Reviewed by Dan Glazebrook
snip
But the most pernicious of the lies that facilitated the Libyan war was the myth of the "African mercenary". Racist pogroms were characteristic of the Libyan rebellion from its very inception, when 50 sub-Saharan African migrants were burnt alive in Al-Bayda on the second day of the insurgency.
An Amnesty International report from September 2011 made it clear that this was no isolated incident: "When al-Bayda, Benghazi, Derna, Misrata and other cities first fell under the control of the NTC in February, anti-Gaddafi forces carried out house raids, killing and other violent attacks" against sub-Saharan Africans and black Libyans, and "what we are seeing in western Libya is a very similar pattern to what we have seen in Benghazi and Misrata after those cities fell to the rebels" - arbitrary detention, torture and execution of black people.
snip
But such disqualification has been a systematic practice of liberalism from the days of John Locke, through the US war of independence and into the age of nineteenth century imperialism and beyond. Indeed, Forte argues that the barely-veiled "racial fear of mean African bogeymen swamping Libya like zombies" implicit in the "African mercenary" story, was uniquely and precisely formulated to tap into a rich historical vein of European fantasies about plagues of black mobs. That the myth gained so much traction despite zero evidence, says Forte, "tells us a great deal about the role of racial prejudice and propaganda in mobilizing public opinion in the West and organizing international relations".
Yet the racism of the rebel fighters was not only useful for mobilizing European public opinion - it also played a strategic function, as far as NATO planners were concerned. By bringing to power a virulently anti-black government, the West has ensured that Libya's trajectory as a pan-African state has been brought to a violent end, and that its oil wealth will no longer be used for African development.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-250413.html
= new reply since forum marked as read