Because Blackness isn't either – and that's perfectly okay
Not only is the map not the territory – the meaning is not the use!
Did you ever get into astrology? I am not a devotee myself, but I am crazy for books, and even more determined to challenge my own assumptions continuously, so when a friend suggested an especially good book on the subject, written by Alestair Crowley under the pen-name Evangeline Adams, I gave it a read (he really was a brilliant writer, though also a highly messed-up human being).
No, the book did not persuade me, but it did rob me of my easiest criticism of Astrology, by offering a degree of nuance I had not previously encountered. Instead of twelve different flavours of pollyanna nonsense (as the newspaper horoscopes long offered), the book suggested twelve basic personality types which could either grow and ascend, to realize the full potential of their particular ingredients, or else dissipate and degenerate, along twelve importantly different patterns.
The fact that his insights into the realized and degenerate Leo type, hit very close to home for both my aspirations and challenges (not just then, but still, decades later) added considerable weight.
As I say – I am still not in any way convinced of the science – but I am much less ignorant now, and also more respectful, having gleaned some useful insights directed at growth and self overcoming.
My technician-side always appreciates a technique which obviously advances important work – whether or not it was a part of my toolkit, when I started the job. (Function over dogma, every time).
The bonus lesson I have tried hard to remember, ever since, was that my easy dismissal of Astrology was based upon the fact that my ignorance was so great, I could characterize it dishonestly (citing the of course silly and commercial abuse in newspapers) instead of simply admitting – I don’t know much about that – which was (and to be clear, remains) the case.
If you want to make fun of another kid on the schoolyard, that’s easy. Find something that you and many others don’t understand about them, and celebrate your lack of understanding, together.
Or, you can make friends with the kid and figure out what’s interesting about them, and what you can learn from their experience that can make your life better. Their differentness could be taken as a threat, or it could be seen as proof that they may have clues we haven’t yet got. It all depends on our (observer’s) attitude. Do we want to stay dumb (threat) or learn something (trove of clues). And to be clear, the lessons ARE sometimes flat-out cautionary, rather than uplifting or inspiring.
I want to start off with one very simple and important distinction. There is still a kind of a ‘left’ which is the ascendant form – about self-overcoming, growth, maturity, usefulness and sacrifice for others.
There is also a degenerate and dissipative form – which is about narcissism, self indulgence, immaturity, sociopathic rejection of responsibility and sloppy ignorant scapegoating.
Some people mistake me, just because I have a decent vocabulary and can cite a lot of smart books, and presume that my own version of the left is the intellectual variant, untested and idealist (Platonic).
Nope – I’m what used to be known as a working class intellectual. Not bourgeois, not management, not disconnected from the hard work and exploitation of the workers. In it and of it, always.
But I didn’t just find a cozy rationalization and get comfortable, I have been actively challenging my own assumptions for forty years straight, so I’ve added a lot of nuance and respect as I went.
For example, growing up in a commune in which shocking child abuse was considered normal, I began with a strong bias against parents and for un-heard kids. But living downstairs from a single mom with a rather demanding daughter taught me compassion for the other side, real quick!
Same thing with the bad treatment and lousy pay I experienced at some early jobs. Some of my earliest leftist inclinations were powered by this resentment, but when I got a job at a small company with a fantastic owner who was forever on the edge of bankruptcy, because he insisted on treating his employees well, and absorbing the rise and fall of business himself, I grew my compassion and understanding once again. Some business is all about greed, some is about doing good work, well. (And to be clear, the optimal balance is just a bit greedier than he was, so you don’t actually go bust!)
I have made the distinction between corrupt monopolism and small business which organically meets community needs many times in different pieces, so I won’t digress there today (but that distinction is KEY – especially for anyone who wants to make their critique of economics, in terms of morality).
What I want to focus on in this piece, is the social criticism side of the thing. Who we think other is.
The political left in the eighties was very much on the back foot, a mostly ignored minority. It was a very interesting time to learn from elders though. When I went to community college to become an electronic technician (‘87), I was there in time to study with people who had helped to build the urban infrastructure we all live in. Men who remembered our society before television, and had run the first power lines into remote towns – personally expanding the range of the light of technological civilization.
