The Live Aid Musical: Built on Lies, Cynicism, and Self-Congratulatory BS of White Saviors
It’s somehow fitting that in more than 700 words of a BBC article about Live Aid being turned into a stage musical, and in another feature published in The Guardian, the word “Ethiopia” only appears once. In both articles, you get the word “famine,” but you learn nothing about what really happened in the country that supposedly inspired this pop culture milestone. We’re told that Bob Geldof “harnessed the power of rock and pop to save lives,” and if you feel a gag reflex over this hokum, trust that instinct.
The truth is uglier, much uglier. It’s been sitting out in the open for decades, and it implicates Geldof, the homicidal Marxist Derg regime, and the diplomats of U.S. and Europe.Because you see, they didn’t just lie to you about the 1984 famine, they’ve tried to con you over the 1973 famine during the last few years of Haile Selassie. And among the top liars for that second one is our familiar piece of walking mold, Alex de Waal.The story that The Guardian and all the other Western media outlets would like to sell you is that Geldof watched a report on the 1984 famine by BBC reporter Michael Buerk and was moved to do something. Presto! Geldof calls up his fellow pop stars, organizes a recording session, and sales of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” raises millions for aid. Geldof follows this up with the twin concerts for Band-Aid and then goes over to Ethiopia itself to see his mission through. Hooray for the white saviors. You’d think if it weren’t for the BBC and Geldof, no one would know this was going on…Which would be a crock. The truth is that Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, which was the government’s organization dealing with the famine, was shouting its lungs out, trying to get help from the world as early as August of 1983. It warned that millions were at risk, hundreds dying every day.
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