LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[Friday, 22 JAN 2021] So, this is it. Here we go, again. We are officially back in the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing politics of the Democrat Party, who make us feel warm and fuzzy, as they devour us with neoliberalism.
Why is America – why does this loom to be such an explosive political year? Because this is the year of politics. This is the year when all of the white politicians are going to come into the Negro community. You never see them until election time. You can’t find them until election time. [applause] They’re going to come in with false promises. And as they make these false promises they’re going to feed our frustrations, and this will only serve to make matters worse. I’m no politician. I’m not even a student of politics. I’m not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American – and got sense enough to know it. [applause]
I’m one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats. One of the 22 million black victims of the Republicans and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism. [applause] And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy – all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. [applause]
Malcolm X, quoted from “The Ballot or The Bullet” speech, 12 APR 1964, King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan
@LumpenProles, 07:53 PST, Friday, 22 JAN 2021
***
After our primary duties are taken care of, let us find out what’s going on out there. Remember, don’t let no one get you down, ‘cos if they do, we’ll be around. Solidarity.
“Mob Mentality: Capitol riot exploited to expand the security state that failed to stop it”, 21 JAN 2022, The Grayzone
Max Blumenthal and Aarom Maté provide us with very valuable analysis and insights in this important discussion. This narrative makes a lot of sense to us. But, of course, Blumenthal’s Grayzone analysis is looking at these events through a political lense. And it’s very revealing that the most vocal slogans among the Trump loyalist alliance were anti-China and anti-Communist slogans and ranting. Blumenthal seemed to downplay racial motivations. We can see how his perspective can be explained by the possibility that he may have seen the most militant subscribers to Trump’s anti-China rhetoric. But the masses in attendance may be less concerned about China and more driven by an assortment of complaints, from anti-establishment views to white supremacy and fascism. But I’m with Martin and Malcolm. We cannot ignore the fact that white supremacy was baked in from the start. Our failure to deal with this reality, the North’s abandonment of Reconstruction, the New Jim Crow (i.e., Second Reconstruction period), and the Black Lives Matter response has left the nation in need of a sincere and meaningful Third Reconstruction, as various observers have emphasized on Pacifica Radio these past few weeks. And, with Black Lives Matter being cited by many in law enforcement as their greatest threat to their unchecked power to kill with impunity and oppress people of color and low-income communities, BLM is poised to defeat and/or reform an institution, which was founded to support the institution of slavery, then to support the capitalist mode of production to jail discontents, dissenters, and debtors. The notion that police exist to keep us safe and to care for us and envelope us in their loving embrace seems an increasingly fleeting notion. U.S. policing has become increasingly militarized, yet without any appreciable benefits or improvements in U.S. ghettoes. Poverty continues unabated, which incentivizes petty crime, which provides a pretext for increased policing. We’ve known this since the 1960s and ’70s. When cops complain that they’re not social workers, that they can’t solve all the society’s problems, it becomes harder for them to argue for increased police budgets. And redirecting some of their bloated budgets to real social workers, who can provide real resources and services to those impacted communities starts to make a lot of sense. Again, we all ought to revisit MLK and Malcolm and other freedom fighters. Kat Brooks was talking about how they would play MLK speeches for the BLM protestors to help them build their resolve toward non-violent direct action, and also to learn about the real MLK, who has been censored out of the history books. MLK was more than a dreamer; he was also an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumerist, which we may be forgiven for reading as a communist.
00:00 – 03:00 PST, KPFK [LA] > Something’s Happening A > […]
03:00 – 06:00 PST, 05:46, RDWOLFF CLIO ON what Biden’s immediate economic program should be, from 21 jan 2021 no mmt? Wolff’s flaw.
05:00 PST, WPFW [DC] & WBAI [NYC] > Democracy Now! > […] 05:35 PST ‘book-burners’. Native American elders, keepers of the language, are dying from covid, native languages may be lost.