I also had some instructors from the younger boomer generation, who had always done a lot more using and spending, than building for others. They had lots of insight too – but always starting from an assumption of easy plenty which the older ones never made, because they KNEW it wasn’t easy. (I want to say users, not coders)
Being a young political kid at the time you could of course learn from people who had protested in the sixties, and continued to do work in the community in the seventies. Lots of helpful stuff which made all of our personal lives easier and more satisfying (status of and respect for women especially).
But you could also talk to older rebels, who had fought in the especially difficult fifties, when social conformity was extremely heavy and oppressive, and the efforts of radicals were called everything from treason and foreign influence to shameful ‘ingratitude’ – for the widespread post-war boom in loot, which was supposed to (that is, was deliberately calculated to) pacify us, and satisfy all of our wantings.
Funny thing is, the beatniks whose defiance would later inspire the hippy movement, felt an unease about the bright shining consumerist modernity of the fifties that few others in society then shared, except for those of faith. Entirely different views of the world, to be sure, but both based on principle.
My own parents were raised Catholic, but raised my brother and I in an insane cult instead, so I can only assume they were either hurt by it (as was not uncommon, back then, especially) or simply unpersuaded. Yet another bias I might have carried myself, had I not met sincere Catholics since, who derive extraordinary principled strength from their faith (ascendent, rather than dissipative).
The point here is, the rebels who fought when their numbers were few, never lazily disparaged the faithful the same way as the boomers, who enjoyed their rebellion with weight of numbers and social inertia on their side – because they KNEW from memory and experience, who had showed up to stand with them, against war and racism, when that often meant confronting serious sustained state violence.
For my younger friends – please be clear, civil right in America were won BEFORE the hippy rebellion showed up – by people of an entirely more robust, principled and self-sacrificing nature.
Now of course, the most difficult factor to explain to anyone under fifty now, is what the working class once was. I have given myself one nice boost already though – because I can say that for several decades in a row, in the post-war period (and not at all by accident) they were their ascendant form.
Unionists who were also veterans had a very special impact – the 1947 Ford Strike in Windsor – just across the river from Detroit, so frightened the monopolists of the day, they made huge concessions to American workers in their next contract negotiations, lest these unbelievably serious, organized (and also, as veterans, decidedly violence capable) workers, should challenge their power directly.
This key working class history is now being erased by ignorant idiots, but we MUST remember. When workers are paid decently and treated with dignity, the very first thing they do is build community. All around North America, the urban blight we see is the long starvation of what once were gardens.
Not built by government decree or grand master plan (which are hubris-powered, every damn time), but chaotically and organically, by uncountable positive efforts, from a huge range of empowered individuals who had only deep principle and genuine hope for the future in common.
North Americans in the modern period, I’m afraid to say, are almost all in a degenerate or dissipative mode. Despite a widespread resolution at the start of the century, to pay more attention to the rest of the world and to understand it better (so maybe it would resent our exploitation less violently), we remain shockingly ignorant about every other country on earth (and often the next county over, too)
One of the most important things you realize when you do pay attention to the world – listening to their own voices and stories of self-description, rather than our expert’s (monopolist serving) views, is that we aren’t where the hope is, anymore. We used to have that magic spirit, but it has evaporated.
The weird thing about this is that we are still much richer than others elsewhere, who do have hope – and with the resources at our disposal, we could build a fantastic future – but only if we returned to that ascendant building growing learning making track once more. Felt hope, deep in our hearts.
Nigerians are more optimistic about the future than we are – and they have more reason to be, also! (Dozens of other countries in Africa, Asia and South America too – to be sure, just one example).
Why am I more convinced by Nigerian optimism than Western doomful navel-narcissism?
Because they haven’t destroyed their culture. Still value family and friends, purpose and principle, which means they still know WHY it is worth the hard work and sacrifice, which means they still can.
What does the modern western consumerist value? Stuff and feelings. Fool’s gold and fantasy.
Along with being lucky enough to learn from older dirty-fingernails teachers, and genuine first generation full-solidarity radicals, I also had the misfortune to watch the beginning of the corruption of the political left, which absolutely led to it’s shameful dissipative and degenerate state today.
The first time I realized there was a potentially fatal disease in our hearts it was 1993, and an especially ignorant and narcissistic friend of mine was lecturing me about not being “politically correct.”
