“I do not need to be rescued by anyone, whether their underlying motive is driven by oil or feminism. As such, I have only one unequivocal demand of all ‘liberators’: Leave me alone. The only solidarity I am interested in seeing is the kind that throws a wrench in the war machine which occupies my homeland.”
—S.R.—an Iraqi living in the United States1
“This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.”
—Teju Cole2
“. . . no one colonizes innocently.”3
—Aimé Césaire
In 2010, Jason Sadler had to give up his dream. He wanted to send T-shirts to Africa. One million of them to be exact. Sadler had never been to Africa and presumably had no academic or professional background in economics, but that didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let this lack of expertise get in the way. It was simply enough that he cared. But before readers start to feel too bad about this failed “humanitarian” mission to clothe (supposedly) naked Africans, better news arrived a few months later. It was then when Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes gave plenty for the White Savior Industrial Complex to celebrate, as his “socially responsible” company sent its one millionth pair of shoes to Africa.
Sadler and Mycoskie are just two of many Western do-gooders featured in Richard Stupart’s article, “7 Worst International Aid Ideas.”4 Putting aside the logistical, economic, and political problems involved in their pursuits, it’s hard not to reflect on T. S. Eliot’s words of wisdom. “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important,” he wrote. “They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” While we might hesitate to assign motives to people like Sadler and Mycoskie, it is not a stretch to see these aid efforts as another arm of U.S. imperialism. Despite their popularity among American shoppers, charities, and the U.S. corporate media outlets, we cannot overlook how these movements represent some of the “worst attempts at helping others since colonialism.”5
An important but overlooked feature of American exceptionalism is not just the idea that the U.S. economy, government, or culture is exceptional. The ideology also maintains that the U.S. is made up of exceptional citizens. As Inderpal Grewal writes in her book, Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First-Century America, “Under advanced neoliberal conditions in which inequality has resulted in protests and critiques of state welfare rollbacks, the US nation-state’s exceptionalism has now moved to its citizens.” Grewal thus helps us see clearly the link between American exceptionalism and American innocence. It is not just our elected officials and military personnel who are forces for good in the world, acting with the most benevolent of intentions. It is individual Americans too. “Instead of an exceptional nation,” Grewal concludes, “there are exceptional citizens, and one way their exceptionalism is produced is through their participation in humanitarianism.”6
The field of journalism is often thought of as a venue of humanitarianism where citizens help other citizens understand the world around them. Yet in America, the media has been called the fourth branch of the American government. A mere five corporations control 90 percent of the U.S. media. These monopolies, which include Time Warner, Disney, and Viacom, possess close ties with the American political and military apparatus. Former and current military officials dominate news airwaves, often serving as “terrorism experts” for networks like CNN, and corporate media journalists have become embedded in the American military. This symbiotic relationship between U.S. militarism and the corporate media is no coincidence. It’s a typical quid pro quo partnership. On the one hand, the U.S. military helps boost ratings for news networks that are hungry for war. On the other hand, American corporate media outlets play an essential—and reliable—role in helping the American military establishment mold popular opinion and perceptions about the world we live in. It’s a win-win situation for the war-makers and the opposite for all those who have lost their lives to war as a result of the relationship between corporate media and U.S. military.
American political and military officials have a vested interest in using the corporate media to achieve their interests. Corporate media outlets benefit from favorable legislative policies, such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996, that have increased their profitability through the easing of regulatory burdens on monopolization. The ultimate winner here is U.S. imperialism. The ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence are filtered through the corporate media in a repetitive and predictable manner. Corporate media outlets deceptively brand their news coverage as an assortment of “balanced” and “factual” perspectives. Americans are encouraged to digest MSNBC, FOX News, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and yes, even NPR and PBS as the only sources of objective information. One will rarely—if ever—find voices on these outlets that critique capitalism, U.S. militarism, settler colonialism, anti-Blackness, the police, or the idea that the U.S. is a force for good in the world. Over the years, the American corporate media has been on the front lines of interpreting the endless imperial ventures of the U.S. around the world in ways that produce favorable—and profitable—outcomes for the American ruling class.
