A little tittle-tattle: There was no increase in anti-Americanism during the Trump years 2016-2020.

Here, we have to give a little , take a little. 

There has always been some degree of anti-Americanism in the world. Anti-Americanism has been a constant, given the USA’s pre-eminent position as “leader of the free world”, and in this our world without end, so far, in the kali yuga, it is one ideology and one system – Capitalism and Democracy as represented by the Capitalist USA pitted against the other system, Capitalism wedded to Communism, as represented by Communist CHINA.

 The economic and ideological rivalry is all set to continue. Xi Jinping is confident and happy. He has already congratulated his good friend, old man Biden / Sleepy Joe Biden, the USA’s presumptive president-elect.

How the US is most likely to fare under a sleepy Joe B - Kamala H leadership will soon be in plain view, for all to see, as the two economic giants battle for world leadership, some say, for world domination.

A few basic clarifications are needed here, in this late, hysterical post-McCarthy era of what was once the communist scare which was resurrected recently by Bernie Sanders and other alleged “Commies” entering the fray. The fray? The doggone 2020 US Presidential elections, and as a renowned Zionist Rabbi put it, if we’re not careful, the country will go to "the dogs!” The Country? Which country? He was talking about the United States, not Israel. God forbid that Israel should ever “go to the dogs ! ” 

I say a renowned Zionist Rabbi without any reservation; I think that I saw (on TV) that the rabbi in question, in his own capacity, attended Madiba Nelson Mandela’s funeral, in South Africa. Now that’s a big plus. I hope that it was not a case of mistaken identity and that I recognised correctly, him when I saw him at the funeral, on TV...

Basic clarification 1, with great reservation: I have just gleaned from Chris Hedges Facebook website (maybe too much of the Merry Christmas Spirit, not to mention the alcoholic beverages/ spirits being consumed, and the general Christmastide euphoria to the extent that even Prime Minister Boris Johnson just announced the Brexit deal as “Glad tidings of Great Joy, I bring ”, but I doubt that he would be happy with the proposition I just gleaned from Chris Hedges pages and some other left-wing websites, the fanciful proposition that “ Jesus was a Communist”. 

Do I hear President Trump yelling, "God forbid ! " ? 

Well, there’s all that Liberation Theology, the extremely critical patriotism of Barack Obama’s former spiritual guide, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who infamously said what he said, thereby causing the then presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama to renounce the apostle of damnation; but, when I was in Nigeria I read an encyclical on laborare est orare and “The Dignity of Labour”, so there; which does not mean that the Capitalist Vatican is about to enter into rapprochement or ecumenical relations with the Church of China.

 But back to the heart of the subject matter: Yes, there has been more than a little anti-Americanism, hostility, hostile rhetoric and a smattering of anti-Semitism too from predictable quarters, so predictable that it has now become a tradition:

1.     IRAN – understandably, the USA’s assassination of Iran’s Military Chief and the Godfather of Iran’s nuclear ambitions has only made Iranian anti-Americanism worse. Iran has already vowed that come what may, Sleepy Joe Biden is soon going to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Mullahs may be thinking along this trajectory: Baby Bush invaded Iraq and took out Saddam, primarily because Saddam had nearly succeeded in k-illing Bush’s dad. So, it’s possible that the Mullahs should eventually invade the US and take-out Trump or Biden to avenge the aforementioned assassinations and that could be what they mean by “Whoever becomes the next president of the US will have to surrender to Iran.”

2.     Palestinian aspirations to self-determination, the right of return and Jerusalem as their capital damaged at least temporarily by Trump unilaterally moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Etc, etc, etc

3.     Hezbollah. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has now gone underground because he fears that in his final days in the White House, Trump or Trump and Israel might be up to something big before 20^th January, so he’s not taking any chances. Better safe than sorry. In fact, in some cases, a man has to be very careful: Better safe and alive than to be martyred and to be very dead.

4.     Nigeria. Normally an unlikely quarter from which anti-Americanism would rear its ugly tail , not even since the brain drain to the USA started, long before any flinching about Trump using the unsavoury epithet “shithole countries”, but most recently this kind of rumour has been gaining some traction:  it's another ridiculous illustration of the fake and the fanciful: "Boko Haram is a covert CIA operation". Bound to promote some bad blood between Nigeria and the USA. Who benefits? Before that there was this kind of grumbling to which I reply so discreetly here below, as some very public thoughts about Ambassador Campbell's alleged "Soft Racism” (and this is what I wrote as a reply on Sunday, 12th July, 2020:

I'm still surviving in my corner of the free speech and the 1st Amendment zone, so, here goes:

Elijah!

