Was Cleopatra black? of course not.
But when hollywood politically correct It should be organized in 2023, “naturally” by the US top management Netflix It was decided to make her a heroine The Case of Lions, of the African Pride (African pride), as well as Dale Pre- litteram feminism.
The problem is that American products travel, cosmopolitan, and the politically correct culture promoted by American elites Markets tend not to welcome this new ideological indoctrination.
For Egypt, Cleopatra Black was a national crimeprovoked a diplomatic incident as well as a collective rejection Against the dogmatism of the dominant powers in the United States. More than the Palestinian cause, more than the war in Ukraine, Cairo has distanced itself from America in this attempt to manipulate its history through the color of Cleopatra’s skin.
The dispute between two states over the old ruler reveals: among the reasons that made Soft power America is in crisis in Africa, there too The radicalization of the establishment that rules Hollywoodin Silicon Valley where Netflix is based, in social media, newspapers and television in New York and Washington.
Cleopatra is an icon Can’t be joked about. The latter were a descendant of pharaohs who were not actually Egyptian although they managed to gain acceptance as such. In fact, he belonged to the ruling dynasty of gods The Ptolemies are of Hellenistic originAlexander the Great installed them in power. They were “foreign” pharaohs, who came from Macedonia, and thus cousins \u200b\u200bof the Greeks, the Europeans. Cleopatra’s actions and her tragic end crossed important chapters in the history of Rome (He was the lover of both Julius Caesar who bore him a son, Both Marc Anthony), and stunned the artists’ imaginations. stayed star for more than two thousand yearsImmortalized masterpieces of literature and painting. Shakespeare made him a character in a tragedy. Hollywood has portrayed her many times in the past, and among the stars of different generations who have played the role of the Ptolemaic Queen. Liz Taylor and Angelina Jolie. All options are aesthetically questionable, but it’s still a bit closer to the original reality, compared to the newer version.
Only a totalitarian, anti-racist America, version 2023, can impose the black Cleopatra by choosing the actress Adele Jamesand consider impunity.
On the other hand in the United States today, if a theater director wants to stage Hamlet and attract positive reviews, he assigns the role of the Prince of Denmark to a lion (checking is faith). Hollywood’s dogmatism does not suspect that its certainties may have some difficulty crossing borders. And so Netflix entrusted the production of its docudrama series “Queens of Africa” to a black celebrity: Jada Pinkett Smithfor which the super pair Will Smith delivered an equally famous smack on Oscars night. Smith had the brilliant idea of turning Cleopatra into a black queen, and enlisted the Afro-British James for the part, to “send a message.”
“It doesn’t happen often that we see stories about African queens, this was important to me, to my daughter, to my community,” said the Hollywood star. The end justifies the means: To boost the self-esteem of black American women, it is worth falsifying history.
They are unpunished games for as long as they remain in the celebrity circle of America’s millionaires, pampered and cultured with media compliance. In fact, Cleopatra, because of her Macedonian ancestors, had a clear complexion without any doubt, especially since the Ptolemaic dynasty practiced consanguineous marriage, as she preferred marriages between her cousins, so as not to dilute the purity of royal blood.
The only hypothesis of a foreign relative – moreover, not shared by all scholars – indicates a possible Persian ancestor in his family tree, but not a black one.
In Egypt, the Netflix docudrama featuring Cleopatra Black has caused outrage on every level. A government authority, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which is responsible for protecting historical heritage, has defined this film as a “falsification of our history.” A famous TV anchor in Cairo accused America of wanting “Annihilating Egyptian Culture”. Lawsuits have been launched to block access to Netflix nationwide.
And the government of Major General Al-Sisi intervened via Twitter to mention that there are remaining statues of Cleopatra and they all confirm the way they were made: “She had Hellenistic features, that is, European, thin lips, light skin.”
The protest from below was even more vague: a newspaper reporter The New York Times In Cairo I found that Vivien Yee Netflix in Egypt had to remove the comments on its siteclogged with protests.
The Netflix executives, who were determined to promote the black cause from their California headquarters, had not expected such a response. They were convinced that they had done a virtuous, morally impeccable deed, which consisted of Destroy white domination About the way the story of humanity is told. Their ignorance of real history, as well as of geography, made them Unprepared for the Egyptian anger.
This incident is symbolic not only for what it reveals about American-African relations today: about the many problems Washington’s foreign policy has created, I am reminded elsewhere of the gay crusade that is hard to digest for many Africans. But theCleopatra case He is also interesting for other reasons: for what he knows about Relations between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as on the different forms of racism that exist among Africans.
