By James Cogan 

Liberal idiots like Spike Lee are firm supporters of the Mueller probe, indifferent to the anti-democratic consequences. His T-shirt proclaims: "God protect Robert Mueller".

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he investigation headed by Special Counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller into alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election has entered a new stage.

Mueller is seeking to substantiate the case he advanced last month—as part of the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers—that Trump campaign insider Roger Stone and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange were part of a conspiracy to hack and publish emails sent by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairperson John Podesta (see: “In run-up to Trump-Putin summit, Mueller charges 12 Russian officers with DNC email hack”).

At least eight alleged “associates” of Roger Stone have been questioned or subpoenaed by Mueller’s investigation. One, Kristin Davis, gave a voluntary interview last month and was instructed to give formal testimony again to a grand jury last Friday. Another, Andrew Miller, refused to appear the same day and has been ruled in contempt of court. Last Thursday, Mueller also subpoenaed radio commentator and WikiLeaks supporter Randy Credico to testify on September 7.

Credico’s lawyer stated last Friday that the Mueller investigation “probably want to talk to him about Roger Stone and Julian Assange.” Kristin Davis told CNN on Monday that the grand jury had questioned her “about whether or not any collusion happened with Russia.”

The purported evidence of a nefarious plot involving Russian intelligence, Stone and WikiLeaks is threadbare to the point of being ludicrous.

Julian Assange

Julian Assange publicly revealed in an interview that WikiLeaks had information on the Democratic campaign in June 2016. It published the DNC leaks on July 22, 2016.

Roger Stone claimed to be “communicating” with Assange on August 8. His first alleged messages to Randy Credico, however, asking the radio host if he could use his connection with Assange to find out if WikiLeaks had more material, were not even sent until September.

Likewise, Stone’s tweets to alleged hacker “Guccifer 2”—whom American intelligence claims was a front for Russian agencies—were sent after WikiLeaks was in possession of the leaked emails and had already published the DNC files.

While WikiLeaks cannot and does not reveal its sources, a credible claim has been made by one of its supporters—British whistleblower Craig Murray—that the leaks were made by DNC insiders, not hackers.

In regard to the DNC and other Democratic Party emails, the source is irrelevant in any case. By any standard of journalism, they were newsworthy. They exposed the real conspiracy that had taken place in the course of the presidential election: a deliberate campaign by the ostensibly impartial DNC to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders and ensure Hillary Clinton won the nomination.

WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on the eve of the Democratic Party National Convention. The revelations provoked fury among many of the 13 million Americans who had voted for Sanders in the Democratic primaries, in large part due to their support for his denunciations of the “billionaire class” and populist vows to fight for greater social equality.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign in disgrace before the convention. After it concluded, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned.

On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks published a trove of emails sent by John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign. As with the DNC leaks, the information was highly newsworthy. The emails included transcripts of speeches given by Hillary Clinton to various bank and corporate forums, where she boasted of her support for Wall Street and commitment to the interests of the financial oligarchy.

The exposures made by WikiLeaks only served to underscore what millions of American workers and youth had already decided, faced with the choice between Trump and Clinton: neither big business candidate could be supported. Trump won the Electoral College and the presidency because, amid an overall fall in voter turnout, Clinton did not win sufficient support in a small number of key states, despite winning the overall national popular vote by more than three million. Russian “meddling,” even if it were taking place, had no significant role in the outcome.

The entire “Russian interference” conspiracy theory could be dismissed as absurd if it were not being so relentlessly pursued by powerful sections of the American establishment, and did not have such immense implications for both democratic rights in the US and world political relations.

The campaign has served deeply reactionary purposes. Firstly, it has been used to demand sweeping censorship of oppositional, primarily left-wing views from internet search engines, Facebook and other social media sites, on the pretext of purging “fake news.”

At the same time, it has played a significant role in the intensified persecution of Julian Assange himself. The WikiLeaks editor has been slandered as a Russian stooge, even as his communication with the outside world has been cut off and preparations made to force him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted political asylum in 2012. Assange faces the danger of being detained in Britain while American authorities file to extradite him to the US to stand trial on false charges of espionage.

Secondly, the hysteria over “meddling” has been used to pressure the Trump administration to maintain a bellicose foreign policy against Russia, threatening to trigger conflict in the Middle East and Europe.

