I think ceding "the family" and "family values" to The Right is a colossal narrative mistake.

...Both the Western and Arab imperialists.

US imperialism played a huge role in this - Hence my strong opposition to any more military intervention.

Reducing it to a religious war does less to help Nigerians and more to serve the politics of imperialists outside of Africa.

Gaddafis death & Libyas collapse also revitalized the Arab slave-trade in Libya. Terrorist groups in the Sahel are kidnapping Black Africans & also shipping em back to the Middle East as slaves.

Its all rooted in decades of foreign extraction, failed development, & Western militarization in Africa.

Their ideology is religious on the surface, but underneath it is a matrix of forces such as economic desperation, land- conflict, climate stress, arms smuggling, and a broader Sahel-wide crisis influenced by the collapse of Libya (after Obama had Gaddafi killed) and the spread of jihadist networks.

In the vacuum of a failing state, militant groups can impose themselves on communities that have no functioning schools, courts, or security forces.

In reality, more Muslims have been killed by Boko Haram than Christians. It's truly not all about religion.

Boko Haram operates in a region that’s been destabilized for decades by government corruption, collapsed public services, poverty, and one of the worst climate disasters on Earth - the drying of Lake Chad - which destroyed the entire Northern Nigeria economy and pushed millions into displacement.

I have no qualms with Christians focusing on how their own international community is impacted, but this is a growing genocide that impacts way more than just Christians.

I'm pushing back on the narrative that this is exclusively a war on Christians because The Right is manipulating this narrative to manufacture consent from the Christian nationalists for imperialist intervention in Nigeria - which I guarantee will be a front for neocolonialism not a "rescue mission"

The targeted includes African indigenous religious communities, it also includes women who don't fit their notions of modesty and sexual purity, it also includes people suspected to be queer. It includes atheists, political opponents and journalists.

Ibrahim Trarore of Burkina Faso (himself a Muslim leader) who is at war with similar forces in his nation put it best: "its not terrorism, it's imperialism".

Why do teens even want to make videos like this in the first place?

Gotta read every day

For those unfamiliar with Africacore humor, Exhibit A: youtube.com/shorts/cH1iF...