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William C. Anderson: "We Don’t Have a Functional Left" Today · The Real News Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Joining us today again is William C. Anderson, author and
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Speaker 1: colonists of PRISM. If you missed our first conversation where
0:08
Speaker 1: we explore how black citizenship has historically been called into question,
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Speaker 1: you can find it on our YouTube channel. The History
0:17
Speaker 1: Fields especially urgent this week following the United States Supreme
0:21
Speaker 1: Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act. This is clearly
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Speaker 1: part of the continuation by the right to reverse black progress.
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Speaker 1: When before you dive into your latest Prism article, which
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Speaker 1: critiques the current left and off way path forward, what
0:37
Speaker 1: is your assessment of what you see coming out of
0:39
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court this week.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, It's something that I've been thinking about quite a bit.
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Speaker 2: I saw the news and I wasn't surprised by it.
0:50
Speaker 2: I thought it was to be expected. As you might know,
0:55
Speaker 2: this is something that I wrote about in the Nation
0:59
Speaker 2: on the Map, and specifically I mentioned the twenty thirteen
1:06
Speaker 2: Voting Right Sick decision in terms of the case with
1:10
Speaker 2: Shelby versus Holder, just following it up to that point,
1:14
Speaker 2: because you know.
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Speaker 3: The book came out in twenty twenty one, so.
1:20
Speaker 2: With things being where they were at that stage, I
1:25
Speaker 2: was anticipating it getting to this point and becoming even
1:32
Speaker 2: more dismantled and even more deconstructed. And the thing that
1:37
Speaker 2: I would say about it is is an especially personal
1:41
Speaker 2: matter for me because I'm from Alabama, from Shelby County,
1:46
Speaker 2: who brought the case against the Obama administration with.
1:50
Speaker 3: Holder, and.
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Speaker 2: You know, in that original ruling, at that point, one
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Speaker 2: of the things that Chief Justice John Roberts has said
2:02
Speaker 2: was that something to the effect of that, you know,
2:05
Speaker 2: at fifty years later, things had changed.
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Speaker 3: Quite dramatically, and it was kind of applying that.
2:11
Speaker 2: There was enough progress that had been made that is
2:14
Speaker 2: not necessary anymore to have something like the voting right sack.
2:17
Speaker 2: And that's what kind of underscores a lot of these
2:21
Speaker 2: white supremacists and fascist attacks on black history and on
2:25
Speaker 2: legislation that has been beneficial to black people. It's kind
2:30
Speaker 2: of trying to illuminate some sort of post racial society
2:36
Speaker 2: that we know clearly doesn't exist because it's becoming increasingly racist.
2:39
Speaker 3: They're not becoming less racist.
2:42
Speaker 2: So it's really just more evidence that if we really
2:49
Speaker 2: want to be able to see better, conditions that are
2:56
Speaker 2: permanent and that are only making progress for the betterment
3:02
Speaker 2: of our lives and the sustenance and the resources that
3:05
Speaker 2: we need. Then we have to have liberatory politics that
3:09
Speaker 2: actually push for those things in a way that is wholesale,
3:14
Speaker 2: that is comprehensive, that is expansive, and that's not incremental.
3:20
Speaker 2: And that's not to do anything or say anything that
3:24
Speaker 2: diminishes all of the blood, sweat and tears that were
3:27
Speaker 2: put in by the foot soldiers of the civil rights
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Speaker 2: movement across the board, from the more radical ends to
3:32
Speaker 2: the more moderate ends of the civil rights. What is
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Speaker 2: to say is that we should be able to learn
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Speaker 2: from this history that no matter what, when we're relying
3:46
Speaker 2: on the halls of the White House and Capitol Hill
3:52
Speaker 2: and representative democracy to try to do something for us
3:57
Speaker 2: that we know it's not designed to do, that is
3:59
Speaker 2: always going to end up like this. It's always going
4:01
Speaker 2: to be dismantled, it's always going to be rolled back,
4:04
Speaker 2: it's always going to be trying to correct itself to
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Speaker 2: get back to serving white supremacy and capitalism and the
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Speaker 2: fullest extent and not doing anything that it's not meant
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Speaker 2: to do originally.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. One this week, Prison published a new
4:24
Speaker 1: installment of your series Another Way Out, titled We Need
4:28
Speaker 1: a Mosaic movement, and you're right. Instead of a call
4:32
Speaker 1: for resentment, feel unity or traditional fronts, we can look
4:37
Speaker 1: to what former Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army members,
4:41
Speaker 1: and political prison of Russell Maroon Shots called the mosaic.
