Ferguson Worked as Intended: For the Maintenance of the Doctrine of White Supremacy in the US

STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH
SENIOR EDITOR

Stephens: he found a way to justify (in his mind) the unjustifiable.

Stephens: “Our system commits no such violation of nature’s law. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the Negro. Subordination is his place.”

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he doctrine of white supremacy was invented in 17^th century North America to justify the use and practice of slavery in the British colonies (and at the time not just limited to the south of what became the United States, but in all of them). Just before the First US Civil War, the doctrine was well-summarized by Alexander Stephens, a Southern Unionist who later became Vice-President of the Confederate States of America under the arch-secessionist Jefferson Davis.

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Stephens memorably declared:

column published in 2009, as it started the First Civil War in support of secession, the South had six principal war aims:

The preservation of the institution of African and African-American (the latter the courtesy of the slave owners and slave masters) slavery and its uninhibited expansion into the Territories of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountain region, and the Southwest.
The acceptance by the whole United States of the Doctrine of White Supremacy on which the institution of slavery was established.
The establishment and subsequent strong prosecution of American Imperialism outside of North America (a position much more strongly held in the South than in the North).

Except that the institution of chattel slavery does not exist, the South achieved all of its war aims, some of them beyond the wildest dreams of any of its leaders. While for the most part that victory is pretty-well self-evident, I have detailed how they did that in, among other places, the column cited above and in my book The 15% Solution. Perhaps most importantly, the Doctrine of White Supremacy dominates the thinking of much of the white US, both consciously and unconsciously.

Birth-of-a-nation-klan-and-black-man
In D.W. Griffith’s famed Birth of a Nation, Hooded Klansmen catch Gus, a black man described in the film as “a renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers.” Gus was portrayed in blackface by white actor Walter Long. The KKK was, of course, the righteous avengers.

Above a quote from none other than the normally revered Woodrow Wilson, used by Griffith in his film. Three decades later, Hollywood again shed tears for the plantocracy way of life in Margaret Mitchell’s elegy for the South, Gone with the Wind.

In Gone With the Wind the Southern way was presented as a genteel civilization unjustly trashed by the coarse, mercantilistic North.

Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh, the indomitable Scarlett O’Hara, In Gone With the Wind. The Southern way was romanticized as a genteel civilization unjustly trashed by the coarse, brutish and mercantilistic North. What made Jewish tycoons in Hollywood want to whitewash the South? That question is yet to be answered.

Then, what immediately followed the end of the First Civil War in the South was, on the economic side, the assurance of the perpetuation of a living situation for the freed slaves that in many ways mimicked slavery, that is share-cropping (“40 acres and a mule” died under the veto pen of the Southern successor to President Lincoln, Andrew Johnson). On the political side, the first objective of the formation of the original Ku Klux Klan was to deny the freed slaves the vote, which was fully accomplished following the withdrawal of the Union Army occupiers in 1877. This system, along with social and commercial segregation, “Jim Crow,” stayed in place until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. With the recent Supreme Court decision voiding a key section of that Act as it applied to the South, along with the Republican national voter suppression campaign, African-American, as well as Latino, voting is being once again repressed, both by making it physically more difficult as well as by the imposition of a version of the poll tax: the acquisition, with no taxpayer support, of the “Voter ID.” And etc., etc., etc. (I will leave the discussion of whether voting accomplishes anything in this nation to other editors on this blog.)

And so, you might be saying at this point, what this all has to do with the killing of Michael Brown, black, by the police officer Darren Wilson, white. It has everything to do with it. An unusual event? No, of course not. For example, in the month between July 17 and August 17, 2014, 60 persons were killed by police officers, almost all of them black or Latino virtually none of them involved in committing a potentially fatal offense. As The World Can’t Wait put it: “the murder of Black and Brown youth by the state goes on like clockwork.”

There is a reason for this state of affairs and it is not just that some white cops are racists and truly regard blacks and Latinos as second-class or non-citizens, with no rights. It is not just because a district attorney decides on his own that he is not going to play prosecutor in this particular case, but rather defense attorney for the accused, which he can do until the cows come home in the absence of any means of cross-examination either of the accused or his witness supporters (one of whom made her own racism abundantly clear in her personal journal. Furthermore, there was no attorney to stand in on the true prosecutorial side to challenge, before a judge, what the mis-named “prosecutor” was actually doing in defending, not prosecuting.

Oh yes, and as for why District Attorney Robert McCulloch chose to make his announcement of the Grand Jury’s decision in prime time rather than around the time when it was reached, about 2PM in the afternoon? Well, he did just win re-election, so that’s not it. No. This man was addressing all white US who think the way that he does, and all the white law enforcement personnel across the US who don’t want to have to worry too much should they just happen to kill an African-American or Latino in the course of duty. McCulloch, who would likely deny vigorously that he consciously thinks in this way at all, it being so ingrained in the thought-processes of so many US, is, along with the modern Republican Party in the Congress, the Supreme Court and many state and local governments sending out a clear message: White supremacy lives. And so, not to worry.

