialism”, support for the “trucker convoy” (which is opposed by most truckers and which has very few truckers). Towards the end there’s a detailed theoretical discussion of how differences and splits occur not just among socialists but also among right-wing conservatives, and what the class basis for these kinds of splits might be. Are we in a multipolar world?
Scramble for Africa 11: Theodore Herzl, the Uganda Plan, and the Zionist Scramble for East Africa
At the first Zionist Congress in 1897, delegates agreed to pursue the colonization of Palestine. But at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903, Theodor Herzl presented a proposal for a colony in East Africa – he presented it as a mere stepping stone to Zion, but it caused bitter divisions among the delegates. We tell the little-known story of the British negotiations with the Zionist movement for a colony in Africa, centering on the founder himself, Theodore Herzl (not to be confused with a contemporary Viennese colonialist utopian named Theodore Hertzka, whose novel also became the basis for a failed African colonization scheme…). Our last stop in the British Scramble for East Africa (West Africa’s next).