Russia's propaganda playground
As Western broadcasters withdraw from Africa, Russian state media fills the void.
A few years back, I remember reading an article about China financing the construction of new government buildings in Africa, and concerns about whether they could be riddled with listening devices. In response, some African officials said they didn’t believe it was true, and even if it was, they honestly didn’t care because it wasn’t one of their former European colonial oppressors.
Tibetans and Uyghurs might have a few things to say about China’s history as an imperialist power, but many African leaders feel a kind of solidarity with China and its ruling party, viewing it as a former Third World country which pulled itself up by its bootstraps to take on the Europeans and Americans and now spends lavishly to help their brother nations rebuild. (It doesn’t hurt that much of that lavish spending fattens their own Swiss bank accounts, of course.)
Russia is a European country, sort of, but its own attempt at colonizing Africa was a half-assed historical footnote. (Nicholas II just couldn’t do anything right, could he?) That, plus the Soviet Union’s support for Cold War-era “liberation” movements1 fighting Western-backed governments, has given Russia an opening to win support for its own colonial enterprise in Ukraine.
And that’s why we have the Wagner Group producing web cartoons showing its muscle-bound mercenaries helping brave African soldiers fight off French zombies.
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