There was a time not too long ago when Bol Gai Deng was getting interviewed by many big hitters in mainstream media. His story is one of the most compelling that you’ll hear, one that could easily be made into a Hollywood biopic. At the age of seven, he was taken by the mujahideen from his village in South Sudan—not yet an independent nation—and entered into a life of slavery for nearly a decade. He escaped on a passing train one day when tending to his captors’ cattle and made his way to America.
Deng has experienced true persecution, not the “systemic racism” that drives so much of the narrative in the United States today. His plight has helped shape him into a leader and after two decades in the United States, he’s ready to go back to his nation and liberate his people from the tyrannical rule of South Sudan’s only president, Salva Kiir Mayardit.
“The reality is slavery still exists in the African Union but they’re silent about it,” he said. “And now the West is talking about ‘slavery’ here in America, we’re talking about the black lives that matter but they don’t talk about the slaves’ lives mattering in Africa.”
After gaining its independence in 2011, South Sudan did not see the reforms and prosperity they’d hope would come from their new government. Instead, corruption and crime have become institutionalized. The raids on villages continue. The kidnappings, rapes, slavery, and murders still persist. And as President Kiir made clear in 2015, journalists are not allowed to talk about it. Kiir said, “freedom of the press does not mean that you work against your country. If anybody does not know that this country will kill people, we will demonstrate on them.”
Deng has worked very hard to learn English, assimilate into American life, and grow as a leader among his fellow Christians and South Sudanese refugees. He began working with journalists and political advisers over three years ago to mount a campaign to replace Kiir. His team has called on Western governments to get involved in South Sudan by applying pressure for new elections. Kiir has held an iron grip over his country for a decade.
“I have learned I have to take on the leadership because that’s something that happened to me and I don’t want it to happen to other people,” he continued.
But Deng wasn’t just learning English and advancing his own prospects in his two decades in America. He has worked to help other refugees advance while trying to mount a serious effort to force elections in South Sudan. If the international community is unwilling to help his people, he said he will rally them with support of the military to reclaim control of their nation through revolution.
In the latest episode of NOQ Report, we had a candid discussion about politics in both his land of origin and his adoptive home. He has become a staunch Christian conservative in his time in America, supporting mostly Republican candidates, including President Trump. But knowing this did not dissuade news outlets like the Washington Post from telling his story. After all, his personal political leanings were one thing but using him as an example of how refugees from Muslim-controlled nations could excel in the United States was too juicy of a prospect for left-wing media.
According to a WaPo article:
Deng earned a bachelor’s degree from VCU and was the first student to sign up for the homeland security major the school created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He had hoped to get a job with the FBI or Department of Homeland Security, but his command of written English was too limited.
On a campus with eight or nine Sudanese refugees, Deng stood out because he was always organizing something, Utsey said. Deng put together a program to help local African immigrants improve their English, led efforts to build a school and deliver medicine to South Sudan, and staged a two-day conference on Sudan that drew diplomats and scholars from Washington and elsewhere.
He spoke to many journalists interested in the former slave who now leads a productive life in America. But the interviews dried up in recent months. Why? Because his perspectives on Black Lives Matter and other radical leftist groups did not jibe with mainstream media’s sensibilities. I asked him his perspective on what he’s seeing happening in America today with Black Lives Matter.
“They’re spoiled,” he said. “They have a good life. They have food. They have jobs. They have cars. They have their own businesses. They have their own churches. These people have been spoiled by the United States.”
He sees Black Lives Matter “activists” filming their “rallies” on thousand dollar smart phones and taking to social media to show their latest virtue signaling t-shirts, but he wonders why they’re not addressing the actual persecution happening in nations like South Sudan. If black lives matter, shouldn’t that mean ALL black lives matter, not just those who are concerned they might be one of a couple of dozen unarmed black men shot by police in a given year? When he was kidnapped from his village and forced into slavery, he was among hundreds of children taken.
The persecution people like Bol Gai Deng experienced is not the persecution that Black Lives Matter or other leftist groups want us to see. Their focus is on bringing down America and nobody’s actual hardships will get in their way.
