It is not in the least bit surprising that America’s President Donald John Trump would so cavalierly and nonchalantly tell Ms. Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, who was at the time visiting with him at the White House, that he could not tell the difference between the Republic of Congo, with its administrative capital city of Brazzaville, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly called Zaire, with Kinshasa as its capital or administrative headquarters.
And yet, the hip-shooting MAGA Revolutionary who has been widely described by his critics and some political analysts and commentators as being disposed towards “Fascist” and “Neo-Fascist” tendencies, is widely reported to have put Congo-Brazzaville among the hit-list of countries whose citizens the half-German and half-Scottish President wants banned and denied access and visas to the United States, although it is almost certain that Mr. Trump had actually meant or intended to either deny or severely restrict access to the United States of America from citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo, being that the billionaire real-estate dealer who was born in Queens, New York City, some 80 years ago, claims that his primary reason for denying or restricting access to the United States from citizens of Congo-Brazzaville is solely and squarely based on the violent political climate in that country (See “ ‘I Don’t Know What That Is’: Trump Claims He Doesn’t Know What African Nation [Is Congo-Brazzaville] During Meloni Meeting” Slingshot News 4/17/25)
The perfectly predictable twist, albeit not in the least bit surprising, is the fact that war-torn Democratic Republic of The Congo is conspicuously missing from the list of countries on which Mr. Trump, whose own Scottish mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, immigrated to the United States at the age of 18, on May 2, 1930 and arrived in New York City some 9 days later, has xenophobically imposed his travel ban. It is conspicuously xenophobic because the list is almost wholly composed of African countries and a few Caribbean and Latin-American countries and a handful of Asian countries, obviously designed to ward off any criticism about overt racism.
We are, however, not in the least bit flabbergasted to learn that, indeed, the name of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been exempted from the Trumpian Travel ban, apparently because the MAGA Republican Leader is widely reported to be presently immersed in some serious transactions to have some of the mineral wealth of Africa’s most richly endowed country exported to the United States. Not in the least bit flabbergasted because as a globally renowned “Transactional President” and a tariff-addicted latter-day politician, it all boils down to dollars and cents. We are here, of course, referring to Mr. Trump’s yardstick for measuring and determining which countries around the globe deserve the coveted privilege of America’s diplomatic acceptance and friendship.
In short, the fact and the truth of the matter is that it is not about the question of whether the political or even the ideological climate of any individual country is conducive or not-so-conducive to business transaction but, glaringly rather the fact of whether any country in the commercially strategic crosshairs of the Trumpian White House is in possession of any highly prized or precious goodies that it is willing to offer the United States on the cheap, in the proverbial “Missionary Position,” in exchange for avoiding being deliberately and strategically targeted for ostracism or, worse yet, the sort of neocolonialist control and manipulation that has become the main and sole political dietary fare between superpower nations like the United States, China and Russia, to name just a couple, and the rest of the politically Wretched of the Earth, my profound apologies to immortalized Martinican-Algerian psychiatrist Dr. Frantz Fanon.
Now, what ought to worry or shock us is not the all-too-common and normal geographical and/or geopolitical exhibition of crass and gaping ignorance of Mr. Trump – for that is perfectly normal for any average leader or politician – but rather, the expression of shock or seismic disbelief on the part of those who so scandalously and erroneously suppose epistemic erudition or the possession of a remarkable breadth of knowledge of global geopolitics to be part and parcel or integral to the profile of the average or the stereotypical American President or Leader. It is actually a laudable hallmark and one that is highly prized hereabouts and deemed to be perfectly normative or standard fare.
You see, the unspoken truth is that any American leader or public official who demonstrates a competent knowledge and/or appreciation for the affairs of Third-World Countries like the Two Republics of The Congo and Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Yemen would be dismissively written off as one who spends too much of his/her time dabbling in frivolities to be taken any more seriously than a maven of trivia on one one of the popular game shows on American Television Networks, such as Jeopardy and the Dating Game. It is common knowledge that a sizable mass of American Citizens and Permanent Residents have been socialized and conditioned to a wholesale and unreserved acceptance of pathological narcissism, falsely and albeit fetchingly or attractively packaged as “patriotism.”
What the preceding means is that any politician and/or leader desirous of winning the approval of a critical mass of the electorate has to put the United States of America over and above all the other countries in the world. You see, any level-headed leader or politician who sees an equal significance and worth or value in other countries besides the United States of America – including the so-called NATO Countries – had better check themselves into a mental asylum.
Ultimately, what is unarguably clear about the Trumpian List of Persona-Non-Gratae Countries, is the fact that the countries and the people so targeted are also almost exclusively the countries whose peoples and populations literally created the Great Civilization that has become known as The Democratic Republic of the United States of America. Now, what is quite obvious and that which only a relatively miniscule few are willing to frankly point out and/or discuss, is the fact the Trumpian Travel Ban is decidedly the latter-day equivalent of the Immediate Post-Bellum or Post-Civil War and Post-Abolition Massive Deportation of Formerly Enslaved Continental Africans by President Abraham Lincoln.
Otherwise, what accounts for the heavily AFROCENTRIC coloration of the targeted nations, including Chad, the Republic of The Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Libya, Somalia and The Sudan, with a smattering or the scattershot targeting of countries like Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Iran, Turkmenistan and Yemen for camouflage? Which is also why it makes absolutely perfect sense that the Trump 2.0 Government would officially decree the proscription of the teaching of African American History and Culture right here in the United States of America.
It is a well-calibrated and systematic erasure of Global African Humanity and one that transcends even the most horrific aspects of the Jewish Holocaust. Let none of us naively mistake the Trumpian Curricular Agenda for what it unmistakably is: An Anti-African Genocide of Gazan proportions that ought to be promptly recognized as such, and fiercely fought off and pushed back with a vengeance.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
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