Her objection was so ridiculous that I laughed, at first, but that just made her angry with me. So then I tried quoting Malcolm X and Martin Luther King – she gave me a blank stare. (reminded me of that fabulous T-shirt with the classic silkscreen picture of Che Guevara and the caption ‘I have no idea who this is’).
So then I tried to talk her through the principle – the spirit of the law, as it were – why the things she was talking about were supposed to be good in the first place, and how her intolerant and technical framing of them was designed only for yelling at people, and not advancing understanding or team.
She glowered with a cold fury, and decided right then, that I was not a real leftist.
And in fairness, I had come to the same conclusion about her, quite early in her ignorant and sanctimonious rant.
At this sad moment, the proportion of people who identify as left in that dissipative degenerate way – exclusively so that they can yell at others who disagree with them, based upon simplifications and misunderstandings which completely obliterate compassion, principle and morality, is overwhelming.
I insist that a rational, principled, self-sacrificing leftist spirit does still exist – but it is a tiny minority, so drowned-out by thrill-seeking emotionalists now, that many outside the clique cannot see any signs of enduring principle at all.
And the number who are now outright shameless bullies and dogmatic zealots, really is truly scary (and of course this sad fact does ongoing and incalculable damage to all genuine humanist-leftist aims).
As a sweet old hippy friend of mine once said, with a sad smile, “It really was a social movement at first, and there were so many brilliant and amazing people contributing, but by the time it became the tide of the times, most of the people you met who looked like hippies, were really just there to get laid.”
I did a piece awhile ago about the damaging effects of post-modernism, and I felt the refutation was actually very simple – a critique is not a plan for building, and concentrating on critique instead of building has lead us to social paralysis, stagnation, stratification, polarization and now outright panic. Planning and work, for all their many faults and limitations, are a far better place to put our primary effort than navel-gazing. (Yes, we can critique a theory of numbers – but we don’t stop using mathematics until we’ve come to a new consensus – THERE IS WORK TO DO)
In response, one of my clever readers quipped, “Well, that almost went somewhere.” (To which I felt compelled to answer - “Well, that was almost useful feedback.”) ;o)
In any case, I sort of knew what he meant right away – which leads me to introduce one more key distinction before I get to the main point of the thing. Do you know the phrase “too online?” Because if you do, you very probably are.
I resisted social media for many years, when others were encouraging me (and I do wish I’d started blogging earlier, as several insisted – it really does suit me well). My resistance was partly just grumpy old-fashioned determination – but it was not degenerate, but rather principled.
When my friends and I were turning sixteen, old enough to get a learner’s permit and begin to drive, we all began to study the materials and quiz each other, but I decided not to get a license myself.
Decades before we were concerned about global warming, we already had serious pollution problems, so I figured – the world will need more non-drivers in future, so I’ll sign up for that now, by never letting myself get addicted to the pleasure of it, in the first place. Never creating the expectation that I am entitled, whatever it costs the rest of the earth and the future.
I don’t say that for hero-points or sanctimony (and I don’t condemn those who drive) I’m just saying that you can very easily make a principled sacrifice, if you frame it to yourself as contributing to a general good much bigger than your own self.
I heard lots of stories about money and attention being delivered on social media – and as a guy who writes, draws and makes music, there has never been a medium which so easily embraces what I do, but I love classic essays, poetry written on an old canary pad with a bold declarative line, big heavy sewn-spine books with beautiful pictures and weird out of print paperbacks filled with rare scholarship, forgotten by the world, long before its most natural moment of relevance.
Even when I write an email, I usually made it more like an old fashioned letter – several pages of friendship and warm witness – instead of the perfunctory enchantment-free missives far more common in that format. And yes I know many readers skim, and miss most of my effort – so what?
I don’t see the goal-state as function, efficiency or saving my own possibly wasted effort, what I’m after is a chance at maximum humane connection, using the magical tool of language (the power of which remains incredible to me, even as I gain skill). You can miss the mark with a goal like that a whole lot of the time, without ever regretting it – because the times you do connect, you get magic!
So – the distinction I still remember as a book nut, which I guard against, as someone who is now also too online, is that the argumentative style of so many blogs (I shouldn’t say whiny, should I?) in which one tries to refute (smack down) every possible argument they can imagine, in advance, rather than just make their point and let people think about it, is really frustrating stuff to read, almost all of the time. Way more emphasis on indignation than serious purpose.
