Tomorrow the Machine (II)
Jacobin's Purity Fetish Analysis of the Burkina Faso Revolution
Imperialism, trying to preserve itself in the face of the oppressed masses anticolonial struggle, presented neocolonialism to the masses. Neocolonialism means powerless visibility. You see an African president, but the entire country is controlled by France or Belgium or England—its former colonial master.
-Kwame Turé & Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
This is part 2 of a series. Read part 1 here.
In addition to refusing to recognize the intricacies of Sahel politics (as discussed in part 1), Berlin-based Professor Dr. Bettina Engels spends a considerable portion of her Jacobin article harping on “the hype on social media” surrounding Traoré and “the strong desire, especially among the younger generation, for substantial change in political and economic structures, namely an end to neocolonial and imperialist exploitation and domination” has led to “Traoré being stylized as a Pan-Africanist revolutionary.” The wide-reaching socioeconomic implications of the Burkinabè Revolution is reduced to a petty game of ego and identity politics, stripped of vital context and a concrete analysis of the material conditions of the country’s people.
This is a classic aim of the purity fetishist; it is in the way Engels analyzes the Burkinabè Revolution under Traoré that, as Dr. Carlos L. Garrido says in The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism, “things are no longer seen in their movement and interconnections, but treated abstractly and in a reified manner. Socialism becomes a rigid definition, with a series of characteristics reality must meet in order to be labeled as ‘socialist.’”1
As in part 1 of this piece, it is important to note that neither Traoré nor Sankara ever claimed to desire to move Burkina Faso, as a national project, towards Communism (although Sankara often quoted both Marx and Lenin in his speeches and explicitly advocated for the reconstruction of a socialist African society). Sankara, in a 1985 interview, states, “For now, I am anti-imperialist. Speaking as your comrade president, this also is the case. We think that this is the product of a specific ideology. That’s enough for us—to be useful to our people, especially when they don’t trouble themselves with labeling their leaders but judge them above all by their revolutionary action.”2 Traoré, in speech as well as practice, seems to be following the same path. Unfortunately for both leaders, the purity fetish outlook employed by Engels and Jacobin are equally applied to anti-imperialistic revolutionary movements such as that of Burkina Faso.
Engels solidifies her position here: she decries the notion that Traoré is “a figure worthy of carrying the mantle of Sankarism.” This is important because it is at this point in the article that Engels and Jacobin cross the line from tacit disapproval and stumble into unsubstantiated condemnation. The comparison between the two leaders is “valid only to a limited extent,” Engels declares, even though “it has real impact on public discourse, and Traoré himself knows how to use allusions to Sankara as a way to gain legitimacy.”
As evidence, Engels relies almost exclusively on the fact that Traoré’s government is abolishing opposition parties, restricting NGOs and civil society organizations, and repressing dissent with violence (she cleverly skirts around the issue of nationalizing agriculture and industry, acts which are always met with indignation by allies of empire). As evidence for her latter point she cites the work of Nigerien political scientist Abdourahmane Idrissa, who claims that the use of civilian militias known as Wayiyans are brutalizing the population that is dissenting against the popular government. We will address these arguments in turn.
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There are a plethora of issues with the assumptions posited by Engels: In no way does Traoré claim to have been passed the torch of ‘Sankarism.’ This is an ideological box into which he is stuffed by the author without explanation. As did Thomas Sankara during the first phase of the Burkinabè Revolution, Traoré has always emphasized that theirs is a nation-wide popular movement, working towards the common goals of the working masses of the country by meeting the most pressing material needs of the majority.
As such, the sweeping reforms seen in Burkina Faso are not a product of dictatorial decrees issued by Traoré at will; what’s more, the People’s Legislative Assembly is largely made up of Burkina Faso-educated professionals and local village leaders, making it a governmental body far more representative of its constituents’ population than those of most corporate elite-governed Western ‘democracies.’ By this logic, the controversial and problematic legislative actions taken by Traoré’s government, such as the anti-LGBTQ family reform program of September 2025, are not the machinations of a minuscule, elite class (as is often the case in the West), but are rather far more representative of the actual values the majority of Burkinabè people prioritize.
Contrary to Western narratives, Traoré is not a dictator. The members of Burkina Faso’s legislative body, the Traditional Legislative Assembly (ALT), is easily accessible on the government’s website. It is headed by college professor Ousmane Bougouma who was educated in Geneva (Western progressives tremble at the anti-democratic despot of indoctrination: Switzerland!) and came back to teach law at Thomas Sankara University—a school heavily subsidized by the Burkinabè government. The legislature’s deputy, Assita B. Françoise Romaine Bailou, is heading Burkina Faso’s Commission on Gender, Health, Social Action, and Humanitarian Affairs (Commission du genre, de la santé, de l’action sociale et humanitaire - CGSASH), a permanent specialized committee established by Traoré to advance gender equality in the country. These progressive efforts go unmentioned in Engels and Jacobin’s articles.
