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ROBERT N. TAYLOR COMMENTARY: The Labeling of Nelson Mandela as a “Terrorist” Was an Act of Terrorism
Last Thursday with very little public fanfare and virtually no media coverage, the United States Senate joined the House of Representatives and undid a great wrong.
The two bodies of Congress struck the name of South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela from the government’s highly dubious “terrorist watch list.”
That’s right! The man who led the struggle to end white minority rule in South Africa had for years officially been labeled a terrorist by the U.S. government. Although Mandela had spent 27 years in prison and emerged to lead a peaceful transition from white minority rule to Black majority rule in the mid-1990s, up until last week our government considered him a terrorist.
This is an amazing example of how the collective racist mind works. During the 1980s President Ronald Reagan had a policy known as “constructive engagement” with the then racist South African government. Constructive engagement basically meant that the U.S. would publicly criticize South Africa’s racist system of apartheid but did virtually nothing to help bring it an end.
Instead, the Blacks who were struggling to end the brutal apartheid system – such as Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) – were labeled terrorists because they would occasionally respond to apartheid’s brutality with acts of violence of their own. Thus, Reagan and later administrations could constructively engage with the racist oppressors of Blacks while labeling the Blacks battling that oppression “terrorists.”
What is any more amazing is that the terrorist label remained until last week as much of the civilized world was beginning to celebrate Mandela’s 90th birthday and praise him as one of the world’s most admired men. Labeling Mandela a terrorist was a supreme act of terrorism by the U.S. government because it was, in effect, giving aid and support to a racist and terrorist white minority government. This bizarre labeling clearly shows that African Americans must always remain skeptical of government labels.
Every time you hear a Palestinian, organizations such as Hamas, countries such as Iran and even Cuba called “terrorist” please be skeptical. The U.S. government has historically played politics – even racist politics – with that word.
[Share your views on the above commentary or any other issue by emailing us at TaylorMediaPrime@yahoo.com. Please include your name and city.]
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