Finally, the claim of collusion is clearly viewed as a possible means to force out or impeach Trump, ending his erratic presidency through a palace coup, and replacing him with his right-wing, Christian fundamentalist vice president Mike Pence.

The accusations against Roger Stone are central to this agenda. The unstated insinuation is that Trump, through his relations with Stone, was in some way aware of, and consented to, a plot to influence the election outcome.

On September 27, 2017, Stone faced down hostile questioning by the House Intelligence Committee. He specifically denied “the charge that I had advance knowledge of the timing, content and source of the WikiLeaks disclosures from the DNC.” He stated that his only communication with WikiLeaks had taken place through a “journalist” who served as a “go-between.” He later named Randy Credico.

Credico has indicated he will contradict Stone before the Mueller investigation, to the extent that he denies that exchanging some messages made him a “go-between” for the right-wing political operator with WikiLeaks. He has also indicated, however, that he will testify that he does not have any knowledge of a direct relationship between Stone and Assange.

WikiLeaks has repeatedly tweeted that it did not discuss the details or schedule of its publications with Stone.

The main consequence of Mueller’s subpoena of Credico, and ongoing pursuit of Stone, over alleged links to WikiLeaks is that it ensures that “Russian meddling” will remain prominent in the US media in the lead-up to the November congressional elections.

The forces that stand behind the hysteria appear to be calculating that the constant accusations that the Trump campaign engaged in collusion or even “treason” will help ensure the Democratic Party wins a majority in the House of Representatives. This would provide a new base of power for conducting investigations and otherwise putting pressure on the administration, as well as raising the possibility of impeachment.

By Danielle Ryan, RT.com

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he banning of right wing controversialist Alex Jones from multiple social media platforms last week was a cause of celebration for many liberals, but should those on the left really be so complacent about creeping censorship?

So far, the evidence suggest that there is indeed plenty for the left to worry about when it comes to corporations like Facebook and Twitter and their alliances with government censors.

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Read more

1. Facebook censorship of Venezuelan news

In May, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council in an effort to weed out “inauthentic content” on the platform. This organization is funded by various NATO governments and a slew of arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Its board includes names like Henry Kissinger and former CIA director Michael Hayden — and it has consistently lobbied for regime change in Syria and, you guessed it, Venezuela, where it has funnelled large amounts of money into pro-opposition groups for years.

So, it’s no surprise that weeks after Facebook partnered up with this less-than-objective group, it deleted from its platform the page belonging to top English-language, left-leaning Latin American news outlet Telesur without any explanation at all. The page was restored two days later, with Facebook citing vague “instability on the platform” as the cause of the block.

Telesur just so happens to be one of the only major outlets reporting on events in Venezuela in a manner that goes against the US government position and US mainstream media perspective — so obviously, out with Alex Jones it must go.

It wasn’t just Telesur, though. Facebook deleted the pages belonging to independent grassroots Venezuela Analysis and Haiti Analysis, which are also leftist websites highly critical of US foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean region.

Facebook's shuttering of @telesurenglish 's page comes days after it did the same to @venanalysis page w/o explanation. The latest outgrowth of FB's Orwellian partnership w/ the Atlantic Council. ICMYI, @MaxBlumenthal discussed it w/ me on @TheRealNews : https://t.co/3XayXXpg34 https://t.co/ZgTaJv0rdU

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) August 14, 2018

2. Facebook complying with Israeli deletion orders

Last year, journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that Facebook met with Israeli government officials to determine which Palestinian activists should have their accounts deleted. The Israeli government threatened to enact laws forcing Facebook to comply with its deletion orders if it did not do so voluntarily.

Of course, Facebook capitulated immediately and set about deleting accounts owned by Palestinian activists. Of some 158 requests submitted (over just four months) by Tel Aviv to Facebook asking for the removal of Palestinian content, 95 percent of them were granted. According to the same Intercept report,  Facebook hasn’t been overly concerned about what Israelis themselves are saying on Facebook and even calls for murder can be ignored by the social media giant.

