I just returned from Catatumbo, Colombia where thousands of peasants are waging a life-and-death struggle against the U.S.-backed Colombian military and its paramilitary allies.   For over 60 days, the peasants have been demonstrating against the deplorable living conditions and economic circumstances in which they live, and in support of their proposal for a Peasant Farmer Reserve Zone of 10 million hectares.

Such a zone, which is provided for under the law, would allow the peasants to engage in subsistence farming free of the threat of encroachment by extractive companies desiring to mine or drill on their land.   This demand, along with the concomitant demand of the peasants for all mining and oil exploration and extraction in their region to be suspended, is critical to the peasants who are being driven to the verge of extinction.

[pullquote] The grotesquely overpaid media celebrities do not deign to cover such important stories, especially when they reveal the true criminal nature of US foreign policy. [/pullquote]

According to the Luis Carlos Pérez Lawyers’ Collective (CALCP), 11,000 peasants have been killed in this region by state and para-state forces, most of them during the 2002-2010 term of President of Alvaro Uribe, and over 100,000 peasants, out of a total of around 300,000, have been forcibly displaced.   At least 32 mass graves containing the bodies of murdered peasant activists have been found in this region in recent years.

And, this mass murder and displacement is being carried out to make way for more oil drilling, African palm cultivation (for biodiesel) and for coal mining by North American companies.

I say that this mayhem is being carried out, in part, in order to make way for more oil drilling because, in fact, much oil drilling has been taking place there for the past 70 years.   And, the peasants of this region have nothing to show for this many years of drilling.  As we were told a few times during out trip, after 70 years of oil exploration, the rural parts of this region do not even have a paved road.    (Our delegation – led by Justice for Colombia and including participants from the USW and Unite the Union UK – found this out the hard way during our 3.5 hour drive over a dirt road from Cucuta to a village outside Tibu near the Venezuelan border).

In addition, there is no sewage system, no running water and no health services.   Indeed, peasants injured in their confrontations with the military and police during the two months of demonstrations – with the peasants defending themselves with sticks against the guns, tanks and other U.S.-supplied hardware of the military and police – have been forced to flee into Venezuela for refuge and medical services.

In short, the oil and other extractive companies, beginning with Texaco in the 1930’s, have taken and taken, and left the people with nothing.  Now, the companies want even more, and it is the very existence and presence of the peasants which stands in their way.  And so, quite logically, the companies, with the help of the U.S.-backed military and paramilitaries, are aiming to literally wipe the peasants off the map.  In other words, these forces are engaged in a calculated act of genocide.   Indeed, when a number of us remarked upon how almost everyone we saw and met with in our visit to Catatumbo were no more than teenagers, we were told that this was the result of the fact that their parents had either been murdered or displaced.   Left behind are villages populated almost entirely by children.

Young Peasants of Catatumbo In Rebellion

The calculated mass killing and displacement that is taking place in Catatumbo is a good example of the phenomenon discussed in the new book, Capitalism: A Structural Genocide by Garry Leech.   In that book, Leech argues, and quite forcefully, that capitalism, left to its own devices, will inevitably destroy (1) those who stand in the way of the exploitation of natural resources; and (2) those individuals, such as peasants and subsistent farmers, who are engaged in pursuits which neither contribute towards economic “growth” nor produce surplus value or profit.  Of course, the peasants of Catatumbo fall into both of these categories simultaneously, and are therefore a double threat.

Citing Indian physicist and philosopher Vandana Shiva, Leech explains that, under capitalism, “nothing has value until it enters the market.   Shiva points out that under capitalism ‘if you consume what you produce, you do not really produce, at least not economically speaking.  If I grow my own food, and do not sell it, then this does not contribute to GDP, and so does not contribute towards growth.’”    Rather, for such subsistence farmers, “’nature exists as a commons.’”   The commons, moreover, and those who work on it, are simply not permitted under capitalism.

Young peasants of Catatumbo in rebellion.

As Leech and Shiva explain, those working the commons must either “be incorporated – often through coercion – into the ever-widening spheres of production and circulation,” or they must be simply be destroyed.   This process, as Leech explains, is what Karl Marx termed, “primitive accumulation,” and it is quite a nasty process, wherever it is carried out.

Leech explains that, as capitalism was beginning to get into full swing in Britain in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the British Parliament passed a series of Enclosure Acts which privatized commonly held lands and “prevented much of the generations-old practice of grazing their animals and cultivating their crops on commonly held lands, thereby forcing them to move to the cities in search of jobs.”

More recently, as Leech astutely points out, Mexico outlawed communal land titles for indigenous peoples in order to make way for NAFTA.   As Leech explains, and as many of us have argued for years, a major raison d’être of NAFTA was in fact the primitive accumulation of the commons of millions of small farmers in Mexico.   This primitive accumulation was carried out by NAFTA’s provisions which allowed heavily-subsidized, and therefore cheap, agricultural products from North America to flood the Mexican markets tariff-free.   Meanwhile, the IMF rules governing Mexico forbid that country from subsidizing its own agricultural producers.