4:45
Speaker 1: Could you walk us through the core argument of your
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Speaker 1: article and could you provide a brief introduction to the
4:52
Speaker 1: life and legacy of Russell Maroon Shows.
4:55
Speaker 2: For sure, I'll start with h with Russell Maroon and
5:03
Speaker 2: Russell Maroon shouts was a really interesting and spectacular and
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Speaker 2: dynamic individual. He was a former Panther and Black Liberation
5:18
Speaker 2: Army soldier and he became active in politics, i want
5:23
Speaker 2: to say, in the sixties and was a founding member
5:28
Speaker 2: of the Black Unity Council in Philadelphia and they later
5:32
Speaker 2: merged with the Black Panther Party.
5:35
Speaker 3: So he.
5:37
Speaker 2: Put in a lot of work as a deep history
5:41
Speaker 2: in movement and then struggle, and he got locked up
5:46
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two for the first time, and he
5:51
Speaker 2: becomes a really extraordinary political prisoner because he's writing, he's thinking,
6:00
Speaker 2: and he's developing over time. And what's so interesting about
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Speaker 2: Russell Maroon Shows is that he's prolific. He's a prolific
6:12
Speaker 2: thinker and individual in the sense that he spends a
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Speaker 2: lot of his time questioning. He doesn't get incarcerated and
6:23
Speaker 2: kind of sit there hold in the same position for
6:26
Speaker 2: thirty forty fifty years. He's asking questions the whole time.
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Speaker 2: He's developing, he's expanding his analysis, and he is moving
6:35
Speaker 2: towards politics that are ultimately really, really interesting and fascinating.
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Speaker 2: So one of the things that I really appreciate about
6:49
Speaker 2: his work is that he was bringing in elements that
6:55
Speaker 2: I would say he wasn't necessarily always speaking about or
7:01
Speaker 2: being influenced by. There are things that were coming to
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Speaker 2: him later over time if you look at the coorus
7:09
Speaker 2: of his work, the development he had as a person.
7:14
Speaker 2: And so one of those aspects is something that comes
7:17
Speaker 2: forth in the essay that I'm referencing in my latest
7:21
Speaker 2: column at PRISM, and this is from an essay called
7:25
Speaker 2: The Dragon in the Hydra. The Dragon of the Hydra
7:28
Speaker 2: is an essay that is an organizational study that looks
7:32
Speaker 2: at the Maroons and the slave revolts and the struggles
7:36
Speaker 2: of African descended people in the Americas and the fights
7:40
Speaker 2: against slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, and what is so dynamic
7:48
Speaker 2: about this essay is that you can see a departure
7:53
Speaker 2: really with shots and his certain aspects of his past.
8:00
Speaker 2: So he is making a critique of democratic centralism, He's
8:06
Speaker 2: making a critique of vanguardism, and he's making a critique
8:09
Speaker 2: of some of the politics that are associated with the
8:12
Speaker 2: Black Panther Party and calling in to question even a
8:17
Speaker 2: lot of the projects of Marxist Leninism and the state
8:21
Speaker 2: socialist projects that were struggling and building national socialism. So
8:28
Speaker 2: he is making a critique that is I think probably
8:35
Speaker 2: controversial in some regards for some people. And he also
8:41
Speaker 2: at the same time he's critiquing these things, he draws
8:44
Speaker 2: from them. Still he still talks about his influence, the
8:48
Speaker 2: influence that these things had rapped his life.
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Speaker 3: But he also brings in element.
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Speaker 2: He says at the beginning of the essay, you know,
8:54
Speaker 2: I'm going to say a lot of things that sound
8:55
Speaker 2: like anarchism, and he says, I'm not an anarchist, but
8:59
Speaker 2: as long as anarchists are willing to stand on mutual
9:02
Speaker 2: footing and the struggle for intercommunal self determination, that you know,
9:07
Speaker 2: you should be able to see the overlap and see
9:10
Speaker 2: where things have parallels.
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Speaker 3: So ultimately, in this essay Showts.
9:18
Speaker 2: He puts forth this organizational study, and he says that
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Speaker 2: it's important for people to be able to learn from
9:29
Speaker 2: the past and not just keep doing the same thing
9:32
Speaker 2: over and over again. That's at the core of that
9:36
Speaker 2: essay I was drawing on in the essay that I
9:42
Speaker 2: wrote for Prism. It is about this last section that's
9:49
Speaker 2: included in the collected writings of Russell Maroon Shows called
9:53
Speaker 2: Maroon the Implacable, and what is in that last section
9:59
Speaker 2: is called the most isaic. It's a section called the Mosaic.
