American Savior Industrial Complex

By Eric Ross, Ph.D.


Teju Cole was born in the United States to Nigerian parents, raised in Nigeria, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of two books, a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City. Teju Cole, who just won a prestigious award for his novel “Open City“, offered a very short essay, in Twitter format, as a reaction to Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign. Although Teju Cole trendy vision of the world narrows his field of vision to what he sees through the Black-and-White rifle scope, just substitute his “White Savior Industrial Complex” for “American Savior Industrial Complex”, and this observant and witty young man, would hit the problem right on the nail:

1-   From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.

2-   The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

3-  The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

4-   This world exists simply to satisfy the needs — including, importantly, the sentimental needs— of white people and Oprah.

5-  The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

6-   Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.

7-   I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

What the hell is Teju Cole  talking about? What is this 'American sentimentality" and why is it so dangerous? – I dare say, what he sees in his crosshairs is the collective consciousness of the American taxpayer, shaped up by the TV and other "news" media, creating a perception of “Saving the World and Humanity” and bringing the “Light of the Civilization” to the “savages”…  by bombing them into the stone age, if necessary.  All the while, America exports its version of the enlightened mobocracy of the brainwashed masses to the rest of the world, opening more markets for MacDonald’s cheeseburgers and Coca-Cola’s sugar-laced sodas, symbols of the American democracy, prosperity and well-being.  

Bombing of Belgrade

Remember Billy Clinton’s “love affair” with the under-aged, overweight girl Monica Lewisnky?  To detract media’s attention from him enjoying relaxing oval office fellatios, he bombed Serbia into the stone age. Serbs were denounced in the Western media for "massacres" in Sarajevo in 1992, -94, and -95 that UN's investigators later found to have been committed by Bosnian Muslims.  Bill Clinton labeled Milosevic, the Serbia’s leader,  "a new Hitler," while supporting Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic who was a convicted World War II Nazi war criminal, and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who wrote a book (Wastelands of Historical Truth) praising Hitler and advocating genocide. 

Truth in the US is an elusive commodity. You won’t find it in on the pages of the New York Times or on Oprah show. But the war in Iraq and the bombing of Serbia are just isolated examples of the unrelenting stream of misinformation, which makes Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, turn in his grave with envy.  The US Media makes us all part of the American Savior Industrial Complex.  If we bomb the hell out of anyone, it's only for their own good.