Trump Announces U.S. Strike Against ISIS In Nigeria
Trump Repeats Pro-Christian Propaganda While Announcing Airstrikes Against ISIS In Nigeria
On Christmas Day, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had launched a “deadly strike” against Islamic State fighters in northwest Nigeria, who the president claimed specifically targeted people of the Christian faith, which authorities in Nigeria have denied, saying people harmed and killed by the militant group were not targeted based on any particular religious belief.
“ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not see for many years, and even Centuries! I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” Trump claimed in a Truth Social post Thursday night, adding that U.S. forces had “executed numerous perfect strikes.”
“Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper,” he continued. “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
According to Reuters, the U.S. acted in coordination with the government in Nigeria, and both governments are strongly condemning the Islamic State militants, but where their messaging diverges is when it comes to the motives of the terrorist organization. The Trump administration has been consistent in claiming the objective of the terrorist group is a targeted, anti-Christian “genocide,” whereas the Nigerian government has consistently said that there is no evidence of that.
From Reuters:
Abuja confirmed it had approved the operation. Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said on Friday Nigeria had acted jointly with the U.S., but not targeting any specific religion.
“Nigeria is a multi-religious country, and we’re working with partners like the U.S. to fight terrorism and protect lives and property,” Tuggar told Nigeria’s Channels Television.
Nigeria’s population of over 230 million people is roughly evenly divided among Christians, who predominate in the south, and Muslims who predominate in the north.
Last month, Trump threatened to order his forces to take military action in Nigeria unless the authorities there acted to stop what he described as the persecution of Christians.
While Nigeria has had persistent security challenges, including violence and kidnappings by Islamist insurgents in the north, it strongly denies that Christians are subjected to systematic persecution.
Its government responded to Trump’s threat by saying it intended to work with Washington against militants, while rejecting U.S. language that suggested Christians were in particular peril.
“After Trump threatened to come guns-blazing in Nigeria, we saw a Nigerian delegation visit the U.S.,” Kabir Adamu, managing director of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, told Reuters.
“The Attorney General was involved, and agreements were signed. Then we learned of U.S. surveillance missions mapping terrorist locations.”
Participating in the strikes could raise a risk that the government could be perceived as endorsing Trump’s language on wider sectarian strife, a sensitive issue throughout Nigeria’s history.
“Trump is pandering to domestic evangelical Christian objectives with his ‘Christian genocide’ narrative,” Adamu said.
So, who do we believe, the people who live in Nigeria, govern Nigeria and are familiar with the culture, politics and conflicts in the region, or the Trump administration, which doesn’t even bother hiding its agenda to make white Christian nationalism great again, is openly hostile towards Islam, non-white foreigners and Africans from various “shithole countries” — as the president openly calls them — and uses conservative propaganda as virtually its only mode of communication to the public?
According to BBC News, “The Trump administration has previously accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians from jihadist attacks and has claimed a ‘genocide’ is being perpetrated.”
Yeah — we’ve seen this before.
Back in May, Trump invited South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House to lecture him about white Afrikaners in South Africa facing a fictional “white genocide,” backing his claims with disinformation inaccuracies, false citations, and outright lies, while pretending to know more about what’s going on in Ramaphosa’s nation than he did.
From our previous report:
Trump also had a stack of print-outs of news articles purporting to be reports on “white genocide” in SA. (Spoiler alert: they were not.)
One image, for example, showed Red Cross workers in protective gear handling body bags.
“Look, here’s burial sites all over the place,” said Trump. “These are all white farmers that are being buried.”
According to AFP, the image was actually a screenshot from a YouTube video of Red Cross workers responding after women were raped and burned alive during a mass jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma. The caption on the video even stated as much.
As for Nigeria, so far Trump hasn’t manufactured fake evidence to back his claims that Christians are specifically being targeted; he’s just making the claim ad nauseam without presenting any evidence to support it at all, which has been his MO for as long as he’s been involved in politics, from the birther movement he led against former President Barack Obama, to his factless claims about the 2020 election, to virtually everything he has done since the start of his second term.
This should have been a simple story about two governments’ joint strike against a terrorist organization. Instead, it’s another story about Trump turning a foreign conflict — or any conflict, really — into an opportunity to promote right-wing propaganda.
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