Soyinka and Nigerian trumpsters

Donald Trump’s bigotry and divisiveness notwithstanding, it is still possible for a person like him to have fans and followers outside the United States of America, in an African country, Nigeria. Bigotry and racism are social acts whose sources lie in the dark and evil recesses of the mind and soul. Bigotry and racism can on one hand intensely repel humanists and progressive people and on the other hand intensely attract right wing people who put the humanity of only their race or group at the centre of things.
In Nigeria, it is very easy to line behind bigotry and bigots. All you need is to construct your argument and position for or against a group, a religion (such as Christianity or Islam); and demonise whole peoples, races, ethnicities, gender groups, and you get the bigots fired up. Adolf Hitler was the ultimate bigot. Therefore, when any humanist sees and smells bigotry anywhere, the opposition to it can be instant, categorical and intense. Wole Soyinka’s opposition to Donald Trump falls into this category.
The slight difference in the wave of nativism, racism, bigotry, provincialism and irredentism in the US is that given the origin of America as a land owned by the native Americans before the wave of immigrations from Europe (starting with Christopher Columbus and his crew who ignorantly called the owners of the land Native “Red” Indians), other people settled in thinking America would be different. These people – from Africa, Asia, South America, Middle East, the Jewish and Arab world – considered that there would never be the bigotry, provincialism and irredentism that saw England exiting the EU in the new territory.
True, there is always an overt explanation for any event, including a local election. In addition, in the recent American election, the explanation of the outcome is said to be economic and about jobs. After putting in Donald Trump, who did not articulate any economic plan during his campaign other than dangerous populist rhetoric, whoever still thinks the issue here is strictly an economic one needs to re-examine his or her knowledge of the race history, race politics, race economics and race sociology of the United States of America.
This explains why after the election, a palpable mutual suspicion, animosity and division along race lines has seen an increase in hate crimes pervade local neighbourhoods and communities, schools.
So given how the Trump campaign was built primarily around bigotry, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism, it is surprising to see that there can be an online community of Nigerian Trumpsters who out of a lack of critical historical agency often attack anyone who rejects Donald Trump.
We are not just in the age of the millennial, we are in the Internet age and this has changed everything. So, like the Nigerian trolls who took over the Net on behalf of their paymasters during the last Nigerian presidential election, I understand internet forces such as the Russian KGB enabled American election trolls, “journalist” and email hacker Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who all worked in alliance with American racist and race supremacist groups to create an online community to spread fake news against the integrity of the American election and Hillary Clinton.

However, given the history of colonialism and transatlantic slavery, and its alliance with Christianity in subjugating the African continent, the emergence of a Nigerian online community of Trumpsters can only be seen as an exercise in a lack of critical historical agency. In addition, palpable ignorance of the negative forces seeking to turn the American democracy into a third world democracy, a banana republic, and an acceptance of the dubious categories of race supremacist groups that backed Donald Trump.
Reading these Nigerian Trumpsters, one wonders if they have ever heard of racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan – a major supporter of Donald Trump, or of a character called Richard Spencer, the founder of the alt right. The rightwing and racist alt right people are happy when they are mentioned because they wrongly think that mentioning them is mainstreaming them. However, it is important to report them as they present themselves, who they are, and for the social, moral and intellectual danger, they represent our common humanity.
Like the former German Führer, Hitler, Richard Spencer makes the intellectually and morally dubious, silly and untenable claim, which associates intelligence and moral values with races – a version of the theory and practice which enable ethnic and race cleansing, and which led to the genocide of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Moreover, this is the race supremacist ideology the Nigerian Trumpsters, are enabling by attacking those, like Soyinka, who reject the bigotry and racism of Donald Trump. Strangely, some of this Nigerian online community of Trumpsters and trolls call themselves “Christians”! Where is their “Christian” faith if their actions enable bigotry, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism and anti-Semitism?
One wonders if these Nigerian Trumpsters ever heard of one Steve Bannon, the alleged Catholic (he presumably grew us as a catholic!) and chief counselor of Donald Trump. Steve, as former CEO of Breitbart News, gave the alt-right (which is a digital and modern re-creation of Ku Klux Klan) the platform of Breitbart News to propagate their bigotry, sexism, hate, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism.
Yet, Bannon will sit beside Trump in the White House. Finally, one wonders if this online community of Nigerian Trumpsters ever heard of Breitbart News and Fox News, the chief media organisations for bigotry, racism and xenophobia in the United States and the chief promoters of Trump. One wonders if these Nigerian Trumpsters know that the alt-right and other racist groups actually theorise racism and bigotry and dubiously allocate moral, intellectual value and intelligence to people based on their races and ethnicity.
Therefore, given the danger Trump and the forces backing him represent to humanity, and given Soyinka’s own humanism and commitment to defending our common humanity, it is to be expected that for Soyinka, a Donald Trump and the social forces backing him, will represent an intense radical violation of our common humanity.
Like global citizens will take on any trend that represents a real, imminent and potential danger to our common humanity, Soyinka correctly rejected Trump and Trumpism and said so.
A self-confessed sexual harasser, sexist and woman groper is an irreparable violator of universal motherhood, our common humanity and hence unfit to be the president of any country, and we should have the moral courage to say so and continue to say so. The Nigerian Trumpsters who mis-read this historical and moral situation and criticise those who have the moral courage to say so are logically committed like Donald Trump to be part of the violators of our motherhood and our common humanity.
Trump’s racism, sexism and bigotry; his assault on our common humanity and its rationalisation by those who surround him, and those who voted for him, must be a point of rejection and radical departure for anyone who is committed to our common humanity, and I guess this is the case with Soyinka. It is therefore sad that when Soyinka makes this point poignantly, analytically and in a symbolic manner, the Nigerian online community of Trumpsetrs missed the point.

Hence, it is either the Nigerian Trumpsters lack a sense of historical critical agency or they are committed to the morally questionable view that the “enemy” (Trump) of my “enemy” (Soyinka) is my friend (Trump). This is a dark and self-deprecating, self-demeaning view that can only come from the abyss of humanity. These Nigerian online community of Trumpsters seem to have accepted by implication inherent in their positions and attack on Soyinka the race supremacist categories of the modern Ku Klux Klan – the alt right that dubiously and cowardly put races other than the Caucasian – i.e. the African-American, the African such as the Nigerian Trumpsters themselves – at the lowest ladder of human intelligence. If the online community of Nigerian Trumpsters still does not see this implication of their attack on Soyinka, then it is indeed grim and frightful. It shows a lack of critical historical agency and it is un-acceptable.
Adeolu Ademoyo wrote from New York, USA.