When you get under Antony Blinken’s skin
On the deplatforming of 'African Stream.'
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash.
- Interview by
- Faisal Ali
On September 13, many were surprised when the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appeared in place of the usual spokesperson, Matthew Miller, for the daily press briefing. Blinken listed a series of grievances about the influence of Russian media before declaring that African Stream (AS), a popular pan-African social media platform, was being run by the state-funded RT (Russia Today). He read out African Stream’s mission—“providing a voice to Africans at home and abroad”—before claiming it, in fact only gave a voice to “Kremlin propagandists.” Shortly after, AS was “zucked,” getting taken down from Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, maintaining only a website and an X presence.
“It was a shock,” says African Stream’s CEO, Ahmed Kaballo, a Nairobi-based British-Sudanese journalist. “We weren’t even able to appeal or anything.” Blinken provided no evidence to support his claim, yet Kaballo suddenly found himself with very few avenues to reach the platform’s audience of well over a million followers. Kaballo rejects Blinken’s accusation, insisting that AS has no ties to Russia and is instead funded by private donors who support its work. He believes the reason they are being targeted is due to the impact his team of reporters, producers, journalists, and activists are having on public opinion.
The trouble began, he explains, when Onyx Impact—a non-profit organization that describes itself as “founded to better serve and empower Black communities by combating harmful information ecosystems targeting them”—alleged that AS was spreading “misinformation.” This claim was then repeated by NBC News without additional reporting or scrutiny.
In August, after the platform published a post about US airstrikes in Somalia, describing them as a “bipartisan tradition.” Voice of America, which is funded by the US government, also published an opinion piece disguised as a news report, staunchly defending the US position. The article wrongly described the AS post as “false” with a huge red X and presented the US’s reasoning for the strikes, rather than actually refuting African Stream’s post that both parties had bombed Somalia. “The US conducts drone strikes in Somalia to protect civilians from the terrorists,” it stated, almost speaking on behalf of the US instead of attributing the statement.
Just for context, the US began striking Somalia in 2003 and since then there have been two Republican presidents (Bush & Trump) and two Democrat presidents (Obama & Biden). Regardless of the efficacy or reasoning for the strikes (it should be noted successive Somali governments have requested them), both parties have bombed Somalia.
This culminated in Blinken giving what Kaballo has said was the “marching orders” to its social media organizations to silence AS. He sees it as both a point of pride and an important lesson about the risks of overreliance on Western platforms, which are ultimately beholden to their governments, Kaballo says. He speaks to Faisal Ali about the shutdown and the importance of anti-imperialist voices in African media.
How did it feel to discover that the foreign minister of the world’s most powerful nation was so irked by your organization’s output that he chose to attack it?
The point of journalism is to have an impact and to ruffle the feathers of the powerful. The best journalists of our time have done that. The social media following we’ve amassed is great but you do wonder whether that is really cutting through and when you see Blinken making a statement like that, the impact is clear.
A different kind of Pulitzer?
Exactly. But if I’m honest, there was also a great deal of concern and alarm about the situation. Blinken is the third most powerful politician in the US—or fourth, depending on how you rate the speaker of the house—or even second, considering that Joe Biden is clearly MIA [missing in action]. My main problem was that he never presented any evidence and his statement was devastating for our work.
Perhaps it was naive of us, but we had the impression that, despite all its issues, the US took freedom of speech seriously. We discovered first-hand that there is a limit, and with a single statement from a press box—almost like an absolute Roman emperor—all our platforms were taken down. Suddenly, we were in breach of “community guidelines.” No detail or explanation provided or due process.
What lessons do you think the rapid de-platforming of AS holds for other similar outlets that are critical of the US but rely on its social media sites to share their content?
Well, the main lesson I learned is that when they decide to target you, they’ll succeed no matter what you do. But you shouldn’t make it easy for them. We were too reliant on those social media platforms and other Western services for our back office, which made it very easy for them to pull the rug out from under us. We didn’t think we’d done anything to warrant this, yet it still happened. You need to bear in mind that when you discuss issues related to Africom, highlight WikiLeaks’ publications on Africa, or give a platform to anti-imperialist voices during Kamala Harris’s tour of Africa, you’re bound to upset some very powerful people.
The second point concerns power, which is the twin of sovereignty. It made me realize that you cannot gather and wield power if you are dependent on platforms beyond your control. If we want spaces where we can discuss revolutionary things, given the talent within the African family, we need to create our own platforms. And we also need to support and use these platforms.
African Stream is unique in that it combines punchy output with a critical, anti-imperialist editorial line, which is not a major feature of contemporary African media. Why did you choose to adopt this approach to African storytelling?
Well, I’m an anti-imperialist. So, I’m not going to work on something I’m not passionate about and that doesn’t reflect how my team and I view the world. But I also wanted to build something that wouldn’t just preach to the converted, but could speak to my niece, my friends at football, students, or even teachers, making the issues understandable and digestible for them. Why for example is Liberia granting 10% of its territory to an Emirati company? Why does the US have such a large military footprint in Africa? Why do so many foreign companies own African assessments and minerals when the continent’s people suffer so much? Is that okay?
Much of it is really common-sense politics—that is what makes it radical.
What inspired the African Stream project?
I think about teleSUR. It came out of nowhere with really high quality anti-imperialist reporting with loads of stories on Latin America.
Just for people who don’t know, what is teleSUR?
It is a Latin American website and TV station funded by Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. And I just thought its content was sick. Places like The Grayzone were also important for their investigative work, which is the direction I wanted to steer African Stream in. I mean, at the time we were just putting together the pieces of the jigsaw from information already in the public sphere; imagine if we began uncovering things ourselves.
AS has been portrayed by some as a dangerous media operation, but it has enjoyed a fairly good reception among Black and Brown communities, especially Africans, globally. What, for you, accounts for that discrepancy?
Well, maybe we were. Journalism is meant to be a nuisance. It is meant to antagonize the powerful. And it isn’t just communities of color; what we say is cutting through. It was truthful and reliable reporting and content and people trusted us. We aren’t infallible but no one has been able to attack us on our content or reporting at all. The social media ban is a case of playing the man, not the ball, because they couldn’t get close to our work.
What do you believe is the responsibility of African media platforms in a global media environment where the color line still so clearly impacts how we frame, prioritize, and report the news?
I think one of the big things we miss is the structural component of the issues Africans and African countries face. We look at individuals like William Ruto, for example, see him being wined and dined in DC, and his government behaving in a corrupt manner, but we don’t ask important, bigger questions. This shifts the focus onto poor leadership or deficits in the character and quality of African politicians, as if that is a unique feature of our continent when it isn’t. I want people to dig deeper. Why is the DRC trapped in a perpetual cycle of poverty when in fact it is so rich? Why are Africans always thought of as helpless victims, when they have the ability to change their fate.
I think it was Michael Parenti who said poor countries aren’t “underdeveloped—they’re overexploited.” Read the mainstream media on Africa for a week and see if you’re able to reach that conclusion. You won’t, and that is what African Stream was for.
