I know it’s about a week old by now, but I thought it would be worth having in the ETHOS archives:

His name is Muntadar al-Zeidi and he is my hero.

Out with the old, in with the new is what they say I guess. Check out this long-ish sober (scary) assessment of what the new has to offer us from al-Jazeera English (yeah, al-Jazeera – contrary to popular belief they actually have some of the best coverage of U.S. politics and Middle East policy. Oh yeah, and they are also your one stop source for the latest Osama Bin Laden video).

The second part of the segment – a debate between Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford and some activist preacher – can be found here.

Over and out,

Eric

Editors Note: This is a review I did over the summer that was withheld due to a conflict of interests relating to the employment situation of one of our bloggers. I am publishing it now because it has been several months, and I doubt Dyson would give a shit about a scathing review of one of his books on a blog as irrelevant as this one. But, if you are reading this Dr. Rev. Mr. MC Dyson PhD (or whatever it is you call your bespectacled self), if you don’t like the harsh reviews, start writing better books. Translation: If you can’t stand the heat, get out the kitchen.

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr’s Death and How it Changed America

Michael Eric Dyson

Basic Civitas Books, 2008

270 pages, $25

Review by Eric Augenbraun

I intended to write this review sooner, but my principles interfered; in a word, I refuse to pay for books that I expect to be worth far less than the cover price. So, given the fact that professor, ordained minister, and self-proclaimed activist/public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson’s latest waste of paper book, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr’s Death and How it Changed America, was checked out of the University of Pennsylvania’s library until about a week ago, I couldn’t get around to reading and commenting on it until now. Despite not paying a cent for this cute little mess—aside from Penn’s $50,000 tuition which includes library privileges (imagine that!)—after reading it, I still felt compelled to go back to the library and demand a refund of the time I had just wasted. But alas, the library has yet to invest in a time travel device—I can only urge them to look into it.

Many will recognize the date April 4th, 1968 as the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing on the balcony outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The year 2008 thus marks the 40th year since King’s tragic death. On this somber anniversary, Dyson’s deceptively short 270-page volume is an “effort to grapple with King’s death—in [Dyson’s] own mind, and in the life of the nation.” With ten chapters sandwiched between a short prologue and a lengthy afterword, this book is divided into three parts, each with a somewhat distinct area of inquiry. Part one explores how King understood his own mortality and dealt with the looming threat of his death as he rose to prominence in lockstep with the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Part two is an examination of the state of black America in the post-King, post-Civil Rights, post-Voting Rights Amendment years. Finally, part three is a look at black leadership since King’s death—namely, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama. Unfortunately, Dyson’s book delivers very little that could be considered new or particularly insightful, and where it strays from the beaten path it arrives at several conceptual and methodological cul-de-sacs.

According to Dyson, from a very young age King was preoccupied with death. As the Civil Rights movement gained steam and King was thrust into the public eye, threats on his life became commonplace. While the reality of the likelihood of a premature death weighed heavily on King’s mind—driving him into depression—he also harnessed it as a motivational tool for the movement. This should not be particularly controversial, but Dyson’s sparse research and use of psychoanalysis to fill the gaps leaves much to be desired. Direct citations are absent from this text and the reader is left with a few short bibliographical notes with no indication of where specific sources are used in the text (as a history major, I am a big fan of Chicago style). But not to fear, the wikipedia page for Martin Luther King could just as easily have been the source of almost all of Dyson’s “research” for the first part of this book. Where archival research is not enough, Dyson simply puts King on the couch and probes his psyche, which is fine, but might not do the trick for people who recognize that, as a very dead man, King is unable to speak back. Thus, instead of serious and careful scholarship we get what boils down to a winding hodgepodge of sentimentalist fluff.

“And how does that make you feel Dr. King?”

While Dyson pays lip service to the fact that the primary strength of the Civil Rights movement lied on the ground, with the ordinary people who gave their time and energy to march and forge connections at the grassroots level, his discussion of King as a near superhuman deity presents a distorted picture of the movement. Dyson makes it appear as if King and his circle of aids were themselves the Civil Rights movement, while little attention is paid to the enormous mobilization of the nameless forces on the ground that ultimately were responsible for toppling Jim Crow. Finally, in the ultimate case of accidental irony, in his discussion of King’s oratorical genius, Dyson references King’s striking ability to be both substantive and eloquent:

King showed that there didn’t have to be strife between lexis (style, such as metaphor) and pisteis (argumentation and proof) as there is in Aristotle’s view of rhetoric. In the best black oratory, style is not juxtaposed to argument; in fact, style becomes a vehicle of substance. Paying attention to how you say what you say doesn’t mean you have nothing to say.