3. Google and Facebook censorship of left/socialist websites

The World Socialist Web Site reported last year that changes to Google’s algorithms had seriously negatively impacted left-wing socialist and anti-war websites. An analysis by WSWS found that 13 such websites had seen their traffic plunge by a whopping 55 percent in the six months since Google had changed its algorithms. WSWS itself experienced a 74 percent drop in traffic between April and July last year. The changes also affected sites like Alternet, which saw its traffic plunge by 71 percent between April and September, Democracy Now (50 percent drop) and Truth-out.org (49 percent drop).

Similarly, Police the Police (a page dedicated to exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which focuses on government transparency) also saw their Facebook page traffic tank in 2018 after Facebook made changes to its newsfeed and search algorithms in an effort to combat “fake news”. PTP traffic dropped from between 12-15 million people per week to about 4 million — and the website had to fire its writing staff as a result. “The left is cheering this on, when historically the left is usually the side cheering for free speech,” PTP founder Jason Bassler told Mic.

Amidst all of the celebration over the banning of Jones, some on the left cautioned that in fact, the left may indeed be the“real target” in all of this — and that those celebrating while people like Jones are banned are in fact being “conditioned”into accepting further censorship down the road.

As we have been trying to tell you the real target for neoliberal corporate censorship was always the left. Now that they have conditioned public to accept it as a result of Russiagate, the left is in their crosshairs. https://t.co/zt2oMIbtDC

— Ajamu Baraka (@ajamubaraka) August 13, 2018

4. Legitimate left-wing protests targeted?

A particularly strange example of Facebook’s commitment to banning “fake news” and promoting a nice, cozy atmosphere for everyone online is its decision to delete event pages for anti-racist and anti-fascist protests happening in Washington D.C.

The “No Unite the Right 2-DC” event (a counter-rally against a previous white nationalist event in the city) was taken down after Facebook decided it displayed some “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (the kind of random phrase that can no doubt be arbitrarily applied to anything without explanation).

The event organizer said in a statement: “This is a real protest in Washington, D.C. It is not George Soros. It is not Russia. It is just us.”

5. Twitter suspending and banning anti-war activists

Twitter has come under fire recently for “shadowbanning” conservative accounts, making them harder to find on the platform and having their tweets appear less prominently in people’s feeds in an effort to limit their audience. But again, it’s not just the right.

Twitter recently suspended the accounts of Daniel McAdams, the executive director of the libertarian and antiwar Ron Paul Institute and Scott Horton, the editor of the AntiWar.com website. Explaining what happened, McAdams said that he and Horton were suspended after defending former US diplomat Peter Van Buren who had just been banned permanently from Twitter after heated exchanges with journalist Jonathan M. Katz over what Van Buren said was his “unwillingness to challenge government lies”. In one of his tweets to Katz, Buren sarcastically commented: "I hope a MAGA guy eats your face". Katz reported him for "promoting violence" and Twitter later caved and removed Buren's account.

A note from Peter Van Buren @wemeantwell and a screenshot of the boo hoo little bitch who tattled on him. pic.twitter.com/qKukwabnyd

— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) August 6, 2018

In explaining his suspension, Twitter told McAdams that he could not “promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease” — none of which he accepts that he did.

Perhaps the really amazing thing about all of this is that it is happening in front of our eyes and the powers that be are not even bothering to lie about it. Elected US officials are openly promoting this kind of censorship as a way to prevent the"sowing of discord" among populations. At a Senate Judiciary Committee last year about “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online,” Democratic Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono called on social media platforms to prove their commitment to preventing “the fomenting of discord” online.

Working hand-in-glove with governments, corporations like Facebook have been handed enormous power to decide what constitutes free speech and which opinions are worthy of being heard. How long will it be before people realize banning Alex Jones wasn’t really a victory at all?

Danielle Ryan 

By Vanessa Beeley, RT.COM

RT.COM

First there was Bana al-Abed, who, at only six-years-old, shot to fame depicting life under “Syrian and Russian bombs” in East Aleppo while ignoring the ravages of this enclave by the numerous US coalition-sponsored terrorist and extremist factions that included Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) and an assortment of client sectarian militants who collectively punished Syrian civilians in both East and West Aleppo for almost five years.