05:40 – c. 1230 PST, KPFA no app feed. See website feed, instead: https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=live
06:00 PST, 198pg plan, as covid soars to new heights. No herd immunity in NYC til 2022? […] “START Treaty” […] waiver for lloyd Austin (Raytheon), a 1st black person to that position
06:00 KPFK > The Stephanie Miller Show > 06:20 PST, liberal talk, of being so pleased that Biden “created such a divide” yesterday from Trump and his politics. Like Amy Goodman’s first guest today, so pleased with Biden. But this is exactly what will further alienate the 74 million, who correctly recognize Biden’s neoliberal corruption and the Democrat Party’s collusion to block third party alternatives. […] 06:26 PST, on the military involvement, “Michael Flynn”, et al “lied”, enabled the 6th? […] 06:28 PST. on Trump’s parting “grifts” and offenses… […] 06:30, more Biden boasting, delusions… […] 06:38 PST, more otherization of the 74 million. This is how out-of-touch liberals will further divide the nation, if they are not careful. They talk trash about the Trump voters, but never bother to engage them on a human level to see what they actually have to say for themselves. Liberals and their liberal audiences seem to have no interest in dialogue across ideologies. That is a recipe for extreme alienation, bitterness, and conflict. Listening to The Stephanie Miller Show is so disappointing because they don’t seem to appreciate how dangerous it is to continue to denigrate and alienate tens of millions of Americans, who were victims of narcissistic abuse, were gaslighted, and manipulated. That 74 million might even continue growing, as comedians keep making fun of them. Chris Hedges tried to warn us back in 2015, just before Trump announced his candidacy for president, that we ignore the rise of fascism at our own peril. Hedges reminded us of the Berlin cabarets where comedians made fun of the Nazis night after night, until the cabarets got closed down, one by one. And, then, people got killed. Like Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, et al., four years of liberal wit accomplished nothing. This show is a mixed bag, we appreciate the factoids and information, but lament the lack of seriousness of purpose. Jimmy Dore has a comedic approach, but retains his seriousness of purpose. Perhaps, that has to do with the fact that he almost died when he had to rely on our for-profit healthcare system when he had a life-threatening disease, but unable to afford the exorbitant medical bills. Stephanie Miller seems to represent a liberal approach to heuristic persuasion.
06:00 PST, WPFW > […] 06:31 PST, talk, interview, “hip hop was originally created for gentrification justice”
06:00 PST, WBAI > […] 06:33 PST, “with your wisdom and your energy”. Fund drive mode for listener-supported free speech radio. Donate and get gift: Julia Loggins, Reboot Your Immune System.
07:00 PST, KPFK > Sojourner Truth > On Biden’s first days, plus MLK speech. [TP] panelists include Dr. Gerald Horne, et al. > 07:02 PST, KPFA News Headlines [TP]
07:00 PST, WPFW > 07:04 PST, News, more honest about Biden’s falseness than KPFA news. [TP]
0800 wpfw 0815 uncritical covid talk
08:00 PST, WBAI > [TP] talk, reclaiming the real MLK. This is the type of sincere discussion, which has long been lacking at KPFA. KPFA’s dominant faction are Wellstone Democrats, who stifle voices critical of the Democrat Party. They would take us back to a time of liberals before MLK and Malcolm X and other important leaders, exposed and rejected the Democrat Party as a false opposition party to the evils of the Republican Party, which has long seeded and nurtured racist, white supremacist culture in the USA.
09:00 – 10:00 PST, WBAI > The Gary Null Show > talk, health.
