LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Sooner or later, the chickens always come home to roost. That’s what we saw on Wednesday, January 6th. Black people were the first observers I noticed pointing this out. Others were surprised. They don’t remember Malcolm X. Yet, the U.S. has been interfering with elections around the world. Most of the violent mob on Wednesday were law enforcement or military-trained. So, the lynch mob violence the world witnessed on the 6th at the Capitol might be interpreted as police harassment and brutality against Congress. Mob violence by a bunch of pro-cop thugs and out-of-uniform cops coalesced on the 6th in a frenzy of misguided, manipulated, and misdirected frustration to subject Congress to the type of police harassment, profiling (persecuting), beating, and killing, which police agencies have been doing to people of color for decades across the nation. Again, the chickens have come home to roost.
@LumpenProles
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Thursday, January 14, 2021
Welcome to my notebook. It seems Dems held the line yesterday. Only ex-Dems argued against impeachment. But only ten Republicans voted against fascism yesterday. That speaks to the reactive narcissism of the Republican Party. They are committing political suicide, even willing to risk reducing our government to a quasi banana republic, or a politically unstable country. Clearly, the GOP cares more about preserving white supremacy than democracy. If the GOP is dying, do not resuscitate, it has proven itself illegitimate and antidemocratic. The sad thing is the Democrat Party has also been historically antidemocratic in its collusion with the Republican Party to block alternative political parties from the presidential debates and ballot access in many states across the nation with top-two primary laws and whatnot.
05:00 – 06:00 PST, WPFW [DC] & WBAI [NYC] & (simulcast) > Democracy Now! > News Headlines > Trump weaponizing census against immigrants.
05:00 PST – 06:00 PST, KPFK > Something’s Happening B > Democracy Now! News Headlines. > 05:15 PST, The Tom Hartmann Show (rerun) Coverage of Impeachment Proceedings. Quigley. Deb Ross (D). Man from Virginia (R).[…] 0550, end of show. 05:54 PST, “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” song
06:00 PST, KPFK [L.A.] > The Stephanie Miller Show > [TP] On the fascist events of January 6th. Compelling analysis f4om guest guy, who monitors right-wing media and groupings.
06:00 PST, WPFW > […] > On the Margin > [TP] Primary document: Fascinating interview by young man with an elder woman. 06:23 PST, “Jim was the one that built the trains.” ‘Yes. And wasn’t he responsible for Mary Frances Berry coming to D.C.” Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Books: The Making of Black Revolutionaries, first published by McMillan. Sammy Young, Jr was the first to die, shot by a gas station attendant who would not allow him to use the restroom for whites. He was a young hero. Grove Press book on Sammy Young, Jr. […] James Foreman, his Freedom of Information Files (FOIA) ‘they were following him all his life.’ JF died in 2005. Library of Congress has organized a lot of Civil Rights era documents. “Jim wanted to be a novelist.” “But, somehow, [his novel] was lost during the [Civil Rights] movement.”
06:00 PST, WBAI > Equal Rights and Justice with Mimi Rosenberg > […] 06:38 PST, talk. 6th aftermath. Biden politics will replay Obama-style neoliberalism. 06:42 PST, will there be a shift in the Republican Party? […] On the Q-Anon narratives and their adherents. ‘Will Trump be able to form, or coalesce, something cohesive out of the disparate racist and fascist groups. Recall: ‘Hitler lost control of the Brown Shirts. So, he ended up executing them.’ ‘Trump alienated the military, so his power grab failed.’ [Imagine if he’d charmed the military. Oh, the horror.]
06:00 PST, KPFA [Berkeley, CA] > Democracy Now! > […] 06:55 PST, COVID-19 vaccine science update. […]
07:00 PST, KPFA > […] [TP] 07:26 PST, the legalities of why Trump can, and must, be impeached. “They’re on the books. And he should be charged […]” BET interview [TP] […] 07:57 PST, listener call-ins. ‘The lack of a 3rd party is the problem…’ [Yet, KPFA never supported third-party politics. They never gave Ralph Nader air-time until he was no longer politically viable. Then, they and Pacifica Radio gave him a radio show. Classic.]
07:00 PST, WPFW [DC] & WBAI [NYC] (simulcast) > The Collision with Dave Zirin > 07:28 PST, talk. sports. 07:30 PST, music break (’90s hip hop)
07:00 PST, KPFK > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod […] 07:35 PST, environmental activism, the Tongas(?) 07:37 PST, music break (“Eyes On the Prize” by Sweet Honey and the Rock. Up next, Haiti.
08:00 – 09:00 PST, KPFK > Democracy Now! > […] [TW] The Bitter Fruits of… Dr. Keeanga Yamatta-Taylor(sp?)
08:00 – 09:00 PST, WBAI > Sojourner Truth > [TP] dr joy de grus(sp?)