For many US, white supremacy is the doctrine that governs their lives. They, sub-consciously for the most part, need to feel secure in that thinking. And they need to feel that US “law enforcement” is doing its part to provide them with that security. I am not talking about feeling secure in their physical surroundings, for given how highly segregated US society is, that is not too often an issue. I am talking about what goes on inside their heads. And so Michael Brown is killed, and the killing will not stop. Actually, in terms of the number of deaths, police killings of black and Latinos make lynching in the Old South (which was not always of blacks, mind you), except in the early days of the practice, look like much ado about not too much. Marches, demonstrations, police lapel cameras (“oh dear, in the heat of the moment mine fell off”), civilian review boards, and etc. are not going to change the reality in the US, still submerged under the victory of the South in the First Civil War and what it accomplished. Only the Second Civil War, which is coming, may be able to change that.

It should be noted that the United States is the only advanced capitalist country in which the political economy is dominated by such a doctrine as that of White Supremacy, and its use by, over time, one party or the other for political purposes. The only other country in which the political use of a doctrine of bigotry, prejudice, and racial superiority focused on a particular social grouping within the society came to so dominate its political economy, combined with an imperialistic foreign policy, was of course Nazi Germany. And we all know to where that led.

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South Africa and the Politics of Working Class Struggle

The reality of South Africa is far from officialdom’s version.

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]espite receiving almost no attention in the international press, South Africa has once again become the scene of an all-important political struggle: the fight to advance and defend working class politics in Africa. While South Africa has been included in the well known BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which serves as an indicator of how the country’s economy is viewed internationally, there remains a deep, and in many ways widening, class divide separating South Africa’s political elites from the working class they are meant to represent.

The deepening rift between many workers, trade unions, and urban and rural poor, and the Alliance made up of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the South African Communist Party (SACP) is cause for concern as the government of Jacob Zuma faces internal political challenges that threaten to rock his ruling coalition to its very foundation. While some commentators have framed the conflict as merely personal politics as leaders jockey for influential positions in the Alliance and government, the reality is that the emerging conflicts reflect a deeply divided society in which millions still yearn for the fruits of the revolution of 1994.

There are two distinctly different, yet inextricably linked currents in South Africa’s working class political movement. The first is the organized labor struggle, including powerful and politically active trade unions and organizations and their leadership which, more often than not, represents a significant locus of power in its own right. The second is the movement of urban and rural poor which represents the most economically marginalized group in the country, one that feels, with much justification, completely left out of the much touted economic growth the country has experienced in recent years. In examining how these political currents both independently and collectively engage with South Africa’s ruling class, including their demands and theaters of struggle, it becomes clear that though apartheid formally ended twenty years ago, the country remains deeply divided and sorely needing to realize the dream of the revolution.

COSATU Split: A Revolt Against the Ruling Elite

To understand how and why COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) is going through an internal leadership conflict, one must first recognize the competing factions within COSATU and the labor movement as a whole. On the one hand are those who remain steadfastly loyal to President Jacob Zuma and the ruling ANC Party which, according to many South Africans, has exercised an increasing degree of control over its people within the labor movement in an attempt to maintain control of workers’ politics. On the other hand is a small number of leaders within the movement who have openly challenged Zuma and the ANC, arguing that their leadership has exacerbated many of the deep seated economic and social problems facing the country, and that the government rules as much in the interest of transnational corporations and financiers as it does on behalf of the people. This important dichotomy is central to the political conflict (or power struggle, depending on whom one asks) playing out in the media and on the streets.

Perhaps the best illustration of the rift within the leadership of the labor movement is the suspension and persecution of COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who was subsequently reinstated by the nation’s high court. It is an open secret that Vavi was demonized and had his character assassinated with bogus rape and harassment charges because of his scathing critiques of President Zuma and the ruling ANC. As South Africa’s Mail & Guardian reported in 2012:

Senior union leaders of Cosatu affiliates and from the South African Communist Party, the ANC’s and Cosatu’s alliance partner, have held behind-the-scenes meetings recently to discuss a strategy to remove him [Vavi] from the position, the Mail & Guardian has established… Unlike Cosatu President Sdumo Dlamini, who is seen as a Zuma ally, Vavi has been vocal in criticising the ruling party and government under Zuma’s watch…This appears to have created a rift between him and other senior leaders in the federation. There has also been a falling-out between Vavi and Zuma. Vavi is believed to be in favour of leadership change in the ANC, although he has not said so publicly.