As Leech explains, the results for 2 million small farmers in Mexico, who could not compete with the subsidized food from the North, was devastating, with these small farmers losing their livelihood and their land and fleeing into the cities, or illegally into the U.S.   Finding themselves displaced from their land, many were left with no jobs at all, found themselves exploited in low paying jobs with poor safety and health practices, or turned to the drug trade for employment.  The result for Mexico as a whole has been the destruction of the social fabric of the nation and increased violence, with cities like Juarez suffering violence levels comparable to nations at war.

While Leech does not focus on Colombia in his book,  he does mention that Colombia itself “has become Latin America’s poster child over the past decade and its economic growth has been driven by the exploitation of the country’s natural resources, particularly oil, coal and gold, by foreign companies.”   Colombia now has the largest internally displaced population in the world at over 5 million.   As Leech explains, “[m]any have been forced from their lands by direct physical violence related to the country’s armed conflict – often by the Colombian military and right-wing paramilitary groups serving the interests of multinational corporations.  However, many others have become economic refugees due to the structural violence inherent in neoliberal policies that has dispossessed them of their lands in order to facilitate capital accumulation for foreign companies.”

Peasants Greet Us Along The Highway

The peasants of Catatumbo have long been the victims of such direct as well as structural violence, but now they are fighting back to defend their land.   For 53 days, these peasants, armed only with sticks, blocked the main highway linking the cities of Cucuta and Tibu.  Shortly after our visit, the government agreed to negotiate with them directly, and the peasants ended this blockade for now.  However, they will begin it anew if talks fail.

Young Luchador in Catatumbo.

While the Colombian Minister of Defense warned us not to travel this highway because of these protests, the peasants freely allowed us to pass.  Of course, as all of us understood, what the Colombian government was truly afraid of was that we would witness that it is in fact the peasants who are on the side of right; that it is they who are defending the land, the water and the rainforests for all of us.   And, this is why their struggle, and the struggles of others like them, must succeed.   In truth, our very lives and future depend on them.

Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer and teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman devote a chapter to the media’s unbalanced coverage of the murder of one priest in Poland in 1984 as compared to the coverage of the 72 religious killed throughout Latin America between 1964 and 1978, the killing of 23 religious in Guatemala between 1980 and 1985, the murder of Archbishop Romero of San Salvador in 1980 and the rape and murder of the four U.S. church women in El Salvador in 1980. In short, the murder of the one Polish priest — the perpetrators of which were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison — received significantly more coverage than all of the latter killings, which almost invariably remain unsolved and unpunished, combined.

Meanwhile, there has been almost no media coverage of the killings of the “two bishops, 79 priests, eight men and women religious, as well as three seminarians” killed in Colombia alone between 1984 and 2011 — this, according to the Episcopal Conference of Colombia. The Episcopal Conference of Colombia publicly announced this grim tally in the fall of 2011 upon the murder of the sixth priest killed in 2011 alone. One of the priests killed in 2011 was Father Reynel Restrepo Idarraga, the pastor of the town of Marmato, who was murdered by presumed paramilitaries in retaliation for his vocal defense of Marmato against the attempt of the Canadian mining company, Gran Colombia Gold, which to this day is still attempting to seize the land of the entire town and convert it into a gold mine. The Colombian bishops attributed the rash of killings in 2011 to “the courageous commitment of our priests to the prophetic denunciation of injustice and the cause of the poorest in the country.”

The number of priests killed in Colombia since 1984 just climbed to 80 with the murder of Father Luis Alfredo Suarez Salazar on Feb. 2, 2013 by two unknown assailants in the northern Colombian city of Ocana.

Then, on February 13, 2013, there was an assassination attempt against another Catholic priest. The target of the attack was Father Alberto Franco, a member of the Inter-Church Commission of Justice & Peace (CIJP), an organization created in 1988 pursuant to the resolution of the Conference of Religious Superiors of Colombia which aspired “[t]o promote and encourage the Christian prophetic signs which are present in religious communities, through the creation of a Commission of Justice and Peace which will channel and disseminate information and protests throughout the country.” As Father Javier Giraldo, S.J., a founding member of the CIJP, relates in The Genocidal Democracy, while the Colombian Catholic Conference of Bishops “did not approve of this initiative and placed obstacles in its path,” 25 Catholic provincials nonetheless went ahead with the formation of the CIJP.