10:02
Speaker 2: What is in that last section is a solution because
10:07
Speaker 2: he doesn't just put forth the critique. He offers a
10:09
Speaker 2: solution for how people can struggle separately and autonomously, but
10:16
Speaker 2: understand their collective interest as different groups, as different genders,
10:23
Speaker 2: as different ideologies, as different political backgrounds, and so on
10:28
Speaker 2: and so forth. And it's not a traditional or typical
10:32
Speaker 2: call for a united front. Is it is a call
10:37
Speaker 2: for people to understand their common interest and to be
10:40
Speaker 2: able to have mutual respect enough to come together and
10:44
Speaker 2: to struggle to overthrow the conditions that are oppressing them.
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Speaker 2: So the core argument of my essay is about challenging
10:54
Speaker 2: what I feel is really a lot of a lot
10:57
Speaker 2: of silliness with the current state of the US Left,
11:02
Speaker 2: especially with my generation, and unfortunately a lot with younger
11:06
Speaker 2: generations than me.
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Speaker 3: There's just a lot of.
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Speaker 2: Sectarianism, there's a lot of beef, there's a lot of conflict,
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Speaker 2: and there's a lot of issues over things that really
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Speaker 2: don't have anything to do with the current different denominations
11:27
Speaker 2: of the US Left. And what I mean by that
11:30
Speaker 2: is that the current US Left.
11:34
Speaker 3: Doesn't have control over anything.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't have any any blocks that it controls, it
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Speaker 2: doesn't have any territory that it controls, it doesn't have
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Speaker 2: power in the government. It doesn't have a party, it
11:49
Speaker 2: doesn't have an army, it doesn't have a military. These
11:53
Speaker 2: are like different fragmented individuals who, at best my have
12:00
Speaker 2: an organization that you know, can do something in the
12:02
Speaker 2: community here or there, or might be able to serve
12:07
Speaker 2: some interest or need in some other way.
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Speaker 3: But this isn't like some massive part of the US population.
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Speaker 2: You know, in the article I was saying, if you
12:16
Speaker 2: put all of these folks together, these different factions of
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Speaker 2: the left, they don't even equal half a percent of
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Speaker 2: the US population.
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Speaker 3: Right, right, So I was just trying to really.
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Speaker 2: Say that this is a good time when we understand
12:32
Speaker 2: that fascism is not even at the door, it's inside
12:34
Speaker 2: of the house. It's a good time to let go
12:38
Speaker 2: of a lot of the rhetoric, a lot of the dogma,
12:42
Speaker 2: and a lot of the silliness that is just so
12:45
Speaker 2: prevalent on the US left, people thinking that they're way
12:48
Speaker 2: more relevant than they actually are, way more powerful than
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Speaker 2: they actually are, and bring forth an analysis.
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Speaker 3: Like what Russell Maroon shows offers with.
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Speaker 1: The mosaic You're critique good on lef it's blistering, to
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Speaker 1: say the least. And rightly, so you say you state
13:08
Speaker 1: is a staying we do not have an oppositional or
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Speaker 1: even a functional left. We have leftists and leftism, and
13:16
Speaker 1: there is a difference. Could you expound on that distinction.
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Speaker 2: The current state of the left the lefts because it
13:24
Speaker 2: is different groups and different factions and sex. The current
13:29
Speaker 2: state of things is it is basically non existent. Right,
13:36
Speaker 2: So when I'm talking about the left, I should first
13:38
Speaker 2: make the distinction that there isn't really a functioning, coherent,
13:48
Speaker 2: sort of unified or or or or homogeneous group that
13:55
Speaker 2: we know as the left. When people say the term
13:58
Speaker 2: the left, they are oftentimes are grouping.
14:02
Speaker 3: Lots of different things that are in conflict with one another.
14:07
Speaker 2: Right, so some people say the left and they mean
14:11
Speaker 2: like liberals and progressives and being maybe some of the
14:18
Speaker 2: more further left elements. Typically, when I'm talking about the left,
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Speaker 2: I'm talking about the historical movement that divided up in
14:30
Speaker 2: the struggle to ultimately build socialism, And I'm talking about
14:37
Speaker 2: the people who would identify as Marxists, as Marxist Leninist
14:43
Speaker 2: anarchists who are formerly known as libertarian socialists in the
14:48
Speaker 2: socialist movement before that the meaning of that term changed,
14:53
Speaker 2: and also talking about, you know, all of the different
14:57
Speaker 2: offshoots and developments within those respective things, because then you know,
15:02
Speaker 2: you have different types of people within each of those
15:07
Speaker 2: larger umbrella terms. That's typically what I'm talking about, which
15:11
Speaker 2: is for some people, the more radical left right.
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Speaker 3: So I think that it's important to first make that distinction.