I still try to make my points in a way I would enjoy reading on paper, by sunlight. To be super clear, because I am too online now, like many of my readers, my head is always filled with a hundred voices which might take (well founded or deliberately misunderstanding) ‘shots’ at any point I can make – I am not only capable of writing in that bitchy way, I end up doing it all the time – I just try very hard to throw out all of those versions of my pieces, and keep re-writing until I can find a more useful line.
(When I say this is the tenth, or even twentieth version of a piece, I really do mean that). ;o)
I am a Canadian from Toronto – which means I grew up saturated in American culture, and with plenty of American friends (many draught dodgers were important early mentors), but have always lived in a less competitive and cut-throat society (which I wouldn’t trade for anything, but has definite down-sides also). I have another whole piece underway about the way that the fantasies the west has long had about itself, no longer ring true, even for us. So, I’ll do the short-form version only today.
America, the land of freedom, locks up more people than any country on earth. Europe, which had so long seemed a beacon of harmony overcoming deep ancient tribal resentments, is now losing that pleasant mask, and suddenly, every hatred so long thought overcome is revealed to be there still, just under the surface. Because we are (shamelessly) ignorant about the rest of the world and history, I should remind my friends – Iraq had this same shock, when it was deliberately smashed by America.
For generations no one much cared who was Sunni and who was Shia (except in terms of government power games – not irrelevant, but not the main deal in day to day life, either). With an advanced economy and education, the point was what is your career, what are your goals in life? When things were good, they almost seemed secular, and all the old resentments were minimized.
So now let me ask an incredibly rude question. What is an African American? More to today’s point, is the modern “Blackness” model really talking about an ascendant African? Or does it characterize a classic dissipative and degenerate American type? Self harmingly self-centred and incredibly ignorant?
(a curse in advance for any who take that one line out of context – though you’re welcome to your idiocy)
Canadians, like Scandinavians, are obnoxiously smug (the one national characteristic Justin actually does represent resplendently – to our great shame). My working class head is tempted to say we start from a more bourgeois – work taken for granted – place, in all our ideas about the world, simply because we fail to acknowledge our incredibly good (and in substantial part, un-earned) fortune.
We also have huge numbers of black people from Africa and the Caribbean here (Toronto especially) and despite our saturation in American cultural product, their local culture is not entirely drowned-out here, by the outrageously narcissistic modern American model.
The two most dedicated and involved fathers I ever knew were both African. You know the one thing they were most concerned about? They wanted to be sure their kids grew up with their African culture, and not the American ideas about what a black person was. Was that racist or ignorant? Racist to be genuinely African?
No, of course it wasn’t. What they wanted was for their kids to be happy and do well in the world, and so far (census bears this out, year after year), people with more traditional African attitudes do far better in the US than black people who were born there – even though Black Americans remain by far the wealthiest population of black people on earth (I’m trusting black economist Glenn Lowry on that).
Now – before you get the wrong idea – I remain a Malcolm X and Martin Luther King guy – deep in my heart. In fact, my deep reading of both of them brings me another really important clue.
What makes an effective radical or revolutionary? What forces and ideas really can move the world, helpfully?
The black revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s like the Black Panther Party For Self Defence (which romantics no longer remember, began as a citizens gun-rights group), were far more militant than earlier, more clearly spiritual and non-violent protest movements which preceded them.
But both the god anchored movements and the later secular political, had one key evolution in common. They began from shared determination around a key point of human concern which hurt them personally and directly – but as they struggled, they came to recognize greater concerns, and with that recognition (an explosion in compassion) they finally saw the family which could really win the day.
Malcolm X gave outrageously racist and angry speeches for years, and though he was persecuted by the state and considered a threat, that threat multiplied into state panic, only when he returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca a profoundly changed man, after seeing white and black together on the Haj, and he recognized it wasn’t race but class oppression which was holding back his people and so many others – and that only class unity could move the world and change that for the better.
Martin Luther King made many speeches about the plight of Black Americans, but late in his career (the incredible Riverside speech) he recognized that America was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and that only by standing with the oppressed of the whole world, could black Americans finally win THE great moral victory (and with that moral clarity, win allies of principle among all races).
