[Peace-discuss] Cornel West denounces fake left politics

Mon Dec 25 10:35:55 UTC 2017

I agree with both of you.

Carl is right to say that Cornel West is right in his dispute with Coates
about Coates' failure to denounce U.S. imperialism.

But, Karen is also right to try to promote the fact that Naomi Klein is
right to try to use this moment to call out all American liberals to
fulfill their duty to oppose U.S. imperialism.

We're at a new, unprecedented moment now where the relationship between
American liberals and U.S. imperialism is being questioned, is being
challenged, is being put on the table, in a way that has not happened for
the last fifty years, or at least has not happened very often in the last
fifty years.

Let's make the most of it.

On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 9:39 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> This is the part from the article in the Intercept that I like, and I see
> it as getting the truth out there:
>
>  " Is it even possible to be a voice for transformational change without a
> clear position on the brutal wars and occupations waged with U.S. weapons?
> Is it possible to have a credible critique of Wall Street’s impact on Black
> and other vulnerable communities in the U.S. without reckoning with the
> predatory and neocolonial impacts of the global financial system (including
> Washington-based institutions like the International Monetary Fund) on the
> debt-laden economies of African countries?
>
> Is it even possible to be a voice for transformational change without a
> clear position on the brutal wars and occupations waged with U.S. weapons?
> Even when our work is primarily focused nationally or hyperlocally, as it
> is for most organizers and writers, there is still a pressing need for an
> internationalist conception of power to inform our analysis. This is not a
> contradiction. In fact, it used to be foundational to all major radical and
> progressive movements, from the socialist internationals to Pan-Africanism
> and the global campaign to end apartheid in South Africa, from the
> “alter-globalization” movement to the international women’s movement. All
> understood that resistance needed to be global in order to win. Marcus
> Garvey, for instance, drew ideas and inspiration for Black liberation from
> the Irish struggle for independence. And Malcolm X famously observed that
> when racial minorities in the U.S. saw their struggle in a global context,
> they had the empowering realization that they were, in fact, part of a
> broad and powerful majority.
>
> We are not saying that this internationalist tradition is entirely absent
> in contemporary North American movements — there have been Black activist
> delegations to Colombia, Brazil, and Palestine in recent years. The climate
> justice movement is linked to frontline fights against fossil fuel
> extraction in every corner of the globe. And the immigrant rights movement
> is internationalist by definition. So are parts of the movement confronting
> sexual violence. We could go on.
>
> But it is also true that the atmosphere of intense political crisis in the
> United States is breeding a near myopic insularity among progressives and
> even some self-described radicals, one that is not just morally dangerous
> but strategically shortsighted. By defining our work exclusively as what
> goes on inside our borders, and losing touch with the rich anti-imperialist
> tradition, we risk depriving our movements of the revolutionary power that
> flows from cross-border exchanges of both wisdom and tactics. cont.
>
>
> "For instance, if U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in isolation from
> the rise of far-right forces around the world, we lose opportunities to
> learn from people in Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, South Africa,
> India, Turkey, and Togo about how they are resisting their various
> strongmen. Because if we have learned anything over the past years of
> left-wing setbacks and disappointments, from Syriza in Greece to Maduro in
> Venezuela to the dashed dreams of the Arab Spring, it should be that the
> forces shaping national destinies are global. International lenders,
> Western military support for despots, or even a sudden drop in oil prices
> can all thwart or derail a liberation project that has defined itself too
> narrowly.
>
> Which is why it’s high time to change the subject from West vs. Coates,
> and begin the much more salient debate about what we all can do to
> rediscover the power of a genuinely internationalist, anti-imperialist
> worldview. A power that our movement ancestors well understood.
>
> Because there is simply no way to fight for a world in which Black lives
> truly matter without reckoning with the global forces that allow Black
> lives to disappear under waves in the Mediterranean, or to be mutilated and
> enslaved in countries like Libya, or to be snuffed out by debt imposed by
> Washington-based financial institutions.
>
> The same is true of climate change, which is hitting people in the global
