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Lumpenproletariat

Category Archives: Political Science

Lockdown TV | Glenn Greenwald: Big Tech Is Censoring COVID-19 & Political Debate

28 Mon Dec 2020

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Fascism, Anti-Totalitarianism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Democratic Party (USA), Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Political Science, Presidential Election 2016, Presidential Election 2020, Republican Party (USA)

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COVID-19, Dr. Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967), Freddie Sayers, Lockdown TV, UnHerd

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—The lack of public scientific and policy debate around COVID-19 science and policy responses is ever shocking to those of us paying attention to the unfolding viral outbreak. Glenn Greenwald articulates eloquently the very real dangers to our open society, of which many of us are ignoring or completely unaware.  We have recklessly made sweeping sacrifices to civil liberties and handed over authoritarian powers to the state in the American slipshod state response to the viral outbreak. So, it’s a welcome discussion when Lockdown TV host Freddie Sayers engages in a healthy reality check with Glenn Greenwald. Lockdown TV can be viewed on the UnHerd YouTube channel.

YouTube > UnHerd > Lockdown TV > Freddie Sayers > Glen Greenwald > Big Tech Censorship

Beyond COVID-19 debate censorship by big tech corporations in Silicon Valley, such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Sayers and Greenwald discussed their respective experiences with censorship in the recent past. Greenwald had to leave The Intercept, which he co-founded due to censorship issues. And Sayers mentioned how their viewers alerted UnHerd that some of their more controversial videos were being downgraded in the search results by the YouTube algorithm. One video was taken down completely. UnHerd was able to make enough noise due to having a large following of support to have their video put back up by YouTube. Similarly, Greenwald mentioned recently defending an African-American communist on Twitter with a following of about 30,000 people, who had his Twitter account arbitrarily suspended. Evidently, Twitter decided he didn’t deserve free speech because they disagreed with his politics. But Glenn Greenwald has a big enough platform/following that he was able to get his fellow Twitter colleague’s account restored.  But this amounts to a system of patronage, a corrupt political patronage, where the only thing that matters is connections.  If you have a connection to the ruling class, somehow, you get a pass.  Both Sayers and Greenwald point out that it shouldn’t have to be this way.

Social media platforms, such as Twitter, are essential to journalism. Censoring users to stifle political diversity is antidemocratic. But big tech is doing just that, and by their own admission, explained Greenwald. Once monopolistic institutions reach a particular critical mass, it’s safe to say, for all intents and purposes, they have become a part of the commons.

How long will we allow the commons to be dominated antidemocratic forces?

Messina

***

[4 JAN 2021]

[Last modified on 4 JAN 2021 at 10:00 PST]

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Jacobin | The Revolutionary Humanism of Frantz Fanon

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Posted by ztnh in Africa, Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Fascism, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Racism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Marxian Theory (Marxism), Memoirs, Political Science, Pyschology & Psychiatry, Racism (phenotype)

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Dr. Peter Hudis, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), lumpenproletariat, Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), peasantry

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—A friend of mine at a Mediterranean café in Berkeley many years ago commented to a mutual friend about me, as I gorged on shawarma: You know what he needs to read? He needs to read Frantz Fanon. Indeed. I was only familiar with the “Cliff’s” notes version of The Wretched of the Earth. Honestly, I think I was afraid to read Fanon, even as an adult in my 20s, American fascism being what it is and all. People of color are often discouraged from reading, or being associated with, so-called radical or revolutionary thinkers, theorists, and authors. The French government, for example, censored Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) 

Even studying the fate of Martin and Malcolm leads you down some pretty scary investigative journalism leads. You get called names, if you’re not careful. And, yet, the forbidden writings and ideas of Frantz Fanon might have never been more relevant than today, with the Black Lives Matter movement reaching a critical mass in 2020, perhaps the biggest protest movement in U.S. history.

Even now, something about our society makes it seem like a radical act to even discuss Fanon. Thankfully, we have Dr. Peter Hudis, a welcome scholar and discussant in the body of work established by Frantz Fanon, the French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher.

The philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary militant Frantz Fanon was a key figure in the struggle against European colonialism. Fanon’s innovative thinking on racism and its relationship to class oppression still speaks vividly to the present.

Fanon argued that the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat would serve as the principal force of the revolution, not Africa’s nascent working class.