And so, it is clear that as early as 2012 there were powerful forces within the labor movement, and COSATU itself, that conspired with government forces and those loyal to Zuma, to oust Vavi from power. This anti-Vavi grouping included his colleague and President of COSATU Sdumo Dlamini who is well known to be an ardent supporter of Zuma, along with leading figures of the South African Communist Party. This faction saw in Vavi a serious challenge to their power as Vavi marshaled the forces of the Left with the rhetoric of class struggle and workers’ rights. Though his rivals have accused him of disingenuously employing the language of Socialist idealism, Vavi has firmly established himself as a leading critic of Zuma and the ANC as it currently is constituted and governs.

But of course the struggle is not simply an individual one between Vavi and Zuma. On the contrary, battle lines have been drawn within the labor movement as a whole, with Vavi being merely one of a number of influential leaders. Chief among these are the leaders of NUMSA (Nation Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) Irwin Jim and Karl Cloete, both of whom have expressed support for Vavi and champion the cause of splitting from COSATU in order to establish a worker-based movement for Socialism as an alternative to the near total monopoly of the ANC over working class politics. Again, some have charged that NUMSA’s leadership is cynically moving the union away from COSATU in order to cement their own control over the union and out of personal animosity towards Zuma, the ANC, and some of COSATU’s leadership. However, such arguments carefully evade the fundamental point that COSATU, like the South African Communist Party, has become a de facto wing of the ANC, an appendage of the ruling political elite who exploit the Alliance for votes without ever delivering the long promised economic benefits.

The divisions have even emerged within the individual unions themselves. In late October 2014, NUMSA President Cedric Gina resigned his post in a move widely seen as a means of distancing himself from the Vavi-Jim-Cloete axis of dissent against the ANC. This rift within the leadership of NUMSA is in many ways emblematic of the broader trend within the trade union movement in South Africa, specifically a growing divide between the more militant leftist leadership and that loyal to the ANC and Zuma. Many experts agree that such irreconcilable differences could lead to profound changes within the trade union movement as a whole, as a number of unions experience similar splits into rival camps. As South African political reporter Stephen Grootes wrote:

This again goes to confirm the theory that a split in Cosatu will actually lead to a split in most of its unions. It won’t be Cosatu splitting along union lines, it will be unions themselves splitting individually, along with Cosatu…In some ways, it’s to be expected that the union that seems to be about to be the first to leave the alliance would also be the first one to split itself. This is a tough decision to make and execute, and the stakes are extraordinarily high. People have long-running ties to alliance leaders, and will have different agendas to some of those who want to leave. Add to that the stress that comes with being the first to go, and there was always going to be fraternal blood on the floor.

Grootes makes a critical point about the nature of the unavoidable split within COSATU, namely that loyalty and allegiances to ANC and Zuma will cause splits within each individual union, with one camp pursuing a more radical independent agenda, while the other remains loyal to the government and the party. In essence then, the power struggle is really an existential struggle within the labor movement as a whole. Should organized labor pursue a socialist path that more directly reflects the needs and aspirations of its rank and file? Or, should labor remain within the ANC-COSATU-SACP Alliance that many argue is the only practical political formation given prevailing conditions in the country? The answer to this fundamental question will have profound implications for working people in South Africa in the generation to come.

The Politics of the Street

While the internal struggles within the South African labor movement continue to play out, a different political battle is raging in the streets and in the slums as the poor and unemployed organize in order to mount opposition to what they regard as the grossly unequal and unfair policies of the ruling ANC. Such organizations emerging from the grassroots to challenge the economic policies, which they regard correctly as neoliberal capitalist policies, have begun to make their voices heard throughout the country and in the halls of power.

One of the more noteworthy organizations now making an impact at the local and national level is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a leftist party led by Julius Malema, former head of the ANC Youth League until he was expelled on dubious charges stemming from his criticism of ANC policies and Jacob Zuma himself. Though it was founded only a year ago, the EFF has rapidly grown into a formidable political force capable of marshaling disparate groups into a somewhat cohesive and militant organization. A brief glance at the group’s manifesto illustrates unequivocally the politics of EFF and the concrete goals it has established:

Nationalization of the land for agricultural purposes and other sustainable economic activities
The abolition of all forms of foreign land ownership, and the institution of a land lease system for foreign investors and companies to use the land for sustainable economic activities
Nationalization of the mining sector, with profits channeled into education, health care, and other social services
Free quality education for the poor from early childhood to post-secondary education
Adequate, affordable housing, sanitation, and other social services for all South Africans

The EFF’s manifesto includes many other proposals not elaborated here. However, these demands should not be anything new to the people of South Africa, as these are nearly identical to the demands issued by the ANC more than a generation ago. In fact, it is precisely these sorts of principles, coupled with a revolutionary commitment to overthrow the apartheid regime, which catapulted the ANC into power in the first place. Many in South Africa regard the EFF and Malema as the embodiment of an ideology long dead and buried within the ANC.

