Band Aid denounced as 'white savior colonialism' 40 years after charity song for Ethiopian famine victims
Forty years ago, back in the days when people were reliant on radio and television for their news, a BBC broadcast by reporter Michael Buerk shocked the world with his description of a "biblical famine" and a horrifying backdrop of masses of skeletal forms barely clinging to life. Few were aware of the background to the story (a Marxist-style dictator diverting resources to his armed forces while forcibly implementing collectivist policies). What Western audiences learned was the limited truth that drought had led to famine, hundreds of thousands had already died, and millions more would if no help arrived.
One person who resolved to do something other than just sigh was Bob Geldof, who formed Band Aid and produced a pop song that ended up raising around £8 million for Ethiopian famine relief with a further £200 million raised to combat famine in Africa in the succeeding decades.
Geldof may have achieved fame if not fortune from the enterprise, but he and Midge Ure, his main collaborator, have always insisted that their sole intent was to do what they could to raise money for the famine-stricken.
We spent two hours trying to think of ridiculous ways of trying to raise some money, then finally succumbed to the fact we were rubbish at everything except maybe writing a song. We [thought] if we wrote a Christmas song and got all of our friends involved, we could raise £100,000.
White saviors worse than starvation?
Band Aid was followed by Live Aid, and over the next decades the concept inspired other entertainment-based methods of raising money for charitable causes such as Comic Relief, USA For Africa (We are the World), and Children in Need in the UK.
Now, in honor of the 40th anniversary of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Geldof is releasing the “Ultimate Mix” of the song, featuring the original version of the track interspersed with later renditions by the musicians involved.
But not everyone is happy, even though the Ultimate Mix will certainly raise a lot more money for those in need.
In fact, a Ghanaian-English rapper who goes by the name of Fuse ODG has called on the BBC not to promote the song and is asking his social media followers to tag the BBC to cancel its planned documentary on the original Band Aid.
Fuse ODG is not the only musician to have spoken out against Geldof’s latest project, but he is perhaps the only one to have released a song of his own in protest, titled, “We Know It’s Christmas.” Writing on Facebook, he described how,
Ten years ago today, I said NO to Bob Geldof's Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas project due to the fact it's a campaign that dehumanizes Africans and destroys our pride and identity in the name of “charity.”
The white savior complex is an incredibly dangerous thing which is now playing out on an individual and corporate level.
What he wanted to see instead, he wrote, was “African problems [being] solved by Africans ... in a spirit of collaboration not patronization.
We need to build the next generation of leaders to solve our own problems and ... to teach kids about their history and understand the leaders that have come before them.
In 2024, there is no way we'd stay quiet and allow other people to continue to tell our story.
Fuse told British media that “Do You Know It's Christmas?” falsely “painted a whole image of Africa.” His ideas are shared by many on the progressive-left which styles itself as “anti-colonialist.”
The Conversation, for example, has criticized Geldof for his original lyrics which “recycled many of the old colonial tropes of Africa as a barren land requiring western salvation.” They explain Ethiopia’s problems in the 1980s as being due to “a war involving Ethiopia and Tigre and a near total disregard for human life by the combatants.” They appear not to realize that such a situation might indeed justify concerned outsiders in concluding that “salvation” of some kind was warranted. Nor do they suggest a better course of action than raising money to ship out supplies.
(Fuse also fails to provide any concrete suggestions to help, although he says that the money raised from his protest song will go toward funding “grassroots innovative projects that aim to better communities across Africa.”)
If you're wealthy, your charity is suspect...
The Conversation goes on to lament how “fundraising became much more of a spectacle” after Band Aid’s astounding success.
Donors were re-imagined and empowered as “saviors.” Celebrities began to view endorsement of charities as a key part of their star profile. Governments – rather than footing the bill for humanitarian assistance solely themselves and viewing it as a moral obligation of statehood – now encourage public donations and offer to add to the total through gift aid tax relief.
Their main objection seems to be based on a belief that “governments” should foot the entire bill and that regular people should not. They appear not to realize that government money comes from regular people, nor do they admit that celebrities donating huge amounts might take some of the pressure off the taxpayer.
In fact, celebrity donations are seen by these lefty-moralists as a bad thing, because a) they gain a good feeling about helping which they are not entitled to (for whatever unstated reason) and b) they aren’t giving enough:
...there has also been excessive veneration towards the charity exploits of billionaires, despite them giving away only a microscopic amount of their total wealth.
... and it's all your fault
In their view, governments, and people, are supposed to be so righteous that they do good deeds solely because that is the right thing to do:
Being charitable has always given donors ... a “warm glow.” This refers to the quick and easy confirmation of righteousness that donors can receive from giving, the achievement of which may be their primary motivator...
