Congo Propaganda Conga
You may have noticed that we are hearing a lot about the DR Congo once more on our television sets and in the news lately. It’s the usual fare, Rebel leader, humanitarian crisis, UN peacekeepers etc. and I’m quite sure a lot of people are either quite disinterested or confused by the coverage but I’m not entirely surprised as its become of another casualty of the misinformation machine that surrounds key news agencies like the BBC and the Guardian which exploit the fact that the public seem to only be able to follow a thread of events stretching back a few months at best.
For a summary of events, the correct way up I suggest that you take a look at War Nerd’s Exiled Online : Congo Warrior Nkunda is Nkool.
Every word, every disgusting damn word, of these BBC and Guardian stories is bullshit. actually makes me sick, listening to these stupid lies over and over. The reason Nkunda’s little army (estimates range from 5000 to 10000 men) advanced into Eastern Congo this week is that the Hutu gangs were getting a little too aggressive about jumping ethnic-Tutsi villages in eastern Congo, killing the men and kidnapping women and girls as sex slaves. Nkunda knows very well nobody else will protect the Tutsi, for the simple reason nobody ever has. So he went in to do it himself.
This is the central problem. The media is biased to telling untruths because there is an agenda and they are toeing the line. People are credulous and believe something, merely because it is the only story which gets out. Similar in a way to my attempt to get another story out a week and a bit ago.
James is quite correct about the media is biased and yes sadly most people will just soak up the story without reading between the lines.
A question remains though, why? The author at Exiled Online suggests French support and francophone snobbery to be at the core but I don’t buy that explanation entirely (although quite possibly a contributing factor). I think “the left” find themselves repulsed by a leader like Nkunda because he is the antithesis of the Africans as eternal victims needful of the white-man’s succour narrative of which they are so fond. They are quick to label every critic of their policies racists but it is they who look down their superior noses at the Africans, rushing to defend the wicked whilst heaping scorn on those who take command of the destinies of their people.
…rushing to defend the wicked whilst heaping scorn on those who take command of the destinies of their people…
Yes indeed.
We know the BBC et al lied to us continuously for 18 years over Yugoslavia, for example describing the Bosnian Moslem leader as a \”moderate minded Moslem committed to a multi-cultural Bosnia\” when they knew for a fact that he was an ex-SS auxiliary publicly committed to the genocide of all non-Moslems. The said the same about our obscene KLA allies & have censored any mention of how they, as NATO Police, kidnapped thousands of Serb teens & dissected them while still alive to provide our hospitals with spare parts.
The problem then is that we do not know if the Congo \”rebels\”, the Sudan government, the Tibetan government, The Sierra Leonese \”government\” or the Burmese \”opposition\” are in any way better, or worse, than their opponents. Indeed if relying on the BBC etc we cannot know.
All we know is that when our media start telling us about human rights abuses overseas they want to bomb somebody.
There’s me thinking it was all our fault, the conflict is all fuelled by western greed for the congo’s rich mineral wealth. The Guardian is never wrong.