Editorial and Contributors’ Notes
Eddie Glaude, Marc Lamont Hill, Cornel West are Misleading Black Millennials.
Very little has changed since the 19th Century when outsiders determined the trends in African American politics and culture. Given their power, a few network executives, who serve corporate interests like General Electric, Comcast, and Time Warner, choose those spokespersons who act as their scouts. Their assignment is to gauge Black opinion. These pundits and analysts have tremendous power. Most of the Black commentators lean toward conservatism. Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee, for example, can be seen around the clock on MSNBC. Poor Steele has the thankless task of defending Donald Trump, the political Frankenstein Clown that media executives manufactured because he brings them profits.
Because of his links to a foundation that is supported by members of the Fortune 500, John McWhorter, who totes their Eugenics philosophy, was jumped ahead of traditional Civil Rights leaders, including elected ones. Some of those pundits lean toward the political left. Professors Eddie Glaude, a regular on “Morning Joe,” CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill and Cornel West fit that category. Cornel West doesn’t have a media job, but he is often the go-to Black intellectual for shows like Bill Maher's. West has also received backing from a powerful entity in American politics. The social democrats. As a way of giving the chosen pundits immunity, their line and the line from some naive Black critics is that you mad ‘cause they didn’t choose you. You upset ‘bout they success. For those who believe that I write this out of envy because I haven’t been chosen as a scout, I have turned down network appearances and invitations to do my own shows. Television and radio.
If Black Millennials are reluctant to support the Democratic nominee, it might be because of the influence of Glaude, Lamont and West. Glaude is asking for boycott of the Democratic nominee in states that Clinton has a chance of winning. With the lead that Donald Trump has, with help from a media that places profits over truth, which states would that be? Voters must regard every state as a tossup, given the billions of dollars in free publicity that the networks are according to Trump because he puts on a decadent show. Abraham Fox, head of The Anti- Defamation League, said that Trump rallies remind him of the Nazi rallies in Germany of the 30s and 40s.
Marc Lamont Hill says that he won’t vote for the Democratic nominee, even though his running mate, Michael Spence, has some extreme views about the rights of Gays. Cornel West is supporting the Green Party, which, according to the nominee of the Libertarian Party, is drawing votes from Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Jean Stein is polling at 3%. In a close election, her drawing 3% from Secretary Clinton might make a difference. Her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, hangs out on the fringes. From The Daily Beast:
“Earlier this year, the former executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network had his work featured in a book edited by accused Holocaust denier (‘the Holocaust controversy was a legitimate topic of historical debate’) and self-described 9/11 truther Kevin Barrett. The book, Another French False Flag? Bloody Tracks from Paris to San Bernardino, featured the likes of Jewishness-loathing Gilad Atzmon and Ken O’Keefe, who once made a YouTube video explaining how ‘Hitler was right.’”
With the support of Jill Stein, Ajamu Baraka has called the president an “Uncle Tom.” Uncle Tom? The president ran for an office that General Powell’s family was opposed to Powell’s running for. Obama and his family have received thousands of death threats. Shots were fired at the White House balcony where his daughters sometimes gather. His presidency has brought the evil racist slime in America’s unconscious to the surface. The ugly blogs about Obama and his family that appear on social media as well as at Breitbart, which was run by Steve Bannon, the CEO of Trump’s campaign, will be analyzed by psychiatrists for years to come.
Under Obama, three million Blacks who would not have had health insurance have it now because of Obamacare. He has faced a storm of criticism because of his exposing a rotten criminal justice system; under his leadership, the government has withdrawn its support from private prisons. For him, global warming is not a hoax.
I have criticized the president for his tough love lectures which single out Blacks, but in my opinion, presidents Obama and JFK are the best presidents that you’re going to get under this capitalist system.