American corporate media outlets regularly interpret imperial ventures as “humanitarian” in scope. This interpretation promotes a savior mentality that turns war, imperial violence, and racism into charitable missions. According to Inderpal Grewal, international charitable organizations have become a $10 billion a year industry with connections to the largest corporations and the most powerful governments, mainly the United States.7 Despite their non-profit status and purportedly community-centered mission, these institutions are wedded to the corporate media in many ways, especially in regard to ideology. The relationship between the American nation-state, the corporate media, and “charity” is more aptly called the White Savior Industrial Complex. White-savior ideology is a direct outgrowth of the pervasiveness of the White Savior Industrial Complex.
The White Savior Industrial Complex is a modernized expression of American individualism and thus a direct product of the United States’ racist and capitalist roots. In an article in the Atlantic, Teju Cole describes the White Savior Industrial Complex as “a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage.”8 White saviorism recruits Americans—and white Americans in particular—to resolve the guilt inevitably produced by the unbearable conditions that U.S. imperialism has wrought on the world with individual acts of charity funded and sponsored by the very agents responsible for the destruction. Acts of “charity” not only focus on individualized action over collective response but also tend to reinforce the United States’ obsessive fear of racialized “others.” The White Savior Industrial Complex uses charity to absolve the U.S. of responsibility for the conditions produced by this obsession. White guilt is the escape valve. “We can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years,” Cole writes, “but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund.”9
American corporate media outlets have historically promoted white savior ideology in its coverage of major events relating to U.S. foreign policy. In the process, it has produced what Grewal calls “humanitarian citizenship.” Humanitarian citizenship has its basis in post-World War II politics when American leadership in the global sphere required an institutionalized basis for the promotion of “values” that justified American domination abroad. In the neoliberal area, the corporate media transformed humanitarian citizenship into a paternalistic act where Americans and Westerners perform “good works” in nations where the U.S. has a vested interest in asserting its dominance.
Take the example of Malala Yousafzai. Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her work detailing the atrocities she experienced from the Taliban. A young Pakistani girl, Yousafzai has become the corporate media’s white savior subject. She has received New York Times documentaries, accolades, and funds from the West to forward her goal in bringing education to young girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.10 Neither Yousafzai nor her white savior backers in the corporate media raise the fact that it was the U.S. and the West that funded and armed the Mujahideen, the predecessor of the Taliban, to destroy the Soviet-supported Afghan government beginning in 1979. In fact, the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan was not only secular but also committed to eradicating illiteracy and other educational hurdles imposed on young girls in the country. These efforts were in full effect prior to the proxy war that then-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinsky hoped would give “the USSR its own Vietnam War.”11 Yousafzai’s backers within the White Savior Industrial Complex hail her stance against the Taliban as a worthy humanitarian cause, but have omitted the U.S. role in enabling the Taliban’s rise, all in an attempt to maintain its image as the world’s saviors.
Prior to Malala’s rise to stardom, Grewal analyzed the popularity of the 2007 book Three Cups of Tea and its alignment with American imperial objectives in Afghanistan. The book details the author, Greg Mortenson, and his co-author’s efforts to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a means to counter “Islamization.” The book’s popularity skyrocketed at the same time the U.S. military escalated a “surge” of bombings in these countries to ostensibly fight the Taliban. Grewal describes the New York Times’ coverage of the book as a quintessential “narrative of the bravery, deprivation, and sentimentality of the heroic white man who eschews military solutions.”12 While the book itself projects Mortenson’s “humanitarian” work as a civilizing mission—dehumanizing Pakistan and Afghan locals in the process—journalist Elisabeth Bullimer reveals the deep connections between the author and the U.S. military, including direct consultations with General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of American operations in Afghanistan at the time. Three Cups of Tea has since been discredited, not least because of Mortenson’s connections with the military. Despite revelations that Mortenson’s NGO, the Central Asia Institute, was found to have pocketed its donations by exaggerating the number of schools actually built in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bullimer’s article and other corporate news outlets continue to promote Three Cups of Tea as an example of a modern day “missionary” who risked his life to “civilize” the Native.
Three Cups of Tea is but one example where the American corporate media and white saviorism worked together to brand American empire as benevolent in scope. Little attention has been paid to the bombs the U.S. military has reigned down on Afghanistan and Pakistan or the United States’ historic role in sowing instability in the region. The ideology of white saviorism has provided cover to the real interests of imperialism. Afghanistan is a resource-rich country with trillions of dollars worth of important minerals necessary to produce advanced technology in all sectors of the capitalist economy. American military officials have even admitted to the “stunning potential” of Afghanistan’s wealth.13 However, in case after case, the White Savior Industrial Complex has buried the real motivations for war under the guise of “good intentions.” It isn’t that these more sinister motivations have gone completely unreported—after all, it was the New York Times that reported on Afghanistan’s mineral riches—but that Americans often find it hard to believe that such motivations could serve as the driving force behind their country’s “humanitarian” missions abroad.
