The show would have been broadcast by MTV, which would have furthered the reach of this attempt to normalise an abnormal government. MTV would have surely billed Minaj's performance as a "step forward for female empowerment in Saudi Arabia", which is preposterous.
If Minaj truly wanted to empower the average Saudi Arabian woman she could have considered performing in local clothing - that would say, "Saudi women have a culture worthy of admiration, emulation and respect." Minaj performing in an abaya could show young, impressionable MTV viewers that Islamophobia is wrong, and that the anti-hijab laws across Europe are racist, anti-democratic and produce violent attacks on Muslim women. But fighting Muslims - not fighting Islamophobia - is the goal of the West's leadership, from their political leaders to their cultural elite.
The Saudi monarchy is also not right in supporting Minaj's brand of rap. I reviewed some of her lyrics, as I am unfamiliar with her music: her lyrics openly glorify her pride in exchanging her beauty for money and luxury; they glorify criminality and drug-dealing; they are ragingly capitalist and obsessed with asserting her self-importance and your inferiority.
When I read Minaj's lyrics I don't see an artist, but I do occasionally see an attempt at art: Minaj deserves credit for also talking about how her African-American community has been absolutely devastated by the incredibly racist policies of the United States at all levels of their government.
It is no wonder that the vast majority of Minaj's lyrics are so debased - she is from a community which has been degraded for 400+ years simply because of their color. The recognition of this degradation is why during the occupation of the US embassy in 1979 the modern Iranian leadership freed not just the embassy's women but also the African-Americans.
But, excepting their slave era, it is now worse than ever for African-Americans: Since 1980 their imprisonment rates have skyrocketed by well over 300% , a community-crushing experience which may only be paralleled by Palestinians. This has devastated African-American families, and thus gutted their culture and music of peace, hope, harmony and love.
Compounding this sadness is the fear and violence they live with - guns and gang warfare are permitted to flourish in the African-American part of town, whatever town that is, and this is expressly by American cultural design. The US government, at all levels, has no interest in providing African-American citizens and taxpayers with safety or law and order. Even Europe's Roma don't live with such violence, at least.
Adding to all that: The economic and political power redistribution efforts finally begun in the 1960s were killed by the Democrat Bill Clinton, and thus endemic poverty in the African-American community adds yet another level of hardship and tremendous suffering to their daily lives.
Therefore, considering how often she has seen her fellow African-Americans die young, and spend their lives in prison, and spend their lives in poverty, then I can understand why Minaj's lyrics are so unconcerned with consequences and so concerned with immediate, greedy acquisition. After all, acceptance of these degraded concepts have been been violently forced upon the African-American community, just like drugs, guns, poverty and familial dissolution.
Minaj is thus just another raging American capitalist - with all the depravity that implies - because African-Americans are given no other way out. She sells her body just as violently as a Black American football player from the ghetto does in the hope of acquiring a university education.
Given this reality, when Washington's officials and NGOs try to lecture Iran about human rights, I wonder if they have ever even set foot inside the entire African-American-majority cities of Gary, Indiana, or Flint, Michigan, or most of the west side of Chicago, or any of the thousands of "American Apartheid" towns and neighbourhoods. The systematic oppression of African-Americans may be ignored by them, but it is not going unnoticed by the rest of the world. When Iranian officials say that the values of Washington make diplomacy impossible - and this was heard long before the JCPOA - this is certainly one of the situations they are referring to.
All these things cannot be admitted in the United States. The oppression, delusion and total hypocrisy in the US regarding this abomination is so extreme that I find it hard to conceive that African-Americans could acquire justice before Palestinians do.
Minaj has certainly not been elevated by their mainstream media for her prideful lyrical defences of her besieged community, although I can imagine that does explain part of her popularity among the African-American community. No, Minaj is elevated as a "liberator" and "model example" by the Western 1% expressly because of her vulgarity, both romantic and ideological.
Minaj actually serves an important function: she injects this culture of desperation, violence and self-centeredness - which is required to survive in a US ghetto - into the culture of the middle and upper classes, which have no need to resort to such desperate tactics, and this helps perpetuate US neo-imperialist culture at home and abroad. US capitalism-imperialism first requires, of course, domestic indoctrination of their own people.
But the problems of the African-American community are not the responsibilities of MBS and the Saudi monarchy - reflecting the moral standards and public opinion of the Saudi people is.
Minaj victimises everyone with her lyrics, probably because she doesn't realise that she has been victimised herself by US culture. While it technically could depend on the song she chooses to rap and the manner in which she would have appeared on stage to rap it, barring some sort of immediate and drastic conversion she would have certainly victimised impressionable Saudi Arabians as well.
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