Afrokracy theory: the elephant against the whale

13.04.2024

When addressing the concept of Multipolarism, Continental Africa occupies a preponderant place. The revolutions currently underway in the Sahel region and the changes in geopolitical balances highlight this reality.

LAND AND SEA, THE QUADRIPOLAR VISION, THE BIPOLARISM, THE MONOPOLAR TRANSITION, THE MULTIPOLARISM

Between the end of the 1800s and during the first half of the 1900s, several classical geopolitical theorists and analysts in the West based their study on the question of space control. For some, this implied mastery of the Sea, for others, control of the Land. In this vision, there have been two geopolitical currents antagonistic to each other: the Geopolitics of Thalassocracy (Mackinder, Spykman,…) and the Continentalist Geopolitics (John Von Lohausen, Haushofer, Carl Schmitt, Carlo Terracciano,…). On the one hand, there was the vision of those who saw in the emergence and unification of the continents a potential threat to the maritime model based on expansionism, imperialism, mercantilism, colonialism and capitalism that characterized the Anglo-Saxon area. On the other hand, there were those who believed that only the creation of Continental States founded on the primary principle of Empire and control of the Mainland could be the path to pursue to be a power. The Maritime Geopolitics school (also defined as thalassocratic) of the British Mackinder, argued that there is an eternal confrontation between Continents and the Sea: Halford Mackinder himself identified the Continental power under the concept of Heartland, which literally means “continental heart”. For Mackinder, the Heartland was located in the current Eurasian region: starting from this, he will state “Who controls Eastern Europe, controls the Heartland;  who has control of the Heartland, commands the World.” Precisely for this reason, for him, it was necessary that Eurasia not unite and not form a pole that could threaten the interests of Thalassocracy. Following in his footsteps, the American Spykman elaborates an alternative vision and introduces the concept of “coastal region”, i.e. the Rimland: For Spykman, the Rimland was the area of Western Europe, the Middle East and a good part of Asia western world, for him the true center of gravity. So he states “Who controls the Rimland can control Eurasia, who controls Eurasia runs the World”. Mackinder and Spykman go down in the history of geopolitics as the precursors of Atlanticism.

On the other hand, there is the opposition of the German Haushofer, defender of a continental geopolitics (also defined as tellurocracy) and of quadripolarism around the Pan-Regions: Pan-America, Eurafrica, Pan-Russia, Asian co-prosperity zone. But such a configuration, although opposed to Thalassocracy, was imbued with north-centered supremacy (North according to the Caucasian vision of the World) and colonialism. Schmitt will defend a more or less similar line. Later, the Italian geopolitician Carlo Terracciano, in the era of bipolarism (capitalist West against Soviet East), will defend a continentalist vision and the structuring of a telluric Eurasian Empire, against Thalassocracy and Mondialism. At the time, in the midst of the Cold War (after the First Two Hot Wars), Africa had decolonized from the French and English Thalassocracy, but neocolonialism (one of the principles of this Thalassocracy) had emerged. Africa, devastated by brutal thalassocratic colonialism and the Berlin conference of 1884-1885, tried to emerge on the geopolitical chessboard, but was forced to align itself with either Capitalism or Sovietism. Much of Africa (under Sékou Touré of Guinea, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Modibo Keïta of Mali, Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, etc…) opted for alignment with Sovietism. However, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dismantling of the USSR two years later, Africa initially lost strategic support in the face of Thalassocracy (neocolonialism, Americanism…). Here, social democracies are born, that is, the juxtaposition between socialism and liberal reformism. On the other hand, capitalist Thalassocracy changes into what is today neoliberal Mondialism and begins the “monopolar transition”, which aggressively imposes itself everywhere. Here, Francis Fukuyama will affirm that the era of the “end of history” had arrived which had established (in his opinion) the liberal victory over all twentieth-century models. It was too premature a statement. A few years later, Samuel Huntington published the book “The Clash of Civilizations”: he stated that sooner or later a world configuration based on civilizations would appear. Years later, we find ourselves talking about Multipolarism and the refusal of the different civilizational poles to align themselves with Western Thalassocracy. Today, the “monopolar transition” and the thalassocratic supremacy has come to an end: among those who are in favor of the Multipolar World, in Africa, there are structures such as the NGO Urgences Panafricanistes chaired by the activist Kemi Seba, such as the the activist Nathalie Yamb, the intellectual Franklin Nyamsi, the Economic Freedom Fighters chaired by Julius Malema, the pan-African Observatory Afropolar chaired by Farafin Sandouno; in China there is the geopolitical Zhang WeiWei; in Russia there is the geostrategist Leonid Savin, the intellectual Alexander Dugin; in Western Europe there is the intellectual Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Diego Fusaro and Alain de Benoist; in South America there is the Nova Resistencia structure chaired by Raphael Machado, the Centro de Estudios Crisolistas; in North America, those who oppose Thalassocracy are Jackson Hinkle of the MAGA Communism movement, etc.