Since the inception of its ancient civilization, Egypt has always been an articulated country, a crossroads between continents. The pharaohs—the original ones, three thousand years before Cleopatra—had intense economic and cultural ties with their southern neighbours, lands that today belong to Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Black Africa was an important hinterland for their empire. However, they also had a Mediterranean projection and at the height of their power projected their influence towards Greece and Asia Minor. Egypt today is ethnically unrecognizable compared to the Egypt of the Pharaohs, having suffered several waves of invasions: Arab, Ottoman and European. DNA-based analysis of the different ethnic groups in contemporary Egypt can reveal these ancestral strata: from Nubians to Greeks, Romans to Arabs, Turks to Albanians. Geopolitically and culturally, the Arab footprint has left two crucial legacies: The important role of Cairo as one of the religious capitals of modern Islam (especially thanks to her university); The close relationship between Egyptian governments and their neighbors in the Middle East. Particularly from the revolution of Colonel Nasser (1954) onwards, Egypt projected its ambitions on all of Africa, and at the same time wanted to be a key interlocutor in the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the balance of power in the Middle East region that reaches as far as the Persian Gulf.
Egypt is a geographically African country. Politically and culturally, this continent is close to him. It is a member state of the African Union, but wants to be heard on issues affecting the entire Mediterranean. In this regard, it has links with other countries in North Africa such as Algeria and Morocco, which are also expected by the ambition towards the north even if events sometimes pull them towards the south.
Egypt is a multi-ethnic society, but that does not mean that it ignores ethnic tensions. Light-skinned Egyptians consider themselves superior to dark-skinned peopleAccording to the traditions of the Arab world. At the head of the regime were figures of different ethnic backgrounds: Nasser had Middle Eastern features and complexion, like his military successors Mubarak and Sisi. Only Sadat was a leader closer to the black component of the population. In general, Egyptians who consider themselves “white” are highly represented in the ruling classes and control the affairs of the country. So a clash with Afrocentrism was to be expected, the latest cultural fad of North American elites. For the Afro-descendants who imposed the law on the American intelligentsia, ancient Egypt was the cradle of black civilization, from which a vast artistic and cultural heritage of black Africa arose, which was later subdued by the white colonizers. Typical of this method of rewriting history is Ma al The New York Times A black professor at Hamilton College, as well as a well-known feminist, Shelly Healy. “Cleopatra reacted to oppression and exploitation just as a black woman does, so we have to embrace her as a sister,” Hayley said.
In this sense, Cleopatra has been embraced by black feministsand the color of his (the inventor) skin becomes a political choice, imposed by the canons of 2023 on a historical reality dating back two millennia earlier.
African-American actor Kevin Hart paid the same price for his indifference to the Egyptian context: he had to cancel a tour of Egypt for declaring that the Pharaohs were black.
Great taboos hover over this story, a topic that none of the interested parties wish to address explicitly. If the Egyptians of today are partly Arab, and marked indelibly by the Arab conquest that converted them to Islam, then they are as such heirs to an empire that practiced slavery on a large scale, and reaped enormous economic profits from the trade in human meat. Arabs were slave traders long before slavery reached its “industrial” dimension on European colonial plantations in the Antilles, in Brazil, in the southern Confederate States of the United States. It is a taboo for today’s Islamic ruling classes, who show no sign of wanting to critically revisit their history as Westerners do. It is also taboo for the anti-racist elite in the United States, which prefers to stigmatize whites as the only group guilty of atrocities, and calls for a broad coalition of all persecuted racial minorities.
The tension between the Arab world and the black African world is also present in the United States. Here it is evident in this tale narrated by the writer Richard Hanania, originally from Chicago: “Black lives in Chicago, a third of it. Like many Midwestern cities, it is very violent, and crime is overwhelmingly concentrated in African American neighborhoods. When it spreads to other areas of the city, it is the individuals who come from those neighborhoods who commit it. I have several family friends who are immigrants from the Middle East and have shops in town. Sooner or later, some of their relatives or acquaintances were robbed and sometimes killed. Basketball champion (black) Michael Jordan was admired and respected by all. But the repercussions of his sporting victories filled the community with fear, as every tournament victory became an opportunity to set immigrant shops on fire. When one of these events occurred, the Arabs spoke to each other in innuendo. “What happened to Walid’s store?” “You know, black people…” “Ah.” Rather, they say “slaves” because this is the expression used by the Arabs ».
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