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Speaker 2: Secondly, I would say that since it is not a
15:26
Speaker 2: functional opposition, and it's not really something that exists because
15:30
Speaker 2: it's so fragmented and divided up into these different kind
15:34
Speaker 2: of sporadic groups, It's interesting because a lot of what
15:41
Speaker 2: you see from within these different elements that I'm referring
15:46
Speaker 2: to is largely posturing, because there's no there's no power
15:54
Speaker 2: base that warrants the level of arrogance that you see
16:01
Speaker 2: coming from a lot of people in these within these
16:06
Speaker 2: different factions of the love. If you're not in control
16:09
Speaker 2: of anything, and you don't have the power to actually
16:12
Speaker 2: overthrow or to seize or to dismantle the oppressive instruments
16:18
Speaker 2: that you're you know, constantly talking about, then you have
16:22
Speaker 2: to operate from a place where you're in touch with reality,
16:25
Speaker 2: the reality of yourself and the reality of what.
16:28
Speaker 3: You are in.
16:31
Speaker 2: The country that you inhabit. So I'm ultimately a bit
16:38
Speaker 2: confused because when I'm saying that there's a lot of posturing,
16:43
Speaker 2: I'm looking at these people who might reference something like
16:49
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Party as an endorsement of their ideology.
16:53
Speaker 2: Say there are Marxist Leninists, and they say, well, you know,
16:57
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Party, you Marxist Leninism or Maoism or
17:02
Speaker 2: anything to push there, to push their organization forward and
17:07
Speaker 2: do that, do this, that or the third The thing
17:10
Speaker 2: is okay, that wasn't you though. You know, if you're
17:16
Speaker 2: the person who identifies as an anarchist and you glorifying
17:19
Speaker 2: the Zapatistas and talking about what they've been able to
17:23
Speaker 2: accomplish and how it influences you, that's not you either.
17:27
Speaker 2: You're talking about Lenin and the Russian Revolution and the
17:30
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks and talking about what that means to you as
17:34
Speaker 2: a Marxist, that's not you. You're an anarchist talking about
17:40
Speaker 2: Nestor Mackno and talking about what was being accomplished in
17:45
Speaker 2: Ukraine with that army.
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Speaker 3: That wasn't you.
17:49
Speaker 2: So I'm very confused by the posturing because if you're
17:54
Speaker 2: not inhabiting the position to be able to affect change
17:59
Speaker 2: and to check change, to change things for the better
18:03
Speaker 2: and your own conditions and your own time.
18:05
Speaker 3: You can't lay claim to.
18:08
Speaker 2: The accomplishments of people from the past or the present
18:14
Speaker 2: that don't have anything to do with you, or don't
18:18
Speaker 2: have anything to do with what you're.
18:19
Speaker 3: Doing in your career in your community.
18:22
Speaker 2: You can't just look and say, I'm this ideology. I'm
18:26
Speaker 2: an anarchist, I'm a Marxist, Leninist, I'm a Maoist, I'm
18:29
Speaker 2: a Trotskyist and then lay claim to historical victories and
18:35
Speaker 2: project yourself onto them and then act as if they're yours.
18:39
Speaker 3: That's not how that works.
18:41
Speaker 2: Your accomplishments have to speak for themselves based on the
18:45
Speaker 2: praxis and the revolutionary activity that you self organize within
18:50
Speaker 2: your own time and your own conditions. And so you
18:54
Speaker 2: have all these people online fighting over things that they
18:57
Speaker 2: didn't even achieve. You have people fight and over things
19:00
Speaker 2: that they have nothing to do with governments that they
19:04
Speaker 2: have no role in, no stake in, And it just
19:07
Speaker 2: blows my mind because it feels like a lot of
19:10
Speaker 2: people have lost the plot that we are supposed to
19:13
Speaker 2: be activating ourselves within our communities to build power so
19:18
Speaker 2: that we can decide together what kind of society we
19:20
Speaker 2: want to live in our unique conditions and time period.
19:24
Speaker 2: Not saying I'm an ideology that I chose off of Wikipedia,
19:30
Speaker 2: and I'm going to then make a decision about what
19:33
Speaker 2: the future looks like based off of my identity crisis,
19:37
Speaker 2: because I'm over here.
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Speaker 3: With all this talk and i haven't accomplished anything.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, very well, put in a lot of lift service,
19:46
Speaker 1: and we in an age and social media, so you
19:48
Speaker 1: can you can give lift service to it, and you
19:50
Speaker 1: can put your social media platform together and that becomes
19:54
Speaker 1: your revolution. Your revolution is I'm more vocal in the
19:58
Speaker 1: social media network, but I have yet to feed people.