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Bellingcat & Atlantic Council join to award exploited Syrian child & American mass murderer / https://www.rt.com/op-ed/431128-bana-alabed-bellingcat-atlantic-council/

Bana rose to prominence in the final months of the Syrian Arab Army campaign to finally liberate the Aleppo’s eastern suburbs from extremist mafia gangs and criminal parasites armed by NATO member states and Gulf States and promoted by the Western media as “moderate rebels” while they crucified, executed, tortured, raped and generally abused the Syrian civilians who did not submit to their version of “democracy and freedom”.

The exploitation of Bana by her own parents has been extensively documented and her father’s ties to Nusra Front and even ISIS have been explored. Bana herself has been instrumentalized and converted into a tool for Western military adventurism in Syria. She has been firmly placed on the treadmill of useful “victim” stardom where she will continue to provide the propaganda gymnastics required of her by her controllers and handlers working within the Western soft power complex. These modern-day child-catchers and Svengalis will ensure Bana a future of book tours and UN appearances to maintain the theatre designed to facilitate “humanitarian” intervention under a “Responsibility to Protect” pretext, which translates into a “licence to kill,” according to former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford.

Previously we had Omran Daqneesh, the “face of the suffering of Aleppo”. Unfortunately for the pro-regime-change cartel, Omran’s fame was short-lived when his father was interviewed in 2017, expressing his steadfast support for the Syrian government and his horror that his son had been so universally exploited. Those interviews exposed the story as fake on a number of levels and the media promulgators of the story as shallow, hypocritical narrative builders for empire.

Today is the #Child's day,
I hope all the #Children of the world and specially the children of #Syria could live in peace, pic.twitter.com/tFAU5iIhku

— Noor And Alaa (@Noor_and_Alaa) April 25, 2018

In Eastern Ghouta, at the apex of the battles for its liberation, we had Noor and Alaa, who sprang up in a similar fashion to Bana, to produce videos pleading for peace which could only be achieved by international intervention. “We ask the international community to put pressure to stop bombing civilians and provide immediate humanitarian assistance.”

Children under the age of ten arguing in perfect English for what would effectively be the escalation of the externally stoked conflict that has raged for seven years in Syria. Unlike Bana, Noor and Alaa were diverse in their messages, targeting Eastern Ghouta, Yarmouk, Idlib, Daraa, producing detailed and eerily professional video shorts presenting the case for defending the “moderates” and bringing in reinforcements to turn the tide of the SAA liberation campaigns.

When Noor and Alaa were eventually evacuated to Idlib with their family they issued a video supporting the Western clamour that the Syrian government was forcefully displacing civilians from Eastern Ghouta. However, my time in Eastern Ghouta during those evacuations demonstrated that only the hardcore extremist factions left on the green buses to Idlib. The majority of civilians, even those who had taken up arms at some point in the conflict, chose to accept amnesty and to remain in Eastern Ghouta to rebuild and to restore their lives back to the peace and stability they had known before 2011.

#Memories from #Ghouta / #Syria
This is our grandparents home,
My mom and dad told me that I was 6 month old when we lived here,
They are forcing us out of our home, we wish we could stay here at our home, pic.twitter.com/8JDrkhUCS3

— Noor And Alaa (@Noor_and_Alaa) April 24, 2018

The exit package for Noor and Alaa was similar to Bana’s – from Idlib they headed to Turkey, the country that was most active in nurturing and incubating the extremist entities that have infested Syria with their ideological hatred and racism.

We are so happy to meet President @RT_Erdogan today pic.twitter.com/X8TG6lVV6z

— Noor And Alaa (@Noor_and_Alaa) April 1, 2018

Perhaps, more notably, Noor and Alaa met with Raed Saleh, leader of the NATO-member-state-created and multi-million-dollar-financed “propaganda construct”, the White Helmets. The PR machine that operates behind the scenes of this faux “humanitarian” group of alleged Syrians from all walks of life is vast, it is powerful, and it is capable of producing all manner of spin offs from their central hub of propaganda production.

Why do all these child prodigy Twitter accounts speak perfect English? Why does their language mirror that of the NATO-aligned media, think tanks and pseudo NGOs? How are they able to produce, almost daily, high-quality videos in areas that are largely deprived of electricity and internet coverage? A scroll through Noor and Alaa’s Twitter page is a trip down the memory lane of regime change themes and slogans - beautifully packaged into Shirley Temple personas who deliver the message with polished appeal.