It should be noted too that Malema and the EFF are not pioneers in making these demands. Rather, they are following in the footsteps of their northern neighbor Zimbabwe which, under the leadership of President Mugabe and ZANU-PF, has implemented many of these same reforms. Though the road has been difficult for Zimbabwe, particularly due to the sanctions and other forms of subversion by the West, the country has persevered and continues on its path of indigenization and resistance to international finance capital and the neoliberal order.

Of course, EFF is not the only organization of note working at the grassroots level in South Africa. The Abahlali baseMjondolo (Abm) and Urban Shackdweller movement has made significant gains in recent years as it represents the interests of the poor, landless, and unemployed peoples of the country. AbM has been met with violence on a number of occasions when the organization rallied in defense of shackdwellers who built their homes on government land. There have been shootings, beatings, home demolitions, and much more perpetrated by government forces against the movement which has shown a resolve worthy of admiration. In honor of the mineworkers murdered by police thugs at Marikana in 2012, AbM members built their own community called “Marikana” in open defiance of the government’s ban on home construction without permits and on government land. The clashes with police led to a number of arrests and trials. AbM’s resistance continues today.

Cyril Ramaphosa: a contemptible sellout and traitor to the revolution. Unfortunately he has many counterparts around the world.

The Vultures of Finance Capital and Their Stooges

No single figure more clearly symbolizes the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the ruling establishment in South Africa than does Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy to President Zuma. Ramaphosa not only is a corporate oligarch himself, he has shown utter disdain for the plight of mineworkers at Marikana (the scene of bloody repression against striking miners in 2012) and elsewhere. In fact, Ramaphosa referred to the courageous strikers at Marikana as “criminals” and urged “concomitant action” to be taken. In other words, Ramaphosa urged his fellow collaborators in positions of power to crack down on the Marikana workers and, in a very direct way, contributed to the circumstances that led to the massacre. However, in examining Ramaphosa and his clear allegiance to corporate interests, we must remember that he is no less than a traitor to the labor movement and the cause of social justice in South Africa.

Ramaphosa was seen as one of the heirs-apparent to Mandela in the wake of the 1994 revolution, having founded the National Union of Mineworkers. However, for a number of political reasons including conflict with former president Thabo Mbeki, he left the movement to establish a powerful and far reaching corporate empire. In so doing, he aligned himself with those same forces which, just a few years earlier, had been supporting the racist apartheid regime. Moreover, he became the exploiter of workers rather than the “crusader” his reputation would have had you believe. Now, this same traitor to the cause of the working class and social justice is in charge of shaping the economic destiny of the country. This is, to say the least, a sad state of affairs.

If the systematic oppression and repression of the workers and the poor were only the work of the ANC, perhaps it would be easier to mount effective resistance. However, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has effectively transformed itself into a collaborator in this injustice. As political author William Gumede points out:

[COSATU] has to deal with the perception that there is a deep divide between union members and leaders, who are seen as the new elite, while the rank and file, grassroots members are struggling…There is the feeling that the alliance is not giving them as much as they are putting into it… The alliance for many ordinary members doesn’t offer much protection or deliver material benefits.

The inescapable fact that Gumede and others have pointed out is that COSATU has transformed itself into the political elite of the labor movement, contenting itself with trying to influence elections and the ANC, thereby allowing the ruling class to continue their exploitation of the workers. In fact, it is this form of collaboration, along with the continued institutionalized white privilege, which has created what lawyer, lecturer, and activist Tshepo Madlingozi has referred to as “class apartheid”. This is a critical point because, as we examine the legacy of the post-apartheid rule of the ANC, we must critique it based on the reality of life for the people, not the ascension of a select few.

The current power struggle within the labor movement, not to mention the mineworkers’ strikes at Marikana and elsewhere, demonstrates clearly the discontent of the workers at their supposed labor representatives. The wildcat strike at Marikana, unsanctioned by the National Union of Mineworkers, itself an affiliate of COSATU, was led by what can be called a dissident union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). This breakaway faction led by workers shows the power, but also the danger, of challenging the status quo in South Africa. Moreover, it shows the degree to which COSATU is in bed with the ANC and the ruling class in South Africa.

The uprising of organized labor in South Africa is merely a product of the corruption, ineptitude, and betrayal of the ANC and the ruling establishment. Instead of representing the people and propelling the country in a progressive direction, away from the horrific legacy of apartheid and toward a prosperous future for all South Africans, the ANC leadership and its collaborators have shown themselves to be traitors to the cause of social justice and freedom which, at one time, the ANC symbolized. By pushing a neoliberal economic agenda while simultaneously silencing dissent and suppressing worker uprisings, the ANC has to a large degree discredited itself. It is now time that the voice of the people, not just the elite few, finally be heard.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine

First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/02/south-africa-and-the-politics-of-working-class-struggle/

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Straight Talk and Reflections

OPEDS
Stephen Lendman

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] generally restrict personal comments to one-on-one emails. Or discussions with friends, family and others. This article is an exception. Why not at age 80. Still working at trying to regain my full health and vigor. A daily struggle.