The White Savior Industrial Complex is the shovel that buries American imperial warfare in the graveyard of popular consciousness. Acts of charity help sooth the craving for Americans, especially white Americans, to feel exceptional and innocent in their relationship with the historical “other,” the targets of imperialism. In the age of corporate social media, information disseminated by the ruling class reaches consumers at rapid speed. A social media campaign in 2012 harnessed the mass appeal that the White Savior Industrial Complex has engendered toward Africa. Started by the nonprofit group Invisible Children, the campaign involved the distribution of a video that accused the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda of recruiting child soldiers. The video received 100 million viewers, many of whom were captivated by the urgent calls to capture Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.
Invisible Children blamed Kony for the atrocities in Uganda with no mention of the broader political context in the country or the region as a whole. Nor did the organization explain what exactly gave it the right to resolve a political conflict in an African country. Invisible Children claimed legitimacy in the shadows by exploiting the ideological tools of the white-savior industrial complex. The Kony 2012 video clearly projected Africa as a “heart of darkness” where inhabitants are incapable of mastering the attributes of Western civilization necessary to govern themselves. As a result, Americans and Westerners generally have no other choice but to force these attributes upon them. As Nerida Chazal and Adam Pocrnic explain,
The western world and the US in particular were depicted as the saviours of the Kony story. At the end of the video we see the US sending in military support and technology to help the ‘primitive’ Ugandan army track down Kony in the vast and savage Ugandan jungle. These scenes employ the saviour metaphor by constructing Ugandans as primitive and in need of rescue by the strong, experienced and morally superior US. Similar savior references feature throughout the documentary as US activists declare: ‘we are demanding justice’; ‘we are going to do everything that we can to stop them. We are going to stop them’; ‘we[are]committed to stop Kony and rebuild what he has destroyed’; ‘if we succeed we change the course of human history’ (Invisible Children 2012a).14
The demands for “justice” and to “do something” ignite the imperial and colonial flame lit by the corporate media. Invisible Children is but another NGO within the White Savior Industrial Complex that strategically exploited “humanitarian” impulses through the corporate media to justify American imperial policy. The organization repeatedly called for American and Western intervention but failed to mention that the Obama Administration waived the application of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (2008) to select countries. “In other words,” writes Sverker Finnström, “Obama claimed—and Invisible Children was actively silent on the matter—that child soldiers can be warranted as long as they are allies in the US-led war on terror. One might again ask what the slogan ‘Stop at nothing’ really means.”15
Nor did Invisible Children mention that its lobbying efforts had already successfully pressured the Obama Administration to send troops to Uganda, not as a means to end atrocities but to secure oil.16 American imperial support for the brutal Ugandan government of Yoweri Museveni, which has been linked to the genocide of over six million Congolese since 1996, has not precipitated any outrage from the Invisible Children lobby. This is no accident. The white-industrial complex relies upon the recruitment of donations from white Americans and Westerners, especially those with deep pocketbooks. It is hard to solicit donations from the wealthy if their government is accused of facilitating genocide. It’s not something that arouses “good” feelings so it is better left unsaid. Humanitarian projects must reinforce the exceptionalism and innocence of the American imperial project or they are not worth supporting. Indeed, this is what Invisible Children meant in the Kony video when it stated “don’t study history, make history.”
Kony 2012 ended up being the most watched documentary in history. It galvanized millions to donate their money toward a supposedly humanitarian cause that in actuality covered up the true nature of American imperial ambitions in Africa. The White Savior Industrial Complex, however, does not merely cover up the exploitation and oppression inherent under U.S. imperialism. Enormous profits are reaped not only from the wars covered up by white saviorism but from the devastation it leaves behind. Naomi Klein calls the exploitation of tragedy for profit “disaster capitalism.” More specifically, disaster capitalism is “the imposition of neoliberal economic policies through the exploitation of weakened states,” a condition fitting for Haiti directly after the devastating earthquake of 2010.17 The earthquake left the already vulnerable Haitian political, economic, and social system in ruin. But what was a disaster for the Haitian people was seen by the architects of the White Savior Industrial Complex as an opportunity for U.S. economic and political expansion.
