Professor Wole
Soyinka, Nobel laureate, has hit back at those trolling him on the
Internet over his vow to cut up his American green card if Donald Trump
won the presidential election.
The professor has come under
severe criticism for not fulfilling his promise since Trump won, and he
has described his traducers as “noisome creatures” and “nattering
nit-wits” who were commenting on an issue from the “secure cesspits of
anonymity” out of “ignorance”.
In an opinion article which he
shared with TheCable, Soyinka listed several instances when he had
issued a “red card” to countries, including Australia, Cuba and South
Africa, on principle, which he said he did not share with the media.
He
also insisted that when he made the promise to exit America, he was
speaking at a private meeting with Oxford University students and was
not making a pledge to the media, questioning why the media would now
want to draw up a departure timetable for him.
On the Internet
trolling, he wrote: “Let me end with a Red Card to those noisome
creatures, the nattering nit-wits of Internet: maybe Trumpland is not as
despicable as the Naijaland you impose on our reality from your secure
cesspits of anonymity. Go back to school. Your problem is ignorance,
ignorance of whatever subject you so readily comment upon. Learn to
study your subject before opening up on issues beyond your grasp.
Sometimes you make one feel like swapping one green for another, out of
embarrassment for occupying the same national space as you. But don’t
get nervous, or start jumping for joy too soon – the Nigerian passport
is just as tough to rip, physically, as is the Green Card…”
He
decried the “literal” interpretation given to his statement that he
would cut his green card — the US residency permit renewable every ten
years — the “moment” Trump was declared winner.
He cited a
gruesome ISIS story to illustrate the literal interpretation people give
to statements, declaring: “That is all I have to say to the
‘literalists’ who obsess over a time scheme of their own assessment.
Thus, failure to have torn my Green Card ‘the moment’ that I learnt that
Mr. Donald Trump had won the presidential elections of the USA. It did
not matter what I was doing at the time – teaching, eating, swimming,
praying, under the shower or whatever. Or a family member saying, ‘Wait
for me!’ – speculatively please, no such disturbance ever took place. If
it did however, I am supposed to contact the Nigerian media – to whom I
have never spoken, and who never contacted me – except one – to beg
permission to pursue a realistic definition of ‘the moment’. Media
fascism is however a subject for another day.”
Soyinka said
anyone would think that the Brexit Vote “made it imperative for the
Brits to plunge into the English Channel instantly, instead of
negotiating two years for an orderly withdrawal. Plebians like me of
course need far less time, nevertheless they do not uproot overnight.
Any other proposition speaks of a permanent agenda, of frustration and
hidden histories – such as opportunities to rehabilitate themselves in
the public eye.”
He said there is also recession in the land,
“and I can understand the psychology of impotence and thus, transferred
aggression”.
No comments:
Post a Comment