So much more I want to do. Feeling rushed to do all I can while I can. Taking things a day at a time. Hoping for the best. Aging isn’t for sissies. For sure not getting sick.

At age 70, I discovered my passion. What I love best, in retirement. What I never could have imagined earlier. The polar opposite of my formal working life. Writing on major world and national issues. Media work as host and guest. Explaining what readers, listeners and viewers most need to know. What directly affects their lives and welfare. Scrupulously seeking hard truths. Telling it like it is. Criticizing media scoundrel rubbish. Denouncing it for what it is. Burying hard truths. A propaganda bullhorn for wealth, power and privilege.

Big Lies repeated ad nauseam, on issues mattering most. On the wrong side of history. Orwell was right (at least about that): In times of universal deceit, truth-telling is a revolutionary act.

An essential one. Especially at the most perilous time in world history. With homeland freedoms eroding. Disappearing in plain sight. Lunatics in Washington make policy. Confronting Russia irresponsibly. Recklessly. Risking global war. Potential mushroom-shaped cloud denouement. Jack Kennedy transformed himself in office from cold warrior to peacemaker.

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind,” he said. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” More on him below.

A personal note. I grew up in Boston. From the mid-1930s – mid-1950s through college. Then military service. Wharton Graduate School. In February 1960, a newly-minted MBA.

At a different time than now. Good and bad. Eisenhower was president. Real unemployment low. Good jobs available for those qualified. Anyone wanting work found it. With good pay, benefits and job security. Most years saw good economic conditions. During post-WW II expansion. Inflation was low.

The average new car cost $1,500. My new VW Beetle cost $600. A typical home under $10,000.

Madison warned that “(a) popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or, perhaps both.”

College was affordable. Harvard’s 1952 full-year tuition was $600. Four years later it was $1,000. For a full, two-semester year. Anyone could attend evenings. For $5 a course. Get a Harvard degree for about $175. Taking courses with professors teaching daytime.

What my mother did. Taking some of the same courses I took at the same time with the same professor. I daytime. She at night. Graduating with me in the same class. The first mother and son ever at Harvard. Perhaps to this day.

I inquired recently if so. By email. To Harvard’s president. Explaining a little about myself. No response. Maybe no records exist. Showing it one way or another. I still have a Harvard graduation photo. A treasure. My mother and I together. In cap and gown. I looking straight-faced.

My mother beaming from ear-to-ear. Not for herself. For me. She was all give. No take. Special and then some.

Wharton treated me better than Harvard. In 2010, several reunion committee members contacted me. About representing my class for its 50th reunion. They were outvoted. Choosing a former corporate boss instead, Robert Crandall, the former American Airlines chairman and president.

He gave a marvelous address. Surprised me. I’d have been proud to deliver it myself. Expressing concerns about today’s troubled world. Essential need for change. We exchanged emails. I explained my current passion. He encouraged me to keep at it.

I assured him I would. Urged him to follow my writing. Tell others to get active. Work for vitally needed change.

[dropcap]Post-WW II America differed[/dropcap] from today. Economically dominant. Unchallenged. Its manufacturing base by far the world’s strongest. Union representation high.

Television was in its infancy. In a June 1950 commencement speech, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said, “(i)f (this) craze continues…we are destined to have a nation of morons.” Jefferson called an educated citizenry “a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

Madison warned that “(a) popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or, perhaps both.”

In 1748, Montesquieu said “(t)he tyranny of a principle in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.”

Jack Kennedy said “(t)he ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” More on him below.

In the 40s and 50s, southern and northern cities were segregated. They still are. Virtually all 1960s civil rights gains lost. Alaska and Hawaii additions grew America to 50 states.

The Korean War left things unsettled. An uneasy armistice remains. Cold War politics settled in. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevented WW III.

Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s premier, during a visit to the States, admiring the iconic Liberty Bell. The CIA gentlemen thugs were not impressed, his toppling was already being planned.

Censure ruined Joe McCarthy. In May 1957 he was dead, at age 48. The CIA’s first coup toppled Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh. A generation of terror followed. A year later, Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was ousted. Fueling decades of genocide against defenseless indigenous people.

Throughout the 50s, few followed Vietnam events. Its defeat of France. America’s growing involvement. Who knew decades of genocidal war would follow, or continue in multiple new theaters. No matter who’s president. Or controls Congress. Or sits on the High Court.

today.

Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower. Less than three years later he was gone. November 22, 1963 a day I’ll never forget. Nor should anyone old enough to remember. Fifty-one years ago. The worst was yet to come. Assassinating him made it easy.

War in Vietnam he wanted ended escalated. So did turning swords into plowshares. Rapprochement with Russia. Recognizing Palestinian rights. Lots more on the right side of history.

Imagine what might have been had he lived. If he had served two terms. Imagine what never was. Today most good jobs and benefits are gone. Social America is on the chopping block for elimination altogether.