20:02
Speaker 1: I have yet to create a school. I have yet
20:04
Speaker 1: to create any institution on things that's raising people's conscience
20:09
Speaker 1: or creating an environment where people come together to talk
20:12
Speaker 1: about what kind of society they think we should live in.
20:14
Speaker 1: But as we mark the sixtieth anniversary the Black Panther Party,
20:18
Speaker 1: how do you define their ultimate contribution to social justice? Additionally,
20:23
Speaker 1: in your book The Nation on No Maps, Black Anarchism
20:28
Speaker 1: and Abolition, what land policy do you highlight as successful
20:33
Speaker 1: examples of self determination and sways.
20:37
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about the way that I feel in
20:41
Speaker 2: relation to the Black Panther Party and some of the
20:45
Speaker 2: elements of what I just mentioned is that, again a
20:50
Speaker 2: lot of what I feel is a large misstep with
20:53
Speaker 2: people who have come along after, especially in my generation,
20:58
Speaker 2: is that there is a discussion and a.
21:05
Speaker 3: Sort of.
21:08
Speaker 2: What's the word I would use, I would say that
21:10
Speaker 2: there's a lot of discussion and reverence for the Black
21:13
Speaker 2: Panther Party that oversimplifies the legacy. And as you know, Mansa.
21:22
Speaker 2: The Black Panther Party was an organization that had different chapters,
21:27
Speaker 2: and it had different eras, and it had splits, and
21:33
Speaker 2: it had internal fighting and a lot of other things
21:37
Speaker 2: that went on over the course it existed. So when
21:41
Speaker 2: you talk about the Black Panther Party and you homogenize
21:46
Speaker 2: it and make it into one thing, which is what
21:48
Speaker 2: a lot of people during this era that have come
21:51
Speaker 2: along later do. You are not able to learn from
21:55
Speaker 2: the successes and the failures of the Black And unfortunately
22:05
Speaker 2: we have to discuss failures in order to not repeat them.
22:11
Speaker 2: And one of the things that gets lost is how
22:17
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Party changed course a number of times,
22:23
Speaker 2: not just in terms of leadership, but in terms of politics.
22:26
Speaker 2: So just a second ago, when I was talking about
22:29
Speaker 2: these different people within the left lay and claim the
22:31
Speaker 2: things that they have no right to lay claim to,
22:34
Speaker 2: one of the things that is kind of mind boggling
22:38
Speaker 2: to me is how the Black Panther Party is oversimplified
22:46
Speaker 2: to glorify certain ideologies, whether it be Marxist, lennon as Maoism,
22:51
Speaker 2: or whatever the case, when the current fact of the
22:55
Speaker 2: matter is, you know, I'm on here today talking about
22:58
Speaker 2: Russell Maroon shows, who's a former Black Panther Party member.
23:03
Speaker 2: Russell Maroon shows his critique of democratic centralism is a
23:08
Speaker 2: part of a larger thread, which is the discussion that
23:11
Speaker 2: I had with you last time I was on. The
23:14
Speaker 2: larger thread that it's a part of is that you
23:19
Speaker 2: had a number of people who after the dissolution of
23:23
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Partier who left the party became anarchists.
23:29
Speaker 2: Russell Maroon shows doesn't fall into that category. But you
23:32
Speaker 2: have people like Lorenzo Comboa Urvin, you have people like
23:37
Speaker 2: Ashanti Auston, Kuwaes Ballagoon, Ojorie Lutello, all these political prisoners
23:44
Speaker 2: and revolutionaries who became attracted to anarchism. Janina Ervin, who
23:49
Speaker 2: was the last editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper.
23:53
Speaker 2: And so not only do certain people change later within
24:00
Speaker 2: the context of the party and at the time that
24:04
Speaker 2: it was going through different changes and splits, you had
24:08
Speaker 2: someone like Huey P. Newton who brings forth his theory
24:11
Speaker 2: of intercommunalism, which I write also about in the Nation
24:14
Speaker 2: on nomap and when he brings forth the theory of
24:17
Speaker 2: intercommunalism and he gives a speech at Boston College in
24:19
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, hue P. Newton is raising this issue about
24:25
Speaker 2: a lot of the Marxist Leninist dogma getting too deep
24:29
Speaker 2: within the party about how they were supposed to be changing,
24:34
Speaker 2: and he starts asking questions about the nation and about
24:37
Speaker 2: the state, and you see a radical sort of turn
24:43
Speaker 2: is happening within the party. This is something that Bobby
24:46
Speaker 2: Seal also spoke about. Bobby Seal also became increasingly critical
24:51
Speaker 2: of a lot of these a lot of these elements,
24:56
Speaker 2: this sort of traditional sort of state socialism that had
25:00
Speaker 2: once been a big part of the party. And they
25:02
Speaker 2: talk about the development from Black nationalism, the Marxist Leninism, Maoism.
