Neoliberalism is a Neoteric Totalitarianism.
What Neoliberalism claims, in a nutshell, is simply this: Today is better than Yesterday. If you don’t agree with me that Today is better than Yesterday, you are Ignorant and you are Primitive, and you need to be Silenced.
This kind of linear progressivism enforces one view of how the world works: The Past is Primitive and the Present is Advanced (PIPPA).
Take for instance just one implication of this view. They would claim that African History (being the elder civilization) is Primitive and European History (being the younger) is Advanced. For this reason African culture, traditions, religions and rituals are Primitive, while European cultures, religions, etc., are more Advanced.
Furthermore, the claim continues that the young are better than the old. And so in European culture, youth is overvalued at the expense of the old. Some Eurocentric scholars have even referred to African Culture as a Grey Culture meaning that African cultures value Old Age (grey hair) in contradistinction to European culture, which only values Youth.
Therefore, the New is better than the Old. Recent is better than the Previous. Now is better than Then. Today is better than Yesterday. If you don’t come along to this view, you are by default, Primitive, Backwards and Ignorant.
That is Neoteric Totalitarianism. And all European Cultures suffer from this insufferable disease. The problem for us in Africa is that we have African students of these colonial Neoliberal cultures – Afrosaxons and Afrogauloises – who carry such neoliberal waters for their colonialists in Africa, and who do the dirty biding of the west in Africa.
The good thing is that, Africa is lucky! We are lucky! These Afrosaxons and Afrogauloises are intellectuals alright, yet they are idiots. They are not very bright. They are mediocre.
Agreed.
Will be back with my thoughts.
In the meantime, allow me to borrow the concept PIPPA
“fly go a moon but can’t find food for the starving tummies”
Damian Marley
Is that really what neoliberalism is? I don’t think Hayek and Ludwig von Mises will agree with you
Trying to Change the history and story of Africa is the reason why the whole world ? is in a mess today but the western world refuses to see it that way
Everyone it seems has their own definition of neoliberalism. Everyone and no one is neoliberal.
But the post is a far cry about what neoliberalism means. And for the majority of people, the present is better than the past.