The Rise of “Celebrity Colonialism”

What is it? According to a piece by Brendan O’Neill in Spiked, it’s what happens when celebrities like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie descend on a tiny nation like Namibia and start calling the shots. “Their daughter - Shiloh Nouvel - was born on Saturday night,” he writes. “As they awaited the birth they reportedly surrounded themselves with their own personal security detail and armed Namibian police. According to the Independent there was even a no-fly zone, enforced by the Namibian government, over the luxurious Burning Shore beach resort where Pitt and Jolie were holed up. Apparently, the stars also got to dictate which reporters could and could not enter the country.”

What’s more, he writes:

According to one report, the Namibian government ‘bowed to pressure from the duo and granted them the right to ban foreign journalists from entering the country - a remarkable move for the government of any sovereign state’. The government is said to have granted this extraordinary veto to Brad and Angelina after the couple told ministers that they would be ‘forced to quit the country unless allegedly intrusive journalists and paparazzi were brought to heel’. Namibian ministers hope that a trip by two Hollywood bigwigs to their shores will do wonders for their tourism industry, and thus have done everything they can to keep the couple happy.

Amazing.

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