Just wondering: do Americans actually realize that the shittiest people in their country are actively spreading their ideas across the world? And I’m not just talking about the political interference or the mega-corporations. I’m talking lobbyists, articles, bloggers, think tanks, street missionaries.
Do y’all even realize there are Americans in the Netherlands who came here in groups specifically to do ‘mission work’ against abortion? And American-funded groups that vilify autism and tell people not to vaccinate their kids?
A lot of Dutch people don’t notice that they’re here either because these groups strategically underplay their American roots but they’re here and when a country that previously didn’t have an anti-vax movement suddenly needs to deal with that shit… yeah.. that happened.
And that’s just the Netherlands, far more money and energy goes into ‘missionary’ work in countries recovering from a history of colonization, countries recovering from wars and disasters, countries with a weakened education system. Republican Americans rush to those places to spread conservative Christianity with all the bigotry, anti-science and absolutely ridiculous politics that go with it.
Like, you should probably be aware of this shit, ‘cause it leaves a smell.
Yes some of us are aware. It’s a common practice for young Christians to go do missionary work and claim they’re doing it to improve the lives of people by “building schools” or whatever when in reality they’re culturally and politically colonizing.
My cousins do missionary work in Central America (aka they convert sinful Catholics to whatever brand of Protestant they are) and build and staff churches. And one of my neighbors’ sons learned Ukrainian in order to move there and convert Ukrainians.
It’s extremely seditious and it’s perpetrated almost entirely by wealthy conservatives, or they convince young, impressionable youth to go on “misson trips” where the goal is to “help” people while simultaneously learning about god or some bs. It’s the same thing colonizers have done for centuries; claiming that we’re helping a “backwards country” by modernizing them when in reality it’s just a front for us stripping them of their own culture and practices in order to assimilate them to our beliefs and politics.
Unfortunately I don’t know if there’s much that can be done about it other than word of mouth shaming them for it. Missionary work is held in pretty high regard by average Americans as it’s seen as charitable and humanitarian.
Call it out when you see it.
It would also be good if information about missionary work was mapped, especially when it is trying to hide itself. Some missionary work is quite openly attached to the organisation funding it, like the building of a church or school. But it quite a few other cases missionaries present themselves as locals or work behind the scenes training locals.
In those cases the work done, such as “we trained anti-abortion protestors in Belgium on how to block a clinic” is often presented proudly and openly in the community at home. That sort of info would be useful over here.
By the way, although the US is a big player in this, of course missionaries also come from other places and every European country also produces its own missionaries. The network runs in a lot of directions.
QueerAnarchism 