The US Pentagon’s propaganda outlet Africa Defense Forum (ADF) has faced backlash in its attempts to mislead Africans.
Washington’s Confuse-and-Rule
The US has been trying to frame the world’s events as too complex for Africans to understand, pushing its biases packaged as a simpler-to-understand reality for Africans. However, these efforts are progressively failing, despite Washington’s persistently creating chaos and confusion to deny Africans a coherent view. The need to mislead Africans with scare stories of climate change, AI, and ‘terrorism’ has been accelerating as the US is progressively exposed for being unable to achieve practical results in security, economy, and development, despite posturing for the past three decades of its unipolar hegemony. One of Washington’s mouthpieces in Africa is the African Defense Forum (ADF), published quarterly by the US Africa Command (USAFRICOM) to “provide an international forum for African Security Professionals”; ‘African professionals’ based in the Pentagon. Noteworthy, the US has no territory in Africa, and it’s having an ‘Africa Command’ is pure imperialism. ADF’s ‘About’ page names areas it focuses on as counter-terrorism, civil-military relations, professionalism, transnational crime, and stability and good governance.
Surprisingly, America has established a ‘defense’ policy to dominate the entire world such that USAFRICOM’s teaching Africans about ‘professionalism’, ‘good governance’, and ‘counter-terrorism’ through its ADF reflects attempts at domination. The stated goals of both USAFRICOM and ADF are just diversions as the latter published an article “Al-Shabaab Still Deadly 18 Years after Emergence” attesting to the command’s failure to fight terrorism while continuing to exist under the justification of fighting the vice. Still, the military command and ADF will continue existing, the former seeking to dominate and the latter to confuse Africans. However, ADF’s recent attempts to bamboozle Africans are progressively rebutted by audiences who have displayed a deeper understanding of context, diminishing Washington’s ability to lie in the future.
Washington Lessons for ‘Kids’
The ADF’s page on the X (formerly Twitter) platform introduces its articles with the line “learn why”, showing how it assumes that its audiences are completely unaware of the subject being discussed, before outlining Washington’s twisted perspectives. For instance, its post on X from September 24 read “Learn why security analysts believe that entrenched GNA and LNA mercenary foreign fighters are delaying Libya’s reconciliation”. The post assumed that audiences did not know that Washington’s intervention in Libya, led to the division of the government into GNA and LNA factions. Therefore, ADF concealed how its benefactor had caused the Libyan conflict, the site is blaming both factions for not settling.
If Washington and its mouthpiece (ADF) genuinely wanted tranquility in Libya, the former would not have intervened, while the latter would have criticized the intervention and warned against such reckless adventures in the future. However, ADF assumes that history begins when Washington wants and tries to lead the audience to unquestionably believe its misleading coverage. Conversely, a good number of Africans rejected the Pentagon’s supremacist worldview, by replying to ADF’s skewed narrative and reminding its publishers that it was the US that caused the division in Libya by killing Gadhafi. Others called out the propaganda piece for lying. Another X user pointed out that Africans were progressively rejecting ADF’s framing of events, such that the American’s false storyline for Africans has hit a brick wall.
Africans are not Impressed, Propaganda Cannot Fly
ADF published another post on X claiming that China was exporting its communist political model to Africa, which allegedly endangered political pluralism, human rights, and long-term development prospects, but received instant backlash and schooling from African audiences. Its claim was outrageous, since the Chinese media or non-governmental organizations do not popularize the Chinese political system or intervene in the internal political affairs of African countries as Washington does. ADF’s fearmongering post misquoted the Chinese President, Xi Jinping’s proposal to establish party-to-party relations with Africa. Miss representation of Xi Jingping’s statement was done by the Pentagon-linked Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, based at the US National Defense University in Washington.
Therefore, ADF was breeding and propagating half-truths to move the US Pentagon’s goals but ignored how past US guidance had not helped Africans to achieve anything, making the latter seek alternative partnerships that work. Africans responding to ADF’s gas-lighting X post noted that America’s purported concern to preserve Africa’s long-term development prospects through Washington’s chosen political model has brought no results. Also, the so-called political pluralism that Washington insists on only creates a government where politicians always agree on their salary increases and reduction in corporations’ tax but disagree on providing services to citizens. Respondents were quick to reject the Pentagon’s proposal and proceeded to educate ADF that the Chinese model is superior to what Washington champions, as presented in the following sample of replies;
@MukasaLuka; China has overtaken world economies through practicability, not propaganda.
@Kule_Chinjika; China’s model is better than the brand of democracy practiced in many countries.
@ediemicho; You’re still teaching us multiparty politics, what have we gained?
@IbrahimHaliluM6, And China is a superpower and vibrant economic giant. If one party politics can make it happen, why not? …
@BUBBLE84918242; They should not forget to export it to Nigeria oh
@shi_zene; Democracy, in its current form, isn’t working for us
@Yusmore2 Is the current Democracy in Africa any better? Isn’t it also a scam?
@ME6703573947252; Adding to that, where is the problem?
@KirundaShafiki; Now the question is why China are one-party State achieved development in contrast to multiple party systems of the west
@stalino1879; Cheap magazine!….tell your sponsors in Washington, DC to back off!
As can be noted, Responses ranged from stating that the American system is much worse, stating that the Chinese system holds a better promise for Africans, to dismissing Washington’s propaganda piece as cheap and foreign. Several X users suggested that their countries import the Chinese system. X user @MukasaLuka expressed views that the author of the current article has stated that Washington is stuck in a competition paradigm based on pomposity instead of prioritizing practical developmental results for its ‘allies’. Other replies showed frustration with Washington’s perennial promise of long-term development prospects, which remains unmet.
Washington has been promising and posturing for the last three decades of its unipolar hegemony and could not help Africans. Some Africans have learned to associate US-style governance models and ‘values’ with stagnation and collapse, and the Chinese model to rapid development. Therefore, the US casting of the Chinese political model as a threat cannot be accepted by Africans, despite Washington’s elaborate efforts to conceal the Pentagon’s voices as African experts.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
