Europe’s Era of the Boomerang: How Arrogance and Incompetence Sealed Its Downfall

My Yoruba people say that "Igbéraga ni nsiwaju iparun" — Pride precedes destruction. Another Yoruba proverb says: "Ajá tí yóò sọ́nú, kò ni gbó férè Olódè" — The dog that will get lost will not heed the hunter’s whistle.

Many of us tried to warn our European friends, families, colleagues, and counterparts about the dangers of their refusal to change course and acknowledge the geopolitical shifts unfolding before their eyes. But, blinded by over 500 years of colonial arrogance, low-quality education, hubris, and a culture steeped in self-worship and self-validation, they dismissed all warnings.

Rather than sober up, European elites, through their EU bureaucrats, silenced dissenting voices, branding them as purveyors of "disinformation" — a catch-all term for any opinion deviating from official orthodoxy.

Who would have thought that we would live to see a Europe where governments openly ban newspapers and media that dare to question their narratives? Today, when visiting Europe, I need a VPN to get access to media outlets that I want to watch or read; EUcrats have decreed that they are the ones to determine what people see or watch. Most astonishingly, Europeans accepted these outrageously totalitarian diktats without protest. And, hypocritically, we have outlets like the Pedophile Centre called the BBC continue to go around the world to evangelize press freedom, human liberty, democracy etc, etc.

Of course, we have shameless and lazy African “scholars” regurgitating the BS they gathered from Western media and the sponsored conferences. Some brainless journalists in Africa continue to use the BBC as the gold standard for journalism.

Not even George Orwell could have imagined the dystopian society that European leaders have inflicted upon their people.

The funniest thing is that while the rest of the world watches Europe spiral into irrelevance, Europeans continue to indulge in self-congratulatory delusions and dance to their self-generated lullabies.

The BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Radio France churn out propaganda so detached from reality that the rest of humanity views Europeans as inhabitants of a parallel universe. It is like Europe has returned to the Dark Ages.

That was until Hurricane Trump descended upon the world. His two envoys — Reality and American Power — arrived in Europe with such a ferocity that the continent’s leaders were left stupefied, reduced to incoherent mumblings and useless imbecilic outrage.

“When you hear someone speak of European culture, reach for your gun.” — Jean-Paul Sartre.

In its infinite wisdom, history has a poetic way of serving justice. The same Europe that, in 1884, met in Berlin to carve up Africa like a butcher’s carcass - without a single African in the room - is today suffering the very fate it once gleefully inflicted upon others. In 2025, with the U.S. and Russia deciding Ukraine’s future in Riyadh, Europe has finally been put in its place: a powerless bystander in matters that determine its fate. The fate of the Ukrainian war and, in effect, that of Europe will be determined by the US and Russia.

This is no accident. It is the direct result of Europe’s historical cynicism, blind arrogance, and refusal to evolve beyond a parasitic existence that has thrived for over 500 years on exploiting others.

Europe imagined itself as the master civilization, ordained by history, culture, and race to rule the world. But what happens when the master wakes up one day and finds himself a servant?

The answer is written on the stunned, indignant faces of European leaders as they watch Trump’s America treat them with utter contempt while Russia dictates terms they are too weak to oppose.

Jean-Paul Sartre once warned that the “era of the boomerang” would come - a time when all the violence, plunder, and racial arrogance Europe inflicted upon the world would return home.

That time has arrived.
As the perceptive Satre also noted, Europe made history, and today, history is being made of it.

For centuries, Europe thrived by manipulating and dividing the world, conquering, colonizing, and dictating the affairs of "lesser" peoples. It declared itself the pinnacle of civilization while looting Africa, Asia, and Latin America to build its wealth. It enslaved millions, extracted resources, and imposed fraudulent political systems upon others, all while hiding behind the veil of "human rights" and "democracy."

Europe’s arrogance was boundless, but so too was its hypocrisy. It spoke loftily of freedom while colonizing half the world. It lectured others about democracy while installing dictators in Africa and Latin America. It paraded itself as the beacon of enlightenment while committing some of history’s worst atrocities — from the Belgian Congo to the Mau Mau massacres, from the brutal French suppression of Algeria to the British genocide in Kenya, India, Nigeria, and Southern Africa.

But history is a patient judge. Empires and civilizations rise and fall, and the wheel has now turned.

Today, the very Europe that once lorded over the world is reduced to a pitiful collection of whining, confused states, utterly incapable of charting their destiny.

The U.S. openly insults them. Russia ignores them. China outmaneuvers them. And the Global South — once bullied into submission — now laughs at their irrelevance.

This is more evident than in Ukraine, where Europe has been reduced to a spectator. As Washington and Moscow decide Kyiv’s fate in Saudi Arabia — without even pretending to consult Europe — the message is clear: Europe does not matter.

Europe’s demise is not just historical karma but also a product of its astonishingly inept leadership. Gone are the days of politicians who, despite their imperialist ambitions, at least had a strategic vision - men like Charles de Gaulle, Willy Brandt, or even Margaret Thatcher.

In their place, we now have Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, and Olaf Scholz — a group of uninspiring bureaucrats promoted far above their station.

Take Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected president of the European Commission, as an example. A failed German defense minister who left the Bundeswehr in shambles, she was rewarded with one of Europe’s most powerful positions despite her evident lack of qualifications. Her tenure has been defined by servile obedience to Washington and a stunning inability to think critically about Europe’s interests.

One of nature's greatest wonders is why Europe decided to put a gynecologist in charge of its geopolitical affairs at this critical juncture in its history.

Then there is Emmanuel Macron, the puffed-up, physical dwarfish, intellectual Lilliputian Napoleon-wannabe French president who loves to pose as a great thinker but consistently proves himself an empty vessel. Macron embodies the European disease: lots of pretentious words and zero real power, whether it is his incoherent “strategic autonomy” talk or his endless flip-flopping on relations with Russia and China.

Keir Starmer, Britain’s hapless prime minister, is so uninspiring that he makes even his predecessors look competent. Lacking vision, charisma, or an independent mind, Starmer exists to manage Britain’s decline — just another in a long line of British leaders who mistake platitudes for policy.

Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth: “The European game is finally over; we must find something different.”

The game is indeed over. Europe’s racial arrogance, which once made it believe that it was destined to rule forever, has proven to be its undoing. It never learned how to coexist on equal terms with the rest of the world — it only knew how to dominate, lecture, and exploit. Now that it can no longer do those things, it finds itself lost, leaderless, and irrelevant.

As history turns a new page, one thing is clear: Europe is no longer at the story's center. The world has moved on, and the only ones who have not realized it are the Europeans themselves. But the reality is a ruthless teacher.

Europe once sat in Berlin and decided the fate of Africa without a single African in the room. A few weeks ago, in Riyadh, the fate of Ukraine was being decided without a single European at the table.

That, dear reader, is what they call poetic justice.

As I concluded my article, “‘Who is afraid of the recolonizers,’ As the global power paradigm shifts inexorably away from Europe, the central question thus becomes: Who needs Europe with all her reckless bigotry, violence, virulent racism, cynicism, unbridled greediness, selfishness, rampant arrogance, immodesty, and wanton decadence?

When the baton is finally and irrevocably passed from Europe, perhaps the rest of mankind can finally leave Europe, with all her negative baggage, behind and march to build a new relationship of mankind based on mutual love, respect, peace, fraternity, and solidarity.” - https://femiakogun.substack.com/p/who-is-afraid-of-recolonisers?r=3wwyw

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)

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