Facing the Rising Barbarism
by Regis Martin, Crisis Magazine:
It was during the early 1960s that the Mau Mau uprisings took place in Kenya, marked by widespread massacres of anyone, black or white, who got in their way. The end of European colonial rule was near at hand and, despite all the atrocities, hopes were running high among the usual liberal elites. Not everyone, however, was equally optimistic.
Conservative columnist William Buckley, for instance, when asked about the future of Africa, remained skeptical. Perhaps, he suggested, the newly emergent nations were not quite ready for self-government. “Well, when do you think they will be?” His answer: “When they stop eating each other.”
OK, so maybe cannibalism was not exactly le mot juste in describing the behavior of Mau Mau insurgents sixty years ago. They weren’t actually eating their political opponents. Any more than, say, our own insurgents have been dining out on human flesh while ravaging our cities and towns. How about the word barbarism then?
Will that work to describe the mayhem and violence witnessed by more and more Americans these days? And not just witnessed—as if the burning and looting of whole cities were nothing more than distant images on a TV screen—but actually experienced as the victims of the rampaging mobs, on whom the mobs have been feasting. Are we not faced with our very own, homegrown, Mau Mau uprising?
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