As Father Giraldo explains, the first and continuing project of the CIJP has been “to gather and disseminate information about the victims of human rights violations, the right to life, in particular.” Not surprisingly, this project has made the CIJP a constant target of threats and violence, particularly from the Colombian state and its paramilitary allies. Father Alberto Franco himself has been the target of threats and surveillance for some time now, culminating in the attempt upon his life on Februrary 13, in which assailants fired three shots into the windshield of Father Franco’s car. Luckily, Father Franco had not yet entered the car and therefore escaped unharmed. Meanwhile, Father Franco, along with 17 other members of the CIJP, remain, by the Colombian government’s own measures, under “extraordinary risk” of attack.

According to a statement sent in support of the CIJP signed by 130 organizations,

We consider these threats to be a direct result of CIJP’s work on land restitution and their efforts to expose state, military, and business responsibility in illegal land grabs, threats, and the violation of human rights before national and international courts. The most recent threats occurred days after Father Franco informed the press that officials of ex-President Alvaro Uribe’s government were involved in the displacement and illegal occupation of the collective territories of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó. That same week, there was a hearing on the case of Marino López and others in Cacarica before the Inter-American Human Rights Court.

We have observed that the Afro-descendant, indigenous, and campesino communities that CIJP accompanies are also attacked for defending their land rights. In December 2012, we received first-hand information of the presence of many uniformed and armed paramilitaries in Curvaradó, in addition to the threat of an imminent massacre. On various occasions, we have expressed our concern regarding the attacks and threats against María Ligia Chavera and Enrique Petro, two emblematic leaders in the land restitution process in Curvaradó.

Of course, as I have written about at great length before, the “land grabs” which the CIJP are denouncing are only accelerating due to the free trade agreements between Colombia and the U.S. and Canada which are promoting the increased exploitation of land by multi-national mining and agricultural companies — companies which regularly use the Colombian military and paramilitaries to clear the land they covet of the residents who live there.

However, in the midst of the economic causes of the repression against individuals such as Father Franco, one also cannot forget the very real spiritual and religious convictions which motivate Father Franco and others like him to risk their lives to defend the poor, and one cannot ignore the commitment of those attacking such individuals to eradicate such convictions. Father Javier Giraldo, S.J., has indeed recently published a book (in Spanish only) which details the spiritual aspect of this struggle.

That book, The Deaths That Illuminate Life, sets forth the stories of 35 Colombians — including bishops, priests, nuns, religious laity and even a child — who Father Giraldo considers to be modern Christian martyrs. In Father Giraldo’s words, they were “witnesses of Christian values objectively: men and women who heroically endured torture and death to the save the lives of others, or for refusing to become collaborators with criminal agencies, or because they joined groups and organizations where they sought to realize in some way their militant option for justice and solidarity.”

Comparing these modern martyrs to the early martyrs of the first three centuries of the Church, Father Giraldo does not mince words about their common executioners — the prevailing empires at the time (the Roman and U.S. empires, respectively).

Thus, Father Giraldo explains that, just as in the time of the Roman Empire Christians would naturally find themselves to be “subversives” in that they were compelled to deny the Emperor as their “Lord,” so too must modern Christians in Latin America find themselves at odds with their neo-colonial oppressors. As he writes,

To confess Christ, in this context, has meaning and truth only in the margins of a historic commitment to the liberation of the oppressed which explains an inescapable confrontation with the oppressors, “some of whom are those who say they are Christians,” that is why there are today Christians tortured and killed in the name of “the democratic freedoms”, in the name of the “market economy”, in the name of “Christian western civilization”, in the name of “national security”, on behalf of the “defense of the society against atheistic ideologies”, etc. The Christian label provides no clue in revealing the roots of the conflict, which cause death; these causes can only be discerned through an in-depth review of the practice of the faith, confronted with its challenging context, and taking into account that the Christian character of this praxis, tends to be refused, systematically, by all those that are in some degree of collusion with the interests of the oppressors.Today there is no longer the idol of the Roman Emperor, in whose altars was shed the Blood of the first Christians, but there is the secular idol of the market economy, upon whose altars is sacrificed the life and dignity of millions of human beings…

To this day, I cannot get over the irony, and indeed the shock, at the realization that it is in fact the U.S. — the professed protector of democracy and indeed Christian values in the world — which is the entity so bent on destroying the roots of true Christianity in Latin America, for it is a philosophy that so profoundly calls into question the U.S.’s true values which revolve around the worship of wealth and power. And so, it is the U.S. which, since 1962, has cultivated the very death squads which haunt the Church of the poor in Latin America, and specifically in Colombia.