Today we are so happy to have @RaedAlSaleh3 the head of the Syrian Civil Defense @SyriaCivilDef in our home.
He is very kind and he brought us some sweets.
The #WhiteHelmets are such a brave people. pic.twitter.com/wVzmOYsDZR

— Noor And Alaa (@Noor_and_Alaa) June 5, 2018

The flurry of activity and production of accounts of six-year old girls all promoting the “moderates” in Idlib reached a crescendo when Lana closed her account and morphed into Yara whose Tweets are “protected” but who displays the same photograph as Hala. Confused? You will be.

Looool @Hala_syri pic is also used by @LanaAlomar1 account. A few hours ago Hala unfollowed "LanaAlomar"... I almost forgot, LanaAlOmar is now @YaraSyria4 ???????? pic.twitter.com/KWMZys1pZS

— Juanes #FreePalestine (@JuanesIG) July 31, 2018

If we focus on the Hala account, this was used to launch the #EyesOnIdlib campaign which will replace the #AleppoIsBurning and #Pray4Ghouta hashtags as the SAA turn their attention to Idlib and its infestation of extremist groups, many of which have been evacuated there from previously liberated areas.

You do know that the fighters in Idlib (the Syrian ones anyway) have a choice for amnesty and reconciliation right? They're choosing to endanger civilians, and so thousands of civilians are leaving Idlib en masse. All they do is delay peace and increase casualties.

— Angelis Dania (@NeotipPro) August 2, 2018

Of course, none of these children pray for or mention the civilians being maimed and mutilated on a daily basis, under fire from the armed factions that have been camped in the outskirts of towns, cities and villages and raining down mortars, missiles, rockets and explosive bullets upon innocent civilians who are living in areas under Syrian government protection.

The terrorist groups in Eastern Ghouta fired 14,800 missiles into residential areas of Damascus city, over the six-year period of their occupation. Thousands of civilians were killed by these attacks including children just like Noor, Alaa, Bana, Hala, Yara, Marwa and Lana. Those children had been too busy just trying to survive to produce videos begging people in the West to end their governments’ financing of terrorism in a failed regime change operation in Syria.

You do know that the fighters in Idlib (the Syrian ones anyway) have a choice for amnesty and reconciliation right? They're choosing to endanger civilians, and so thousands of civilians are leaving Idlib en masse. All they do is delay peace and increase casualties.

— Angelis Dania (@NeotipPro) August 2, 2018

Of the Idlib child pool, Marwa is the most eloquent and is once again promoting the White Helmets, another common thread that runs through the child chatter from inside areas that are “serviced” by this dubious search and rescue team that has been roundly discredited by Scott Ritter - a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

“First and foremost, as a “light” USAR team, the White Helmets are not trained or equipped to conduct rescues of entrapped victims. […] The techniques used by the White Helmets are not only technically wrong, but dangerous to anyone who might actually be trapped. […] In my opinion, the videos are pure theater, either staged to impress an unwitting audience, or actually conducted with total disregard for the wellbeing of any real victims.” Ritter said in an op-ed piece titled ‘Trump’s Sarin Claims Based on a Lie’.

Marwa would like Turkey to save Idlib according to her Tweets. “Children in Syria want freedom The world is watching how Assad and Putin are committing crimes against children, women and civilians in Syria.” This very un-childlike rhetoric is reminiscent of the Bana deleted tweets in which she invented the #HolocaustAleppo hashtag and suggested that ‘Dear World’ should start WWIII to counter the Syrian & Russian advances towards Aleppo’s liberation.

Children in Syria want freedom
The world is watching how Assad and Putin are committing crimes against children, women and civilians in Syria
And no one says Shi, so we demand Turkey to protect us in Idlib#EyesOnIdlib #SaveTheChildrensyria pic.twitter.com/SqC3n3YVx0

— Marwa from Syria (@Marwa76175721) August 10, 2018

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hoever is harnessing these children into the humanitarian war complex is cynically relying upon their appeal to promote causes that serve the US-led coalition agenda in Syria and the region. Children should not be exposed to war but even more importantly they should not be exposed to a sinister behavioural change apparatus that will rob them of their innocence and their childhood while converting them into mouthpieces for the military industrial complex and cover for Western governments’ crimes under international law. These children are unwitting pawns in a game being played by global powers where their parents have chosen the side of the mercenaries and extremists and have sacrificed their children to a lost cause. The children are not to blame but one wonders what they will become.