Haiti is a prime case study into the formula used by the White Savior Industrial Complex to achieve dominance in the wake of destruction. The formula has three components:
1. The use of military intervention to secure American political dominance.
2. The enforcement of neoliberal economic policy to facilitate privatization and austerity measures.
3. The deployment of NGOs to manage American hegemony permanently through the usurpation of sovereign state power.
Following the earthquake, Haiti was known as the “NGO republic” due to the presence of anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 NGOs operating within the country. NGOs were ostensibly present in Haiti to facilitate the distribution of “foreign aid” but instead reinforced the United States’ historically imperial relationship with Haiti. Aid monies donated from the U.S. for emergency and reconstruction relief were funneled into American military and corporate investments. In fact, 75 cents of every dollar of the $379 million donated after the earthquake was invested into American NGOs. After providing a detailed list of U.S. firms and organizations that benefited from American “aid” projects to Haiti, Keir Forgie concludes, “Relatively speaking, the Haitian government and local businesses were almost entirely bypassed in the reconstruction of their own country, whereas the US received substantial capital investment.”18
In other words, the White Savior Industrial Complex has created an ideological environment where the “good intentions” of NGOs were weaponized to facilitate the plunder of Haiti. It was the plunder of Haiti that gave wealthy white actors the opportunity to volunteer for NGOs and pose as “saviors” of the impoverished country. Yet white saviorism has coincided with an American-led occupation of Haiti that saw the deployment of tens of thousands of American soldiers and UN “peacekeepers” accused of spreading cholera to nearly a million people across the country. White saviorism also went hand in hand with the privatization of Haitian agriculture, mining, and construction industries. To make matters even worse, American-backed privatization has left hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in tents and the minimum wage in Haiti suppressed to a mere 24 cents an hour.19
American corporate media outlets have struggled to maintain the legitimacy of white saviorism in Haiti, mainly due to the exposure of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s role in the looting of the country. The Clinton’s record in Haiti hurt Hillary Clinton’s popularity in the 2016 presidential election. WikiLeaks found that it was Hillary Clinton’s State Department that prevented a minimum wage increase in Haiti. As president, her husband Bill supported right-wing death squads that helped engineer the second coup of Haitian President Jean Paul Aristide in 2004. Through the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hillary Clinton accumulated billions of dollars worth in donations that were then siphoned to billionaire investors who built hotels and other profitable ventures at the expense of poor Haitians. The exposure of the Clinton Foundation produced a rupture in the legitimacy of the White Savior Industrial Complex in Haiti. Even Oxfam has come under recent fire for allowing aid workers to commit sexual acts in exchange for participation in the organization’s food program.20
Still, the corporate media has paid scant attention to the Clinton-sponsored plunder of Haiti. Corporate media inattention to U.S.-made humanitarian disasters is often complemented by incessant attention to humanitarian interventions led by the U.S. For example, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 ostensibly to prevent “ethnic-cleansing,” the New York Times devoted nearly 18 percent of its daily coverage to the issue to ensure that Americans were not privy to the hundreds of thousands of dead and displaced civilians caused by the NATO bombings. By the end of the bombings, Virgil Hawkins observes, “The damage had already been done . . . by the extensive and misleading media coverage, and the ‘do something syndrome’ came into full effect.”21 While the Times covered up U.S.-led NATO atrocities in Yugoslavia, it virtually ignored the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, devoting less than 1 percent of its international coverage to the millions that have perished due to constant war. Such a gap in media coverage demonstrates that the corporate media reflects not the welfare of nations around the world, but rather the agenda set by U.S. political and military officials serving the rich and the powerful. The White Savior Industrial Complex masks this agenda behind the veil of humanitarianism.
