Ibrahim Traoré, who took power in 2022 coup, tells state broadcaster ‘we must tell the truth, democracy isn’t for us’
People in Burkina Faso should forget about democracy as it is “not for us”, the military president, Ibrahim Traoré, told the country’s state broadcaster.
Traoré took power in a coup in September 2022, toppling another junta that had taken power just nine months earlier. He has since stifled opposition and in January banned political parties outright.
A transition to democracy had originally been planned for 2024, but that year the junta extended Traoré’s rule until 2029.
“We’re not even talking about elections, first of all … People need to forget about the question of democracy … We must tell the truth, democracy isn’t for us,” Traoré said in an interview on Thursday with the state broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB).
To put it simply, when western forces colonize a people, they simultaneously suppress and frame their traditions as barbaric and prop up their own western values as civilized. The colonized people experience unconscionable violence from these western forces, seeing first hand the inhumanity being caused in the name of ‘civility’. Naturally, as anti-colonial resistance mounts, the most anti-West voices gain the most momentum, seen as less corruptible to those western forces and more unwavering in their resistance. So it’s no surprise that reactionary attitudes on civil rights come as a reaction to western colonialism.
It’s only once a people are able to reclaim their sovereignty that civil rights movements are able to build, fight for, and win those rights domestically. Without being co-opted by foreign powers with the only goal of destabilization.
I wasn’t aware of the connection myself until I read Fanon’s works at length
No doubt it and many other historical events will affect many things later on but it’s still not really a reasonable position to assume that has to be it even with lots of evidence that makes it seem unlikely in a particular case. Colonialism did not introduce anti-homosexual attitudes to the African continent. Islam, which arrived before the western colonialists also has them but wasn’t the first appearance of that there either.
This history of lgbt acceptance and religion is complicated, but that is beside the point here.
Colonialism and Imperialism are absolutely to blame for the reasons described prior, they have significantly halted progress made in civil rights within their target countries. A foreign power mass executing your people makes it difficult for the conversion to be anything but liberation.
If you want to learn more about the psychology of colonialism on the colonized, and how that influences social beliefs and revolutionary resistance, read anything Frantz Fanon.
Sorry but colonialism being to blame here seems like an a priori assumption with you and not anything that you’ve actually factually established.
I certainly don’t have a problem with the idea of colonialism or other parts of history having very long lasting and diverse effects but it’s just not the case that we can say it is the root cause of any given issue absent of any real evidence for such a claim.
My analysis is based on Fanon, how well read are you on anti-colonialism?
As I said. “Analysis” only based on a theoretical framework with zero supporting facts is not analysis, it’s dogma.
There are a significant amount of support facts for how French Colonialism and Neocolonialism have affected Burkina Faso, not to mention the plethora of other countries affected similarly. Not only does Fanon use a large amount of supporting facts in his works, it’s very easy to find such in reference to neocolonialism online. As I have when responding to the other person.
This is a classic appeal to authority rather than addressing their question.
No, it’s not unless you’re claiming Fanon in unreliable and not credible. A counter argument of ‘I don’t personally think so’ is not a valid counter argument against the highly respected works of an academic who both lived and studied his lifes work
The Wretched of the Earth
A Dying Colonialism
Black Skin, White Masks
If you can’t attack the substance, you attack the source. The only other time I’ve seen a weak bs claim of ‘appeal to authority’ is from people who try to discredit human rights reporting on genocide.
You’re asserting that because a person is a highly respected academic that we should accept their conclusions are relevant here - you are not synthesizing their work with applicability for your claim that the current regression on LGBTQ rights is the result of colonialism.
For an example of what I mean:
We are making the claim that Burkina Faso has been an independent country for 65 years. For most of that time, while LGBTQ people were not broadly loved, there was no outright oppression - arguably (from one [edit: one very important] perspective) they were better about homosexual relationships than many western countries in the same timeframes. This recent shift is a regression primarily from internal pressures - it’s been too long to reasonably claim that this shift in attitude is singly the result of a reaction to having been a colony.
You have not done anything to refute that claim, or present evidence or reasoning that your claim (that this is the result of colonial and imperialistic pressures) is at all applicable, beyond citing a well known and well respected academic who has not talked about this specific situation. You are instead insisting that we cannot argue against your argument because your argument cites the work of a respected academic, and are shifting our criticism of your claims to criticism of Fanon’s claims, which is unfair. I have not addressed Fanon’s thesis here because I am questioning the applicability of that thesis to these events; that is a claim you have made, and which you have not supported.
This is absolutely an appeal to authority - you claim that your argument is based on respected works and therefore has standing on that merit above the claims of others.
First, thank you for well written response
It’s true that Fanon himself did not write too much on neocolonialism, as it was a bit past his time. However, if you understand how reactionary sentiments foment in the process of an anti-colonialist revolution, it’s not difficult to understand how that persists in the face of neocolonialism, as western empires continue to subjugate these nations with modern methods.
In the case of Burkina Faso, we can’t ignore France’s neocolonialist actions since their independence. They have not been sovereign in the same sense that western nations have. While western nations were able to develop civil rights free of the constant battle against neocolonial dominance, this is still not the case for countries like Burkina Faso. France has still been a constant threat against their sovereignty, and as such, the anti-western hardliners continue to stay in power.
Spoiler