This Week’s Flavor of Despair

This article was originally published via my Substack: <https://frankcorva.substack.com/p/this-weeks-flavor-of-despair&gt;\
This piece was updated on Oct. 19, 2026. I removed a bad source with distorted information about an event filled with anti-Zionist Hasidic Jews at the Barclays Center in New York and replaced it with a better source and better information about the same event.

Last week, I wrote about how social media platforms can keep us trapped in a cycle of outrage, fear, and despair.

This week, I conducted an experiment related to this notion.

I paid close attention to whenever I felt pangs of outrage, fear, or despair while scrolling through social media, and I reflected on those feelings.

The main “news item” that provoked such feelings this week was the protests in Paris.

On X, I noticed a lot less reporting on what was actually going on and a lot more incendiary rhetoric around the “third-world savages” involved in the protests.

Once I saw a number of accounts using virtually the same rhetoric, I came to the conclusion that the reality on the ground, whatever that may be, was irrelevant in the sense that what was happening on X was part of a coordinated effort to get people to feel a certain way.

Coordinated “Third-World Savage” Rhetoric

Before speaking to the last point I made, I’d like to first more generally address the “third-world savage” rhetoric.

It’s gross that people try to normalize it.

I speak and work with people across the “third world” day in, day out and they’re some of the most innovative, interesting, and sophisticated people I know.

Meanwhile, people using or perpetuating the word “savage” don’t seem to have much to say about how “The West” is currently funding a genocide in Gaza. If anything, some believe what’s happening in Gaza is part of some divine plan (more on that further down).

Men carrying dead children in Gaza | Photo credit: The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Funding the extermination of a people feels pretty savage to me.

And, to be clear, there are plenty of Jewish people, every members of conservative sects of the religion, who are against what Israel is doing.

In June of this year, over 15,000 ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist men filled Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York to protest the mandatory conscription of members of their sect (the Satmar Hasidic sect) by the Israeli military.

Image courtesy of The Times of Israel

Here’s a quote from a rabbi who spoke at the event:

“It is commonly believed that the State of Israel commits violations of human rights only against its non-Jewish neighbors, under the pretense of bringing greater security for Jews,” said Rabbi Aron Jacobowitz, a spokesman for the rally, said in a statement. “The truth, however, is that they oppose authentic religious Jews who refuse to follow their ideology just as much as they oppose others. To achieve their goal of make us into Zionists, they are oppressing us, expecting us to break down, give up and join them.”

But I’m getting a bit off track.

My point is if you don’t think what Israel is doing to Gaza with the help of the United States is savage, I’d ask you to take a moment to imagine what you’d feel like if this is what your neighborhood currently looked like through no fault of your own:

If you don’t think what Israel is doing to Gaza is savage, I’d ask you to take a moment to imagine what you’d feel like if this is what your neighborhood currently looked like through no fault of your own:

Image of Gaza courtesy of PBS

Come to think of it, “savage” feels like too mild of a word.

No Mention of France’s Modern-Day Financial Neocolonialism

In the years I spent teaching immigrants English in New York City, one of the things that I learned from my students that has really stuck with me is that most immigrants do not want to leave their home country — they are often forced to do so out of financial, economic, or political necessity.

And France still plays a role in significantly worsening the financial, economic, and political conditions in 14 of its former colonies.

It does this via the CFA franc (as well as via other tools and measures).

CFA is an acronym for Colonies Françaises d’Afrique.

This version of the franc was created by France in 1945.

It’s a tool for France to continue to exercise control over it’s former colonies.

How so?

Glad you asked.

Let’s say France needs raw materials from Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and it wants those raw materials at a cheaper price.

All it has to do is devalue the CFA franc that Côte d’Ivoire uses and what happens is that while it still pays a similar nominal rate in CFA francs for the raw materials, the raw materials cheaper because those CFA francs are worth less.

In this way, France can continue to extract from its former African colonies.

More extraction leads to more poverty.

More poverty leads to more people emigrating.

And on and on the cycles goes.

So, by all means, if you’d like to see stricter immigration policy in France, advocate for it (and by that I mean actually engage with the powers that be, not just post outrage porn about it on the internet).

But what would likely be more effective is if you advocated for France to stop its financial neocolonialism. This way, people from the “third world” would have less of a reason/need to immigrate to France.

What is more, please be mindful that “The West” is economically and financially propped by extraction from the “third world”.

I put these terms in quotes because this extraction doesn’t benefit everyday Westerners and doesn’t harm all people in the developing countries.

It benefits elites, oligarchs, the uber-wealthy, etc. which exist in both The West and developing countries (albeit much more so in The West).

For more on the CFA Franc and it’s role in West and Central Africa, I recommend reading the following two pieces:

The CFA Franc: French Monetary Imperialism in Africa (The London School of Economics and Political Science Blog)

The CFA Franc Zones: Neocolonialism and Dependency (Young Scholars Initiative)

Farida Nabourema criticizes CFA Franc, Says It Was Modeled After Nazi Currency (The Cable)

And if you’re interested in what I think is part of the solution here — Bitcoin — I recommend listening to the interview I conducted some years back with Nzonda Fotsing, who is from Cameroon, one of the 14 countries that uses the CFA franc.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhwQmrEz9-0&t=6s>

Contextualizing, Not Rationalizing

I share what I share above not to downplay any of the damage being done in France.

I’ve been to the country a handful of times, and it’s beautiful.

I also have a number of friends from the country, and they’re great.

I don’t take any pleasure in watching Paris burn. In fact, I’d like to see the rioting stop.

(I actually appreciated that account above at least calls itself what it is — propaganda.)

I also believe that those burning the city down should have to face justice.

And I believe even more so that the people involved with leveling Gaza and continuing to colonize Africa should face justice, as well.

To the latter point, though, most of the people or social media accounts (bots) calling for the rioters in France to be brought to justice will argue in the same breath that what Israel is doing to Palestine or what France is doing to Africa is not only okay but some version of the concept of manifest destiny.

Please make no mistake, though — it’s not.

Or maybe a better way to put that is that the concept of manifest destiny is bullshit.

What it is in fact happening is better termed genocide and neocolonialism, respectively.

The people arguing otherwise are either struggling with a notable amount of cognitive dissonance, are willfully ignorant, or are susceptible to believing in and perpetuating PSYOPs.

I don’t say that to make people defensive but more to make them reflect.

If you’re French, for example, and don’t like people burning down your city or if you’re from anywhere else in the world and don’t like seeing Paris on fire, that’s of course both okay and logical.

The hard part is accepting that maybe the government of your country is responsible for some of the desperation you’re seeing in the streets of France right now or that it is actively engaged in burning cities down elsewhere around the globe, and then genuinely incorporating that into your perspective.

Best,

Frank