Instead of the predictable kneejerk I had thought that Professor Ochonu (a dear and well respected friend) would have something substantial and substantive to say this time and that it would be a killer, that at the very least he would produce a smoking gun, that he would pile up incriminating evidence upon incriminating evidence so that Pontus Pilate would have no alternative but to certify the crucifixion whilst the Chief Justice of Nigeria and the Chief Justice of the United States would have no alternative than to issue an international warrant for the immediate apprehension and arrest of the man that Messrs Kperogi & Ochonu are out to demonise – and after Ambassador Campbell’s arrest (God forbid) he would then be duly handed over to the International Criminal Court at the Hague or the Nigerian Supreme Court of Justice in Abuja to await his trial, the verdict of course a foregone conclusion to be followed by his summary execution by firing squad or by hanging for crimes against humanity in general and crimes against the Nigerian section of humanity in particular. 

But I was wrong and it was a great relief and nothing but an anti-climax finally reading Ochonu through and noting that all he could do was to trot out trite, tired and tiresome “four legs good, two legs bad” clichés, that we have heard before, time without number, in the usual weepy, anti-Buhari, anti -“Northern Hegemony” tirade – all as if time has been standing still since Brother Buhari was democratically elected for the first time in 2015. I followed the last days of his election triumph from Ephesus in Turkey, where I was on the day Brother Buhari’s election victory was announced and celebrated it with a bunch of Iranians who were staying at the same hotel, since Brother Buhari’s victory announcement coincided with some equally good news from Iran, about the nuclear deal 

One question that I would like to ask: Isn’t Brother Buhari currently waging a war against corruption in Nigeria? At least his interlocutors could express some appreciation, if not satisfaction for those anti-corruption efforts…

Exactly as the erudite Femi Kolapo so ably points out here (about the divinely sanctioned legitimation / de-legitimation of violence in thought, word and deed) so too in this instance all that we witness is Moses Ochonu ‘s selective arrangement of his accusations  - so for example he says,

 “In a March 2015 lecture, he (Ambassador John Campbell) attempted to answer the question of “where did Boko Haram come from?” by repeating the discredited claim that Boko Haram was a Northern protest against bad governance and corruption!” 

When we take a good look at the genesis of Boko Haram in Nigeria, is that not an essential part of the raison d'etre of Boko Haram or indeed an essential element in the founding of HAMAS as a purification agent in 1987?

On the other hand, is that all that he said in that lecture? In fairness to Mr. Ambassador here is his almost hour-long lecture delivered on 28 May 2014 and he wasn’t talking nonsense:

Religion & Security | John Campbell: Boko Haram and the Dynamics of Instability in West Africa

March, 2015: Ambassador John Campbell on Boko Haram

As history can attest, Boko Haram has had to react to several incidents since its inception, so that the Boko Haram of Mohammed Yusuf is not the same Boko Haram that we have today. In fact, the Boko Haram of 2015 is not the same Boko Haram of 2020.

This one thing’s for sure: Ambassador John Campbell is not going to descend from heaven, the sky or wherever he is in the USA at the moment, in order to enter the fray or to dignify Messers Kperogi & Ochonu with a reply. I choose “descend” consciously, because if we are to follow Kperogi’s pugnacious weekly ramblings from where he is safely tucked away in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and his co-pilot in this essay with an identical axe to grind, he also writing from the relative safety of Nashville, Tennessee which is the heartland of country music, so loved in Nigeria, then, the other thing that we are to believe for sure is that Nigeria is a hell on earth and that’s one of the reasons why as Nigerian patriots and nationalists, it’s apparently much better (and easier) for Ochonu & Kperogi and a whole load of other Nigerians to be in Ambassador John Campbell’s USA under the avuncular patriarchal monster known as Donald J Trump than to be back home shmiling whilst shuffering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” under my man, President Muhammadu Buhari !

We ought not to lose sight of the fact that Muhammadu Buhari defeated the incumbent Southerner Goodluck Jonathan in a free and fair election and that Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected for a second term after defeating a fellow Northerner in an election that split the Northern vote.

Conclusion: In both elections Brother Buhari could not have won without substantial support from the South.

 Which does not mean to say that the South, the South-East enclave in particular, still mostly loyal to Goodluck Jonathan, is not out to get Buhari

Peter Bernstein: Chant

 (To be continued with a closer look at the “soft” racism claims and each of Ochonu’s chosen examples)