I’m a socialist, specifically
a communist, a communist being a revolutionary socialist advocating the total
destruction of capitalism and the erection in its place of not a hierarchical
dictatorship of one party but a cooperative commonwealth which replaces the
sham of political democracy limited to selection of one’s rulers from among a
narrow elite with a real political democracy in which economic, industrial, and
social democracy are intrinsic, one in which the needs of the many outweigh the
greed and ambition of the few and which rejects both capitalism of the elite and
capitalism of the state a la Leninism and its offspring, both being equally destructive
of the freedom, security, and general welfare of the people.
(White) Liberalism & the CBC
Having said that, let me
stress how much I hate liberalism.
Martin called its adherents “white moderates”, Malik (Malcolm) called
them “white liberals” (read both if their denunciations in 1963). Liberals, centrists, moderates, “pragmatic
progressives” are all the designations for the same group, and appending the
adjective “white” to liberalism in America is always accurate since that
ideology of status quo is dominated by and most benefits White People of the
Nordic, Gentile, mostly Protestant variety.
Take, for instance, the
endorsement of Joe Biden by Jim Clyburn in the 2020 Democratic primary of South
Carolina. Or the endorsement of Hillary
Clinton, the woman Sister Souljah referred to as a “plantation mistress”, in
2016 by the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus (without consulting
its membership), following its likewise initial endorsement of Hillary Clinton
in 2008 despite Barack Obama having already declared, though CBC did later
switch. Or, much more recently, the CBC’s
endorsement of Eliot Engel over Jamaal Bowman for the Democratic nomination to
the 19th Congressional District of the State of New York. The last reminds me in so many ways of the
Human Rights Campaign and the Stonewal Democrats endorsing establishment Democrat
Andrew Cuomo over queer progressive Cynthia Nixon in 2018.
As a representative of the
interests of Black People, the CBC sold its soul long ago in 1994 when it voted
to allow the bill drafted by Sen. Joe Biden and Sen. Strom Thurmond which
became the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act out of the committee into
which it had been introduced. CBC
members had been holding up what many have described as the Mass Incarceration
Act but caved into pressure to allow it out of the committee and onto the floor
where passage was all but guaranteed.
And indeed, that is what happened, even though many CBC members such as
John Lewis who’d allowed it out of committee onto the floor where passage was
inevitable voted against it.
Origins of the Mass Incarceration Act of
1994
The bill was part of the
Democratic Leadership Council, the “Third Way” group of neo-Dixiecrats who’d
remained in the party after the hardcore Dixiecrat exodus to the Republican
Party in the 1980s, program to realign the Democratic Party to the right, one
part of this recasting Democrats as the “law-and-order” party (see Lee
Atwater). Clinton introduced that phase
of his plan during the 1992 campaign at Stone Mountain Correctional Facility, in
the same community as the founding of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 and
with the nation’s largest idol to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, with
fellow neo-Dixiecrats Zell Miller and Sam Nunn flanking him in front of row
upon row of inmates standing at parade rest, all of them Afro-American, a scene
which was meant to send a message to its intended target.
Naturally, I support Black
Lives Matter and the related Movement for Black Lives, support which is merely
a continuation of my involvement with the original group of Chattanooga’s
Concerned Citizens for Justice from the early 1990s to its dissolution (the
group’s revival in 2012 after the murder of Trayvon Martin by white vigilante
George Zimmerman was endorsed by my friend Maxine Cousin, the first group’s principal
founder). That is why I find it
necessary to correct certain positions adopted by some advocates based on what
are either historical misperceptions or historical outright deceptions, most of
these actually arising from the afore-denounced white liberalism.
The actual end of slavery
Slavery did not end with the
Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed in 22 September 1862 and taking effect on
1 January 1863. In fact, that document
specifically exempted West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee,
certain counties in northern Virginia, and parishes of Louisiana east of the
Mississippi River. Nor was slavery ended
in those territories on 19 June 1863, when the last slaves in the State of
Texas were liberated under the provisions of the proclamation. No, the slaves in the above exempt
territories were not freed until the 13th Amendment went into effect 18
December 1865. However, that date being
just a week before Christmas, Juneteenth is the best day to celebrate the end
of that atrocity. Especially since the
13th Amendment did not really end slavery either, but contains a loophole
allowing it to continue to this day.
Master bedrooms
The first use of the term “master
bedroom” occurred in the house section of the 1926 Sears & Roebuck catalog,
where the term was actually “master’s bedroom”. Being sixty-one years after the
afore-mentioned 13th Amendment, trying to connect this designation with slavery
is more than a bit of a stretch, but liberals are trying really hard, calling
it both racist and sexist. The
publishers of the catalog realized the second point early on, changing the
designation to “master bedroom”, master in this case signifying main,
principal, or predominant. The move of
Texas realtors to change the terminology smacks of pandering, but, really, who
gives a shit one way or the other?
Rhode Island
Another name change currently
being pushed is that of the state officially known as Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations, under the historically inaccurate assertion that the
word plantations here refers to slavery.
Under early modern English law, a plantation was a particular type of
colony, the first in the Americas being the colony of Providence Plantations
granted to Roger Williams in 1636.
Plantations were first granted to English lords in Ireland in the 1500s
in the Irish provinces of Munster and Leinster, in the province of Ulster at
the turn of that century, and in the province of Connacht in the
mid-1600s. Since Rhode Island legally abolished
slavery in 1652, keeping Providence Plantations in its name was out of
deference to its primary founder and not a reference to slavery. However, the full official name is a mouthful
and inconvenient, so change it.
Origin of police in America
Municipal police departments in
the United States did not arise from slave patrols, but from the night watch
brought over from England that were the primary law enforcement and security
vehicles until being dissolved to make way for said police departments. This is true even in Southern cities. Did the practices of the former slave patrols
make it into the later practices of those police departments? Indubitably, especially in the South once Jim
Crow became the norm. But to say that police
in the United States came from slave patrols is either badly mistaken or utter
bullshit.
Why I’m pointing these things out
Black Lives Matter is a
movement I really care about and I don’t want to see it go down the same sorts
of rabbit holes American (white) liberalism often does. Like, for instance, the current manufactured
shitstorm deriving from the recent New
York Times fiction about Russians paying the Taliban to kill American
soldiers in Afghanistan.
This article is sourced from “anonymous
intelligence officials”, the same amorphous group which gave us the stories
about Saddam Hussein’s massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons of mass destruction in 2003.
The tall tale is being
promoted by literally the very same people who pushed the invasion of Iraq in
2003 over those fictitious WMDs, now calling themselves the Lincoln Project. You don’t believe me? Check its roster. After Dick Cheney tweeted a pic of himself
wearing a mask, the Lincoln Project welcomed the author of the Iraq War into
#TheResistance.
Taking or advocating actions
based on faulty historical premises runs the risk of discrediting the movement,
much as liberals seizing onto such an obviously fictitious story will make
themselves look ridiculous.