Peter Hudis, “The Revolutionary Humanism of Frantz Fanon”

Messina

***

JACOBIN—[26 DEC 2020] The renewed protests against racism and police brutality over the last year have supplied a fresh impetus for thinking about the nature of capitalism, its relationship to racism, and the construction of alternatives to both. Few thinkers speak more directly to such issues than Frantz Fanon, the Martinican philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary who is widely considered one of the twentieth century’s foremost thinkers on race and racism.

— snip —

These considerations were central to Fanon’s last and most famous book, The Wretched of the Earth. He began writing the book after learning that he had incurable leukemia and died shortly after it appeared in 1961. Scholars often overlook the fact that The Wretched of the Earth does not completely turn its back on Europe. Instead, Fanon set out to critically rethink dimensions of European thought, including Marxism.

Fanon insisted that a Marxist analysis “should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colonial issue.” In Marx’s analysis of capitalist accumulation in Europe, the development of capitalism had torn peasants from the “natural workshop” of the land and transformed them into urban proletarians, who in turn would become a massive, compact, and revolutionary force through the concentration and centralization of capital. Fanon saw that this process was not being repeated in Africa.

The destruction of the continent’s traditional communal property forms did not lead to the formation of a massive, radicalized proletariat, since the colonialists did not industrialize Africa but rather underdeveloped it through the brutal extraction of labor power and natural resources. The peasantry remained the greater part of the population, while the working class in towns and cities was relatively small and weak. Because of this, Fanon argued that the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat would serve as the principal force of the revolution, not Africa’s nascent working class.

— snip —

Learn more at JACOBIN MAGAZINE.

***

[31 DEC 2020]

[Last modified on 1 JAN 2020 at 06:02 PST]

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Covid, Race & Democracy | Covid, Corporate Greed, and Vaccines

22 Tue Dec 2020

Posted by ztnh in Civic Engagement (Activism), Neoliberalism, Police State, Political Science

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Ann Garrison, Area 941, COVID-19, KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Steve Zeltzer

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Covid, Race & Democracy is a radio podcast series, which critically analyzes the intersections between the police state response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the belligerent police state attitude toward people of color, and the profiteering of vaccines in a time when the world is clamoring for medical relief from the coronavirus.

This is a welcome time capsule, documenting a lot of the real life and times of working class people during the COVID-19 pandemic, police state lockdown, and economic crash. Listening to this broadcast, one gets a more intimate sense of what the nation is going through than we tend to get from watching corporate media.  The full series is accessible as part of Pacifica Radio’s Covid-19 Taskforce.  Listen and/or download audio here.

Messina

***

KPFA > AREA 941—[22 DEC 2020] Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant represents a socialist grassroots movement that managed to pass a city tax on corporations towards COVID relief.  Her campaign is now under attack by billionaires like Jeff Bezos, companies such as Amazon, as well as the Democratic and Republican establishment in a recall effort. From producer Elliot Avila. Kshama Sawant Solidarity Fund – Socialist Alternative.org

What is now known as the Pfizer vaccine was originally developed by the German company BioNTech, started by two Turkish refugees in Germany. Pacifica producer Mehmet Bayram brings us this story.

University of California San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford worked to develop treatment options for HIV/AIDs, and is now working to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

The transportation of the vaccines is being done by Teamsters who work for UPS. Steve Zeltzer spoke to Richard Hooker, president of Philadelphia IBT Local 623.

Opponents of US wars are expressing alarm at reports that President-elect Biden is considering former UN Ambassador Samantha Power to head the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Pacifica’s Ann Garrison reports.

Music credits:

Vaccine, Vaccine, a parody of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, performed by Northeastern University Professor Ryan Cordell, written by Internet Linguist Gretchen McCulloch.

We Shall Overcome by the Aeolians.

Cops of the World by Phil Ochs.

Production:

This program was hosted by Esther Iverem and co-produced by Steve Zeltzer and Polina Vasiliev, with contributing producers Elliot Avila, Ann Garrison and Esther Iverem. The executive producers of “Covid, Race and Democracy” are Akua Holt, Polina Vasiliev, and Steve Zeltzer.

Learn more at AREA 941.

***

[4 JAN 2021]

[Last modified on 4 JAN 2021 at 16:04 PST]

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