Fukuyama’s mistake was the premature analysis of the phenomena. In fact, we are at the end of History, but at the “end of thalassocratic History”.

AFROPOLARISM: THE ELEPHANT AGAINST THE WHALE

After having analyzed the concept of Geopolitics, which is useful for understanding the process of resistance in the Sahel and its fate, we analyze what I define as “Afropolarism”. Afropolarism, in the continuity and development of Geopolitics, is nothing other than the opposition of the Elephant against the Whale. The Elephant is an animal that lives on the mainland, symbolically important in African ancestral royalty: it represents sedentarism, power, royalty, memory. Where, however, the Whale is a water animal, and we have already analyzed what the Sea means geopolitically speaking. The pan-Africanist revolution of the 21st century is an Afropolar revolution: the populations in the Sahel, the sovereignist citizen movements that are in juxtaposition with the patriotic military forces, reject Thalassocracy (radical opposition to neocolonialism in all its forms and to mondialism) and reason in key to what I define as Afrokracy (definition I use to define an African Tellurocracy, emerging Pan-African Heartland), as well as Multipolarism. The Alliance of Sahel States (AES), made up of Abdourahamane Tchiani’s Niger, Ibrahim Traoré’s Burkina Faso and Assimi Goïta’s Mali, in its paradigmatic vision completely espouses the principles of Pan-Africanism and Federalism. In this sense, on an institutional level, they are the pioneers of Afrokracy (as opposed to Thalassocracy) and Afropolarism (as opposed to monopolarism). The AES is destined to expand on a continental scale, as the project seduces the popular masses and is in continuity with the theories of Marcus Garvey, Cheikh Anta Diop, Kwame Nkrumah and Muammar Gaddafi. It can therefore only represent a potential African Heartland. I therefore affirm “Whoever controls the Sahel and the center of Africa (now Kongo) has control of Africa, whoever controls Africa controls the fate of the World”. The opponents of African sovereignty have understood this, for this reason the thalassocratic forces are concentrated in Black Africa, they support jihadism (there is a complaint from Mali on this) so that destabilizations are created, which can facilitate access to African Heartland. The African Elephant will survive by totally breaking (as the AES is doing) with Thalassocracy and pursuing an Afrokratic (African telluric / Afro-continental) and Afropolar path. This Afropolarism is distinguished from Haushofer’s quadripolarism or from Jean Thiriart’s Europe-Africa integration (Eurafrica) because it wants a total break from any paternalism, it is distinguished from twentieth-century bipolarism (West against the East) and fits into a Multipolar vision (West against the Rest) in Afrokratic and Pan-Africanist style. If the AES expands, if more pan-Africanist regimes emerge in Africa, this vision of the Elephant will prevail over the stateless Whale.

VISION OF CIVILIZATION IN AFROKRATIC AND AFROPOLAR THEORY

If the Elephant Afrokracy is a necessity to counter the forces of the Sea (and Evil), an economic and political federation cannot be sufficient. The discussion must be deeper: a vision of civilization is needed. The telluric and ecumenical African Empire that will come will have multiple centers in accordance with the civilization on the Continent: Mandingo-Sahelian axis (West Africa), Kongo-Bantu axis (Central and Southern Africa), Ethiopian axis (East Africa), in a first half. In a second stage, there will have to be a Maghreb axis. All these axes, however, will be part of one and only monolithic anti-thalassocratic African Empire (which I define as Neter Farafina Himaya, which combining the medu neter-bambara-kiswhaili language, means “Powerful African Empire”, in reference to Ta Netcher. Ta Netcher is “the Land of the Gods” and matrix of humanity located in present-day Central Africa, according to the Africans of Antiquity).

POLYCENTRIC HEARTLAND

We have seen that in the classical schools of Geopolitics, the dualism Sea Power (maritime power) and Heartland (continental heart) exists. However, in the construction of a Multipolar World, a contradiction arises to be filled: If there are multiple Blocks, including Afropolar and Afrokratic Africa, the member countries of the BRICS, among others, only one Heartland cannot exist. More Heartlands will need to exist as there are existing Civilizations and their ideologies of destiny. For this vision I propose the term “polycentric Heartland”: a vision that deserves in-depth study and elaboration. It is very likely that this development will start precisely from Africa and what is called the Global South.