The racism is just so deeply ingrained they don’t understand, and there’s not much to say about Obama at this point; he’s taking the piss and he knows it.
The racism is just so deeply ingrained they don’t understand, and there’s not much to say about Obama at this point; he’s taking the piss and he knows it.
A reactionary relative of mine (and the lib I work with) didn’t want to believe this was true (because Parenti’s a socialist), so we googled several of the points and they all came up true and I told them the rest would too. The reactionary relative now wonders what the point of overthrowing Gaddafi was and the
is seriously defending it (in a roundabout way; he won’t directly say he supports overthrowing Gaddafi, but instead wants to say that the people should have a right to choose their leader) as people having the right to pick their leader; his defense of saying that Gaddafi was bad is that maybe someone could have come around who would have been better.
The reactionary has better politics than the lib, and yes, it’s coming from an earnest place of being upset that the Libyan people are suffering needlessly. The lib is instead seriously trying to have a discussion about the importance of democracy when an actual nation of people’s future has literally been taken from them.
You should point them on to this then:
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/01/12/gaddafis-libya-was-africas-most-prosperous-democracy/
And when they question the contents of this article. The New York Times article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/africa/20libya.html
You’ll notice it still tries to frame him as “authoritarian”, but read beyond that and ask questions about these councils and committees, it becomes obvious his leadership was one of popular support in a system that was MORE democratic than representative democracies are rather than authoritarianism. The word “authoritarian” is absurd to use for this system tbh. But that is the word america applies to all enemies of the US.
Keep working on that reactionary you know. In my experience some of the right wingers are easier to reach than liberals if they’re mature enough to engage with these topics.
Oh and don’t let them forget that every word the socialists said about it was true.
Daaaaaaaaamn, I just read the article in the first link you gave; that’s extremely impressive. I legit had no idea it was like that.
I’m teaching the
about Libya’s system and he’s definitely surprised and confused; he keeps asking about how people can take Gaddafi’s position if they wanted it and I had to keep explaining that his position was without political power, that the country was run by the people and policies chosen by the people, but he kept harping on about Gaddafi because he can’t wrap his around wanting to believe the guy was a brutal, authoritarian dictator who silenced dissent and journalists, and people having the political power to alter how the country functions.
I’m not showing him the second link because this guy wants to believe US propaganda in regards to any of their geopolitical rivals, he’s not going to question anything the NYT article says. I keep telling him of the political power the people had, even to the extent of rejecting Gaddafi’s proposals such as ending the death penalty, and he’s still struggling to understand/believe/reconciling what he wants to believe about Gaddafi and what the reality of Libya’s government was. This guy wants to trust US empire.
Thanks for the links; daaaaaaamn, I had no idea Libya’s government functioned like this.
This is the main problem with people who trust the media unconditionally as “authorities” that wouldn’t ever lie or mislead them. You give truthful structural information to people who’s brains are filled with
by the media and they reject it because it doesn’t fit with the narrative they have already chosen to believe. Now you’re coming up against a barrier of “one of these people are lying and I don’t want to believe it’s the media” wall.
@SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net is probably also tapping for information on this as I think they’ve been actively reading into Gaddafi recently, I’ve read some in the past but it’s not really fresh in my mind. Comrades just out of fresh reading tend to have extra info and extra criticisms to add.