It is important to note that reactions to Thomas Sankara having implemented similar programs back in the ‘80s (he too established a gender equality commission, the Union des Femmes du Burkina Faso [Union of the Women of Burkina Faso/UFB], in 1985, although it was immediately reversed in 1987 by traitor Blaise Campaoré) are conveniently treated with the rosy glow of purified nostalgia by so-called leftists such as Jacobin when viewed in retrospect. It begs the reader to wonder whether Jacobin would have approved of Sankara in his day, when he was banning political parties and moving towards the dictatorship of the working class majority.3
Furthermore, at least five of the legislature’s 71 members belong to the ethnic Fulani/Pulaar group: Daouda Diallo, Ousmane Diallo, Moumouni Dialla, Ly Hama, and Mamadou Yaro. This is particularly relevant with regards to Engels’ source, Dr. Idrissa’s accusation of systemic anti-Fulani violence in Burkina Faso “which some would call a genocide.” Human Rights Watch reported similarly on the abuses of the popular militias as well as the Burkinabè military, but conveniently leaves out crucial context to provoke the age-old Western reaction of demonizing the leaders of sovereign, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial nations.
It is true that jihadists are currently occupying the area along the Burkina Faso-Mali border in which Fulani populations are high. This does not by any means, however, equate the Burkinabè military’s response to jihadist attacks (many of which include a number of Fulani insurgents) to a pointed attempt at ethnic cleansing. At a time when there are several very real genocides occurring around the world—one of them nearby in the Sahel region of Sudan and Chad—it becomes even more fallacious to haphazardly apply the label of ethnic cleansing to an armed conflict, especially as Burkina Faso is defending itself from Western neocolonialism.
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Dr. Idrissa treats the concept of civilian militias (Wayiyans) with a similar degree of reductionism. He portrays them as roving bands of terrorist gangs, bent on abusing their power as government-supported armed groups and committing crimes against the local population. This could not be further from the truth: a video posted to X by Somali independent media outlet Daljir Media from the capital city of Burkina Faso, Ougadougou, in the aftermath of one of the attempted 2025 coups, shows a group of civilians being interviewed as they spend the nights outside of Traoré’s presidential palace and at well-traveled roundabouts. When asked why they are sleeping at and around the president’s property, a young man responds, “because of the love we have for our country” (he says this in perfect English, as the interviewer, likely Somali, would not share the same Francophone background as the Burkinabè youth he is interviewing).
Far from the picture of corrupt, violent militias that Dr. Irissa paints, Wayiyans consist mainly of lightly-armed civilians willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of their country’s anti-colonial revolution. Other veritable, independent media outlets such as People’s Dispatch have highlighted this reality which falls dead on the ears of such critics as Dr. Idrissa and the Western outlets which platform him.
Regarding the Human Rights Watch report, which was conveniently released within a month of the Jacobin article, Amerikan NGOs such as HRW have a despicable record when it comes to fair and accurate reporting on anti-imperialist movements in the Global South. The primary source used in the report consists of a video taken after the combat between jihadist groups and the Burkinabè volunteer defense forces had ceased, leaving more than one hundred Fulani villagers dead. The credibility of the entire HRW report rests on the NGO’s ‘Senior Sahel Researcher,’ US-educated Italian Ilaria Allegrozzi—who in turn cites no Burkina Faso-based sources or outlets in her reporting.
These dubious circumstances are characteristic of HRW and other Amerikan regime-aligned NGO’s style of reporting. Additional examples of this tendency are readily available in Joe Emersberger & The Anti Empire Project (Justin Podur)’s 2021 book Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela and Jeremy Kuzmarov & Daniel Kovalik’s 2025 Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change.
Supposedly ‘neutral’ nonprofits and think tanks such as HRW, Council on Foreign Relations, Amnesty International, Brookings Institute, Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), InSight Crime, and many others work to advance the aims of neocolonialism. Anyone interested in an in-depth study of the inner working of the nefarious strategy of the US empire with regards to the news media should direct themselves to Michael Parenti’s 1986 masterpiece Inventing Reality.
Given the fact that the Burkinabè village of Solenzo, where HRW claims this massacre took place, has been under almost complete control by jihadist terrorists, it is impossible to confirm the claims that Allegrozzi puts forth on behalf of the US-based NGO. The Burkinabè government maintains that their volunteer forces did not perpetrate the killings, noting that jihadist groups such as JNIM are known to widely recruit Fulani villagers and to resort to inhumane methods such as using human shields and forcing villagers to fight against Burkinabè forces.
With all of this in mind, readers should approach reporting by HRW in regards to the Global South with ambivalence at best. It is the strategic role played by such NGOs within Amerikan society that allows the US empire to perpetrate narratives that not only disparage popular movements abroad, but perpetuate the continued oppression of neocolonialism. As is noted in Extraordinary Threat: “Recall that, in the case of Israel, when almost one hundred percent of the dying is on the Palestinian side, and the death toll is in the thousands, the Western media often manages to depict Palestinians as the more violent party. At best, they are portrayed as equally violent and culpable. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have descended to this false depiction as well.”4 This strategy proves to be all too useful for the Amerikan empire’s machinations with regards to the sovereign people of the Sahel.
This is part 2 of a series. Part 3 coming soon!
Garrido, Carlos L. The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism. Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2023. at p. 58.
Sankara, Thomas. Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-1987 (edited by Michael Prairie). Pathfinder Press, 2007. p. 266.
See the footnote on p. 69 of Id.: “Only parties associated with the former neocolonial regime were dissolved. A number of groups and organizations that supported the revolution were able to function openly.”
Podur, Justin & Emersberger, Joseph. Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, The Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela. Monthly Review Press, 2024. p. 170.
The spaceship is waiting, ready to go back to Alpha Centauri