Where are the Yaras and Halas in Yemen? Where are the perfect-English tweets describing the horror of a school bus full of children being targeted by the Saudi coalition with US and UK-manufactured bombs? Yemen has no slick PR companies defending its “human rights”, there are no White Helmets in Yemen. Syria is the cradle of propaganda for the West and its allies in the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel. When we witness what can only be described as the abuse of children on such a horrifying scale, we know those PR agencies have reached the depths of moral bankruptcy which is only a reflection of the ruling elite who control the entire information battlefield and who have strewn it with the decaying remnants of failed propaganda stunts in their race towards failure in Syria. Idlib will be liberated and no amount of Halas, Marwas or Lanas will alter the course of history and victory for Syria and her steadfast allies.

Then and only then will Syrian children, who are not given voices in the West, be truly free and the role of the Bana imitators will come to an end.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vanessa Beeley is an independent investigative journalist and photographer. She is associate editor at 21st Century Wire.

By David Walsh, WSWS.ORG

American filmmaker Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman, takes as its point of departure the infiltration in the late 1970s of the racist Ku Klux Klan by a black police officer, Ron Stallworth, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The film is based on Stallworth’s memoir.

Adam Driver and John David Washington in BlacKkKlansman

Typical of Lee’s efforts, the film views the world through the prism of race. Such a diametrically false and backward view is a miserable basis for art, or anything else. The result is a largely tedious and poorly constructed work, which has been praised in glowing terms by the critics, including, in particular, A. O. Scott of the New York Times .

In BlacKkKlansman, Stallworth (John David Washington, son of Denzel Washington) is the first black detective hired by the Colorado Springs force. Initially assigned to a menial position in the records room, he is subject to abuse by a fellow, bigoted cop.

Shifted to undercover work, Stallworth attends a rally (which occurred in 1977) addressed by black nationalist Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), the former Stokely Carmichael. Ture tells his rapt audience that “black is beautiful” and preaches race war. Following the meeting, Stallworth is assigned to the intelligence division.

Coming across a recruiting advertisement placed in a local newspaper by the Ku Klux Klan, Stallworth phones the organization and pretends to be a white man who hates blacks and Jews. Foolishly, however, he provides his real name. He then sends his colleague, a white, Jewish officer, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), in his place to meet the Klansmen. Zimmerman, claiming to be Stallworth, is eventually enrolled in the organization. One of its members speaks obliquely about an upcoming bombing attack.

Klan members in BlacKkKlansman

When his KKK membership application stalls at the national level, the real Stallworth phones David Duke (Topher Grace), the outfit’s national director, in Louisiana. Duke is impressed with Stallworth and promises to send him a membership card immediately. Meanwhile, one of the more fanatical local Klansmen, Felix (Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen), grows suspicious of Zimmerman.

Stallworth establishes a relationship with the president of the Black Student Union at Colorado College, Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), but conceals from her at first that he’s an undercover cop. The local Klan chapter plots to silence Patrice by planting an explosive at a civil rights rally or outside her house. When Duke comes to Colorado Springs to speak, Stallworth, the black policeman, is put on his security detail. Events come to a head.

The facts of Stallworth’s exploits hold a certain interest. His ability to fool Klan members and Duke over the telephone speaks to the essential stupidity and impotence of this fascist filth. Such reactionary political movements never gain ground as the result of the inherent strength or coherence of their arguments. They develop a following due to widespread and festering social misery, on the one hand, and the paralyzing worthlessness, on the other, of the organizations that claim to oppose them and speak for “social progress”—in the US, the Democratic Party, the trade unions, the “civil rights” organizations, the affluent pseudo-left.

Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, Chi-Raq) long situated at the epicenter of identity politics in the US, has no grasp of this political reality nor any interest in it. He has never appeared to have much time for concrete social realities in general.

Topher Grace as David Duke in BlacKkKlansman

As a nationalist, devoted to the politics of race and blood, Lee is obliged to present a version of events largely existing outside actual history. Instead, we are offered history as the record of the beauty or emanation of the race.