And indeed, the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), which continues to train thousands of repressive Latin American military forces, has, as Noam Chomsky explains, gone so far as to brag about its role in destroying Liberation Theology (the Christian philosophy which advocates “the preferential treatment for the poor”) in Latin America. As Chomsky has explained, “[o]ne of its advertising points is that the U.S. Army [School of the Americas] helped defeat liberation theology, which was a dominant force, and it was an enemy for the same reason that secular nationalism in the Arab world was an enemy – it was working for the poor.” Thankfully, the SOA has not been as thoroughly successful as it has advertised in this regard, and that brave souls like Father Giraldo and Father Franco continue to risk martyrdom in order to defend the poor and dispossessed in Latin America.

In truth, I stopped being a practicing Catholic some time ago, but I continue to hold dear the philosophy of the “preferential treatment of the poor,” and I honor those in Latin America who continue to exhibit the courage — courage I have yet to find in myself — to risk their lives every day in carrying out this key tenet of Liberation Theology. I have concluded that, to be a person of decency by any measure, one must join with these Davids of the Third World who are fighting for independence and economic justice against the Goliath in which we happen to live.Follow Dan Kovalik on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@danielmkovalik

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Kovalik is a human and labor rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh. He has been a peace activist throughout his life and has been deeply involved in the movement for peace and social justice in Colombia and Central America. He is an attorney for Colombian Plaintiffs in cases alleging corporate complicity in egregious human rights violations. Kovalik, a 1993 graduate of Columbia Law School, was a co-recipient of the 2003 Project Censored Award for a story he co-wrote on the murder of trade unionists in Colombia.

That America is in deep moral and legal trouble was pretty much obvious to everyone before Edward Snowden released official documents showing the extent to which the U.S. government has been playing fast and loose with the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Snowden’s revelations — as explosive as they are — were, in one sense, merely the latest challenge to those of us who took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That has been a commitment tested repeatedly in recent years, especially since the 9/11 attacks.

This is our summer of discontent. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether that discontent will move us to action. Never in my lifetime have there been such serious challenges to whether the Republic established by the Founders will survive. Immediately after the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin told a questioner that the new structure created “a Republic, if you can keep it.”

He was right, of course; it is up to us. After all the many troubling disclosures — from torture to “extraordinary renditions” to aggressive war under false pretenses to warrantless wiretaps to lethal drone strikes to whistleblowers prosecutions to the expanded “surveillance state” — it might be time to take a moment for what the Germans call “eine Denkpause,” a “thinking break.” And it is high time to heed and honor the Noah Principle: “No more awards for predicting rain; awards only for building arks.”

So let’s face it. The Obama White House and its co-conspirators in Congress and the Judiciary have thrown the gauntlet down at our feet. It turned out that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. As Annie Dillard, one of my favorite theologians, has put it, “There is only us; there never has been any other.” And as one of my favorite activists/prophets continued to insist, “Do not say there are not enough of us. There ARE enough of us!”

Besides threats to basic constitutional rights and gross violations of international law, there are other pressing issues for Americans, especially the obscene, growing chasm between the very rich and the jobless (and often homeless) poor. There is widespread reluctance, even so, to ask the key questions?

Is it right to fire teachers, police and firefighters; to close libraries; leave students in permanent debt; gut safety-net programs — all by feigning lack of money? Yet, simultaneously, is it moral to squander on the Pentagon and military contractors half of the country’s discretionary income from taxes — an outlay equivalent to what the whole rest of the world put together spends for defense?

It seems we are guided far more by profits than by prophets. And without prophetic vision, the people perish.

Profit Margin

America’s lucrative war-making industry operates within a fiendishly self-perpetuating business model: U.S. military interventions around the world (including security arrangements to prop up unpopular allies and thus to thwart the will of large segments of national populations) guarantee an inexhaustible supply of “militants, insurgents, terrorists or simply “bad guys'” — a list that sometimes comes to include American citizens.

These troublemakers must be hunted down and vaporized by our remote killing machines, which inflict enough destruction and stir up enough outrage to generate even more “militants, insurgents, terrorists or simply “bad guys.'”

And, in turn, the blowback toward the United States — the occasional terrorist attack — creates enough fear at home to “justify” the introduction of draconian Third Reich-style “Enabling Act” legislation not very different from the unconstitutional laws ushering in the abuses in Germany 80 years ago.

With only muted murmur from “progressive” supporters, the Obama administration has continued much of the post-9/11 assault on constitutional rights begun by George W. Bush — and in regard to Barack Obama’s aggressive prosecutorial campaign against “leakers,” Obama has taken these transgressions even further.

Are we to look on, like the proverbial “obedient Germans,” as Establishment Washington validates the truth of James Madison’s warning: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

Yet, while countless billions of dollars are spent on “security” against “terrorism,” little attention is devoted to the truly existential threat from global warming. Can we adults in good conscience continue to shun the dire implications of climate change?

This question was again brought home to me personally on Aug. 6, as our ninth grandchild pushed her way out into a world with challenges undreamed of just decades ago. When she is my age, will she rue joining us last Tuesday? I can only hope she will forgive me and my generation for not having the guts to face down those whose unconscionable greed continues to rape what seemed to be a rather pure and pleasant planet when I made my appearance seven short decades ago.