08:00 PST, WPFW > 08:15 PST, [TP] resistance to ‘Orientalism’ through arts, tapestry (cf. Edward Said)
08:00 – 09:00 PST, KPFA > UpFront > BET
09:00 PST, WPFW > music: the blues
09:00 PST, WBAI > Gary Null [TP] Interesting info, during fund drive broadcast.
09:00 PST, KPFA > Democracy Now!> 09:23 PST, John Boniface(sp?), 6th.
1000 kpfa kpfk lap tw
10:00 PST, WBAI > Black Agenda Radio > […] 10:20 PST, [rerun] black anarchists and pan-african socialism. [See audio note.] Author [TP], Dr. Marx
10:00 PST, WPFW > 1016 covid info talk > 10:35 PST, [TP] Richard Schweib(sp?) (from Barcelona) on labor topics. RS reported severe lockdown there. “You really can’t leave the municipality [after curfew] without good cause.” […] 11:20 PST, Is it inflammatory to talk about an ‘inside job’ or LIHOP? [Tw] what can we learn from the 9/11 Truth Movement? […] 1141 [TP] 11:46 PST, “white Christian nationalism” is the problem… [TP] cf. ‘work of black women’
1155 bai wpfw news headlines
12:00 – 13:00 PST, KPFA > Behind the News > Jodi Dean [TP] “Ted Cruz is just so utterly vile.” –Jodi Dean on #BehindTheNews with @DougHenwood . “The question is: What’s the next thing that’s gonna bring them [the motley assortment of misguided discontents] together.” 1232, quincy Bowdoin author of Globalists(?)
13:00 PST, KPFK > [TP] white-sounding people engaging in liberal, bourgeois politics. With all due respect, I’ve heard this before. This is not for me. And I wouldn’t recommend this naive pollyannish rubbish. This man is regurgitating old Alan Watts hits with less verve. And, even, he will admit that he was merely interpreting eastern philosophy for the west. His female companion cited the problem of the day (re: the 6th) as the “virus, social justice, and politics”. 13:16 PST, this woman has no concept of white supremacy, much less white nationalism or fascism. People need to read Dr. Peter Dale Scott, Dr. Peter Phillips, Dr. Karl Marx, Dr. Michelle Alexander, Fred Hampton, Frantz Fanon. I dunno. Maybe this bourgeois broadcast is good for somebody out there. I just can’t think of who that might be.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. empire convulsed internally on its own toxicity, externally, its moral authority, even decency (and, by extension, its imperial authority) is being challenged abroad. RT has just reported: “China says ‘George Floyd cannot even breathe freely’ as it blasts US over Uighur Muslims forced labor claims”. We gotta wake the folk up. Our nation, or rather our ‘ship of state’ (whatever the hell that means) is belligerent, when it needs to be humble. Maybe it’s time to begin questioning so-called ‘statist’ solutions and start thinking about ‘stateless’ solutions.
13:00 PST, WBAI [NYC] > Democracy Now! > Dr. Keeanga Yamatta(sp?) Taylor [TP]
“Observation No Crime” by Fela Kuti [1]
14:00 PST
Back in October 2020, the AP reported, “Black officers break from unions over Trump endorsements.” Many of us may be excused for not having heard about this. Such dissent flew under the radar for too many of us. Then we have the following headline from NPR, also from October 2020, “How Endorsement Of Trump Could Affect Legitimacy Of Police.” Revealing NPR’s bias, their wordsmith, Martin Kaste, wrote about cops’ bromance with Trump, “Some worry that kind of political alignment may undermine the police’s legitimacy.” No shit? Rather than make me worry, the notion warms my cockles. I imagine I’m not alone. I have never felt anything except racism and hostility from police. Well, that’s not true on an individual basis. I have encountered respectful cops. But it’s true at the institutional level. And that makes me question the decency of cops, who do not dissent from the white supremacist and, increasingly, white nationalist nature of police agency leadership.
The so-called “Blue Wall of Silence” has functioned as subterfuge for white supremacist ideology. We all need to seriously think about defunding the police. Listening to Pacifica Radio very closely this past week, I heard at least one excellent explanation of the concept of defunding the police. Defunding the police doesn’t mean abolish the police. It means prioritizing the social programs, which cops themselves admit are needed to reduce poverty and other incentives for crime. When local funding is allocated, and crime is held up as a problem to be solved, we cannot simply continue to increase police funding as if that will solve crime. It hasn’t so far. There’s no reason to expect it will now. People are incentivized to commit crime, by and large, due to poverty and other social ills, for which solutions exist, but political will is lacking. Socialist and communist politics understands this fact of sociology. Capitalist politics is all about individualism. There is no space for social concerns or socioeconomic, or even simply social, justice in capitalist social relations. Any humanity in capitalist societies was injected from other ideologies, such as spirituality and basic human, neighborly decency.
