The White Atheists’ Burden: save the savages

This article was published in Spiked-Online 16 September 2010

The idea that the pope is responsible for spreading AIDS in Africa is built on some very dodgy, colonial-style prejudices.

The idea that the pope is responsible for spreading AIDS in Africa has acquired the moral force of a chattering-class commandment. Say it in polite company and you will be greeted by vigorously nodding heads.

The pope’s criticism of condom-use ‘sabotages the fight against AIDS’, says a Guardian columnist (leading an online commenter to say: ‘the genocidal freak should be tried for crimes against humanity.’) The New Statesman reckons the Vatican has done more to spread AIDS around Africa than ‘prostitution and the trucking industry combined’. Stephen Fry, that unofficial High Representative of the chattering classes, says the pope has caused devastation in Africa by ‘spreading the lie that condoms actually increase the incidence of AIDS’.

There are two problems with this super-simplistic moral equation of ‘pope + anti-condom propaganda = death’. First, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, since AIDS is most widespread in minority-Catholic African countries, where most people are not in thrall to the men of Rome; and second, it is underpinned by some deep, dark prejudices of its own, prejudices that make the Vatican’s pronouncements seem relatively mild in comparison.