Prophets on the Margin

And, then there is the worship of “free market” idolatry which has savaged America’s Great Middle Class and expanded the ranks of the desperate poor. The late Rabbi Abraham Heschel had challenging words for us: Decrying the agony of the “plundered poor,” Heschel insisted that wherever injustice takes place, “few are guilty, but all are responsible.” He added that, “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned:

“A time comes when silence is betrayal … We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak … There is such a thing as being too late … Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity … Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.'”

Amid these daunting challenges — endless war, encroachment on liberties, environmental devastation and economic disparity — there is also the question: Are our churches riding shotgun for the System?

As truly historic events unfold in our country and abroad, I often think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who founded the Confessing Church as an alternative to the overwhelming number of Catholics and Lutherans who gave priority to protecting themselves by going along with Hitler. How deeply disappointed Bonhoeffer was at the failure of the institutional church in Germany to put itself “where the battle rages.”

This is the phrase Martin Luther himself used centuries before:

“If, I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield, except there, is mere flight and disgrace if one flinches at that point.”

No one has put it better than a precious new friend I met on a “cruise” in June/July 2011 hoping to reach Gaza — author and poet Alice Walker — who said: “Activism is my rent for living on this planet.”

As some of you know, that attitude found her a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope” — the U.S. Boat to Gaza. On July 1, 2011, we made an activist break for the open sea and Gaza but were able to sail only nine nautical miles out of Athens before the Greek government, under strong pressure from the White House, ordered its Coast Guard to intercept us, bring us back to port, and impound our boat.

Okay to be Angry?

Recalling the anger I felt at the time, I was reminded that, all too often, people are conflicted about whether or not to allow themselves to be angry at such injustice — whether it be in Gaza, on the Aegean, or elsewhere. I had been in that category of doubt, until I remembered learning that none other than Thomas Aquinas had something very useful to say about anger.

In the Thirteenth Century, Aquinas wrote a lot about virtue and got quite angry when he realized there was no word in Latin for just the right amount of anger — for the virtue of anger. He had to go back to what Fourth-Century Doctor of the Church John Chrysostom said on the subject: “He or she who is not angry, when there is just cause for anger, sins.”

Why? Because as John Chrysostom put it, “Anger respicit bonum justitiae, anger looks to the good of Justice, and if you can live amid injustice without anger you are unjust.”

Aquinas added his own corollary; he railed against what he called “unreasoned patience,” which, he said, “sows the seeds of vice, nourishes negligence, and persuades not only evil people but good people to do evil.”

Frankly, I have not thought of us activists being virtuous — but maybe we are, at least in our willingness to channel our anger into challenging and changing the many injustices here and around the world. There should be no room these days for “unreasoned patience.”

One saving grace peculiar not only to the ancient prophets and theologians but to the Alice Walkers and Medea Benjamins of today is that they did not get hung up on the all-too-familiar drive for success. That drive, I think, is a distinctly American trait. We generally do not want to embark on some significant course of action without there being a reasonable prospect of success, do we? Who enjoys becoming the object of ridicule?

The felt imperative to be “successful” can be a real impediment to acting for Justice. One prophet/activist from whom I have drawn inspiration is Dan Berrigan. I’d like to share some of the wisdom that seeps through his autobiography, To Dwell in Peace. Berrigan writes that after he, his brother Phil, and a small group of others had used homemade napalm to burn draft cards in Catonsville, Maryland, in May 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, Dan mused about why he took such a risk:

“I came upon a precious insight. … Something like this: presupposing integrity and discipline, one is justified in entering upon a large risk; not indeed because the outcome is assured, but because the integrity and value of the act have spoken aloud. …“Success or efficiency are placed where they belong: in the background. They are not irrelevant, but they are far from central. I was in need of such reflections as we faced the public after our crime. … All sides agreed — we were fools or renegades or plain crazy. …

“One had very little to go on; and one went ahead nonetheless. … The act was let go, its truth and goodness were entrusted to the four winds. Indeed, good consequences were of small matter to me, compared with the integrity of the action, the need responded to, the spirits lifted.”

The more recent prophets and activists I have known have generally been able to do this — to release the truth of the act to the four winds. And I am sure that helps them avoid taking themselves too seriously.

Anticipate the Jut-Jaw

Here’s how Dan Berrigan recounts the immediate aftermath of the action at Catonsville:

“We sat in custody in the back room of the Catonsville Post Office, weak with relief. … Three or four FBI honchos entered portentously. Their leader, a jut-jawed paradigm, surveyed us from the doorway. His eagle-eye lit on Philip. He roared out: ‘Him again! Good God, I’m changing my religion!’“I could think of no greater tribute to my brother.”

