I have absolutely no idea what is going on in this meme.
The meme doesn’t make sense to me either, but I can tell you that the person in the second panel is Michael Parenti, a highly regarded communist historian known for analyzing history through class struggle. The quote in the 3rd panel is a famous one from his lecture about the US War against Yugoslavia:
Africa is rich! Only it’s people are poor. There are still problems in Africa today, there are still outrageous things happening today. ‘“Building your own pharmaceutical factories in Sudan” where do you think you can get off where you think you can do that, when you should be buying from the multinational pharmaceutical.’
Take the case of India. India was a rich, advanced, developed country. Until the British went in 1800. Between 1800 and 1830 the Indian textile industry, which was outperforming the British textile industry, was dismantled and the great industrial centers were de-industrialized. The people were sent back out onto the land to grow cotton for the factories in Manchester and London. Between 1850 and 1900, the per capita income fell by 65%. So that poverty in the third world, that so called ‘underdevelopment’ … These countries are not underdeveloped, they were overexploited- they’re maldeveloped.
Parenti’s speech is also known as “The Yellow Lecture” because the surviving footage of it has a distinctive coloration.
The other reference is this meme is to a scene in Seinfeld where Kramer’s apartment is being aggressively illuminated by a big red neon sign across the street; in this case, changed to yellow.
The middle frame is of Michael Parenti from this https://youtu.be/xP8CzlFhc14?feature=shared And referencing a quote of his “These countries are not UNDER developed; they’re OVER exploited!”
Protestation
What a genuinely wonderful speaker, anyone who hasn’t yet read Blackshirts and Reds or viewed his 1986 “Yellow Parenti” lecture owe it to themselves to do so immediately. Unlike many other Marxists, he speaks clearly and in common terms, for direct communication with the average person. They are the best radicalization works I have seen, with the ability to turn liberals into Marxist-Leninists practically immediately upon finishing them.
Especially read and watch if you consider yourself left or left-leaning, but denounce AES as “redfash” or otherwise denounce the USSR, Cuba, etc. Blackshirts isn’t so much a glorification of AES states as it is a critical examination of what they managed to achieve for their people despite their geopolitical circumstances.
Truly a wonderful voice.
