Forgetting MLK

Martin Luther King would have been 79 years old today. He stood at the head of a movement whose goals were ensuring equal rights for all before the law, regardless of skin color, and for ending poverty once and for all. In his time he, along with many comrades in struggle, laid challenge to the existing order in the South with marches, the montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, and overall, and most importantly, building organizations that could continue to battle the existing white power structure in the South. And while he is regarded as something of a patron saint of the civil rights movement, few organizations take the time to truly honor his memory by looking back at some of his most powerful statements, and his truly radical analysis of America as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world". Like so many great radicals before him, he has been embraced by today's leading political establishment and simultaneously been eviscerated of actual radical politics. 

I had the (mis)fortune to attend a talk this morning given by MC Lyte on remembering MLK. I walked away from it depressed and distraught at the state of the movement today: there is none. We have gone from 1968, perhaps the most radical year in the last century, where numerous groups were either becoming large or just forming to protect the interests of the poor, disadvantaged and unempowered--groups such as CORE, SNCC, the SCLC, the Black Panther Party, to name only from the civil rights/black power movement, to a time in which movements seem almost to be a relic of a more hopeful time. Today, groups such as SNCC have virtually no leftward pull on the political discourse, which has continually slid rightward in the last 30 years. It is now the rhetoric of Bill Cosby which dominates any debate on the systematic racism in the US, not anything close to what Dr. King might have injected.

MC Lyte, apparently a very accomplished female MC from Brooklyn, demonstrated exactly what kind of discourse results from the lack of any sort of movement in the last 30 years: a mix of nasty and individualistic ideology with a complete lack of understanding as to what the major problems are in the US, where they come from, and what kind of steps to take to fix them. Her speech was further worsened by the fact that she seemed to posses no real knowledge of what King had actually done or what the content of his message had been, and instead focused her speech around the nebulous theme of "change". Herein lay the first problem of her speech: she did not ever explain what actually needed to be changed. An aggressive war of imperialism, perhaps? A systematically racist prison system? Political violence in Kenya and Pakistan? Nope--none of these issues were raised, nor was any specific issue. But we were urged that we shouldn't be afraid of change. Thank god for that. Of course, the lack of raising any specific points can't be blamed entirely on Lyte. While some of her songs (again, I have very limited knowledge of her) speak to political issues, she admitted that she is more at home talking about the problems within the hip-hop scene today--which pointed out that again, in absence of a movement, the group organizing the event likely did not realize that someone involved with the civil rights/black power movements would have made a much better choice to speak. Lyte continued by admonishing the audience to make change, and told us that if we didn't realize there were problems in the world we should look more closely. Inspiring stuff.

The real kicker, though, came when Lyte began to talk about responsibility and power. Now with that theme, you might think that she could begin to channel Dr. King's message. Rather than raise the issue of who has power and why they have it, and why the poor are continually stripped of their rights as people, why blacks have been continually denied access to equal resources, Lyte instead related to us an anecdote about her local blockbuster. Believe it or not, one of the employees working there when she wanted to rent a movie was--brace yourselves--unhelpful!  Meanwhile, another employee had cheerfully found the movie she was looking for. That unhelpful employee was probably going nowhere in life, Lyte told us, and in her view he deserved it. Of course! Employees of corporations must be cheerful at all times and ready to help a customer with whatever she desires despite the fact that they are paid slave wages, don't have health care or benefits and can be fired for trying to organize a union. MLK would be rolling over in his grave. Lyte continued with the personal responsibility theme, telling us that we should be careful in our friendships, because, as she seemed to draw from experience, certain groups of friends will hinder your future. Now, perhaps this is a fitting speech for an adolescent child--but not for a group of young and hopefully idealistic college students looking to gain an insight in to King's teachings! Lyte went as far as to say that she wanted to feel bad for people doing time, but didn't--they had to be responsible for their lives. She finished the speech by saying she had hopefully prodded us to make change. I have probably never felt less inspired in my entire life.

So this is the state of our politics today, nearly 40 years after King's assassination. The official spokespeople for the black community are Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, perhaps with Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton being on the radical fringe. And the mainstream message is this: the existing order is here to stay, and we do not need a "radical re-ordering of priorities" as King suggested, but for people of color to be more "responsible". After sliding back this far on the progress of the civil rights era, we must remember that King's dream is far from fulfilled. In order to have a truly new social order, though, what is needed is not one "great leader" to follow in King's footsteps, but for people to collaborate together today to ensure their rights are fulfilled as humans and citizens. 

NOTE: Probably the best way to celebrate this day is not with the traditional reading of King's "I have a dream speech," but with his far more biting speech against the Vietnam War.