Sadly, these standards cannot be applied to Dyson’s book—a clear lack of substance is compensated for by an abundance of schmaltz and bombast.

Part two shifts the focus to the present day status of blacks in America and how, in many regards, King’s vision has yet to be realized. The first chapter of this section, entitled “Report Card on Black America,” is the book’s strongest, which is not really saying much. Dyson uses an assortment of interesting statistics to make the case that, though the gains of the Civil Rights movement cannot be understated, blacks continue to be the victims of racism and poverty. Still I find it hard to believe that people who would pay $25 to read this book were not already aware of the facts that Dyson highlights in this chapter. Moreover, if one were interested in gathering the same statistics he uses, it is nothing that a simple Internet search couldn’t handle. While Dyson is effective at exposing the objective reality of the persistence of inequality and poverty, he stops short of implicating capitalism and class society as central to the perpetuation of inequality.

The final part of the book takes a look at black leadership since King’s death. Dyson focuses primarily on three of the country’s most visible “black leaders”—Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama—devoting a chapter to each. It is here that Dyson’s own ideological framework prevents him from careful and critical analysis of the broader issues that underlie the notion of a “national black leader.” He appears far more interested in exploring the personal histories and leadership styles of each respective leader than in interrogating the social, political, and economic contexts from which each emerged and the bases of their authority. For instance, the differences between King and Jackson’s leadership are presented as largely personal—rooted in their upbringings and educational backgrounds. Not considered is the fact that the historical context in which King led the charge against Jim Crow differed fundamentally from the context of Reaganism in which Jackson attempted to position himself as “national black leader.” Dyson only goes so far as to mention a handful of the strategic mistakes and errors in judgment that each has made over the years while embracing uncritically their positions as race leaders. This and Dyson’s repeated castigation of members of the black middle- and upper-classes who have “turned their backs on the black poor” reflect the belief in an undifferentiated black “community” that permeates Dyson’s thought.

“Leaders” like Sharpton and Jackson (and academics like Dyson for that matter) who desire to situate themselves as “black voices”—a politics which has its roots in the race relations brokerage that emerged in the context of Jim Crow at the turn of the century—rely on a reified “black community” wherein those elements of the black population that do not conform to an imagined normative blackness are painted as inauthentic. Further, by lumping the black population into a homogenous monolith, black leaders have no need to appeal politically to any specific constituency and are thus not accountable to any constituency at all. In reality, black people exhibit the same diversity of interests and political opinions as any racial or ethnic group—the goal, then, for black and white progressives alike, should be towards the embrace of a politics that acknowledges this diversity within the black population. I also think it is worth mentioning that Dyson’s chapter on Obama is nothing more than an extended piece of campaign propaganda that does not even come close to engaging Obama on a political level.

Dyson closes his book with a 25-page afterword that is just an exercise in self-validation. To be frank, after his last “book” (and I use the term loosely) in which he enlisted rappers Jay-Z and Nas to sing his praises in the “intro” and “outro” respectively, I am used to such shameless acts of self-promotion from Dyson. His most recent effort is a composed interview with Martin Luther King on his 80^th birthday based on what Dyson believes he might have said. However, the 80-year old King that he imagines is little more than a mouthpiece through which to trumpet his own beliefs and opinions and have them corroborated by one of American history’s most revered figures—albeit a figure that has been dead for 40 years. Of course, this all amounts to a 25-page act of intellectual autofellatio considering that there is no way of knowing what Martin Luther King would believe if he were alive today. While it is possible that he may have respected the “incredible lyrical genius” of today’s hip hop artists, abhorred the prosperity gospel movement, and fawned over Obama, it is just as likely that his thought might have developed in an alternate fashion. Just look at the political trajectories of people like Du Bois, Malcolm X, or even Eldridge Cleaver.

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend you waste your time (at least until they develop time travel technology) or money on this book. Keep your $25 and check out Jack Bloom’s Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement for an excellent account of the political economy that underlay the brave activity of Southern blacks and the valiant leadership of Dr. King in the fight against Jim Crow.

Footnote: The views contained in this review are solely those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect the perspectives of the rest of the ETHOS team.

By Eric Augenbraun

Some artwork from my brother: 

The Obamamobile heads to Washington

(Artwork courtesy of Danny Augenbraun, click image to enlarge)

Considering that it has been nearly a month since Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee and at least some of the unrestrained euphoria has worn off among his supporters/fans, I figured I would take this time to do a quick recap of some of the recent developments in his campaign. It is hardly a secret that since the late 70s and early 80s the Democrats have embraced a national strategy that attempts to appeal to the same constituencies that the Republicans have been able to ride to electoral success for the last 25+ years. This, in turn, gives the Republican Party an enormous amount of leverage in setting the terms of debate in the run up to elections and also produces the inevitable rightward shift taken by every Democratic candidate over that same time period. Moreover, it should come as no surprise that the Dems are every bit as beholden to the same set of corporate interests as the Republicans which largely explains their unwillingness to reject a national strategy based on constituencies constructed by the Republicans and to attempt to create and appeal to an alternative constituency–namely one organized around a program that can be of immediate benefit to the working class.

But, without further adieu, let us take a trip back to the not so distant past:

1. Not 24 hours after he had secured the nomination, Obama stood before a gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in an attempt to assure Zionists of his pro-Israeli occupation credentials. Here he pledged his support for an undivided Jerusalem and stated that he would rule out negotiations with Hamas–a position not even the Israeli government has taken.

2. On Father’s Day, Obama echoed Bill Cosby’s victim blaming criticisms of Black men as a cause of the problems of the America’s Black population. 

3. While he criticized HRC for once sitting on the board of Wal Mart and positioned himself as a champion of the “little guy” during the primary battle, after securing the nomination Obama chose Jason Furman–a well known defender of Wal Mart and neo-liberal ideologue–to head his economic team.

4. Oh yeah, and then there was this: 

5. Finally, there was last week when Obama voiced his disapproval of the 5-4 Supreme Court decision that barred executions for people convicted of raping children. Right, so Mr. Hope has aligned himself with the likes of Scalia, Alito, and Thomas. That makes sense.

There is no shortage of examples to illustrate the clear right turn that Obama has taken and will continue to take as the election nears and these are but 5 of them. 

The most common defense I have heard of Obama’s rightward shift is that “he has to say the stuff he says,” that “it is the nature of electoral campaigns for Democratic candidates to move towards the center to appeal to voters.” While there is some truth to these statements, they do not reflect some universal truth about the American electoral process so much as they underscore the bankruptcy of the strategy pursued by the Democratic Party for the last 25 odd years. In other words, the only reason Obama has to say the stuff he says is because he is attempting to court the same constituencies that the Republicans have been able to mobilize with such success (and ultimately devastating effects for the vast majority of the American population).

Finally, an underlying assumption of the “he says it because he has to” argument is that Obama is actually far more progressive than his rhetoric would suggest–that he does not truly mean the things he says. But given his record dating back to his days in Illinois state politics, I have no reason to believe that Obama is not just another neo-liberal Democratic politician dedicated to securing the profits of corporations and upholding America’s economic and military global dominance.

Rafi Kam from over at ohword.com and Dallas Penn of dallaspenn.com (a.k.a. the Internets Celebrities) seek to answer some questions about the ubiquity of check cashing spots in the working, poor, and minority neighborhoods of American cities.

The video is now featured on youtube and as of now has over 130,000 views:

Hilarious video that takes on a real social issue in an accessible way, what more could you ask for? I highly recommend you check out their youtube channel for some of their other great short video essays. Hopefully there is more to come.

By Eric Augenbraun

I will start by saying that from the very little I know of TV host Rachael Ray, I find her incredibly annoying and rather stupid, possessing the personality of a Jack Russell terrier or a similarly excitable small animal. I also know that my mother owns one of her misleadingly titled 30-minute meals cookbooks that contains not a single recipe that could possibly be prepared in 30 minutes or less. I get the impression that Ray’s audience (like that of most daytime talk show/cooking show hosts) is generally composed of middle-aged, middle-class, women of the white variety. So, given the demographics of her audience and her own dim-wittedness, I find it hard to believe that either Ray or those who follow her (or the vast majority of the American population for that matter) had even the slightest clue to the significance of the keffiyeh that she donned in a recent Dunkin’ Donuts ad.

That’s not a Dunkin’ Donuts Iced Mocha Latte she is holding, it’s a fully functional bomb!

Naturally, there was a backlash to the advertisement, eventually resulting in it being canned. Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin took a break from defending the internment of Japanese-American people during World War II to chime in: “The keffiyeh has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.” I guess one person’s “murderous Palestinian jihad” is another’s “struggle for national liberation against a brutal apartheid regime.” We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one Michelle. In any case, this situation has brought to the fore a few issues I have wanted to write about for a while now:

1. In the face of the transformation of the keffiyeh into a fashion trend—as evidenced by Rachael F@#%ing Ray rocking one in a Dunkin F@#%ing Donuts advertisement—what is the history of this garment and what is, or was, its significance for both people in the Arab world and people outside of the Arab world?

2. The equation of the keffiyeh with terrorism and its implicit association of all Arab people with terrorism is patently racist.

I think it would probably be useful to start with this telling anecdote: last year, when I was a member of a certain left-wing organization, I was in West Philly selling copies of the organization’s weekly newspaper while publicizing a meeting about Palestine we had coming up and trying to recruit people. On such paper sales we would sometimes profile our targets (it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds, bear with me), looking for signs that suggested a person might be sympathetic to our arguments before we approached them—political T-shirts, buttons, hair styles, facial hair, head gear, and keffiyehs are a representative handful. Of course we didn’t confine the people to whom we spoke to these parameters, nor did every person who met one or more of the above criteria actually give a shit about our politics. For instance, on this particular sale, I spotted a college-aged white female with a black and white keffiyeh wrapped around her neck.

“Hey, nice keffiyeh,” I said pleasantly, trying to start a conversation as I approached her with a newspaper and a flyer for the upcoming meeting. Instead of an enthusiastic “free Palestine!,” “long live the Intifada!,” or even just a simple “thanks,” I got what was probably the most awkward silence and piercing stare I have ever endured. She looked at me as if I had just asked her to perform some lewd, unspeakable sexual act. Note to self: do NOT use this as a pick up line.

“What!?” she replied in a disgusted and insulted sort of way after several excruciating seconds.

“Oh, never mind,” I shot back quickly as I scurried away trying to convince myself, as I do after all such awkward encounters, that it was not nearly as awkward as it felt.

If this is at all reflective of the knowledge that the majority of keffiyeh wearers have of the garment, then it suggests that it is time to enshrine it alongside Che Guevara and Malcolm X T-shirts in the “Urban Outfitters Hall of Fame for articles of clothing that once had a modicum of political significance but now do not necessarily suggest that the wearer even knows the name of the figure on the garment or the name of the garment itself.” Excuse me while I catch my breath. In fact, Urban Outfitters went through a controversy similar to the Rachael Ray flap not too long ago when they were inundated with criticism from angry Zionists who were unhappy about the store carrying the item. Moreover, I should not be surprised that the woman I met on that paper sale didn’t know the proper name of the keffiyeh she was wearing…Urban Outfitters (where I would bet my life savings is where she purchased it) marketed them not as keffiyehs, but as “authentic Arab scarfs” or something to that effect.

Che: “I stay fly in my authentic Arab scarf.”

So what is the significance of the keffiyeh? While it has come to be associated with Palestinian people and their struggle for national liberation, the keffiyeh has been worn by Arab men in the Middle East for quite some time. The large, square, cotton cloths are typically worn wrapped around the head to protect from sun exposure in the hot and dry climate of the Middle East. The color of the pattern stitched into the cloth also tends to vary from one place to another. It was not until the 1960s with the upsurge of Palestinian resistance that the keffiyeh became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism—most notably worn by long time PLO leader Yasser Arafat. For people in the Western world, the keffiyeh thus became a popular way for anti-war and pro-Palestine progressive activists to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people in the struggle against the Zionist occupation. Still, owing to its practicality as an article of clothing, the keffiyeh is worn by Arab men across the Middle East, the vast majority of whom, obviously, have no connection to terrorism (a word that I take with a grain of salt when it is used by right-wingers anyways) and do not wear it with any intention of making a political statement.

This is why the assertion that the keffiyeh is symbolic of “terrorism” or “jihad” is so poisonous. First and foremost because it assumes both that all terrorists wear keffiyehs and all Arabs wear keffiyehs, with an act of sleight of hand that would put David Blaine to shame, the pro-Israel right-wing is able to equate being Arab with being a terrorist. Zionists and proponents of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East who attempt to turn the garment into a symbol of terrorism do so with the clear intention of legitimizing the oppression of Middle Eastern people to gain economic and political control of the region while at the same time disparaging resistance to this oppression. The amount of sway this has in shaping public opinion is unmistakable as the resistance of Palestinian people is painted as terrorism the actions of the Israeli government are thus portrayed as necessary steps in the “War on Terror”—this presents a real obstacle to building solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Yasser Arafat

Personally I am not a fan of self-righteously moralizing against the people who make such items into fads and fashion statements. To be frank, I consider it a waste of time to sit around shaking an angry fist at “these damn people who are destroying the political significance of keffiyehs”—it’s just a bunch of hot air that can never actually accomplish anything. I tend to think that the attire one wears (or any lifestyle choice for that matter) is not the most effective grounds through which to participate politically, in fact, it is an evasion from real political engagement—nothing more than a posture. Plus, this is how fashion trends usually work. In all honesty, it’s not difficult to understand why keffiyehs would become so popular; they look cool, and they serve a practical purpose—an excellent balance between form and function. Sometimes the latter is not as important as the former as far as fashion is concerned, but you get my point. I find it far more fruitful to ask the question “what is it about the political context in which we live that allows for items that were once political statements to lose this significance?” If we lived in a country with a flourishing left, a strong and united anti-war movement, and a visible Palestine solidarity movement perhaps it would be less likely that the meaning of the keffiyeh would be lost on the hipsters and fashionistas. If this were, in fact, the case, maybe public discourse around the issue would not be dominated by the thinly veiled racism of the right wing.

In closing, I will say that the commodification of the keffiyeh does have its shining moments. For instance, as a Jewish anti-Zionist, nothing strikes me as funnier than the prospect of seeing a bar- or bat-mitzvahed Jewish teen who has likely been spoon-fed Zionist rhetoric since he or she emerged from the birth canal buying an “authentic Arab scarf” from Urban Outfitters because “they think it looks cool.” As Paul and I mused, this would be a lot like a Nazi wearing a yarmulke or a Klansman rocking some FUBU or Ronald Reagan sporting a hammer and sickle tattoo.

Now imagine that!

By Eric Augenbraun

As I write this more than 23,000 people are dead and an estimated 37,000 are missing in the wake of Cyclone Nargis’ landfall over Burma (also known as the Union of Myanmar) on May 2^nd. Many expect the death toll to reach a staggering 100,000 by the final count. Just to put this in perspective, as a result of the September 11^th attacks and Hurricane Katrina 3,017 and 1,836 died respectively. I do not point this out to suggest that these two tragedies are in some way less significant than what has happened on the other side of the world, nor do I wish to let our government off of the hook for the unnecessary hell that Huricane Katrina wreaked and continues to wreak on the people of New Orleans—you know me, that is the last thing I want to do. I make this comparison merely to remind people that in the insulated media market that is the United States, it is easy to lose sight of the pain and suffering that goes on in the parts of the world that most people would be hard pressed to find on a map.

In case you slept through geography class…

So what can we learn from the devastation that resulted from this Cyclone and Hurricane Katrina?

Both cases throw into relief how “natural disasters” quickly become unnatural when the state and ruling class are indifferent to the plights of poor and working people. As historian Winston James, writing about a series of hurricanes that struck the Caribbean islands at the turn of the 20th century, argued correctly:

The effects of natural catastrophes…are profoundly mediated by social, economic, and political relations. Put simply, God may send hurricanes, but their consequences are not God-given. The damage that hurricanes, floods, and droughts do is clearly related to the degree of power one has over the effects of these natural phenomena, and the mechanisms at one’s disposal to cope with their aftermath.

Since 1962, Burma has been ruled by a military junta that is, by all means, repressive and antidemocratic—its record hardly indicating a commitment to the protection of human rights. Most of the country’s population lives in abject poverty and, at $1,900, the Burmese GDP per capita ranks 179^th in the world. One need not strain to understand just why the fallout from the Cyclone has taken the course that it has.

Though in both the United States and Burma wealth and resources are stratified to small minorities, the poverty of Burma and the wealth of the United States and death toll of the cyclone underscore the fact that what Lenin once called “oppressor nations” and the third world operate on entirely unequal footing. Still, while Burma and the United States are, admittedly, incomparable, what do these two governments have in common? Both stood idly as disasters—the consequences of which could have been largely averted—took the lives of countless innocent victims.

The Burmese government has been slow to accept aid from other countries while our hypocrite-in-chief has attempted to take the moral high road for which he missed the exit in 2005. The United States has offered up a whopping total of $3.25 million in aid—the war in Iraq, meanwhile, which has killed nearly 1 million Iraqis, costs approximately $2 billion per week. Oh the contradictions just make my head spin.

In any event, Time magazine journalist Romesh Ratnesar has the solution to the post-Cyclone recovery: invade Burma.

Yes, you read right, invade Burma.

Ratnesar suggests that it might be time for the United States to consider a “humanitarian intervention” if the Burmese government continues to deny aid to the country. This invasion would be for no other purpose than delivering aid to the people of Burma argues Ratnesar. With all due respect, he is either extremely naïve or he is an idiot. His argument is grounded in several faulty premises: First, he assumes that the United States government is actually interested in aiding the recovery of Burma—that $3.25 million check must have been really convincing.

Second, Ratnesar’s solution embraces the problematic understanding of America as a global police force. While the Burmese government should accept aid for the sake of its people, the United States has no right to violate the nation’s sovereignty should it decide not to accept aid. The use of United States military might in such a fashion sets a dangerous precedent and certainly serves to buttress the American-military-as-humanitarian, liberator, and democracy-spreader logic.

This was the result of Clinton’s “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Finally, and most importantly, proponents of “humanitarian interventions” like Ratnesar wrongly assume that it is possible for the henchmen of U.S. imperialism (i.e. the military) to operate in the interests of any group other than the U.S. ruling class. Historically, “humanitarian interventions”—popularized by Bill Clinton (remember Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo?)—have been little more than thinly veiled attempts for the U.S. to assert its economic, political, and military dominance on a global scale. Moreover, the ambiguity of the term allows those seeking to justify even the most blatantly imperialist endeavors (like the current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan) to paint these invasions as “humanitarian” in nature. Ratnesar, ignorant of the last 200 years of history, suggests that it is actually possible for the United States military to intervene in the affairs of a foreign nation as a truly neutral force. This is the very same reasoning that underlies the “Save Darfur” movement; principled opponents of U.S. imperialism should resist this tendency.

The death and destruction wrought by the cyclone is a tragedy worthy of the world’s attention. Reflecting on the end results of such tragedies, however, is not enough. We must look critically at the way wealth and power are distributed around the world to understand why disasters like this end the way they do. While the cyclone has made clear the priorities of the Burmese government, it is not the role of the United States (or any other nation) to assert its own will in a foreign nation—whatever the fluffy rhetoric justifying such an action. If real change is to come to Burma, it must come from within.

I have mixed feelings about the “youtube-ification” of American politics. On one hand you get hilarious stuff like this:

“B**** got eyes like the GEICO lizard…”

On the other hand you get stuff that is hilarious for all of the wrong reasons:

Fan club? I rest my case.

By the way, am I the only one who is slightly disturbed by these Obama ‘hope’ posters?

The above is the work of the fairly well known contemporary artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey, known for his fascination with political propaganda art (a lot of his work is quite interesting actually, check it out).

I just have a hard time figuring out how the Obama campaign would consider it a good idea to put at every bus stop in the city of Philadelphia posters that look so much like this:

What do you think?

By Eric Augenbraun

Check out this Good Morning America interview with Hillary Clinton from Tuesday:

Clinton’s hard line on Iran shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone at this point, but I do find this nonsense about an attack on Israel rather disconcerting – meant only to stir up people’s fears and provide a pretext for actually beginning to have a discussion about OBLITERATING an entire country (for the record, Iran, contrary to popular belief, does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel does). As an aside, Obama too has made his intentions clear for Iran, and they don’t stray too far from Clinton’s path. I do think, though, that sometimes Clinton’s position as a female candidate competing against men for an office that has been held by nobody but men forces her to perform certain rituals of masculinity – hence, the tough talk about murdering 71 million people on a whim.

But obliterate is a REALLY strong word and I can only assume that a Clinton presidency will look something like this

Coming soon to geography textbooks everywhere, February 2009 (Shoutout to Isaiah Greene on the photoshop)

As a proponent of leaving Earth’s topographical features the way they are, especially if it means saving tens of millions of people in the process, I will not be able to give Clinton my vote in November (should she be so lucky as to steal win the nomination).

On a more serious note, I find Clinton’s way of framing her response downright hypocritical at best, utterly racist at worst, and pure, unfiltered, sophistry in any case. Clinton speaks of the Iranian people as if they are some monolithic group of savages all marching in stride with whatever the hell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says or thinks. By this same logic, the American people are all in favor of the war and just as culpable as the small group of people in our country who voted for it. While it is true that we could probably do some good by “looking very carefully at our society,” as Clinton would say, it would certainly not be appropriate for normal American people to be punished because our government (Clinton included) decided to go off to Iraq and murder people. Hell, the American people are already punished by having to go fight and die in the first place.

Finally, I am utterly horrified by Hillary Clinton’s complete lack of regard for humanity; that she would think it acceptable to sit in a room and casually discuss the fate of MILLIONS of HUMAN BEINGS as if they were little more than ants. Aside from the whole imperialism thing, hearing her comments makes it much easier to understand how this government can so cooly perpetrate slaughter around the world – when you don’t acknowledge the humanity in others, murder becomes just a war game.

By Eric Augenbraun

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” -Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -Barack Obama at a San Fransisco fundraiser, April 6, 2008

Can’t you see the resemblance?

By now, you would have to be living under a rock not to have heard the media backlash over Obama’s recent comments at a San Fransisco fundraising rally in which he ascribed the embrace of religion, guns, and bigotry among small town whites to their “bitterness” over being screwed by American capitalism over the last 25 years. While the media, HRC, and Old Man McCain have blasted him for being ‘elitist’ and ‘condescending’, as a self described Marxist I was more struck by the eery similarity between Obama’s statements and Karl Marx’s now (in)famous materialist analysis of religion. Of course, Obama added the nuance that people turn to guns, too, out of bitterness – though I can think of reasons other than bitterness that people might own guns.

In keeping with their tradition of ad hominem attacks, Right wing hacks like Karl Rove and Glenn Beck have jumped all over his statements to link him to the “red specter” and, naturally, scare voters. “You know, it was almost Marxian in this they cling to their religion. I mean, it’s sort of like it’s the opiate of the masses,” Rove said on Fox News this week. Glenn Beck – who is about a millimeter to the left of David Duke on the political spectrum – had this to say on his show:

I hope it doesn’t matter to Barack. But he has heard the message of Jesus that shared prosperity is the thing to do. Hope, change, Marxism. This guy is a socialist and all you have to do is listen to his words.

After hearing all of this hype, I had to investigate for myself. Sadly, though, after looking over Obama’s record and re-reading my own piece on him, it is still pretty clear that the ‘neoliberal’ suit fits Barack better than the ‘Marxist’ one. Bummer.

The American flag under Chairman Obama…

So, what of this talk of Obama being elitist? When it comes from McCain and Clinton, it is little more than the pot calling the kettle black (no pun intended). The fact of the matter is that every politician who runs for or holds elected office in the corporate controlled two party system is an elitist. The two party system depends on keeping everyday, normal, non-elite voices out of power as such voices would likely pose a challenge to American capitalism. As hard as McCain and Hillary try to posture as the down-home man and woman of the people, at the end of the day their interests lie with the corporate power structure who write them the biggest campaign checks and have made them rich over the years. It has gotten to the point that now when I hear a pundit lambasting Obama for being an elitist I say to myself: “A politician being an elitist? Noooo, you don’t say! Now what about the Sun – it’s hot right?”

But still, I am not willing to let Obama off of the hook that easily. There is an important distinction to be made between the context in which Marx posited his analysis of religion and that in which Obama voiced his beliefs. Marx, as a social critic and philosopher, was interested in understanding the historical and material roots of religion. Like much of his work, Marx’s statement that religion is the “opium of the people” has been removed from its appropriate context and hoisted by opponents of Marxism as proof that Marx had nothing but contempt for religion. In fact, the opposite is true. Marx displayed a nuanced and sympathetic view of working people who embraced religion in response to the hopelessness and inequality that were inherent in class society. It was his contention that with the elimination of class society and exploitation, the material basis for religion would cease to exist. Religion – which has in many cases played a profoundly positive role in the liberation struggles of oppressed people – was not the problem. The problem was class society.

We should put aside for a moment that as a candidate for elected office – the highest office at that – Obama’s statements could be considered alienating and offensive not just to rural whites, but the millions of religious voters in this country. From a Marxist perspective, though, Obama’s statement does not seem too far off the mark. However, by running on an unmistakably neoliberal platform, an Obama presidency will likely see a continuation of the same material inequality to which he attributes religion, guns, and bigotry in the first place. Thus, the insightfulness of his commentary collides with the brick wall of his political agenda, planting it firmly on his shelf of platitudes – alongside ‘hope,’ ‘change,’ ‘Yes we can!,’ and the rest of them.

By Eric Augenbraun

“Why should I, as a progressive, vote for Obama?” I recently asked an Obama supporter desperately trying to compel me to change my party affiliation from Independent to Democrat. Of course, I had no intention of switching. I have heard all the arguments before and have yet to be persuaded.

“I serve as a blank screen…on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” -Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

“Well, Obama is the only candidate who has opposed the war in Iraq from the outset,” the Obamamaniac began.