The nation is being thirdworldized. Protracted Main Street Depression conditions persist. Poverty is a growth industry. About 23% of Americans wanting work can’t find it. Most jobs are rotten temp or part-time low pay/poor or no benefit service ones.

With no security or futures. Horrific conditions getting worse, not better. Hunger is a major problem. For about 50 million Americans. Around 13 million families. About 16 million children. In the world’s richest country.

Using its resources irresponsibly. For banker bailouts. Other corporate handouts. Militarism. Permanent wars. The national pastime. Making the world safe for war-profiteers. Wars waged to enrich them. Empower them.

Michael Parenti calling war-making the best way for Nobel Peace Prize acknowledgement. Peacemakers needn’t apply. Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy loved poetry. They made the arts part of their White House life.

On June 16, 1956, as a junior Massachusetts senator, he addressed my Harvard commencement exercises. Outdoors in Harvard’s yard. A longstanding tradition. Wall-to-wall with graduates. Family. Friends. Global guests of distinction.

Saying how “proud and grateful” he was “for the honor bestowed on me today…(A)n honor I could not possibly have foreseen some 16 years ago as I attended my own commencement exercises.”

Delivering an erudite, incisive, timely address. Filled with scholarly references and quotes. Polar opposite what politicians say today. Calling truth the object of controversy. Sacrificed for political advantage.

In 1856, Republicans had three brilliant presidential aspirant orators. William Cullen Bryant. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In 1860, Americans elected Republican Abraham Lincoln. Kennedy said “(t)hose were the carefree days when the eggheads were all Republicans.” Compare them to Obama, Bush and likeminded scoundrels.

Kennedy once said “(w)hen power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations…When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

At Harvard, he quoted Milton, Bismark, Goethe and others. Books were the tools of early US leaders, he said. Not their enemies.

“Locke, Milton, Sydney, Montesquieu, Coke, and Bollingbroke were among those widely read in political circles and frequently quoted in political pamphlets,” Kennedy explained.

“Our political leaders traded in the free commerce of ideas with lasting results both here and abroad.”

The link between US scholars and politicians lasted over a century. When freedom is endangered, intellects and politicians should be natural allies, Kennedy stressed.

“(W)orking more closely together for a common cause against a common enemy.” He ended saying “if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live on this commencement day of 1956.”

In seven years, five months, he’d be dead. Murdered by dark forces ruling America today. Killing JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X decapitated America’s left. In the 1970s, things began shifting right. Progressive charismatic leaders were gone.

None exist today. Their absence is sorely missed. America gets away with mass murder and then some.

Dark forces run things. War on humanity persists. Peacemakers aren’t around to stop it. Survival hangs in the balance.

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Lendman is a writer, syndicated columnist, activist, News TV personality, and radio show host. He currently writes for The Greanville Post, MoneyNewsNow.com and VeteransToday.com, among other leading venues, and hosts, since 2007, a progressive radio show at The Progressive Radio News Hour on The Progressive Radio Network.

Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity” and “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War“.

NOTE: OpEds express the views of the authors which The Greanville Post considers valuable enough to be distributed. Publication does not imply that we endorse ALL statements made by the writers. In some aspects we may actually disagree, as when authors present, as our dear colleague Lensman does in this personal piece, John F Kennedy, a man who brought the world to the edge of the nuclear abyss in 1962, as a mature statesman and not one more postwar president intoxicated with hubris. The same goes for anyone who represents some mainstream liberals, or other ruling class figures as having more wisdom or commitment to peace and democracy than they ever had.

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What I Did After Police Killed My Son

PRIMARY SOURCE

By MICHAEL BELL | August 15, 2014
POLITICO

Ten years later, we in Wisconsin passed the nation’s first law calling for outside reviews.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter police in Kenosha, Wis., shot my 21-year-old son to death outside his house ten years ago — and then immediately cleared themselves of all wrongdoing — an African-American man approached me and said: “If they can shoot a white boy like a dog, imagine what we’ve been going through.”

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I could imagine it all too easily, just as the rest of the country has been seeing it all too clearly in the terrible images coming from Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown. On Friday, after a week of angry protests, the police in Ferguson finally identified the officer implicated in Brown’s shooting, although the circumstances still remain unclear.

I have known the name of the policeman who killed my son, Michael, for ten years. And he is still working on the force in Kenosha.

Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us—regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy — that was my son, Michael — can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country — that’s me — and I still couldn’t get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren’t going to be able to do anything about it either.

***

I got the phone call at 2 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2004. It was my oldest daughter. She said you need to come to the hospital right away, Michael’s been shot by the police. My first gut reaction was, “Michael doesn’t do anything serious enough to get shot by a police officer.” I thought he’d gotten shot in the leg or whatever. When I arrived, I saw the district attorney huddled with about five police officers. The last time I saw my son alive he was on a gurney, with his head wrapped in a big towel and blood coming out of it. I learned that an officer had put his gun up directly to Michael’s right temple and misfired, then did it again, and shot him.