> south first and worst. It has been reported that of the top 10 nations most
> impacted by climate change, six are on the continent of Africa. Similarly,
> there is no way to fight for the full funding of public schools and free
> universal health care inside the United States without confronting the
> vastly expanding share of the budget that goes to feeding the war machine.
>
> The immigrant rights movement is the most internationalist of our
> movements, but we still need to do more to connect the dots between rights
> and justice for migrants within countries like the United States and
> Canada, and the drivers of migration in places like Mexico and Ghana,
> whether it is pro-corporate trade and economic policies that destabilize
> domestic industries, or U.S.-backed wars, or drought deepened by climate
> change.
>
> Our movements simply cannot afford to stick to our various comfort zones
> or offload internationalism as someone else’s responsibility.
> The unending misery in Haiti may be the most vivid illustration of how
> today’s crises are all interrelated. On the island, serial natural
> disasters, some linked to climate change, are being layered on top of
> illegitimate foreign debts and coupled with gross negligence by the
> international aid industry, as well as acute U.S.-lead efforts to
> destabilize and under-develop the country. These compounding forces have
> led tens of thousands of Haitians to migrate to the United States in recent
> years, where they come face-to-face with Trump’s anti-Black, anti-immigrant
> agenda. Many are now fleeing to Canada, where hundreds if not thousands
> could face deportation. We can’t pry these various cross-border crises
> apart, nor should we.
>
> IN SHORT, THERE is no radicalism — Black or otherwise — that ends at the
> national boundaries of our countries, especially the wealthiest and most
> heavily armed nation on earth. From the worldwide reach of the financial
> sector to the rapidly expanding battlefield of U.S. Special Operations to
> the fact that carbon pollution respects no borders, the forces we are all
> up against are global. So, too, are the crises we face, from the rise of
> white supremacy, ethno-chauvinism, and authoritarian strongmen to the fact
> that more people are being forced from their homes than at any point since
> World War II. If our movements are to succeed, we will need both analysis
> and strategies that reflect these truths about our world.
>
> Some argue for staying in our lane, and undoubtedly there is a place for
> deep expertise. The political reality, however, is that the U.S. government
> doesn’t stay in its lane and never has — it spends public dollars using its
> military and economic might to turn the world into a battlefield, and it
> does so in the name of all of U.S. citizens.
>
> As a result, our movements simply cannot afford to stick to our various
> comfort zones or offload internationalism as someone else’s responsibility.
> To do so would be grossly negligent of our geopolitical power, our own
> agency, as well as our very real connections to people and places
> throughout the world. So when we build cross-sector alliances and
> cross-issue solidarity, those relationships cannot be confined to our own
> nations or even our own hemisphere — not in a world as interconnected as
> ours. We have to strive for them to be as global as the forces we are up
> against.
>
> We know this can seem overwhelming at a time when so many domestic crises
> are coming to a head and so many of us are being pushed beyond the breaking
> point. But it is worth remembering that our movement ancestors formed
> international alliances and placed their struggles within a global
> narrative not out of a sense of guilt or obligation, but because they
> understood that it made them stronger and more likely to win at home — and
> that strength terrified their enemies.
>
> Besides, the benefit of building a broad-based, multiracial social
> movement — which should surely be the end goal of all serious organizers
> and radical intellectuals — is that movements can have a division of labor,
> with different specialists focusing on different areas, united by broad
> agreement about overall vision and goals. That’s what a real movement looks
> like.
>
> The good news is that grassroots internationalism has never been easier.
> From cellphones to social media, we have opportunities to speak with one
> another across borders that our predecessors couldn’t have dreamed of.
> Similarly, tools that allow migrant families to stay connected with loved
> ones in different countries can also become conduits for social movements
> to hear news that the corporate media ignores. We are able, for instance,
> to learn about the pro-democracy movements growing in strength across the
> continent of Africa, as well as efforts to stop extrajudicial killings in
> countries like Brazil. Many would not have known that Black African
> migrants are being enslaved in Libya if it had not been for these same
> tools. And had they not known they wouldn’t have been able to engage in