The United States possesses plenty of contradictions within its own borders that further call the legitimacy of the White Savior Industrial Complex into question. The devastation that Hurricane Katrina leveled on the lower 9th ward of New Orleans in 2004 is case in point.22 Hundreds of thousands of poor Black Americans were left displaced from their home without the possibility of return and thousands of public housing units were destroyed. The conditions that Hurricane Katrina left in its wake gave the U.S. little room to espouse exceptionalism. Hurricane Katrina made it clear that the American imperial apparatus was not constructed to serve the interests of the majority Black and poor city of New Orleans. American corporate media thus had a difficult time promoting the “humanitarianism” so characteristic of the United States’ responses to so-called international crises. The Bush Administration’s leadership over the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allowed media images to surface of Black families trapped on top of their homes and their drowned bodies afloat in the flooded 9th ward. American corporate media outlets interpreted the disaster in a number of ways to avoid challenging the role of the state and its capitalist infrastructure in the devastation. Many corporate journalists framed the disaster as a rare American loss in a war with “nature” while others blamed “poor government responsiveness.”23
However, American corporate media outlets could not avoid the fact that many Americans—especially the Black community hit hardest by what had transpired—would view such emergency responses as lackluster. Not surprisingly, criticisms by media pundits emerged which centered on neoliberal logics of American exceptionalism. White reporters employed by corporate news outlets were framed as heroes going into the heart of a disaster to question how such a devastating event could ever happen in the U.S. Inderpal Grewal cites Anderson Cooper’s Hurricane Katrina coverage as indicative of this phenomenon. Cooper was portrayed as a hero who took government officials to task, exclaiming that “I never thought I’d see this in America—the dead left out like trash.”24 His coverage led to a 400 percent increase in CNN’s viewership. Many journalists echoed Cooper’s sentiments by comparing the tragedy to something more akin to something seen in Somalia and Iraq.
By painting the scene of Hurricane Katrina as a product of villainous government officials exposed by heroic journalists of the American corporate media, the weapon of American exceptionalism was once again being drawn to make up for the complete lack of a “savior” narrative to explain the carnage. Rather than view the events of Katrina as indicative of a structural crisis, the U.S. once again addressed the issue in the context of reform. Irresponsible government officials glossed over the fact that American corporations abandoned vital telecommunications infrastructure during the storm to ensure that rescue for thousands was impossible. Militarized American police forces prevented poor Black Americans from escaping to the white, wealthier neighborhoods that were protected from Katrina’s excesses. In other words, the entire apparatus of U.S. imperialism was responsible for the utter neglect and suffering imposed upon the mostly Black victims of Hurricane Katrina.25
That the American system of imperialism wasn’t blamed by the very corporate agents responsible for its propogation is nothing new. More concerning is the effectiveness of the neoliberal narrative of heroism and faith in American reform that still exists among many Americans today. These aspects of U.S. exceptionalism help bail out the system of imperialism in moments of crises. Faith in American heroism and reform opened the door for the corporate media to criminalize Black Americans starved of resources for taking what they could from stores and businesses. Blacks were depicted as unworthy pariahs partaking in “uncivilized” behavior. Their desperate struggle to survive became a criminal act against the U.S. state. In times of crisis, faith in the U.S. state to protect “freedom” and enact reform condemns and dehumanizes the racialized “other.” Katrina opened gaping wounds in society and required Black Americans to be framed as enemies of the state so that the U.S., which is built upon anti-Black racism, could maintain its hero image in a moment where it was difficult to do so. Such racialized criminalization inherent to American exceptionalism ultimately led to the permanent displacement of a large percentage of New Orleans’ Black community and the complete privatization of the city’s school system, a development that led President Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to declare Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”
The humanitarian impulses of American exceptionalism serve the empire’s rulers, not its victims. American exceptionalism, however, also gives the U.S. sole responsibility for civilizing the world’s “darker” nations. The darker nations of the world uncoincidentally happen to be the primary centers of profit for the American ruling class. American “humanitarian” efforts in locations as close as New Orleans and as far as Uganda have thus come at the expense of poor and the oppressed people who have been dispossessed of half of the world’s wealth which currently sits in the coffers of just six individuals.26 American exceptionalism and American innocence gave birth to the White Savior Industrial Complex and represent the first line of defense against opposition to the actual impact of American “humanitarianism.” They create the ideological conditions for issues like unequal wealth distribution, poverty, and war to be ignored, despite the central role the U.S. plays in their proliferation. Even worse, the widely held belief that corporate media outlets, corporations, or NGOs are primarily interested in the welfare of people around the world makes it increasingly difficult for Americans to accept the reality that in fact the opposite is true. In other words, hardly is it ever addressed that the U.S. and its “humanitarian” backers cause the very humanitarian disasters they purport to fix.