25:07
Speaker 3: Towards that place that they had come and that they
25:12
Speaker 3: had arrived at.
25:12
Speaker 2: Another person who talks about it was Philed Marshall don Cox.
25:15
Speaker 2: Build Marshall don Cox was increasingly critical. So I just
25:20
Speaker 2: named a plethora of people from the Black Panther Party
25:24
Speaker 2: who started say, actually, we need to start rethinking.
25:28
Speaker 3: This and moving away from this.
25:29
Speaker 2: And they start saying a lot of things that if
25:32
Speaker 2: they weren't outright anarchists, become increasingly anarchistic in their thinking.
25:38
Speaker 2: And I just think that it's important, extremely important to
25:44
Speaker 2: notice that thread, to acknowledge it and not pretend like
25:47
Speaker 2: it didn't exist, and to talk about what it actually meant,
25:51
Speaker 2: and not freeze the Black Panther Party in one era
25:56
Speaker 2: and one chapter of its development of it as an organization.
26:01
Speaker 2: So that's one of my biggest concerns with my work,
26:03
Speaker 2: and that's one of the reasons that I write about
26:05
Speaker 2: Black anarchism. It's not because I'm trying to be doctrinaire
26:09
Speaker 2: or create a new ideology or bring forth a new ideology.
26:14
Speaker 2: Rather to some people's attention for them to become zealous
26:21
Speaker 2: about or so dogmatic about. I just think it's important
26:26
Speaker 2: to be able to look at the bigger picture of
26:28
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Party and to talk about the entire
26:32
Speaker 2: scope of what happened, what occurred, and the changes that
26:35
Speaker 2: people made at the end of their lives. Just like
26:37
Speaker 2: I was talking about, Russell Maroon shows at the beginning
26:40
Speaker 2: being a person who developed over time, so too was
26:44
Speaker 2: everybody else you look at from the Black Panther Party.
26:48
Speaker 2: They all developed, they all changed, they all became people
26:52
Speaker 2: who departed.
26:54
Speaker 3: From positions that they at once held.
26:56
Speaker 2: And you have to acknowledge that you can't just freeze
26:58
Speaker 2: them as access lendiness or this or that. That's what
27:03
Speaker 2: they were, and that means that this is good forever
27:06
Speaker 2: and that's the way it is. You have to look
27:08
Speaker 2: at the entire picture. And I think that one of
27:12
Speaker 2: the things that that leads me to do is to
27:15
Speaker 2: call in to question a lot of the necessity for
27:21
Speaker 2: the politics that they departed started to depart from or
27:24
Speaker 2: did depart from, depending on who you're talking about, respectively.
27:28
Speaker 2: And that's why when I talk about land politics, when
27:31
Speaker 2: I think about land, when I think about territory, I'm
27:35
Speaker 2: a person who tries to move away from the idea
27:38
Speaker 2: of just building a nation state and having borders and
27:42
Speaker 2: having a regime that creates oppression for some and not
27:48
Speaker 2: for others, or has a ruling party or a ruling class.
27:52
Speaker 2: I don't tend to think about things that were in
27:54
Speaker 2: relation to the land. I think that we have to
27:56
Speaker 2: have a more holistic and a more thoughtful approach that
28:00
Speaker 2: doesn't rehash or recreate any of the trappings of colonialism
28:05
Speaker 2: or the class instrument that we know as the nation.
28:07
Speaker 1: State, and we recognize, like to your point, like the
28:11
Speaker 1: Republic of New Africa over there in them. You know,
28:14
Speaker 1: they had an ideological perspective of what they wanted in
28:19
Speaker 1: terms of land. And when we look at the evolution
28:22
Speaker 1: of the thinking of party members when here he came
28:25
Speaker 1: out with the constant theory of intercommunalism, it took a
28:29
Speaker 1: change the trajectory in terms of the thinking and had
28:33
Speaker 1: because now we define and what we see as our role,
28:39
Speaker 1: and what we see is how we go about implementing
28:41
Speaker 1: our ideas in the face of over surmounting repression. They
28:47
Speaker 1: never seen nothing like this. You being bombarded with misinformation,
28:51
Speaker 1: disinformation and murders. So to your point, it's interesting to
28:57
Speaker 1: see how are people when they take making a historical analysis.
29:01
Speaker 1: I'm kind of questioning what is their intent that, Like,
29:05
Speaker 1: go back to your point, you refercent valid historical events
29:09
Speaker 1: and activity to substantiate your position. But as we close out,
29:14
Speaker 1: talk about where we're staying at and how we get
29:17
Speaker 1: out this quagmied? Are we in with this? How you
29:20
Speaker 1: think we're going to get out this contradiction?
29:22
Speaker 3: Man?
29:22
Speaker 2: So I think that one of the most important things
29:24
Speaker 2: that we have to do to be able to escape
29:27
Speaker 2: this situation. And this is a lot of the subject
29:30
Speaker 2: matter that I try to focus on in my column,
29:32
Speaker 2: which is why it's called another way out, and that
29:36
Speaker 2: is to a large extent a reference to Amy Sazare
29:42
Speaker 2: and his resignation from the French Communist Party when he
29:47
Speaker 2: said the world is in an impact, but that didn't
29:49
Speaker 2: mean that there was no way out. I'm looking at
29:54
Speaker 2: the situation as someone who has failed a lot. I
30:02
Speaker 2: say these things with all respect to the people who
30:07
Speaker 2: have come before me, the people who exist alongside me,
30:13
Speaker 2: who are operating from a place of genuineness and sincerity,
30:19
Speaker 2: and the people who are going to come along in
30:21
Speaker 2: the future. It's with respect to them that I truly
30:25
Speaker 2: believe in my heart of hearts that at this point,
30:29
Speaker 2: what we know as leftism in the United States, like
30:36
Speaker 2: I was arguing in the article, we have an abundance
30:39
Speaker 2: of leftism and leftists. I think that at this point
30:42
Speaker 2: in time that all of this has become.
30:49
Speaker 3: A bit of a trap. And I say that because.
30:55
Speaker 2: The way that it's currently functioning, the level of disconnect
31:02
Speaker 2: that you can identify amongst a lot of young people.
31:06
Speaker 2: This showed sessay that I'm referencing the Dragon and the Hydra.
31:10
Speaker 2: It's from two thousand and six. It's from twenty years ago.
31:13
Speaker 2: It's not a really old essay. That was when I
31:21
Speaker 2: first started coming into left spaces. That was around the
31:25
Speaker 2: time I first started entering left spaces. Things have gotten
31:31
Speaker 2: much worse, real, much worse. And I'm talking about the divide,
31:38
Speaker 2: the sectarianism and the anti intellectualism that is becoming an
31:45
Speaker 2: increasing problem. A lot of the things I'm complaining about
31:50
Speaker 2: and critiquing are actually rooted in a lot of ignorance,
31:56
Speaker 2: because a lot of this for people is just rhetoric
32:01
Speaker 2: and it's not actually based in real world experiences or
32:07
Speaker 2: conditions that are outside It is a lot of performance
32:14
Speaker 2: that comes from a place that doesn't seem to have
32:19
Speaker 2: much to do with making the world better. It comes
32:23
Speaker 2: from a place of repetition that I feel is indicating
32:31
Speaker 2: and exposing that leftism as we know it in the
32:36
Speaker 2: US has become.
32:40
Speaker 3: Secular religion.
32:43
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is it is turning
32:49
Speaker 2: into something that it was not supposed to have any
32:55
Speaker 2: intention of being. It's become a faith and a zealotry
33:01
Speaker 2: for a lot of people. When you're constantly fighting about
33:05
Speaker 2: these accomplishments and these tenets and these associations of the
33:10
Speaker 2: past that reminds me of religions. It reminds me of
33:15
Speaker 2: the way that people adapt institutional and oppressive fundamentalists and
33:22
Speaker 2: theocratic views and then start going around trying to bash
33:27
Speaker 2: people in the head with them and say, if you
33:28
Speaker 2: don't do and adapt to what I say, then you're
33:31
Speaker 2: the enemy and you have to go. And I don't
33:35
Speaker 2: understand how that's supposed to have anything to do with
33:39
Speaker 2: liberating people in the working class sees needs the production
33:44
Speaker 2: like I think that that is completely being lost here.
33:48
Speaker 2: I thought we were trying to get workers in control
33:50
Speaker 2: of the means of production, and we were trying to
33:52
Speaker 2: make sure that everybody was able to live and have
33:55
Speaker 2: resources and be happy and at peace. I did not
34:00
Speaker 2: think that this was supposed to be something that becomes
34:05
Speaker 2: so toxic and inundated with rhetoric that is completely based
34:09
Speaker 2: off of opinion, with a lack of good faith arguments.
34:15
Speaker 2: You know, found hardly anywhere when we're at that place.