From the beginning I cautioned patience, though Michael’s mother and sister were in an uproar. They had watched him get shot. But as an Air Force officer and pilot I knew the way safety investigations are conducted, and I was thinking that this was going to be conducted this way. Yet within 48 hours I got the message: The police had cleared themselves of all wrongdoing. In 48 hours! They hadn’t even taken statements from several eyewitnesses. Crime lab reports showed that my son’s DNA or fingerprints were not on any gun or holster, even though one of the police officers involved in Michael’s shooting had claimed that Michael had grabbed his gun.

The officer who killed my son, Albert Gonzalez, is not only still on the force ten years later, he is also a licensed concealed-gun instructor across the state line in Illinois—and was identified by the Chicago Tribune in an Aug. 7 investigative story as one of “multiple instructors [who] are police officers with documented histories of making questionable decisions about when to use force.”

From the beginning I allowed the investigation to proceed and didn’t know it was a sham until many of the facts were discovered. But before long I realized a cover-up was under way. I hadn’t understood at first how closely related the DA and the police were—during his election campaign for judge, the DA had been endorsed in writing by every police agency in the county. Now he was investigating them. It was a clear conflict of interest.

The police claimed that one officer screamed that Michael grabbed his gun after they stopped him, for reasons that remain unclear though he was slightly intoxicated, and then Gonzalez shot him, sticking the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint. Michael wasn’t even driving his own car. He’d been out with a designated driver, but the designated driver drank and was younger, and so my son made the decision to drive.

Wanting to uncover the truth, our family hired a private investigator who ended up teaming up with a retired police detective to launch their own investigation. They discovered that the officer who thought his gun was being grabbed in fact had caught it on a broken car mirror. The emergency medical technicians who arrived later found the officers fighting with each other over what happened. We filed an 1,100-page report detailing Michael’s killing with the FBI and US Attorney.

It took six years to get our wrongful death lawsuit settled, and my family received $1.75 million. But I wasn’t satisfied by a long shot. I used my entire portion of that money and much more of my own to continue a campaign for more police accountability. I wanted to change things for everyone else, so no one else would ever have to go through what I did. We did our research: In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was unjustified. There was one shooting we found, in 2005, that was ruled justified by the department and an inquest, but additional evidence provided by citizens caused the DA to charge the officer. The city of Milwaukee settled with a confidentiality agreement and the facts of that sealed. The officer involved committed suicide.

[dropcap]I’m not anti-cop[/dropcap]. And I am finding that many police want change as well: The good officers in the state of Wisconsin supported our bill from the inside, and it was endorsed by five police unions. But I also think the days of Andy Griffith and the Mayberry peacekeeper are over. As we can see in the streets of Ferguson, today’s police are also much more heavily equipped, armed and armored— more militarized. They are moving to more paramilitary-type operations as well, and all those shifts call for more transparency and more rules of restraint. And yet they are even less accountable in some ways than the U.S. military in which I served. Our citizens need protection from undue force, here in our own country, and now.

Michael Bell is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.

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The Post-Left Era

OPEDS

In 1971 Germaine Greer shook the feminist camp with her book The Female Eunuch, a witty, passionate but ultimately too personal account of politics that remained safely within the bounds of bourgeois rebellion.

By Batu Caliskan

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here exists no Left in the West in the modern age; Leftists are extant in small, isolated enclaves, but there is no genuine Leftist movement. The absence of the Left has terrible implications, not only for the future of Western nations, but also for the nations still subjected to Western hegemony through the mechanistic workings of the world governments and the duplicitous narrative of Liberalism.

I. Devolution of the Western Left

There, at one critical point in history, existed a genuine Left, a Left that was unequivocally committed to the ideals of self-determination and liberation for all peoples. For all intents and purposes, the Left, and with it the promise of an emergent revolutionary class, is gone. The historic Left, composed of dissident communists, “red” anarchists of the syndicalist persuasion, radical socialists, and the like, has been replaced by the New “Left”, a political scam of a movement that perpetuates globalism, New Class managerialism, entrenching capitalism, and atomistic individualism, all under the guise of freedom for the downtrodden. What exists now, in modern Western society, is not the Left, in any meaningful sense, but rather, a flimsy simulacrum that vaunts the rhetoric of the historic Left without understanding or committing to it.

II. The Composition of the New “Left”

In the United States, in particular, the New Left came into prominence within the late decades (60s and 70s, noticeably) of the twentieth-century. When describing the New Left, it is important not only to describe the general composition of the movement, but also the personalities that it attracts. The champions of the New Left, prime examples being disillusioned university youth, wayward pseudo-political liberal bohemians, libertine hedonists, and other marginal, effete deviants, were largely a product, and continuation, of a conservative post-war American society.