> acts of necessary solidarity.
>
> So let’s leave narrow, nostalgic nationalism to Donald Trump and his
> delusional #MAGA <https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/maga?hc_location=ufi> supporters.
> The forces waging war on bodies and the planet are irreversibly global, and
> we are vastly stronger when we build global movements capable of
> confronting them at every turn.”
>
>
>
> On Dec 24, 2017, at 19:26, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Munich, 1938
>
> Forget Neville vs. Adolf — We All Have a Duty to Confront the Full Reach
> of Imperialism
>
> So, which side are you on? #TeamNeville or #TeamAdolf?
>
> Choose fast, preferably within seconds, and don’t come to this gunfight
> with a knife. No, like some nerdy Rambo, we want you greased up and
> loaded with ammo: your most painful character smears, your most
> “gotcha” evidence of past political infractions, a blitzkrieg of hyperlinks
> and, of course, an aircraft carrier of reaction GIFs.
>
> That’s pretty much how the online debate has played out ever since
> Neville Chamberlain published his piece in the British papers regarding
> Adolf Hitler (“Peace in Our Time’), an article you either regard as an
> outrageous injustice or an earth-shattering truth bomb, depending on which
> team you have chosen.
>
> We see it differently. We see this debate as a political opportunity, one
> that has far less to do with either of these brilliant men and everything
> to do with how, at a time of unfathomably high stakes, we are going to
> build a multiracial [Anglo-Saxon/German] human rights movement capable
> of beating back surging Aryan supremacy and rapidly concentrating
> corporate power. As women, we see the question like this: What are the
> duties of radicals and progressives inside relatively wealthy countries to
> the world beyond our national borders?...
>
>
> On Dec 24, 2017, at 9:59 AM, Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> This from the Intercept, maybe even better, once you get past the
> first paragraph or two.
>
>
> https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=
> https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2017%2F12%2F21%2Fcornel-
> west-ta-nehisi-coates-feud%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%
> 7Ce9262a1eeaf147f5b4a508d54b4753b7%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa
> aaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636497692066417509&sdata=FIkCJnifeYSr5UW6HOEg5f3jvZuBtiEcwLnLKQwVHaA%3D&reserved=0
> <https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=
> https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2017%2F12%2F21%2Fcornel-
> west-ta-nehisi-coates-feud%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%
> 7Ce9262a1eeaf147f5b4a508d54b4753b7%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa
> aaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636497692066417509&sdata=FIkCJnifeYSr5UW6HOEg5f3jvZuBti
> EcwLnLKQwVHaA%3D&reserved=0>
>
>
>
> On Dec 24, 2017, at 06:19, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-
> discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
> The US government is killing people around the world, but not for
> white supremacy.
>
> https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%
> 2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2017%
> 2Fdec%2F17%2Fta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-
> cornel-west&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb2033471046f4b807ad508d54ad96e6a%
> 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636497220078317095&sdata=pR%
> 2BFOyrxOf8kdm80yFc88yZCaU5U6M6JEGbQu0YrY%2F8%3D&reserved=0
>
> ‘...any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall
> Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class,
> gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously
> misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.
>
> 'Coates rightly highlights the vicious legacy of white supremacy – past
> and present. He sees it everywhere and ever reminds us of its
> plundering effects. Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fightback,
> and never connects this ugly legacy to the predatory capitalist practices,
> imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the
> black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.
>
> 'In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it
> almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative
> of “defiance”. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic – a
> personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It
> generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing
> power or giving up privilege.
>
> 'When he honestly asks: “How do you defy a power that insists on
> claiming you?”, the answer should be clear: they claim you because you are
> silent on what is a threat to their order (especially Wall Street and war).
> You defy them when you threaten that order…'
>
> ###
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
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