Fred Hampton organized and taught in Chicago as the leader of the local Black Panther party, and was one of their great innovators in community outreach programs. His transforming epiphany was to realize that the poor Italian and Irish communities faced the same basic challenges, and by raising the poor to working class dignity, they might all win and enjoy a huge advance in common.
All three of these men were killed within months of that most dangerous and vital humane insight.
You want to know where “Representation Counts” works absolutely? Noah’s Ark, that’s where.
I’m not even kidding here folks, and again, I want you to think about the distinction between an ascendant and dissipative phase. Representation counts begins from the assumption that mass under-employment, gig-work and housing insecurity is the new normal which we must all accept – here to stay – nothing we can expect the political process to do about it – screw you loser, too bad!
So – if we’re going to be peons and golden ones from now on, we should have one pair of golden ones of each type, to make sure our ark is properly stocked. Everyone else? Hope you can swim!
But that starting assumption is outright psychotic – we’ve already lost, the only thing left is to marry a few of our tribe into the ruling family, so hopefully they’ll think twice before wiping us out completely!
Now let me say a more hopeful thing – ascendant America is all about transcending the aristocracy!
NOT getting representatives of all types into it – but abolishing and restraining the class itself by hard individual efforts, and where needed or appropriate – organizing those efforts on principle.
Now let me ask another rude question which no one on the left seems to ask anymore.
If you were an aristocrat, terrified about the organizing power of a genuine popular movement which had broad and socially beneficial aims which were self-evident to the principled majority, how might you deploy your wealth, to steadily reduce the threat of that social progress, year after year?
If it was me, I’d start by attacking principle itself, by promoting those who ignored it, in favour of emotionalism and ego.
You discredit the power of a genuine movement, by diluting and displacing it with unprincipled fakes. If you can make the followers nasty sanctimonious conformists, who think their feelings are more important than solidarity, so much the better. — You have built a self-sabotaging machine with wrong aims anyhow.
I have to insert a key bit of reality here, which is very important and widely obscured. Police in America kill more white people every year than black, very consistently. If police violence was as simple a problem as racism, we would expect almost no dead white people. But there are always more. The proportions are way out of whack, to be sure, but the clearest correlation with experiencing police violence is not race, it is poverty (which consistently governs frequency of interaction, which itself weights risk). If we noticed the problem was general (everyone has a poor friend or relative, even if they are lucky enough not to be poor themselves, in this difficult time), then our team for solving it would be approximately everyone. Old style faith and radical alliance for more compassion.
This won’t even register for some people who want to think police are all bad human beings (not my experience, particularly when subtle understanding was least obvious or expected) but the fact is, a vasty improved system of police training for de-escalation would be way better for them too. Make it easier for the sincere well meaning majority to do far better work for more people, safely.
There is a huge question to work on – about how we have allowed increasing insecurity to become normalized in our still rich western societies – and after decades of sloppy margins which might have cracked it, this is becoming increasingly difficult to solve, as our old wealth engines begin to stutter.
A society which regards the poor as citizens, and tries hard to move them up and out of poverty (as many economies around the world now do far better than we in the west) would naturally demand a different definition of duty for police. Representatives of citizens, rather than bouncers for capitalism.
Not trying to be backhandedly mean there, either. Sincere police people don’t get to pick their tasking, only how they respond to whatever situation they are sent into.
As for de-funding police, call me again when we are closing almost all rape and murder cases.
(Until then, you can be the one to explain to the victims and relatives why they can just suck it)
Some may disagree, but I think the most telling moment for the Black Lives Matter movement was not their weird indulgence in bourgeois real-estate (though that is gross, to be sure). It was the way that movement used it’s influence in a key moment, to help promote Biden as the Democratic nominee, instead of Bernie.
The story at the time, if you’ll recall, was that Biden – who we must remember is a lifelong buddy of many very famously racist scumbags (the last original Dixiecrat, according to Washington old-timers) was more open to ‘reparations’ than Bernie, who just wanted to do right by the entire working class.
Can I make the case for reparations? Dude, I’m a history geek – of course I can. But I start with the case for reparations to the first nations of North America, and my list also includes most of Central America, Chile, Brazil, East Timor, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and many other nations which were directly and grievously harmed, to increase the obscene wealth of American aristocrats.