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Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, during the heady days of the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 70s. Vietnam served as a uniting force and inspiration for many leftists but the tactics and strategies for genuine revolution remained painfully elusive.

[dropcap]At the end of the World War II[/dropcap], the world was witness to the transformation of America into a global empire; it escaped relatively-unscathed from the horrors of the war, and was free to pursue its own trajectory of unprecedented economic prosperity at the dawn of the “Golden Age”. The financial security that this prosperity birthed facilitated the gradual entrenching of the New Class, a conglomeration of social engineers, white-collar managerialists, planners, technocrats, and professionals entirely detached from the realities of the working-class¹. The crass materialism (in a non-philosophical sense) of suburban New Class lifestyles, and the rigidity it carried, propelled a whole generation towards a rebellion which, in a kind of tragic irony, preserved the conservative impulses of the era in a more implicit fashion.
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Germaine at 75. She has aged gracefully, and some say mellowed, but her revolutionary contribution shrinks with each passing year.

All the attempted rebellion of the New Left amounted to was a re-packaging of reactionary ideals into different forms. The energy directed towards the liberation of American racial minorities was diverted into support for the abomination of affirmative action, a policy intended to assimilate the racial underclasses into the White, Liberal majority’s institutional pathology by means of entrance into the university system, which remains as the primary point of access to a managerialist, upper-class lifestyle. The danger and intrigue concomitant to revolutionarism, particularly that of anarchism, was bottled like a commodity and sold en masse to the public in the form of the “anarchist” punk-rock bands of the late twentieth century. Women’s demands for liberation from male dominance in the private and public spheres manifested in the rise of the “sexual liberation” of the 1970s², which only furthered women’s traditional oppression by disguising sexual humiliation as the epitome of sexual liberation.

III. The Institutional Pathology of the New Left

The Left has collapsed into a sad state of degeneracy; it is now possible for any political illiterate to advance a claim to Leftism. The reason for this is that the New Left is apolitical, non-committal, and highly unserious; it reduces politics to recreational lifestylism. This pathology is inherent not only to communist circles, but to anarchist ones, an observation the late political theoretician, Murray Bookchin, expounded upon in several of his works against the post-Left anarchists³.

The ideology of the New Left is dangerous precisely because it subdues all radical consciousness, usurps genuine Leftist movements, and monopolizes all claims to the revolutionary traditions of the historic Left. For the recreational “Leftist”, politics is just another game to indulge in. He is not interested in constructing the myth of revolutionary violence (used in the Sorelian sense⁴) necessary to liberate the working-class nor is he interested in serious subversion of the existing politico-economic structure that permeates through the Western world so thoroughly. He may complain of the excesses of capitalism here and there, but not only does he lack a reasoned, cohesive insight into the intimate workings of corporate capitalism, he is also not willing to relinquish the crass consumerism (and the lifestylism it produces) that capitalism nurtures so effectively. He touts the rhetoric of violent resistance without understanding its implications on the personal, and is content to spout any denunciations against the existing capitalist order, as long as his personal comfort and state of mind remain intact. The irony lies in the fact that the recreational Leftist who clings to this lifestylism, and who putatively champions for the underprivileged, oppressed, etc., is the bitterly-hated class enemy of the downtrodden, including revolutionaries of the criminal (and non-criminal) working class, lumpenproletariats, the racial “underclasses”, and other supposed dregs of society.

IV. A March Backwards

Never before has there been a worse historical cycle to inherent. Whatever the cause of this decline may be, one thing can be noted; the post-Left era is upon us. The New Left was never the Left, is not the Left, and will never be the Left, contrary to the shrill insistences and reckless conflations of Right-wing ideologues. It has no potential, no vision, and no spirit; it is the shell of the former Left, a crude imitation that is extant due to its intimate association with the conservative forces of modern Western hegemony and Liberal capitalism.

V. A Much-Needed Revival

This morass exists because we, those unfortunate enough to witness the emergence of this historical trend, are not serious; we were not serious when cries of “Make love, not war” substituted the slogan of “Make jobs, not war”, when anti-capitalist rhetoric was reduced to exosemantic gang-signs for pseudo-Leftists to flash on whim, or when the ravings of the post-Leftists were in vogue among the self-proclaimed “anarchist” milieu.

It is time to abandon the New Left; it is no accident that it ended up in its current state. Whatever ideological praxis may dominate after its collapse, it is clear that the intellectual stagnation we witness today is no step forward.

References

² Jeffreys, Sheila. Anticlimax a Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution. North Melbourne, Vic.: Spinifex, 2011. Print.

³Bookchin, Murray. Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm. Edinburgh: AK, 1995. Print.

⁴ Sorel, Georges, T. E. Hulme, and J. Roth. Reflections on Violence. Glencoe, IL: Free, 1950. Print.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Batu Caliskan is a Turkish writer who has written for various journals, including Attack the System and RADIX, on the question of decentralization, anti-statism, race relations, and the modern Left.

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