**Why Are Black Venezuelans and My People Globally Going Crazy Over Maduro and Ignoring Gaddafi? - Why Is Obama Our Hero and Trump Our Enemy? Why?**
**Why Are Black Venezuelans and My People Globally Going Crazy Over Maduro and Ignoring Gaddafi?
Why Is Obama Our Hero and Trump Our Enemy? Why?**
This is not a complex question. It is a simple one, and its simplicity is precisely why it is uncomfortable.
When measured in material contribution, structural ambition, and tangible outcomes for Africa, Muammar Gaddafi did more for African unity, sovereignty, and economic independence than Nicolás Maduro has done for Black people anywhere on earth. Yet Gaddafi is largely dismissed, erased, or quietly tolerated in Black political discourse, while Maduro is loudly defended, Obama is canonized, and Trump is universally cast as the singular villain. That contradiction deserves to be confronted plainly.
Gaddafi: Material Power, African Focus, and Structural Ambition
Gaddafi’s relationship with Africa was not rhetorical. It was financial, institutional, and strategic.
He funded African infrastructure, paid arrears for African Union member states, backed the creation of continental institutions, and pushed—openly and repeatedly—for African monetary independence through an African Central Bank, African Investment Bank, and African Monetary Fund. He supported Africa-owned satellite infrastructure to break dependency on European telecom systems. He used Libyan oil wealth, whatever its flaws at home, as leverage for African bargaining power abroad.
This was not symbolism. It was structure.
One may criticize Gaddafi’s authoritarianism, his contradictions, and his regional meddling—and those criticisms are legitimate—but to deny that his political imagination was explicitly African-centered is intellectually dishonest. His ambitions threatened Western financial architecture in Africa. That threat, not humanitarian concern, explains much of how his story has been framed.
When Gaddafi was removed and killed, Africa lost not a saint, but a counterweight—one of the few leaders willing to fund African autonomy without Western approval.
Maduro: Symbolic Alignment, Minimal Substance
By contrast, what has Nicolás Maduro materially delivered to Black people—inside or outside Venezuela?
Venezuela under Chávez at least articulated a redistributive vision tied to oil revenues. Under Maduro, that vision collapsed into survival politics, elite consolidation, and state decay. Black Venezuelans, like Black populations across Latin America, continue to experience structural racism, color hierarchy, and economic marginalization. Symbolic recognition has not translated into systemic transformation.
Maduro’s foreign policy alignment with Africa is diplomatic and ideological, not developmental. There is no African equivalent of Gaddafi’s institutional investment, no continental financing push, no structural challenge to global economic dependency.
Support for Maduro among Black communities often functions as oppositional identity politics—“he is against the West, therefore he must be for us”—rather than evidence-based assessment. That is not strategy; it is projection.
Obama: Symbolism Over Substance
Barack Obama occupies a unique psychological position in Black global consciousness. He is not revered primarily for what he did, but for what he represented.
A Black man occupying the apex of Western imperial power produced an emotional rupture in centuries of exclusion. That symbolic breakthrough matters. But symbolism is not immunity from accountability.
Obama presided over drone warfare expansion, destabilization campaigns, and the Libya intervention that shattered a functioning—if flawed—state and ignited regional chaos across North and West Africa. The long-term consequences for African migrants, security, and sovereignty have been devastating.
Yet these outcomes are rarely foregrounded in Black political memory. Why?
Because Obama is read as “one of us inside their system”, while Gaddafi was “outside their system challenging it.” The former feels aspirational; the latter feels dangerous.
Trump: The Honest Villain
Trump, unlike Obama, did not cloak empire in moral language. He was crude, transactional, and explicit. For that reason, he became the perfect enemy.
But structurally, Trump did little that previous U.S. presidents had not already done. The difference was aesthetic, not imperial. Obama spoke the language of inclusion while executing the same geopolitical logic with better optics.
Empire with a smile is easier to forgive than empire with a snarl.
The Core Problem: Narrative Capture
The issue is not Maduro versus Gaddafi, or Obama versus Trump. The issue is how Black political judgment is shaped.
Too often, evaluation is based on:
-
Rhetoric over resources
-
Alignment against the West rather than outcomes for Black people
-
Media narratives rather than material analysis
Gaddafi fails because he does not fit the acceptable moral script. Obama succeeds because he fits it perfectly—even when the consequences contradict Black interests globally.
The Uncomfortable Conclusion
If Black political consciousness were genuinely grounded in material outcomes, structural power, and long-term collective interest, Gaddafi would be debated far more seriously, Maduro far more critically, Obama far more soberly, and Trump far less exceptionally.
The fact that this is not the case suggests something deeper than ideology:
a discomfort with power that is not Western-approved, and a preference for symbolic inclusion over structural independence.
That is the question beneath the question.
And it remains unanswered.
Comments
Post a Comment