Posting to both Latestagecapitalism and here, but I recently posted a question on /r/AskEconomics and I got great responses honestly referring to a supposedly incorrect article.

However, I knew something was up when we got into a bigger discussion on African development and people began to attack socialism even though I was arguing for protectionism. I'm a huge leftist, but this was irrelevant to my current argument that the policies of the World Bank, IMF, and other entities that favored trade openness and liberalism from the 1980s to the early 2000s decimated opportunities for African development and that the continued protection of Tax Havens and illicit trade and liberalist policies suggest that the IMF, WB control of the economies of African nations is an injustice that keeps African nation relatively poor. I believe that African nations should move towards protectionism for their infant industries despite their donor institutions being expressly against it otherwise they'll never get out of the yoke of being the economic "third-world."

They made arguments based on these implicit notions that all wealth relates from the west which somehow produces more than nations that actually have resources, and that wealth is somehow produced within the act of trading itself. That no nation can truly produce wealth from within nor in isolation. Notions which if true, goes against U.S.' own long-held subsidiary policies for agriculture and oil. I am not going so far to argue for Gaddifism (Which I think is not entirely incorrect in what should be done and what would be done), I am still arguing that that individual states should work within the system but for their own best interests.

I guess my question is if the global west would find this so untenable as to make a socialist strawman? Go to war? Is my argument valid? By arguing this am I quintessentially arguing for a "dirty break?" Or are there other factors such as racism and colonialism that allow for some nations to achieve protectionism, the development, while others are blown open. Where can I find more resources, hopefully without the racial gaslighting?