1100 wpfw resistance radio (rerun) [TP]
1100 KPFA [TP] VOMENA
1200 KPFA bourgeois analysis of the 6th, etc. Where’s Against the Grain when u need them? […] “anarchist” guest smeared the left, said ‘leftwing govts are worse than right-wing’, as if all future iterations of left movements would repeat the errors of the past… […] 12:57 PST, That was a disappointing broadcast. KPFA seems determined to have their own isolated take or narrative on this historical moment. As noted previously, KPFA dropped out of key national Pacifica Radio broadcasts. And Mitch Jeserich, Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Kris Welch, et al refuse to engage with the listenership on a sincere basis. When it comes to a program about the state of the nation in the aftermath of the 6th and Biden’s first 100 days, ATG dodges the current events, and they air anarchist analysis, which ignores party politics. They talk a good game, but disempower…
1200 wbai TP Sojourner Truth Dr. Gerald Horne, debunking US colony settler myths
13:00 PST, KPFA > The Project Censored Show > A big sigh of relief falls over many of us when we get to commune with a good Project Censored broadcast, especially in times of crisis, such as our current American winter of discontent.
14:00 PST, WBAI > 14:03 PST, an honest conversation; we need more of this. These ladies are speaking with sincerity.
“The Ballot or The Bullet” speech, 12 APR 1964, King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan
(c. 7:34) At this point in the speech, Malcolm X makes the case for economic self-determination for black people through mutual aid, and even boycotting white businesses to help get black businesses off the ground by concentrating black purchasing power onto black-owned businesses. Also, there’s an important element of boycotting white businesses as a political rejection of white supremacist socioeconomic structures in society.
However, in the process, Malcolm X, perhaps, is excessively harsh on his audience, as if boycott-divestment-sanctions would be the answer because the “slums” he lamented were solely created by patronizing white businesses. It was certainly an excellent starting point.
What few people knew was that the slums and ghettos were deliberately created through red-lining, racial residential covenants, school zoning rules, and other draconian and racist real estate and development laws and ordinances.
Dr. Kevin Fox Gotham’s book, Race, Real. Estate, and Uneven Development lays out all this history powerfully. This was eye-opening for us to learn in Dr. Erik Olsen’s Urban Economics course at the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Most economics departments are conservative (i.e., neoclassical); so, they don’t teach you this kind of stuff. Most econ depts tend to want to erase history and the human element altogether. They want to turn economics into the most boring math classes. So, that passionate dreamers, who want to help end unemployment or homelessness or poverty, will never go into the field of economics.
Listening to this again, it’s amazing how prescient Malcolm X was, like many people of color. Malcolm X was spot on. No, that’s an understatement. Like MLK, he was prophetic.
We may not know the details or specifics, but we can see it in our daily lives how white supremacist institutions are stacked against people of color.
We agree with one caller on Pacifica Radio, during on-air radio call-in on WPFW in the aftermath of the racist, fascist, and narcissistic assaults on the Capitol, who said he’d been revisiting Malcolm X’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. Indeed. The lessons about black people (and all people of color, nay, all people) must stop voting Democrat because it’s a false opposition party.
18:00 PST, (91.3) NPR > ‘A wartime effort’ is what Biden says will be required to fight the pandemic. Hosts air an uncritical interview with Dr. Fauci, who extolls the virtues of the drugs he’s pushing. No mention of Immunoboosters…
*
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the USA. Seth Meyers was telling jokes, eerily reminiscent of the comedians at the nightly cabarets in Berlin, making fun of the brown shirts.
*
[These are my raw notes. I will expand and edit, as time constraints allow. TP = transcript pending volunteer labor. We must transcribe breaking news and information to make it accessible, searchable, and usable. It’s urgent that we document the people’s narrative of the events of January 6th and President Biden’s response in his administration’s first 100 days, which have been situated historically in the aftermath of polarized American social relations in the wake of the 6th. We seek diversity of perspectives; so, we seek perspectives not often found on corporate media. But we must not get corralled into narrow silos of thought, theory, or action. Please, also monitor corporate media and right-wing media, too,. Solidarity.]
***
[22 JAN 2021]
[Last modified on 22 JAN 2021 at 18:44 PST]
Lumpenproletariat 