Cornel West calls Obama “A mascot of Wall Street.” As an example of West’s power and influence as a result of his backing from wealthy progressives, his comment, picked up by CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, reached millions. If he believes that Wall Street is evil, he should tell his wealthy Berkeley-Hills and Beverly-Hills’ progressive supporters, who wanted him to primary the president in 2012, to stop investing in capitalism. Like West and Hill, Glaude talks pretty but on “Morning Joe” he follows MSNBC's talking points that Trump’s followers are those who have been left behind, economically. This lets racists and anti-Semites off the hook. The purpose of this line is to comfort the haters who buy their advertisers’ products.
This idea has been refuted by a Gallup study and a 100 page report Tea Party Nation, which reports that every broken-down, has-been individual on the swastika circuit over the decades, those who have sampled the 3 day old apple pies of every seedy diner from coast to coast, have attached themselves to the Tea Party, the foundation for Trump's support. Not only do these fascist deadbeats threaten Jewish reporters who unlike the weak and pathetic Obama hater, Chuck Todd, expose the fraud that Trump is, but beat up Black people who attend his rallies. When I informed Glaude that 20% of Trump’s followers believe that Lincoln was wrong to free the slaves, he was surprised. Shouldn't he have known that?
I share some of the trio’s objection to Mrs. Clinton. Under the regime of her husband, more Blacks were incarcerated than any time in history. I said that any Black who voted for Mrs. Clinton given her “super predator” remarks, which turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by the fringe that supports Race Science, and her support for Welfare Reform, which has South Asian immigrants eating out of garbage cans, should have their heads examined. But that’s before the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump, who as president would return the Civil Rights movement to the Dark Ages, and construct suppressive campaigns that would injure the rights of women. He believes in hoaxes like voter fraud and dismisses claims of global warming as “A Chinese Conspiracy.” Why would millennials risk electing a person with such views when some scientists are saying that we are approaching the point-of-no return about the issue? He gets all of his information about the world from supermarket tabloids. Like his advisor Rudolph Giuliani, he will support the police no matter how recklessly they use firearms against Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Muslims, and LGBTers. Chinese Americans would be the subject of hate crimes as a result of his demagogic attacks on China. So those who are critics of Mrs. Clinton face the choice that Louisiana voters faced when David Duke ran for governor against Edward Edwards. As David Brinkley said about the outcome of that election, Louisianans “Chose the crook over the Nazi.”
In the late 1800s, the Southern White nationalists took their argument on behalf of their superiority to the battlefield. Over 600,000 people lost their lives. The Black millennials, if they attended the same schools that I attended, or get their information from the segregated media, where Black independent voices are few, may have heard of Selma 1965, but not New Orleans of 1886, where over 200 Blacks were massacred, because some Black men tried to assert their constitutional rights.* Or the Wilmington riots of 1898, where Black elected officials were removed from office by force and others massacred.** But if the 600,000 weren’t enough to convince the world that White nationalism, though capable of drawing millions is actually a death cult, and in our country, led by a group whose members have high suicide rates, in the late 30s and 40s, White nationalists’ managed European governments and made a claim for Aryanism on the battlefield. 60 million people lost their lives.
The storm troopers surrounding Trump are successors to these earlier White nationalist movements. They brag about it. Though flabby, Trump is their Blonde Beast. Glaude, Hill, and West, all of whom have audiences in the millions, are urging Black millennials to either boycott the top of the Democratic ticket, stay home, or vote Green Party.
Network executives who act out of loyalty to the dollar and not to democracy have given the trio the power to reach millions. They are telling people to support candidates who have little chance of winning in the face of the most serious threat to Black aspirations since the early part of the 20th Century.
I don’t know why Hill and Glaude are risking an election of Trump. For Cornel West it might arise from animosity toward a president whom he feels slighted him. He has to decide whether his hurt feelings are more important than the future of those millennials who listen to him.
Ishmael Reed
*http://www.blackpast.org/aah/new-orleans-massacre-1866
**http://www.blackpast.org/aah/wilmington-race-riot-1898
Contributors’ Notes: