America Is Spiritually Bankrupt. We Must Fight Back Together

By Cornel West, Guardian UK

15 January 18

The undeniable collapse of integrity, honesty and decency in our public and private life has fueled racial hatred and contempt

e live in one of the darkest moments in American history – a bleak time of spiritual blackout and imperial meltdown. Exactly 25 years ago, in my book Race Matters, I tried to lay bare the realities and challenges to American democracy in light of the doings and sufferings of black people. Back then, I reached heartbreaking yet hopeful conclusions. Now, the heartbreak cuts much deeper and the hope has nearly run out.

The nihilism in black America has become a massive spiritual blackout in America. The undeniable collapse of integrity, honesty and decency in our public and private life has fueled even more racial hatred and contempt.

The rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity has so poisoned our hearts, minds and souls that a dominant self-righteous neoliberal soulcraft of smartness, dollars and bombs thrives with little opposition.

The escalating military overreach abroad, the corruption of political and financial elites at home, and the market-driven culture of mass distractions on the internet, TV, and radio push toward an inescapable imperial meltdown, in which chauvinistic nationalism, plutocratic policies and spectatorial cynicism run amok.

Our last and only hope is prophetic fightback – a moral and spiritual awakening that puts a premium on courageous truth telling and exemplary action by individuals and communities.

The distinctive features of our spiritual blackout are threefold.

First, we normalize mendacity and naturalize criminality. We make our lies look like the normal order of things. And we make our crimes look like the natural order of things. We too often say Wall Street is a good servant – rather than a bad master – of the common good. Then we look away from the criminal behavior of big banks because they are too indispensable to prosecute.

We deny that drone strikes are killing innocent people abroad. Then we overlook killing lists on Terror Tuesday at the White House, when a president and his staff can decide to kill people without any legal procedure, including, sometimes, US citizens.

Second, we encourage callousness and reward indifference. We make mean-spiritedness look manly and mature. And we make cold-heartedness look triumphant and victorious. In our world of the survival of the slickest and the smartest, we pave the way for raw greed and self-promotion. We make cowardice and avarice fashionable and compassion an option for losers. We prefer market-driven celebrities who thrive on glitzy spectacles and seductive brands over moral-driven exemplars who strive on with their gritty convictions and stouthearted causes.

Third, we trump the moral and spiritual dimensions of our lives and world by applauding our short-term gains and superficial successes. This immoral and brutal disposition reinforces – and, in part, is a result of – the all-encompassing commodification of a predatory capitalism, running out of control in our psyches and societies.

The pervasive violence in our domestic lives and military policies abroad are inseparable from the profit-driven marketization of our spiritually impoverished capitalist civilization. And our civilization rests upon an American empire in decline and decay.

Imperial meltdown is at the center of our catastrophic times. Our ecological catastrophe is real. The Anthropocene epoch engulfs us. Human practices –especially big business and big military operations – now so deeply influence the Earth’s atmosphere that extinctions loom large.

The potential for nuclear catastrophe remains urgent as US-Russia tensions escalate and other nuclear powers, like North Korea, China, Pakistan, India, and Israel, are expanding and restless.

Our economic catastrophes proliferate along with grotesque wealth inequality. Our political catastrophes deepen as oligarchy triumphs from governmental dysfunction. Our civic catastrophes deepen as the public interest, common good, or even rule of law are undercut by big money.

And our cultural catastrophes are often hidden – the vast and sad realities of trauma and terror visited upon vulnerable fellow citizens who are disproportionately poor people, LGBTQ people, peoples of color, women and children.

The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom – not cause or origin – of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie.

He is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy – all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and maturity. His triumph flows from the implosion of a Republican party establishment beholden to big money, big military and big scapegoating of vulnerable peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women.

It also flows from a Democratic party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and the clever deployment of peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims and women to hide and conceal the lies and crimes of neoliberal policies here and abroad; and from a corporate media establishment that aided and abetted Trump owing to high profits and revenues.

The painful truth is there is no Donald Trump without Barack Obama, no neofascist stirrings without neoliberal policies – all within the imperial zone. Obama was the brilliant black smiling face of the American empire. Trump is the know-nothing white cruel face of the American empire.

Obama did not produce Trump, but his Wall Street–friendly policies helped facilitate Trump’s pseudo-populist victory. Obama’s reluctance to confront race matters in a serious and substantive manner did not cause the ugly white backlash, but Obama’s hesitancy did not help the opposition to white-supremacist practices.

And, more pointedly, both Obama and Trump – two different faces of the imperial meltdown – supported military buildups, wars against Muslim-majority countries, drone strikes, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people, illegal imprisonments of innocent people, night raids on poor Muslim families, and inhumane detention camps. These war policies and war crimes have come back to devour what is left of America’s democratic soul.

So how do we respond to our dark times? The greatest tradition of prophetic fightback in the American empire is the black freedom struggle. The greatest tradition of moral and spiritual fortitude in the American empire is the black musical tradition.

The artistic excellence in the best of black music – including the magnanimity and majesty of the sound – sets the standards for the black freedom struggle.

These standards consist of radical freedom in love and radical love in freedom – the freedom to tell the truth in love about one’s self and world, and the love of the truth as one freely speaks and lives.

The Movement for Black Lives is a grand sign of hope. It is an exemplary collective effort to put prophetic fight back in our bleak moment of imperial meltdown and spiritual blackout. The prophetic vision and social analyses of the Movement for Black Lives begin with the most vulnerable, such as the precious LGBTQ people subject to massive trauma and terror.

In this way, the terror and trauma suffered by the people in Gaza, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and India (especially with Dalit peoples) are inseparable from the trauma and terror in Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland and Chicago.

Another sign of hope is Reverend William J Barber II, the most Martin Luther King–like figure in our time. His Moral Monday movement and now the Poor People’s Campaign is, alongside people such as Father Michael Pfleger and his great ministry at St Sabina Church in Chicago, the Reverend Katie M Ladd at Queen Anne United Methodist Church in Seattle and the Reverend Michael McBride at the Way Christian Center in Berkeley, California, the last hope for prophetic Christianity in America.

Like the Movement for Black Lives, the 8 March 2017 women’s mobilization was a grand sign of hope. It shattered the neoliberal hegemony of the Women’s March of 21 January 2017 over the “feminist” label. In stark contrast to the fashionable corporate feminism, boss feminism and top-down feminism of the corporate media, the 8 March women’s mobilization put class matters, gender matters and LGBTQ matters at the center of race matters and empire matters.

The historic moment of Standing Rock, in which indigenous nations came together in a struggle for sacred lands, self-respect and control over resources was another grand sign of hope.

Race matters in the 21st century are part of a moral and spiritual war over resources, power, souls and sensibilities. There can be no analysis of race matters without earth matters, class matters, gender matters and sexuality matters and, especially, empire matters. We must have solidarity on all these fronts.

As we fight back, we remember the great visionary and exemplary figures and movements of the past. These precious memories focus our attention on things that really matter – not spectacle, image, money, and status but integrity, honesty, dignity, and generosity.

This focus locates and situates us in a long tradition of love warriors—not just polished professionals or glitzy celebrities – but courageous truth tellers who fell in love with the quest for justice, freedom, and beauty.

What Activists Today Can Learn From MLK, the 'Conservative Militant'

By Christopher Beem, The Conversation

15 January 18

 

n the turbulent days following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists launched resistance movements: Greenpeace activists climbed a large construction crane near the White House and unfurled a large banner with the single word – “Resist.”

Similar protests took place elsewhere. Thousands of protesters used their bodies to spell the word “resist” on a San Francisco beach. And at the Grammys, the very next day, rapper Q-Tip yelled “resist” no less than four times from the stage.

A year later, demonstrations like these have not disappeared. A second women’s march is planned for later this month. But the resistance has moved beyond street protests. Activists are now embracing the hard work of political organizing. “Don’t Just March Run for Something” – the title of a best-seller by Amanda Litman, email director of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, crystallizes this transition.

I have studied the words and actions of Martin Luther King Jr. for decades. The very change we are witnessing now – the transition from protest to politics – is exactly the kind of transition that King called for during the civil rights movement.

MLK: A ‘conservative militant’

In the words of historian August Meier, who wrote a seminal book, “Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915,” published in 1963, King succeeded because he was “a conservative militant.”

The word, “conservative” has a specific meaning here. King was a democratic socialist, he opposed the Vietnam War, and he called for massive investment in the inner cities. He was not conservative in any political sense. But what Meier showed was that King nevertheless manifested a conservative core – one that resonated with millions of Americans and thereby helped achieve the movement’s remarkable success.

In Meier’s words:

“American history shows that for any reform movement to succeed, it must attain respectability. It must attract moderates, even conservatives to its rank.”

King understood this. And to that end, he was indeed conservative – both in the arguments he made and the manner in which he presented them.

King argued that racism in America meant the United States was not living up to its own ideals. At the very core of the Declaration of Independence and thus at the center of American life was the belief that “all men are created equal.” But in America in the 1960s, and especially in the South, African-Americans lived out their lives as second-class citizens. In King’s words, American culture was “the very antithesis” of what it claimed to believe.

King did not want to challenge, let alone replace, ideals of freedom and equality. He wanted America to better embody them. He argued that the civil rights movement was just the latest in a long American tradition that was both grounded in those ideals and sought to make them more authentic.

King compared the civil rights movement with the abolitionist movement, the populist movement of farmers and laborers in the late 19th century, and even to the American Revolution itself. The American ideal “all men are created equal” constituted what King called a “promissory note.” In each case, ordinary citizens demanded that that promise be honored. And through their actions, the nation was made more free and more just.

By framing the cause of civil rights in words and ideas that most Americans strongly identified with, King was able to appeal to their innate patriotism. What’s more, those who stood against his cause were, by implication, the ones who could be seen as un-American.

King’s strategy

King’s resistance was also strictly nonviolent. Following the model of civil resistance developed by M.K. Gandhi, the leader of Indian independence, King argued for nonviolence within the terms of his own Christian faith.

King said that by responding to injustice with civility and to violence with nonviolence, the resister was fulfilling “the Christian doctrine of love.” For King, that love was best reflected in the Greek word “agape,” an “understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” This was the love that Christ epitomized, and which his followers were called to emulate.

But King also insisted that nonviolent resistance spoke to a respect for the law that can only be called conservative. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where he was imprisoned in 1963, King insisted that while unjust laws must be broken, they must be broken “lovingly,” such that the act demonstrates a respect, even a reverence, for the law.

King argued that this nonviolent strategy was not simply the most Christian response. It was also “the most potent instrument the Negro community can use to gain total emancipation in America.” He said that violent protests gave the white man “an excuse to look away,” to ignore those who want to claim the mantel of equality.“

Conducting the struggle "on the high plane of dignity and discipline,” dressing well, using respectful language and accepting violence without responding in kind – all this gave protesters a moral standing that attracted moderates to the cause. It also sought to change the hearts and minds of the bigots. Even if that effort failed, the bigots were nevertheless defeated.

The Jim Crow system of racial segregation rested on the idea that African-Americans were inferior to whites. By rigidly adhering to the high road, the actions of protesters proved that that entire system was based on a falsehood.

Indeed, if anything, actions on both sides demonstrated the opposite.

Acting politically

Many protesters in the 1960s sought to bring down an established order that they saw as irredeemably racist and corrupt. But to those who said:

“Burn, baby, burn,”

King said,

“Organize, baby, organize.”

The fundamental purpose of resistance was to effect political change and that meant operating within existing political institutions.

It also often required compromise. For example, at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, a crisis developed when the newly created and integrated “Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party” demanded they be recognized and seated instead of the all-white “official” Mississippi delegation. They argued they were the truly democratic representatives of the state as they were the product of procedures fair and open to all.

Party leaders worked out a compromise that allowed the Mississippi delegation to remain. King accepted this compromise, but many advocates condemned it as an illegitimate accommodation to racism.

King did not disagree, but he argued that this face-saving gesture would help to ensure that the South would not abandon then-candidate Lyndon Johnson. One year later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which ensured voting rights for all African-Americans, and brought federal control over elections in the South.

Resistance through politics is conservative

The notion of conservative militancy is not one that many of Trump’s opponents would likely affirm. Some see this moment is an opportunity to grow and strengthen the left; others see it as an opportunity to move beyond the two-party system altogether. But the transition from marching to politics show that many understand that opposing Trump requires mobilizing the power necessary to make that happen.

The civil rights movement expressed a similar operating principle: Keep your “eyes on the prize.” Here too, the thought was that opponents should not allow themselves to be satisfied with simply articulating their dissatisfaction. Rather, they should continually orient themselves and their actions such that they advance the movement toward the ultimate goal.

Right now, those Americans who oppose the president contend that longstanding democratic procedures, norms and ideals are under attack. Because they seek to defend those core American ideals, those who resist have become, by default, conservatives and patriots. And now, one year after his inauguration, that defense has moved from protest to politics.

Whether they know it or not, in both regards, these Americans are following King’s example.