15:00 PST,
And then Scott Rodd filed this foreboding, or comforting, headline, for CapRadio: “California To Deploy National Guard Ahead Of Expected Demonstrations Leading Up To Inauguration Day.” Yo7 can’t blame the governor. Right-wing and fascist media has been broadcasting all sorts of rabid incitement and plotting everywhere. It seems authorities have been responding somewhat. The FBI has issued warnings that the fascists are planning armed demonstrations and/or occupations in all 50 states.
20:00
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‘Being Neutral in the Face of a Fascist Threat Is Not an Acceptable Journalistic Value’
CounterSpin interview with Dorothee Benz on January 6 insurrection JANINE JACKSON
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Janine Jackson (Fair.org) makes a powerful point in the headline, ‘Being Neutral in the Face of a Fascist Threat Is Not an Acceptable Journalistic Value’. We heard a similar point on WBAI‘s broadcast of Resistance Radio, where one woman was questioning the role of the media as anthropological observers, morally and emotionally detached from the events, they’re witnessing, which may be presenting threats even to themselves. At one point, we wonder, does anthropological observation become complicity? We understand the desire of journalistic objectivity, but what is the purpose of documenting injustice, if not to contribute to its end? The ideology of neutrality, or journalistic objectivity, assumes a neutral agent. But nobody is neutral in the sense that we all harbor a certain degree of bias because of our particular life experiences. Some of us simply choose to be overt about it, whereas others choose to be covert. And we notice how one grouping at KPFA seems to self-censor when party politics are involved, or the issues of the day may warrant serious critiques of the Democrat Party. Even worse is when this faction, including Kris Welch, have access to prominent Democrats and give them access to the free speech airwaves, but then refuse to ask them the hard questions. It’s very disappointing and contradictory to the station manager’s on-air proclamations about KPFA ‘advancing the conversation for social and racial justice’. It is true that many sincere broadcasters at KPFA do a fine job of speaking sincerely and never dodging the issues, such as Ann Garrison, Dennis Bernstein, Steve Zeltzer, Bonnie Simmons (before she was taken off the air), Kat Brooks, Mickey Huff, Walter Turner, Miguel Molina, and others.
But there are repeat offenders at KPFA, who we hear fending off callers during call-ins, callers who voice their frustrations at the lackluster framing of the issues of the day. This grouping exhibits a journalistic behavioral pattern, which simply refuses to engage with callers sincerely on controversial issues of the day. Callers are calling in and asking for things that used to exist at KPFA. When a caller crosses them ideogically, usually by articulating a clear political position to the left of them, they will acknowledge the caller and, perhaps, what the caller said, but hang up stat. The only perspectives to the left of their evidently centrist political positioning, which they tend to allow on the air to engage current events are anarchists, who shun party politics. Thus, they pose no serious critiques of the Democrat Party as a false opposition party, and, therefore, seem to pose no political threat to their agenda, unlike other leftists, which they seem to avoid. During the recent national Pacifica Radio special broadcasts to cover the proto-fascist events of January 6th, during the most compelling hour of radio, when the Revolutionary Communist Party was on the air, KPFA cut away from the national broadcast to the usual liberal, less critical discussion provided by Kris Welch on The Talkies. It was very disappointing to know that the Bay Area and northern California Pacifica airwaves were being deprived of perspectives not often heard in the so-called mainstream media. Conversely, when a caller calls in to support the Democrat Party, they allow the caller to go on at great length. This is the same for guests, too. All of this demonstrates a pattern, which many of us have observed at KPFA for years, decades. It seems it’s time to request an interview with our favorite KPFA broadcasters to ask them for their perspectives on what we, the listenership, are hearing. Are we satisfied with the apparent pro-Democrat Party line, which is held quite strongly by Rising Up, UpFront, Letters and Politics, The Talkies, et al.? Notice the stark contrast from the other current affairs programming on KPFA, which don’t seem to self-censor the way the liberal broadcasters in question seem to do. Perhaps, it has something to do with a bourgeois perspective. It’s very subtle and hard to pinpoint, but not impossible, especially when you’ve been a KPFA/Pacifica Radio listener since your teenage years.
[These are our raw notes. We will expand and edit, as time constraints allow. TP = transcript pending volunteer labor. Please help transcribe breaking news and information. It’s urgent that we document the people’s narrative of the events of January 6th. Please, also monitor corporate media and right-wing media, too. Solidarity. ]
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[1] As of 23 JAN 2020 this video link was disabled by the publisher or by YouTube for some reason.
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[14 JAN 2021]
[Last modified on 23 JAN 2021 at 07:48 PST]
Lumpenproletariat 