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not underdeveloped (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

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.