Last week the United Nations removed what it claims was a satire article venerating the merits of world hunger. Now, the author of that pulled article says it was not meant to be satire.
The article, “The Benefits of World Hunger,” was written by Professor George Kent from the University of Hawaii. Originally published in June 2008, the article was more recently reposted to the UN’s Chronicle magazine, as Valiant reported last week.
“We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished,” Kent wrote in 2008. He added that hunger could be “a great positive value to many people.”
“Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy,” wrote Kent. “Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labor.”
The UN commented last week that the piece was “an attempt at satire and was never meant to be taken literally.”
This article appeared in the UN Chronicle 14 years ago as an attempt at satire and was never meant to be taken literally. We have been made aware of its failures, even as satire, and have removed it from our site.
— UN Chronicle (@_UNChronicle) July 6, 2022
Now, Newsbusters reports that Kent, now the Deputy Editor for a magazine called World Nutrition, told the outlet it was never meant to be satire.
“I never intended it as satire,” Kent told MRC Business and Newsbusters. “I did not hope that it would be read as praise for hunger.”
“My main point was and still is that some people benefit from the existence of hunger in the world,” Kent told the outlet. “That helps to explain why hunger is so persistent in many places.”
In the article, Kent argued that for the elite at “the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster,” as “if there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields?… Who would clean our toilets?… For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.”
Published in 2008, the article spent more than 14 years on the UN’s website before it was removed before noon on July 6, 2022 following outcry on Twitter.