The Berrigans help affirm for me that this God of ours is a God of laughter, and we are the entertainment. And that’s just one reason a light touch seems to be required. Will we be successful? Wrong question. The right one is will we be faithful? Will we dare to go with the Berrigans to where the battle rages.

I am very much looking forward to being able to refresh my spirit, and also my sense of humor, with some later-day prophets at the upcoming Conference on the Moral Imperative of Activism, Aug. 16-17, at the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York.

Let me close with a poem written by the German writer Peter Gan in 1935 during the Third Reich. I think it summons us in a thoughtful way to contemplate who we are and what we are called to do — today.

But first the most important thing:
“What are you doing in these great times?“Great, I say, for times seem great
to me, when each man driven
half to death by the era’s hate,
and standing in the place he’s given,

“Must willy-nilly contemplate
no less a thing than his own BEING!
A little breath, a second’s wait
May well suffice — you catch my meaning?”

By Jason Miller, Cyrano’s Journal/Thomas Paine’s Corner

“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.

How could anyone who’s noted for having said, “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine,” have such a pernicious effect on our culture?

Let’s “count the ways…with a passion put to use.”

To truly understand the depth of the damage Oprah inflicts on our society, we need to step outside of our bourgeois indoctrination and see her for what she truly represents. Manifesting the Horatio Alger Myth on steroids, Oprah is a wet dream come true for our criminal class of ruling elites sometimes referred to as the plutocracy. She provides them with “irrefutable” and ubiquitous anecdotal evidence which “proves” the idiotic delusion that America is a meritocracy where everyone has a realistic chance of getting rich, if they just work hard enough. The reality is that the richest 20% of US Americans own over 80% of the wealth and the long-term trend has been toward an ever increasing concentration of treasure into a smaller number of strong-boxes(1).

Comfortably administering her dominion from “The Promised Land,” her 42 acre estate near Santa Barbara, CA (which she purchased for a cool $50 million), Oprah surpassed the $1.5 billion mark in net worth in 2006 while earning the tidy sum of $260 million. See what happens when you devote yourself to excellence (and narcissism) instead of “wasting your time” parading about in a dashiki to pursue “ridiculous” ideals like civil rights and egalitarianism? Others did that for her. And now Oprah’s very existence proves that economic inequalities and barriers to upward mobility have been eliminated for all of us, right?

Well, not exactly. Consider that in the United States “the average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family…..[and] the average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family(2).” Meanwhile, in the most affluent nation in the world (in which 12% of the population is black), “Saint Oprah” is the only black billionaire and one of only two blacks to make the Forbes 400.

Despite the innumerable exploitative workings of the capitalist pyramid scheme which enable the obscene opulence of Oprah and her miniscule number of peers (while concurrently damning billions of others to live in varying degrees of economic misery), she certainly has no qualms. In fact, she gushes about her unconscionable accumulation of treasures. From the 4/11/06 People Magazine article, Oprah Winfrey: Wealth Is ‘A Good Thing:’

[Speaking in Baltimore on Monday at a fundraiser for Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School, Winfrey told the audience, “I have lots of things, like all these Manolo Blahniks. I have all that and I think it’s great. I’m not one of those people like, ‘Well, we must renounce ourselves.’ No, I have a closet full of shoes and it’s a good thing.”

Winfrey, 52, who is reportedly worth more than $1 billion, said she doesn’t feel guilty about her wealth. “I was coming back from Africa on one of my trips,” she said. “I had taken one of my wealthy friends with me. She said, ‘Don’t you just feel guilty? Don’t you just feel terrible?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I do not know how me being destitute is going to help them.’ Then I said when we got home, ‘I’m going home to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I’ll feel good about it.’ “(3)]

The Oprah mystique affords her and her fellow members of the opulent ruling class a potent psychological weapon (which they wield like a cudgel) to sustain their cultural hegemony, thus perpetuating their virtual monopoly on the wealth and power of the US. And be it conscious or otherwise, Oprah has betrayed her own race and class by shilling her core philosophy that “not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.” While personal responsibility is undeniably important and human beings do have the potential to pull themselves out of difficult circumstances (i.e. abject poverty), for every Oprah who “makes it,” there are tens of millions, regardless of race, who work tenaciously and are never able to overcome the tremendous barriers erected by the ruling class. Yet Ms. Winfrey would have us believe that if she can do it, anyone can. And if you don’t, just what the hell is wrong with you?

Aside from the significant impediments that face all US Americans (excepting those who are born into our de facto aristocracy and can rise to the top regardless of how lazy, depraved, and ignorant they may be—think George W. Bush), many blacks face nearly overwhelming structural barriers which keep them mired in chronic destitution.