Slide, slide, slippity slide...

I had a much longer post planned on the continual slide of the US into fascism, but I think I'll instead post some of the points that feminist author Naomi Wolf brings up in her new NYT best-seller, The End of America. She was recently on Democracy Now!, and I highly suggest that you check out the interview, but the gist of her book is this: the slide in to fascist dictatorship always follows the same 10 basic steps:

1) Invoke an internal and external enemy. (Terrorists.)

2) Create a Gulag. (Guantanamo.)

3) Develop a thug caste. (Blackwater.)

4) Set up an internal surveillance system (TIPS program, Gonzales' wiretapping.)

5) Harass citizens' groups (numerous examples)

6)Engage in arbitrary detention/release (James Yee, among many others.)

7)Target key individuals (Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson)

8) Control the Press. (Fox, New York Times.)

9) Dissent equals Treason. (in progress.)

10) Suspend the rule of law.

Wolf seems to have a fairly good grasp on the concept, and I'll just elaborate on one piece which she brings up: the "circle the wagons" mentality that goes along with the threats in (1). The significantly increasing poverty in the US, combined with a somewhat increased consciousness of people that they are being exploited by societal elites means that they look to ideas that guide them in who is their enemy. Unfortunately, with the weak state of the left in this country, this can feed directly in to the ideas spouted by Billo and Lou Dobbs, and present in Ron Paul's campaign. What do they say is happening to the country? It's been taken over from by business elites, secretive cabals, and is losing its ethno-racial purity with the influx of Mexican immigrants and the looming presence of Islamic/Arab terrorists. It is the perfect grounds to begin taking away civil rights: first from people who are "threats," then to immigrants who don't look like "us" or speak "our" language, and then from treasonous dissenters. This is one the scariest things that Wolf does not discuss: the increasing play that these paranoid conspiracy/ultraright groups are getting in politics today. It is not mainstream at all, but it does represent a significant political force.

This dynamic is important to understand particularly with the looming recession right on the horizon. The decline into a totalitarian state is a process, not an immediate action. But it can come with certain jumps, and a massive depression could provide just such an impetus in the not to distant future. It is when you have the dire conditions provided by unemployment that people begin to look to rebuild society in some way, and this process depends entirely on the forces on the ground. And with the growth of right wing nativist groups such as the Minutemen, said forces could be more than willing to forcibly destroy the kind of movement from below that would be needed to provide a barrier to complete dictatorial control.

Regardless of this nightmare scenario, however, immigrants rights are already being detained and abused, non-citizens have been declared enemy combatants and shipped to Guantanamo, citizens are being wiretapped, and there is a full fledged occupation of a country which had no role in attacking the US. The progression here is clear: it is easiest to exact violence and repression on those that seem least "American": those in a non-Western country (Iraq & Afganistan), followed by immigrants from such countries, followed by dissenters. The key to stopping this aggression? Building up the strongest left possible. If anything is necessary now, it is to create the organizations that are capable of resisting the consistent pressures of repression.

Update: As far as spying goes, it appears that the DOJ attempted to subpoena for Amazon.com order records of 24,000 customers. Thankfully, Amazon didn't capitulate to this measure as easily as telecom companies did to domestic wiretapping. 

Only We May Govern You

I've been re-reading Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival lately, and for anyone who is interested in US foreign policy, ideology of the ruling class, or... survival, it certainly warrants a look or re-look. It's probably a bit outdated now, with the rise of China, India, and to some extent Russia, looking to dominate the "two superpowers" complex which Chomsky describes--American state power and World public opinion--but still quite relevant. What I've found particularly compelling is how Chomsky chronicles the changes (in name only) of the central doctrine of America's foreign and domestic policy.

Going back to that great governmental split learned from high school civics classes--the Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian view of government--Chomsky shows that there has long been an understanding that the people, termed a "great beast" by Hamilton, must be reigned in sharply by those high-born and well raised "men of best quality" who know better. Madison, as well, was in fundamental agreement with Hamilton, understanding that the role of government was to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority". The shape of the US government, from its inception, followed these guidelines. When those who were indebted after the revolution sought to use their own militia to keep their land and protest the government, the formerly war hungry elite cried for "law and order," suspended habeus corpus and drew up a Riot Act to prevent the kind of popular uprising that the nation had just been born from. The temporary action was of course not sufficient to guarantee the bankers and business elite the protection they desired, and their concerns dictated the federalist nature of the constitution. The document laid out provisions for the people (white male property owners, that is) to vote for one half of one branch of federal government directly. I'm not about to look up stats on this and take out a calculator, but it doesn't take a great deal of math to see that the percentage of control that "the masses" were given of their government was negligable. (This illustration, by the way, is mine and not Chomsky's. It is much better examined in Zinn's People's History of the United States).