True indeed! Though isn’t it convenient that he was also the only candidate who was not in the Congress in 2002 to vote on the war. This is, of course, beside the point. What the Obama man was trying to say was that his candidate is the true “anti-war” candidate. It has a certain Orwellian quality that in this country someone who has voted for every single war spending bill, has stated repeatedly that he would consider using nuclear force on Pakistan, has stated that he would crack down on Iran, has refused to commit to any plan to remove troops from Iraq by 2013, and has stated that he is in favor of increasing the size of the military by 100,000 troops can position himself as the anti-war candidate. Obama, like his party, is thoroughly committed to maintaining U.S. domination of Middle Eastern resources and politics. He may be against the way the war has been executed, but one must be a skilled in the art of intellectual contortion to believe he is at all “anti-war.” Meanwhile, more than 4,000 U.S. troops and likely over 1 million Iraqis have been killed over 5 years of this unjust occupation. The anti-war movement can’t repeat its mistake from 2004 and throw its support behind another pro-war candidate.

“Okay, but he supports universal healthcare,” said the campaigner, slightly flustered.

“Oh really? So he supports single payer healthcare?” I replied.

“Well, uh, no. Not exactly.”

No. In fact, Obama voted against the single payer health care bill HR676. Obama is not interested in challenging the healthcare and pharmaceutical corporations who make healthcare so unattainable for the more than 50 million without it and the service so poor for working and middle class people who have it. While he has said he wants to make healthcare more affordable, his plan for reform operates on the corporations’ terms. This is understandable as he tries to position himself as friendly to the corporate agenda and attempts to attract their support.

“Fine, but he is a better candidate than Hillary or McCain.” I could hear the first signs of desperation in his voice.

Alright, sure. My dog is a better candidate than McCain. As for Clinton, from what each candidate has revealed about their respective platforms, it’s hard to distinguish Obama’s positions from the largely party-line centrism advanced by Clinton. However I think Ralph Nader’s formulation says it best: “The problem with voting for the lesser of two evils is that at the end of the day you still have evil.”

“I just think it would be an historic change to finally have a black president. It’s a sign that there is hope for the future.”

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I know, I can’t complain. I am talking to an Obama partisan so I should have expected to hear “hope” and “change” uttered at least once. Many other people I speak to make a similar argument. While it is completely apolitical and painfully abstract, sadly, given the decidedly neoliberal character of his platform, it is the most compelling reason I have heard to vote for him yet. We cannot underestimate the historical importance of having a black candidate with a legitimate shot at becoming president. But we also must not favor a personality or identity over the actual political positions and past voting record of that candidate.

“But if you don’t vote for a candidate with a chance of winning you are wasting your vote! You are going to vote aren’t you? How could you take for granted such an important right?”

Cue the moralism. I guess if I don’t vote for Obama I will also be damned to hell, right? I don’t pretend to be a logician, but let’s unpack that first statement. I have already made clear that I don’t see Obama’s agenda as being nearly as progressive as it is cracked up to be and I am very much opposed to many of the things he purports to stand for. I think Eugene V. Debs’ famous quip captures my belief quite well: “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”

Member #123226 of the Obama fan club…er…”movement”

Progressive social and political change comes from below – from the mobilization of ordinary people to demand change from those in power. History bears this point out: from the mobilization of enslaved people to bring about the end of slavery, to the labor movement in the 1930’s, to the Civil Rights movement. Even Obama himself has incorporated this message into his campaign rhetoric, but the throngs of his zealous supporters embody an important contradiction. While in many respects it resembles a social movement, the support for Obama should not be seen as anything more than a campaign to get the man elected. Certainly voting is an important form of political participation – but it is the most passive form of participation. Progressives should not be focusing all of their time, energy, and resources on getting one person elected (we saw where that got us with Kerry), we should be focused on building an independent movement big enough to present a real threat to those in power and end this war, win universal healthcare, improve our education system, end unemployment, and ensure everyone a living wage. With its single minded focus on electoral politics and by sweeping many progressive activists into its ranks, the Obama campaign serves to demobilize already existing social movements and limits our ability to rebuild them after November 4th.

By this point, the Obama supporter realized that about 40 potential Democratic votes had vanished down the street in the time it took him to make his fruitless argument.

“Look, I have to get back to work. If you change your mind, here’s a voter registration application,” he said with an ounce of resignation and a dash of annoyance in his voice.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it to be polite (though I really hate to waste paper.)

The Obama campaign is not all bad of course. It has been truly encouraging to see the base of young people and people of color who have coalesced around the campaign – and his success to this point is a sign that the political climate in this country is shifting. People are fed up with eight years of the neo-cons and Obama has emerged in this context as a blank slate onto which people can project their hopes and aspirations for the future. Unfortunately, when so many people have such different understandings of the meaning of a single campaign, some people are bound to be disappointed. Even Obama agrees with that – those are his words, not mine.