I am not saying the case for reparations for blacks is not distinct, in fact I have already shared a link to my favourite interview on this in ages – where white boy Scott Ritter sees the light, in a discussion with Chairman Omali of the still vital and principled Uhuru movement. The key line (paraphrasing) “The Irish came here, the Italians, many others, and they worked their way into the society over time because they had the protection of the constitution – but your people never did – you were left out!”
And there’s a big clue in that case, too. The Uhuru group actually do the thing that the wealthy urban bloggers and editorialists don’t – they do the work, not just the critique – because they never stopped fighting for the REAL WIN.
When I say do the work I don’t mean self-flaggelation for bored white middle classers, I mean community building, citizen organization and programs, making lives better.
The same kind of things which actually made J Edgar Hoover far more worried about the Black Panthers than their violence ever did. Solid proof of positive effort and principle – an entirely distinct thing from anger, which can always be portrayed as frightening to the masses and then brutally suppressed.
But how do you make a group that does community gardens and social outreach seem frightening? Well, in the case of the Uhuru movement, if you’re the Biden administration, you charge and now even convict them of being “Russian agents” (because racism really does remain Joe’s go-to instinct, despite all that focus group training).
Chairman Yoshitala was protesting the American war machine back in the sixties, mind you! But he met a Russian once – so he got a no-knock swat team raid and now faces serious jail time for ACTUAL REBELLION, COMMUNITY COMMITMENT AND DEEP HUMANE PRINCIPLE.
You call me when a swat team kicks down the door of Ta Na-Hesi Ernie Ford, Kendi or DiAngelo, and I’ll sit down and read them, ‘kay? But you already know you’ll never call, ‘cause they are no threat to the aristocracy – they are in fact the aristocracy’s kept ‘representation matters’ people – whose primary function is to neuter genuine revolutionary energy, sew interpersonal discord and chaos and destroy any possibility for class organizing, which absolutely harms all the poor and struggling, nation wide, and does heavy damage to uncountable individual, often very nourishing, relationships.
Those who put dogma ahead of friendship, love, learning and honour? Aristocrats or their servants.
Those who put work, principle and solidarity ahead of greed, critique and complaint? The people.
Again, I hesitate to use the word bourgeois too often, because I know it makes some people’s teeth ache (and appreciate why that is, and trust they can filter for my true tone and meaning). But simply to be honest about where I come from, I must repeat, almost everything which is now claiming to be ‘left and progressive’ is in fact profoundly bourgeois and aristocratic, rather than people-serving.
At risk of making even more people’s teeth ache, I can’t resist offering an incredibly obvious example.
The exact same people who always said voter ID was racist, suddenly demanded that everyone must be able to show a vaccine passport – even to enter a grocery store to buy food – but now they are all the way back to saying voter ID is racist once again. Like that ultra sharp demand moment never even happened.
That is, when they are afraid, they will support rules that mean those without ID starve to death – but when they are not afraid, they again prefer their romantic ideas about others that they don’t know much about. (and someone please tell me – why not a big ID drive, then? WHY NOT ORGANIZE?)
Principle is different. Principle makes room for the whole, not just the one, and always puts advance and solution ahead of ego. Principle also takes a longer view. Remembers that precedents can soon be employed against us as individuals, just as surely as they sometimes seem to serve our desires.
More precisely – never pass a law that you wouldn’t trust a creepy bastard with – ‘cause you’re sure to get one of those in charge eventually – and then how glad you’ll be of that cudgel you gave them!
Censorship boosters are just like the fake black leaders who faithfully serve the aristocracy (or else they would be harshly persecuted by American power, like every actual serious revolutionary in American history, instead of actively promoted by them and the corporate elite at every possible turn).
I oppose censorship with the same rock solid confidence with which I oppose capital punishment.
Not, however, the same reason I had when younger. I am now fully convinced that some people really are so deeply malevolent that they do deserve death. But I still don’t trust any government to make the call without any error or corruption – and once they do, they have either done small justice or else actually murdered a citizen by state force, tainted every citizen with some part of great evil.
Not in my name you don’t. You don’t smash the opponent’s press (lest he smash yours) you make a better argument and you show greater commitment to work and principle (prove what that builds).
As for Mis Diss and Mal information (the last, hilariously, is information they admit is completely true – but is embarrassing, they don’t like anyone saying it, and so believe it should be ‘sanctioned speech’ – and just screw citizens rights anyhow) the honest documented legally demonstrated truth of the matter is that the whole censorship industrial complex is a gigantic spy-run scam. Aristocrats again.
Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew, who literally invented modern public relations) famously observed that the easiest way to tell when you were reading public relations, instead of actual objectivity-seeking news, was when the story began “Experts say...”
I’m not even kidding here – the Stanford Internet Observatory, Hamilton 68, and a host of other oft-quoted ‘experts’ which have been used to scare us about the horrible (diss) information which is even now turning our neighbours into brain-eating zombies behind our backs, are all intelligence agents. People whose professional specialty is lying, in order to change power dynamics and take advantage.
People from the same institutions which tried to destroy the union movement and civil rights with an orgy of violence and violations of rights and law. (for my younger friends – go read up on Cointelpro)
People who literally start wars, in order to make money flow their way. Maximum psychopaths.
So now let me close those parenthesis I opened awhile ago – about the telling moment for Black Lives Matter (when serious revolutionaries realized, with great sadness, that they simply were not).
Why on earth would they choose to promote the racist who wrote a law which would keep rich kids like his son from doing serious jail time, but locked up millions of black men for their formative years? The most damaging racist evil in modern American history.
And why would they attack someone who was determined to make serious material improvements for all the forgotten workers and poor in America? A boost for Black Americans which would obviously have been helpful, in direct proportion to their proportionally unfair rate of poverty?
Because their definition of whiteness was based on their anger, instead of any kind of understanding. “White” was whatever it needed to be, to make their blind fury justified wonderful and heroic, instead of self indulgent, cause-harming and stupid. They were convinced they actually had to pick a racist, in order to win the cracker vote!
Which is to say – despite all of their elaborate cosplay-posturing as revolutionaries, they not only denied the poor a real measure of genuine advance, they spit directly in the faces of their most principled leaders, by falsely appropriating their early divisive and angry messages, while completely ignoring the crucial epiphanies of awareness and radiant humane compassion which finally made them truly dangerous to the powers that be – and mark them as true beacons still, for any who will hear them.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And yes – my online head badly wants to go on another ten pages about the absolute lack of compassion awareness and solidarity between American blacks and every last part of the entire continent of Africa – which absolutely is the inflection point for humanity’s future – but my poet head says nope, you got it, walk away.
Here is the website for the Uhuru Three, now grotesquely convicted of “conspiracy” (thought-crime) and awaiting sentencing – so you can watch the progress of this obscenely racist, anti-peace and anti-speech Biden regime case for yourself.
And here again is that superb interview with an old jar-head (marine) white guy getting a bit of black power religion, in the most honest possible way, talking to the obviously principled (and amazingly funny) chairman Yoshitala of the Uhuru three.
Here’s a very revealing story about the way the ideology of blackness (that is, the bourgeois post-modernist philosophy being used to displace genuine change-force) ignores all material reality.
TLDR – one person insisted Canadian racism was worse than that in America, because even though Upper Canada was founded on Simcoe’s words "The moment I assume the Government of Upper Canada under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates by dishonest policy between natives of Africa, America, or Europe," and thus began the long process of the abolishment of slavery across the entire British empire, we still have a queen on our money! Whereas America had slaves and racist law until very recently – but invented rap?
Damn though – did this tragic case ever get way out of control. (Just in case you still foolishly think Canada is sane, peaceful and/or boring)
And just in case you think the FBI only does shock and intimidation raids on black rebels – here’s a case which really amazes. Not just where did google come from (NSA) but also how did the whole freakin’ web get turned against us?
Yes – he takes a few positions which raise my eyebrows too – but eccentrics are like that, still can’t deny his courage or principle, even if you disagree with his politics!
Finally, just because it is utterly delicious to hear one note of strong clear truth in that reliably murderous and dishonest spot – this.
Are you old enough to remember reporters who brought memory, nerve and heart?
Not fake-smiling Orwellian propagandists, but the real thing?
If you are, this will give you some small hope.
And if you aren’t? Same.
Liam Cosgrove from the GrayZone which, along with Scheerpost, keeps serious left journalism and profoundly necessary criticism of corrupt government(s) alive.
Here's something super-relevant to the question of state institutions and rebellion
(from the always brilliant Matt Taibbi)
https://www.racket.news/p/note-on-the-fbi