Chomsky might well have traced this understanding of elite governance (now in the guise of democracy) back to Plato's Republic, but he instead looks forward through the 20th Century. The trend of elite governance was seen in the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary (stay out of our hemisphere, Europe, and stay out of control, people, respectively) and up to Wilsonian Idealism--the idea that the US ruling class held the worldwide responsibility to make sure that government positions were in the hands of "the good, though but a few". Of course, this was significantly easier to accomplish abroad than domestically. Military coercion abroad could always be trumpeted and shipped with the stamp of liberation, duty, patriotism, or whatever other trite title the subjugation required. At home, though, the people must be manipulated in a more subtle way. Chomsky points to an early 20th century journalist named Walter Lippmann, who wrote for the need of a system of media which was meant less to inform than to "manufacture consent" for the policies of the "specialized class" of "responsible men". Some 87 years later, we have 6 major media owners in the country, and an army of think tanks ("people paid to think by the makers of tanks," as Naomi Klein put it) looking to focus group the war with Iran. Meanwhile, the democratically elected group Hamas was not invited to the mideast peace conference, and is being systematically denied resources from Israel. But by the logic of the system it makes perfect sense: the people of Palestine were foolish enough to elect the wrong group, and by "[conferring] positions of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their power in this behalf". In other words: democracy is granted in the tiniest amount, provided that the information available to the public is of benefit to the neo-aristocracy. And if the people actually manage to elect the wrong person... well, there are ways of dealing with that.

It is especially important for the US left to understand this trend in the meantime, though. While it is quite clearly recognized that the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations were the products of a media putsch backed by the neoconservative Bush administration, the urgency of getting troops out NOW is not so recognized. The propaganda machine has been successful, if not in convincing the US public that we are "making progress," that at least the withdraw of US troops will lead to chaos and all out civil war/ethnic cleansing. With 1 million Iraqis dead and 4 million displaced, one might think that this is what is happening already. The example of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot is used, ignoring the US funding of said regime, as is a slew of racism which seeks to plaster Iraqis as too prone to fighting to actually govern themselves. What is actually happening is as old as imperialism itself: a racist assumption (they can't govern themselves) is being used to justify the continual occupation of Iraq, which could perhaps pave the way towards Iran. When violence actually declines due to a decrease in troops, the evidence is of course ignored. The real logic is that in the absence of US control, the Iraqis might choose the wrong leaders: people not friendly to US corporate control of oil fields, and to do-nothing contractors. And that would be very, very threatening to those "men of best quality".

The Beginning

I really hate deadlines. A lot. As a sophomore in college, I have had to deal with paper deadlines since the 6th grade or so, and probably will have to for at least another 2 years (or until I win the lottery). What that has meant for me is 7 1/2 years of waiting until the last minute to do a paper, sitting down at the computer and watching as my brain oozes out of my ears and runs as far away as it possibly can. A shame, really, and certainly not unique to myself. But I have begun to fear that this mode of writing papers has actually had a detrimental effect on how I write and--more importantly--how I think. It seemed to me that the best remedy for this malady was to actually start writing about things that I want to write about, and hopefully wow millions of readers worldwide in the process. This blog is about me learning how to write well. So I apologize in advance if I happen to slip in a word that just does not make sense (I've always wanted to use "selfsame" in a sentence), or try to use a metaphor that falls flat. 

That being said, writing, and good writing in particular, is done with a goal in mind. And my goal for this blog is not singularly to be able to write, but also to communicate some fairly weighty ideas. So I suppose I can sum up the subject of the blog as this: adventures in middle class revolutionaryism. Yes, I'm aware revolutionaryism is not a word, thank you big red underlines. What I mean by that title is: I am a 20 year old college student in a middle class upstate New York college, and I work in a revolutionary socialist organization. In fact, I am a revolutionary socialist. So while I advocate for a working class revolution, I am situated in an institution full of people whose values are highly separated from my own ideas, and I am somewhat separated from the working class myself. I come from a middle class background as well, so while most of my political ideas are those of Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist ideology, I come from a town whose public high school regularly sends students to each Ivy League university. Quite a divide indeed. I hope that through this blog, I can show that perspective, through analysis of news and commentary on the conditions right around where I live and go to school. And if in doing that I develop at least one or two interested readers, then I think I will have succeeded in both of my goals.

So, with all that out of the way: Welcome.