Nelson Mandela and the Dangers of Deification

The death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela prompted torrents of gushing praise from world leaders and media this week. Mandela was widely depicted as a near-flawless human being. BBC presenter Evan Davis said Mandela ranked near Jesus in the "pantheon of virtue"; Bono said Mandela was "stubborn 'til the end for all the right reasons, it felt like he very nearly outstared his maker."

But the truth about Mandela is somewhat more shaded. He will be remembered for his magnificent legacy of racial unification in the aftermath of his release from prison in 1990. Mandela's critics worried, not unreasonably, that the committed leader of the African National Congress could lead a race war in revenge for the horrors of apartheid. Instead, Mandela took the leadership of his country with an open hand, and in the process, set a global example of forgiveness on both a personal and national stage.

But Mandela was also a terrorist leader associated with the Communist Party during his early career. His ANC was responsible for violence and murder against both military and civilian targets. During his prison term, his wife Winnie became famous for allegedly using "necklaces" -- oil-soaked tires set aflame and placed around the heads of opponents. (They later divorced.) He remained close with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro ("Long live the Cuban revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro"), personally supported Libyan thug Moammar Gadhafi ("It is our duty to give support to the brother leader"), sold tanks to the Syrians and backed the terrorist Palestinian regime of Yasser Arafat ("There are many similarities between our struggle and that of the PLO"). Mandela said: "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings."

Mandela's administration was remarkable in its attempt to solidify the country instead of dividing it along racial lines. But it also infamously ignored the threat of HIV/AIDS and did little or nothing about the explosion of murder and rape in the country. South Africa remains one of the developed world's most dangerous countries, with 65,000 rapes per year. Select surveys show one in three women saying she had been raped in the past year, and one in four men saying he had participated in a rape. Racial murder remains incredibly high. Mandela's ANC has run the country since 1994.

The world will remember him for the good he did rather than the evil he embraced. That's appropriate and praiseworthy; his living legacy to the world will be his support for racial reconciliation rather than the violence of his youth or the incompetence of his administration and successors. But the media's deification of Mandela means that millions around the world will lump in Mandela's bad with his good. Instead of separating Mandela's racial record from his support for communistic regimes, the media celebrate him as a sort of bridge between the Castros of the world and the West. Even more problematic is that President Barack Obama, who warmly shook the hand of Raul Castro at Mandela's funeral, does, too.

This is the problem with our "good person" versus "evil person" view of history. Most of us, in our daily lives, say that someone is "good" when we mean that he is more likely than not to take a good action; we say that someone is "evil" when he is more likely than not to embrace the evil position. But in the Vaseline-covered lens of the media camera, every "good" person becomes a perfect person. The truth is more nuanced: Mandela did some incredible things, and he did some terrible things. The overall analysis of his life will weigh his largest and most important choice as the heaviest, as it should. But that should not mean that all of his sins become virtues, just as for his detractors, all of his virtues should not become sins.

First of all, unfortunately, no one cares that Mandela was a Communist. There is no longer any such thing as liberal anti-Communism, or even non-conservative anti-Communism. Communism is now regarded as "good" by the mainstream and even its crimes and atrocities ultimately justified by its goals. The Cold War has faded from memory and has never been chronicled (other than by leftist revisionists) so that now anti-Communism is just another "black mark" indicating that one is a bigot or an apologist for bigotry. (Once upon a time liberals condemned bigotry because it could lead to mass murder a la the Holocaust. Now the bigotry is actually a worse crime the mass murder that could theoretically follow it. Just as Baptists are opposed to illicit sex because it could lead to dancing, so liberals are opposed to mass murder because it could lead to bigotry.)

Second, the element of racial mysticism that entered the leftist philosophy some 70 to 80 years ago has now blossomed into full-blown racial mysticism that literally deifies not just Black leaders, but all Blacks. Just as they were once looked upon and treated as subhuman, they are now superhuman--"gxds" in human form who have no trace of "original sin" or an evil inclination within them. They are literally incapable of the bigotry that is otherwise the common temptation of mankind and their prejudices can only be interpreted as righteous (and fully justified) indignation. A people who share with poor rural white Southerners everything for which liberals despise and ridicule the latter are not only exempted from all ridicule but given a place of honor in the leftist pantheon to the "left" of Marx, Lenin, and Mao and all other "oppressed" groups. Pointy-headed white leftist intellectuals literally worship high-melanin rednecks.

Mandela, like King, is merely the leftist racial melodrama writ large. Just as the sinless King died for the sins of the white race, so the sinless Mandela spent thirty years in prison for the same reason. No amount of adulation or worship will ever remove the stain of white original sin for the left (who used to claim there was no such thing as right and wrong, and therefore no reason to feel guilty about anything).

I once read Black Americans described in an old book as the "most alienated, and yet least alien, of all American minority groups." And you know, that actually used to be true. But it is true no longer. It is well known that the left threw away the proletariat for the nationalism of the "oppressed" decades ago. Now through some sort of alchemy they have over the past few decades transformed the least alien American minority group into the most alien--literally more alien than any group that has come over recently from the most radically different cultures. A non-indigenous people who have lived in this country since at least 1619 and who for most of that time were rural agrarian Southern chrstian fundamentalists has literally been transformed into the exact opposite of everything they ever were. Blacks used to be the Ultimate Americans, the Ultimate Southerners, and even the Ultimate Simple-Minded Religious Believers; now they are the Ultimate Anti-Americans, the Ultimate Anti-Southerners, and the Ultimate Cynical Materialistic Skeptics.

Despite a history that makes them second only to the original English colonists as the oldest non-indigenous American group, the racial mysticism of the Left has elevated them above even "native Americans," Hispanics, Asians, and certainly Jews as the ultimate in alienness and alienation. They must really be going by nothing other than darkness of skin. The one exception to this is rednecks, who are as a rule darker in complexion than pasty-skinned leftist academics. This appears to be the only exception to the otherwise totalitarian tyranny of complexion.

MANDELA, OBAMA AND FIDEL ARE BIRDS OF A FEATHER

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After being released, Cuba was one of the first countries visited Nelson Mandela . Former South African President then began a long friendship with Fidel Castro, whom the July 1991 thanked Cuban troops to the battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

During his imprisonment, Mandela became an admirer of the writings of Mao and Che Guevara, whom he also dedicated praise when it was released: "his revolutionary achievements were of such magnitude that no charge of censorship in the prison could hide them ourselves." Che's life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom. " We will always honor your memory", said.

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