US Imperialism and Crypto-Imperialism | The Hastening | Our Side of the Ledger

The Hastening is a show about US imperialism. And, in particular, it’s a way to explain how imperialism has evolved into what I call crypto-imperialism.

Crypto-imperialism is basically the outcome of living in denial about imperialism for decades — instead of consciously and intentionally working to keep an empire running, we tell ourselves there is no empire at all, while a handful of spies, diplomats, and other unelected and generally unaccountable people try to keep things running.

This is actually a reboot of this series, which I made a few episodes of in the latter half of 2023. You can watch all those episodes here: New Ellijay Television

So many things have influenced me on this subject, but in particular, I want to shout out the book Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories, which is a compilation of the writings and speeches of Amilcar Cabral, a revolutionary from Guinea-Bissau.

I’ve been really moved and invigorated by that book in a lot of ways, but a lot of my thoughts in this episode are pretty heavily derived from Cabral. In particular, the analysis of why having no local economically powerful class makes newly-freed colonies vulnerable to neo-liberalism. He was a pioneer in this subject, and his analysis is so precise that it doesn’t even read like what it was at the time — a prediction. He describes the problems as if he had perfect hindsight. I would encourage anyone interested to read that book.

Next time, we’ll take things to the next level and see how crypto-imperialism looks up close, by analyzing the current war in the eastern part of the DR Congo. A Rwandan-backed rebel group called M23 has been on a rampage, sacking major cities and sending millions of people fleeing into exile. Tensions over this are spreading across the continent and threaten to unleash a pan-African war, with leaders as far away as South Africa issuing threats against the Rwandan President Paul Kagame. So next time on the Hastening, we’ll look at how the US and other imperial powers like France are the drivers of this conflict, even though they pretend to know little and less about it.