Thanks to the courageous efforts of civil rights activists, institutionalized and overt racism are fading in the United States. However, Oprah’s very existence as a black billionaire and the “you can do and be anything you want if you work hard” pseudo-wisdom she so gleefully dispenses to the masses would indicate that America’s poor (and its impoverished blacks in particular) no longer face incredibly long odds as they employ vigorous efforts to improve their socioeconomic conditions.

Consider this excerpt from Paul Street’s “Skipping Past Structural Racism” (http://www.blackcommentator.com/85/85_think_street.html):

“…reflecting (via e-mail) on a commentary in which liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert argued that inner-city blacks’ material poverty reflected their own poor values and behavior. “There is a need for” a “values discussion” among “the poorest African-Americans,” my correspondent acknowledges. “But,” he added:

“there are three points to add. One is that [the] hypersegregation [of urban blacks into nearly all-black de-industrialized ghettoes] creates objective conditions that incentivize (perhaps even require) certain anti-social behaviors. The second is whether the values evidenced by the poorest are actually anti-American values. If we consider that the norms of the protestant work ethic have been devalued in American society – consider conspicuous consumption, state gambling expansion, frightening anti-intellectualism, Wall Street’s shenanigans, sexual revolution, and that recreational drug use knows no racial barrier – how different is the “underclass” from the rest of America? The final point is the somewhat sad notion that those who have been most disadvantaged by American society must somehow quickly develop the values and norms necessary to overcome those disadvantages, to “function,” concomitant with undertaking political struggle to dismantle structural barriers. What is more is that if we accept that the values Herbert holds in high esteem are not reinforced generally throughout American society, we are absurdly expecting one group of super-disadvantaged people – without additional assistance and against the mainstream of American society – to somehow morph into some kind of ubervolk.

“As the great ‘historical materialist’ Karl Marx once wrote,’men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.’”

Hard as it may be for Oprah and her fellow moneyed elites to fathom, Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” was a pernicious suburban legend, and that most people, given an environment affording them reasonably accessible options, wouldn’t consciously choose to perpetually wallow in the misery, indignity and self-destruction associated with chronic and inter-generational poverty. Not everyone is blessed with exceptional talent, intellect, or drive, but that doesn’t mean they deserve a life of suffering so that a tiny fraction of humanity can live as Croesus did.

With the vast numbers of people she influences, Ms. Winfrey plays an instrumental role in sustaining the false consciousness that keeps us in the poor and working classes pursuing the one in 20 million dream she projects, staunchly opposing the creation of viable publicly funded social uplift programs, and fighting amongst ourselves based in large part upon the malevolent lie that personal responsibility is the ONLY reason so many blacks remain “ghettoized,” unemployed, drug-addicted, and imprisoned.

Man the barricades, Ms. Winfrey, here come the “barbarian hordes” to raid our treasury!

But Oprah didn’t reach her perch atop the capitalist pyramid as one of its chief apologists simply by virtue of her existence as an anomalous opulent black woman (portrayed as what could be the “norm” if only more people subscribed to her “wisdom”). She also plays a very active role in contributing to the bourgeoisie cause.

A common lever of appeasement employed by our de facto aristocracy in the United States is to exercise faux benevolence by making charitable donations. After accumulating shameless affluence through abject exploitation of the Earth and its sentient beings, they show the masses their “humanity” by giving a mere fraction of their ill-gotten gains to a pet cause or two.

Oprah is no exception. Despite being known for her “generosity,” she remains one of the wealthiest people on the planet, maintaining her sprawling estate in California and, at last count, four other lavish abodes with high dollar zip codes. Bear in mind that Forbes recently gauged Oprah’s fortune to be about $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, her crowning philanthropic achievement is her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. This “charitable act” is cynical and self-serving. Its chief beneficiaries are those with a strong interest in maintaining the maleficent inequitable distribution of wealth. Here’s why:

1. Oprah invested $40 million in this school, a mere 2.67% of her net worth.

2. For those questioning the use of the word “invested,” this was indeed a shrewd and calculated investment for Oprah. By “donating” this relatively paltry sum, she will reap huge dividends in terms of increased popularity, goodwill, power, and influence. Her Harpo juggernaut will continue to gain momentum.

3. In a world where 30,000 children die of starvation each day, Oprah has elected to build a posh, luxurious academy equipped to educate a mere 152 girls. Winfrey’s scheme was such an abuse of resources that the South African government withdrew its support of the project.

4. In a vain quest to “make her childhood right”, Oprah is “rescuing” the poor black female attendees of her school by providing them with a regal, lavish existence. Just what the world needs–152 more highly educated elitists who are immersed in the paradigm that the suffering of the many to ensure the comfort of the few is the “way of the world.”