The scene of Ture/Carmichael’s address, for example, is unintentionally parodic. The speaker tells his engrossed listeners that they have swallowed the oppressor’s conceptions of ugliness and inferiority, and that, in fact, “black is beautiful.” But the audience resembles a Black Panther party rally circa 1969, with every woman in the hall (including, of course, Patrice, a slighter, more delicate Angela Davis) brandishing an Afro and every attendee, male and female, dressed in all the appropriate “militant” gear. These elegantly attired and self-confident people, whose rapt faces individually float before our eyes, clearly do not need such banal, “elementary” remarks. But Lee can’t help himself.

The scenes of Patrice and her friends, of Patrice and Stallworth, are the weakest in BlacKkKlansman, worthy of the dreadful Dear White People television series. This is the ambitious and socially indifferent African-American petty-bourgeoisie announcing its importance and its aspirations. It is probably not accidental that the real Stallworth had no such activist girlfriend.

Nor did the actual Colorado Springs policeman have a Jewish undercover partner. That invention becomes another means by which the filmmakers make the case that racial or ethnic identity is everything. Zimmerman reveals that he never thought of himself as Jewish until his undercover duty placed him among anti-Semites and racists. His “Jewishness” comes flooding back to him, as it were. This is presumably intended to be a positive development.

John David Washington and Laura Harrier in BlacKkKlansman

This feature of the film has been praised to the skies. The Times ’ Scott claims Lee’s “fearless embrace of contradiction gives BlacKkKlansman its velocity and heft.” He asserts, referring to both Stallworth and Zimmerman, that “ BlacKkKlansman is about the boundaries of group identity, and how a person can or can’t cross them.”

However, Stallworth’s “tricky position” (Scott’s phrase)—as an African-American infatuated with aspects of black nationalism, an opponent of the Klan and an undercover cop—is not a genuine contradiction: the black policeman was doing what the powers-that-be at the time required. The counter-offensive against the working class was conducted in the late 1970s through the Democratic and Republican parties, with the invaluable assistance of the AFL-CIO trade unions. The summoning up of fascist forces today reflects a new and far more aggravated phase in the crisis and degeneration of American capitalism.

The actors in BlacKkKlansman, for the most part, do their best. Washington is effective in those scenes when he is simply an individual on the make, desiring to make his way within the system, which Stallworth apparently was (he ended up working as an investigator for the Utah state police for 20 years). Driver is less self-conscious than usual, which is all to the good. Harrier as the flawless Patrice has a thankless task, as does Frederick Weller as a snarling, racist cop. Pääkkönen and Ryan Eggold as two of the Klansmen are more or less convincing. Grace is all too foolish and insubstantial as Duke, a sinister and persistent figure, with deep connections to the major political parties, the international far-right and elements within the US military and the state.

Lee’s essential lack of interest in such matters manifests itself in the unseriousness with which he portrays one of the more significant of Stallworth’s discoveries—that several active members of the US military, including NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] personnel, individuals with their fingers on the nuclear button, are members of the Klan chapter. We see Stallworth having a brief meeting with an FBI agent about the matter, and that’s that.

NORAD headquarters is near Colorado Springs, as is the US Air Force Academy. The city was becoming a center for the religious and fascistic right in the period BlacKkKlansman treats. The filmmakers do not trouble themselves about that.

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ee’s outlook is conformist and conventional. He’s a racialist, an avowed supporter of the Democratic Party and a wealthy, privileged defender of the profit system. He told CNN recently he hoped BlacKkKlansman would inspire “Americans not to vote President Donald Trump into office for a second term. ‘I hope that [viewers would] be motivated to register to vote. The midterms are coming up, then this guy in the White House is going to run again, and what we’re going through is demonstrated, I think… is full evidence [of] what happens when you don’t vote, when you don’t take part in the process.”

In the same interview, Lee commented, “The rise of [racism] right here in the United States, specifically, is a direct reaction to eight years of President Barack Obama… It’s two steps forward, one step back.”

This is someone very distant from the working class, black, white and immigrant, its harsh conditions of life and its increasing alienation from both major parties.

