Apr 17, 2019
"The
scale of corruption in Africa is daunting," warns The Economist.
"Corruption a Cause of Poverty in the Developing World," DW tells
us. "Why corruption is holding Africa back," CNN laments.
Everywhere we turn in elite media and halls of power, we are told
the global South is poor, in part or in whole, due to rampant
"corruption."
But a
closer look at the data – and any effort to put notions of
corruption in their proper historical context - reveals our
limited, racialized definition of corruption is the geopolitical
equivalent of complaining about “black on black” crime. True in a
limited, technical sense but, in practice, often functions as a
victim-blaming red herring meant to avoid uncomfortable discussions
of white supremacy, deliberate economic dispossession and a far
greater global regime of corruption leveled by the
super-wealthy.
This
episode examines the extraction of trillions annually from the
global South in illicit transfers of money through the exploitation
of tax shelters, so-called "hot money", interests on exploitative
IMF loans, trade misinvoicing and a host of other routine and
totally unscrutinized financial schemes.
We
are joined today by anthropologist and author Jason
Hickel.