5. Oprah’s principal lesson to her “girls”? Looking to her as their example, they will learn that once they have attained their affluence and power they will need to ease their conscience and help maintain the social order. The lesson is that to do so they will simply need to donate a sliver of their bounty in such a way that it enhances their public image and fulfills their narcissistic needs.

As we prepare to examine Oprah’s most deleterious effect on our society, consider the depth and breadth of her impact as characterized by Vanity Fair:

“Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope.”

Biographer Kitty Kelly added:

“As a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over the American culture and psyche…There has been no other person in the 20th century whose convictions and values have impacted the American public in such a significant way. … I see her as probably the most powerful woman in our society. I think Oprah has influenced every medium that she’s touched.”

Now let’s analyze one of Oprah’s recent and most spiritually corrosive “contributions” to the fetid cesspool we euphemistically call a culture in the United States. In February of this year, Ms.Winfrey used her leviathan media platform to introduce her minions to The Secret, a book that characterizes Christ as a “prosperity teacher.” Leave it to the high priestess of Mammon to promote a means to overcome the seemingly irreconcilable contradictions between the compassionate teachings of Jesus and the avaricious selfishness of capitalism.

Here’s what the Oprah Winfrey Show website had to say about The Secret:

“It’s making headlines around the world—and buzz just keeps building. Some say it’s the secret to creating the life you truly want—losing weight, making money, finding love. See why people everywhere are talking about The Secret.”

James Arthur Ray, whose “credentials” include, “…almost going bankrupt, [which] forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to create wealth in all areas of their lives,” joined forces with Winfrey to plug The Secret, a book rife with myriad inane mythologies the ruling class loves to perpetuate.

Again, from Oprah’s website:

[According to James, there is scientific evidence to back up the spiritual practices and laws defined in The Secret. “Science tells us that everything is energy, and so your thoughts are energy. Your body, your cash, your car—everything you think is solid, if you put it under a high-powered microscope, it’s just a field of energy and a rate of vibration,” he says. “And so are we. So if you think you’re this meat suit running around, you have to think again.”

“One way to describe this energy is by comparing it radio waves, “The frequency you give out through your thoughts and your emotions is what you have a tendency to manifest in your life,” Michael says. “Whether those thoughts and emotions are conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter.”

This means that if you are sending out the same negative energy over an over—whether thoughts or feelings—you will attract like energy back to you. James says that when bad things happen people might ask, “Oh, God, why me?” “Because it is you,” he says(4).]

Forget the immediate insult of James’s barrage of pseudo-scientific gibberish. People have been using that technique to peddle their snake oil for years. The core issue here is that in The Secret, James and company are hawking a particularly toxic brew. Oprah, Secret author Rhonda Byrne, and their fellow hucksters would have us believe that Tony Robbins or Gandhi would be equally at home applying The Secret’s “spiritual practices” based on “scientific evidence” to create the life they “truly want.”

At first blush its obvious remarketing of the shopworn “philosophies” related to the power of positive thinking seems benign enough, but thanks to its Oprah’s validation sparking its wild popularity and wide acceptance, The Secret is significantly reinforcing some very nasty strands of our cultural DNA, which is no small blessing to the moneyed elites atop our economic hierarchy.

While to a person who values critical thought and the pursuit of true meaning in their life The Secret would serve little purpose beyond perhaps kindling or toilet paper, future archaeologists may hail it as a Rosetta Stone to unlock the mysteries of our perverse, mean-spirited, and jejune society. Byrne was careful to incorporate nearly every revolting aspect of American culture, including narcissism, self-absorption, victim-blaming, hubris, consumerism, immediate gratification, acquisitiveness, Mammon worship, hyper-individuality, selfishness, and an unwavering faith in any belief that “forces” the world to conform to our desires.

In typical Oprah Book Club fashion, Winfrey’s enthusiastic endorsement sent the sales of Byrne’s abomination soaring into orbit. Thank you, Oprah.

As the abundant evidence indicates, despite her impeccable image and the ostensibly “positive influence” she has upon the untold millions who have yet to shatter the intellectual shackles of their acculturation and indoctrination, Oprah Winfrey is a member of our cynical pecunious ruling class and acts as a highly effective shill for their agenda.

Forget the good and benevolent image she projects. Oprah ultimately serves to distract, obfuscate, and lead us into the increasingly over-crowded cul-de-sac of “fuck thy neighbor; what’s in it for thee” savage capitalism. As a part of our filthy plutocracy, she is an enemy to the poor and working class. We need to start viewing her through that lens.

Notes:

(1) http://multinationalmonitor.org/…

(2) ibid

(3) http://www.people.com/…

(4) http://www2.oprah.com/…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Miller —in his words— “was a wage slave of the American Empire who had freed himself intellectually and spiritually.”  For several years he served as Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate editor and published Thomas Paine’s Corner as a personal blog within Cyrano’s.  Later he became a vocal advocate for the cause of animal rights.