(See ADDENDUM video)

In light of the current political crisis racking Washington, the film’s essentially respectful treatment of the police and the FBI has a certain significance. That the Hill reported Lee “wore a shirt reading ‘God Protect Robert Mueller’ during an interview with CNN” comes as absolutely no surprise. Former FBI Director Mueller is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump colluded with such interference. Lee is publicly identifying himself with the reactionary drive to censor the Internet, slander WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and pressure the Trump administration into an even more bellicose foreign policy against Russia.

BlacKkKlansman doesn’t hold water intellectually or aesthetically. There is an illogic to racial politics that cannot be overcome in art. Demagoguery is possible at a political rally or in an article, even an entire campaign. But art relies on utter sincerity. The inauthentic word or gesture is fatal.

Much of the film is awkward, clumsy padding. There is no dramatic reason for many of the scenes. They simply go on until they end. We receive the message early on about the ferocious racism and anti-Semitism of the Klan. The harping on their poison becomes an evasion of the political and ideological problems in the US. These forces represent an infinitesimal percentage of the American population, but the White House was won by someone in the same general political orbit. How is this possible? There’s no insight here into the historical or social process. It’s superficial and lazy, it challenges no one.

In Lee’s film, everything is race, except when it’s not, every white American is a racist, except when he or she is not. To his credit, the director concludes his film with documentary footage of the August 12, 2017 attack on peaceful protestors opposing the fascist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Neo-Nazi and white supremacist James Fields Jr., 20, drove his automobile at top speed into the crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Lee dedicates his film to her.

What the filmmaker gives with one hand, however, he more than takes away with another. It’s his parochialism and narrowness that is so debilitating, and fatal. He told an interviewer: “If you look at the civil rights movement, white people died in Mississippi, Alabama, Kent State during the Vietnam protests. White people have died for justice… Right is right and Heather Heyer is a martyr. She gave her life for justice.” But he goes on: “We can’t just do it ourselves. We have to have a bigger heart to embrace people who are righteous and wanna help us.”

This is magnanimous of Lee. As though world history revolved around “helping” him, whatever that might mean.

Scott’s ecstatic review of BlacKkKlansman in the Times is deplorable, albeit predictable. Scott claims in his headline that Lee’s film is a journey “Into White America’s Heart of Darkness.”

Once again, the Times critic should perhaps speak for himself. He proceeds to praise Lee’s work as “a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare, and also a symphony, the rare piece of political popular art that works in all three dimensions.”

It’s embarrassing to read such obvious pandering to racial politics and second- or third-rate artistry. Scott applauds Lee’s “fearless embrace of contradiction [that] gives BlacKkKlansman its velocity and heft. It is worth pausing to admire its sheer, dazzling craft, the deftness of its tonal shifts—from polemical to playful, from humorous to horrific, from blaxploitation to Classical Hollywood and back again—and the quality of its portraiture.” The Times review concludes, “Maybe not everyone who is white is a racist, but racism is what makes us white.” Pernicious, foul stuff.

In one of the most unintentionally revealing scenes in BlacKkKlansman, an elderly black man (played by Harry Belafonte) recounts for the Black Student Union the horrifying details of a lynching of a black youth that took place in Waco, Texas in 1916 (a lynching, in fact, only made possible because it had political value for county officials running for office). At the same time, Duke and the Colorado Springs Klansmen are holding their reactionary gathering, complete with a screening of D. W. Griffith’s racist The Birth of a Nation (1915). Belafonte’s character concludes his account with the assertion that such horrors as the Waco lynching prove “Black Power” is needed. The black students begin chanting “Black Power!” Meanwhile the racist conclave, for its part, starts shouting, “White Power!”

It never occurs to Lee or anyone else involved that, notwithstanding the racist outrages described by Belafonte, there is a political and ideological symmetry at work here. Both camps are advocating racial separatism, the fracturing of the working class and the oppressed along ethnic or national lines—all of which benefit only the ruling elite.

In a recent interview with Stallworth and Lee conducted by NBC’s Lester Holt, the latter questioned Stallworth about a telephone conversation he had with David Duke. Duke was apparently concerned, according to Stallworth, “about how he is going to be portrayed in this film. He’s only seen the trailer and the trailer makes him out to be a buffoonish, cartoonish idiot.” But, Stallworth then added, the Klan leader “complimented Spike. He said, ‘I’ve always respected Spike Lee.’ Which surprised the heck out of me.”

It doesn’t surprise us, however, one bit.