So when celebrities such as 50 Cent and Bono latch on to the latest “humanitarian” effort in Africa on behalf of some corporation or foundation, it is important to remember who and what actually benefits from what may appear on the surface as pure charity. When TOMS corporation gives a pair of shoes to African children for every pair purchased, we should remember that the corporation is profiting from—and contributing to—the impoverishment of African nations that in no way can be resolved by “dumping a pair of shoes in places where people otherwise might be employed to make them.”27 The real question that arises from American imperial “humanitarianism” is this: Why do so many American leaders and institutions consistently refuse to see that so many of the problems they’re trying to solve are the problems that they themselves created? When corporate media darling Angelina Jolie, for example, says that “the conflict in Iraq” is “the source of so much Iraqi suffering to this day,” and also claims to be “a proud American,” it should raise a few eyebrows. And when she further proclaims that “a strong nation, like a strong person, helps others to rise up and be independent,” we should be even more alarmed. As journalist Belén Fernández notes in response, “Never mind that the US—a strong nation indeed—happens to have effectively destroyed Iraq, inflicting unquantifiable death and misery upon the Iraqi people.”28
Narratives of American exceptionalism and American innocence attempt to convince “exceptional citizens” living in the U.S. that the world’s crises are caused by someone else. And they believe that these problems are fixed by charitable donations, documentaries, celebrity-organized concerts, and bombs dropped on the “uncivilized” so that they learn to recognize the error of their ways. Furthermore, many Americans believe that simply by being born in the U.S. or by being white, or by attending an American university, that they have a unique, God’s-eye perspective as to how other countries should be governed. As African feminist Ifi Amadiume describes in her story about encountering a well-meaning university student:
I asked a young White woman why she was studying social anthropology. She replied that she was hoping to go to Zimbabwe, and felt that she could help women there by advising them how to organize. The Black women in the audience gasped in astonishment. Here was someone scarcely past girlhood, who had just started university and had never fought a war in her life. She was planning to go to Africa to teach female veterans of a liberation struggle how to organize! This is the kind of arrogant, if not absurd attitude we encounter repeatedly. It makes one think: Better the distant armchair anthropologists than these ‘sisters.’29
Such hubris is commonly found among many U.S. college students, prompting Maximilian Forte to outline some questions he asks his students who want to change the world: “Do you really have any special skills to offer other than the ability to articulate good intentions? Has your assistance been requested by those who would presumably benefit from it? How well do you understand a different society that you can permit yourself to undertake potentially transformative action?”30 Theologian William Cavanaugh takes this a step further and explains why he would never be invited to deliver a U.S. college commencement address. “Please don’t go out and change the world,” he would tell the graduates. “The world has had enough of well-meaning middle class university graduates from the U.S. going out and trying to change the world and the world is dying because of it . . . go home.”31
U.S. humanitarianism is therefore not part of the solution to the world’s problems. It is part of the problem. Thus, true revolutionary social change will not come from the generous donations of former presidents, poverty awareness campaigns by Hollywood celebrities, or American university graduates with a degree in international economics. As Maximiliam Forte tells his students, “It is important not to assume that others are simply waiting for a stranger to come and lead them, like a Hollywood tale of the usual white messiah who is always the hero of other people’s stories.” In fact, true change will not come from the U.S. ruling class at all.32 Charity will not bring justice. Capitalism cannot bring justice. Capitalism is injustice. It is the problem.33 Justice requires the very dismantling of the systems upon which the ruling class finds its ultimate reason for existing. This is a tough pill to swallow for Hollywood celebrities, CNN correspondents, and the board of the Clinton Foundation. After all, if their lives, emotions, perceptions, and ways of “being the world” depend on systems of capitalism, militarism, and white supremacy, then they would never wish to bring about their own demise. The ruling class depends on American exceptionalism and American innocence to paint the system it presides over as the savior of humanity, which is why any hope that this class will bring about its own demise is futile. We must place our hope in a new humanitarian impulse not guided by NGOs that take funds from the U.S. government or U.S. corporations. Oppressed people need their own self-funded institutions, including media, that offer a new vision and path toward a more equitable and just society. Deconstructing the humanitarian impulses of the deadly ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence is a necessary starting point toward these ends.