Background
Scholars have noted ongoing neocolonialism, in which former colonial governments and their corporations extract value from Africa’s resources without commensurately benefiting Africans (here, here). However, the US and Western Europeans’ strategy to recolonize Africa has escaped scholars and leaders from the Global south. Western leaders have meticulously concealed this goal, but indiscrete ones such as Boris Johnson and Erik Prince have revealed it, to the applause of racist audiences. This paper evaluates Princes’ interview published on his channel Off Leash in February 2024 (here) to glean into American and European’s imperialist strategy to colonize all-resource-rich countries, noting that his speech mirrored Johnson’s views that colonialism should never have ended (here). In the video, Prince, who is the founder of the atrocious Blackwater (now Academi) mercenary group that conducted Nisour Massacre (here) for the US, asserted that Washington should recolonize Africa, Venezuela, and Iran since these countries ‘cannot govern themselves’ while his interlocutor added the ‘national Security interests’ justification. Blackwater conducted the massacre for the US as the country downgraded the mercenaries’ crimes to ‘manslaughter’ and the president pardoned them after conviction (here). Prince, like Johnson, seems to have prematurely leaked his handlers’ plans to move from neocolonialism to full colonialism, and the global south should plan accordingly.
Mercenaries Prince and Johnson
Prince insisted that Africa should be recolonized because its leaders do not serve their populations but only shop in Paris. The racist Prince did not explain why Africans are qualitatively better off under such leaders, than when they were governed by white colonialists that conducted genocide, exploitation and repression against black people (here). Also, he does not blame Paris for accepting money from such African leaders. To condemn Iran and Venezuela to colonization, Prince weaved a story around an instance where the US border services cleared a Somali immigrant along the southern border, only for the federal agencies to later discover that he had links to Somali-based Al-Shabaab terrorists, before roping in Iran into the narrative that it also ships Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) spies as immigrants through Venezuela. He produced no evidence. Also, Prince did not blame US boarder services for laxity or his government for creating or abetting Al-Shabaab, but gave a simplistic and, racist tale that the Global South cannot govern itself, which he probably heard from his colonialist and extractivists forebears. His role in the US navy and later as pentagon’s and CIA’s appendage places him in a position to understand his country’s central role in causing the crises facing it. He must have known that Al-Shabaab developed due to (or despite) the US military meddling in Somalia since the 1980s, according to the CIA edited Wikipedia (here). Both the US and Al-Shabaab could be partners, as the former could not sanction the terror group, until a month ago (here), when patriotic Somalis are nearly rooting out the group. Also, the group has the disproportionate number of UK citizens (here, here, and here), while London is Washington’s partner in the secretive and racist Anglo-Saxons’ Five-eye intelligence group. Furthermore, Prince’s pedestrian claims against Iran and Venezuela, can be conceptualized in the context that both are oil-rich and have suffered Anglo-American domination, regime change and rabid sanctions campaign. It is against such oil-rich countries that spurious allegations such as possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) for Iraq, or the presence of government-sponsored rape programs in Libya (here) are trumpeted in the western media before being conveniently withdrawn (here, here) after the Anglo-Saxons’ empire starts a war on them and steals oil.
Prince’s tales eerily resemble those made by Johnson, decrying how colonization should not have ended as it enabled the British to control crops that African farmed. Johnson rushed to conceal Anglo-Saxons neocolonial interests by stating that ‘conditions’ of Africans have worsened because the British left. Clearly, Johnson believes that the ideal conditions for Africans is when they are dictated to on what to farm, the markets and prices, which is colonialism. Johnson would therefore desire the terror services of Prince to force Africans to only grow what Anglo-Saxons want, and that is what both men think would constitute correctly governing Africans.
Genocide and Hypocrisy; Anglo-Saxons’ Modus Operandi
Prince has most likely won a star in the Anglo-Saxon’s hall of fame for conducting a massacre against Iraqis, which made his handlers proud as they rewarded his leader. His senior, Tony Blair, got knighted for his ‘service’, maybe, in leading Anglo-Saxons in eliminating a million Iraqis and others that sit on resources that westerners want but cannot buy. Blair and his fellow Anglo-Saxon, George Bush used Blackwater and regular militaries for wars and massacres. Prince represents the essence of the American and Anglo-Saxons Empire, and Johnson has been cited admiring and trying to ape past Anglo-Saxon nationalist Winston Churchill (here). In an earlier interview with ABC News, Prince was not remorseful about Nisour Massacre but deplored his government for investigating the crime as a waste of judicial time. His unfortunate stand was proven to represent Washington’s when Trump pardoned the perpetrators. Who would expect the Criminal Washington, which attempted to deny its Amiriyah Shelter bombing in which over 400 civilian died (here) or mass tortured people at Abu Ghraib prisons (here) to hold Blackwater criminals to account? Killing and torturing everybody that Anglo-Saxons do not like is the US/UKs modus operandi, and Prince is the current empire’s face. He is to the American empire what the British East India Company or the Mississipi Company were to the British and the French empires, respectively. The British East India Company controlled trade in India, South East Asia and East Asia, specializing in colonizing and looting in addition to sea piracy under various justifications. It had a military of over 260000, (double the British army) operating abroad outside any laws for the Empire’s benefits just as Blackwater has been doing, killing and terrorizing others to accept Anglo-Saxons domination.
Anglo-Saxon’s Mind Stuck in the Past
Prince’s calling on the US to colonize Africa, Iran and Venezuela is similar to Johnson’s regret that colonialists left Africa. Their claim that the rest of the world has been unable to govern itself is cynical and hypocritical, but not surprising. Prince’s claiming that the US or the UK can govern Africa better is a blatant lie, as the continent has largely thrived in post-colonial space despite western interference and neocolonialism, both of which will be weakened further in a multipolar world. Kenyans, for instance, have experienced growth in income levels, education achievements, and life expectancy in addition to massive infrastructural development only in 60 years of independence, as compared to genocide, and poverty that were imposed by the British colonial rule for 68 years. Prince’s and Johnson’s statements are racist, and meant to deceive audiences that black people would rather be poor or die under white colonization than thrive under black leadership, which is absurd. While areas of improvement to reduce prevalent poverty in some communities are needed in Africa, American or British colonialism is not and cannot stand now, since it was resoundingly defeated in the last century.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”