Since Band Aid, charities have intensified their focus upon warm glow within their fundraising communications...
...and this is undesirable, according to them, because instead of feeling good about giving away their wealth to others less fortunate, they should instead be blaming themselves for causing the problems and trying to figure out how to stop making things worse:
...donors should concern themselves with introspection as to how they might be contributing to the harmful circumstances others find themselves in.
In the Marxist mind, ideology trumps facts every single time
Responding to the furor, Bob Geldof wrote:
Haha… It’s a pop song...
He then described the truly difficult conditions in Africa, mentioning water scarcity, soil quality, and ongoing wars.
These are not “colonial tropes” — they are empirical facts. This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive. In fact just today Band Aid has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to help those running from the mass slaughter in Sudan and enough cash to feed a further 8,000 children in the same affected areas of Ethiopia as 1984.
Those exhausted women who weren’t raped and killed and their panicked children and any male over 10 who survived the massacres and those 8,000 Tigrayan children will sleep safer, warmer and cared for tonight because of that miraculous little record. We wish that it were other but it isn’t.
Who's exploiting Africans, and why are they getting away with it?
Africa has over 30 percent of the world’s deposits of critical minerals, and demand for these minerals (such as lithium, cobalt, gold, and diamonds) is massive. However, those taking advantage of African deposits generally belong in either one of two camps: foreign investment, or local corrupt leadership. The average African miner is not doing much better if at all, despite the riches being dug up from under his land.
But even without mineral deposits in the picture, Africa still has considerable natural advantages. 60 percent of the world’s arable land is located in Africa, where just 16 percent of the world’s population lives. And yet, according to the World Food Program, at least 14 of African’s 56 nations are just months away from famine, while 30 others suffer from shortages and chronic hunger.
In 2020 alone, approximately 20 million African migrants left the continent, seeking a better life. Are Western musicians and philanthropists to blame for the fact that they haven't found a better life in their homelands?
To give a quick snapshot tour of Africa today, consider that:
- In Rwanda, there is ongoing warfare between rebels and the government;
- In West Africa, most farming is for cash crops (cocoa, cotton, coffee); these nations forgo self-sufficiency and must import staples such as rice and wheat, making them extremely vulnerable to bad harvests with such a lack of crop diversity;
- South Africa, after three decades of neo-Marxist rule under the ANC, has almost 40 percent unemployment, frequent power cuts, inadequate water supply — aside from hundreds of political assassinations — and all this despite massive international investment and trade concessions;
- Jihadists have taken over or are attempting to overrun multiple African countries including Nigeria, Chad, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Somalia, and Eritrea. The results have been hundreds of thousands of Christians murdered due to their religion, as well as millions of people displaced by the constant warmongering.
Let's (not) talk genocide
An Open Doors report quotes Pastor Barnabas, who lives in a displaced persons camp in Nigeria:
Millions of Christians are displaced, here in Nigeria. Millions of Christians are displaced in Africa. The news doesn't care about it, politicians don't talk about it, governments don't talk about it, global politics don't talk about it. Nobody talks about it.
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch asked last month:
Who is funding these groups? Who is arming and enabling them to the extent that they are more powerful than the forces of sovereign states? What powerful and monied entities are supporting the advance of jihad in Africa?
One answer to that question is Iran, which is steadily gaining influence in Sudan and many other parts of the continent, with massive infusion of funds to Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations which are increasingly active in Africa. But liberal anti-colonialists appear to not be concerned about brown-on-black colonialism, or perhaps they are just blissfully unaware of its existence.
Why blame the United Nations when you can blame Bob Geldof?
As for Ethiopia, it is not doing all that much better than it was back in 1984, though it is unclear whether an aging Irish musician is the guilty party. Wars continue to break out sporadically and last for years. A famine such as the one that inspired Band Aid has not repeated itself, but around 16 million Ethiopians rely on humanitarian food aid such as that provided by the UN World Food Program.
A recent UK Parliament report described how food is still being “used as a weapon by both sides of the conflict” there, with militants destroying local food supplies and trade infrastructure, and also diverting aid to supporters away from opponents. The UN has not taken responsibility for the diversion of its taxpayer funded aid. The UK remains a major donor to African nations including Ethiopia, giving away hundreds of millions of pounds every year.
Earlier this year, the UN held a conference in Geneva co-hosted by the UK, the government of Ethiopia, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The UN reported that $630 million had been pledged at the conference, which was welcome, but then complained that,
...immediate funding of $1 billion is required to sustain aid delivery for the next five months.
Fuse ODG, The Conversation, and liberals are not, however, blaming the United Nations for Africa’s plight. They prefer to target a little song with an outsized impact, an impact that even 40 years later still resounds.