34:19
Speaker 2: This isn't this isn't anything that's taking us in a
34:23
Speaker 2: progressive direction anymore. And so I think that that was
34:28
Speaker 2: one of the problems that was at the beginnings of leftism,
34:35
Speaker 2: Western leftism as we know it. In Europe that has
34:39
Speaker 2: now reared its ugly head in such a way that
34:42
Speaker 2: a lot of the warnings that happened at the beginning
34:48
Speaker 2: of the beginnings of the socialist movement have now become
34:51
Speaker 2: increasingly clear.
34:52
Speaker 3: You know. One of the things I think about is a.
34:58
Speaker 2: Letter that person person who coined the term anarchists, Pierre
35:03
Speaker 2: Joseph Prudan, wrote a letter to Marx during their time saying,
35:09
Speaker 2: you know something to the effect of, if you're if
35:11
Speaker 2: we're not careful, that this is going to start looking.
35:15
Speaker 3: A lot like religion.
35:16
Speaker 2: These these issues that we have amongst each other, these
35:19
Speaker 2: disc and that's that's where we're at. That's the same
35:26
Speaker 2: type of reasoning that Malcolm X had when he said,
35:30
Speaker 2: we don't need to discuss religion when we come together.
35:33
Speaker 2: Let's leave it at the door, and let's figure out
35:35
Speaker 2: what we need to figure out together so that we
35:37
Speaker 2: can make progress. That's that's one of the terms that
35:39
Speaker 2: Malcolm made in his life. And I just I just
35:44
Speaker 2: feel like this is where we're at, uh, and we
35:46
Speaker 2: have to depart from it. We have to depart from
35:49
Speaker 2: this relationship that is completely an overly ideological and theoretical
35:56
Speaker 2: and not rooted in practice and humble ourselves to say
36:00
Speaker 2: we're going.
36:01
Speaker 3: To do what we need to do here to defeat.
36:03
Speaker 2: Empire so that we can change the world and change
36:07
Speaker 2: our community better instead of just talking all this ideology, ideology, ideology.
36:12
Speaker 2: I'm not here to talk about anarchism and Marxist Leninism
36:17
Speaker 2: and all of these things as some sort of proselytizing
36:21
Speaker 2: on a soapbox. I'm preaching that you're trying to convert
36:24
Speaker 2: you to my faith. I'm here to talk about these
36:27
Speaker 2: things as tools. They are learn from respectively, as tools
36:32
Speaker 2: so that we can make progress. And you need different
36:36
Speaker 2: tools in order to assemble a house that we can
36:38
Speaker 2: live in together. And so I'm here to look at
36:41
Speaker 2: those things respectively in that way and to evolve and
36:45
Speaker 2: to grow so that we can get beyond them, not
36:48
Speaker 2: be trapped by them and have fights in the name
36:51
Speaker 2: of ghost and dead people who are not here and
36:55
Speaker 2: not living with us. I'm not here to fight on
36:57
Speaker 2: behalf of no ghosts with nobody. I don't have any
36:59
Speaker 2: time for that type stuff. And I hope that there
37:01
Speaker 2: are other people out there who feel similarly.
37:03
Speaker 3: I know that there are who.
37:05
Speaker 2: Are willing to build something like what Russell Maroon Shows
37:08
Speaker 2: was offering with the Mosaic because I think that that's
37:11
Speaker 2: the format that I find really inspiring right now to
37:13
Speaker 2: help us get out of this situation.
37:16
Speaker 1: Well, put you definitely rally the bars, they will. And
37:18
Speaker 1: we want to remind our audience that when you find
37:22
Speaker 1: yourself in a space where you can't afford to pay
37:24
Speaker 1: your rent, medical insurance is high, can't afford childcare, you
37:29
Speaker 1: can't turn left for turn right without losing something. The
37:32
Speaker 1: last thing you want someone to talk to you about
37:35
Speaker 1: is why you should believe a certain way, and that
37:38
Speaker 1: belief system has not converted. None of it has not changed.
37:41
Speaker 1: Nothing has not changed, your rent has not changed your
37:44
Speaker 1: living conditions. So if we want you to look at
37:47
Speaker 1: this particular podcast and recognize that we're talking about, or
37:52
Speaker 1: thinking we're talking about, understanding social igonomed political conditions enough
37:58
Speaker 1: to understand how to change them as opposed to like,
38:02
Speaker 1: before I can change them, I gotta say, I gotta
38:05
Speaker 1: tag myself or I'm a leftist, I'm a Marxist, I'm
38:08
Speaker 1: a Leninist, I'm a Stalinist. No change social conditions. First,
38:14
Speaker 1: you need to understand what the problem is and then
38:17
Speaker 1: come together collectively how to resolve the problem. Thank you,
38:20
Speaker 1: will you definitely raping the bars day we asked I
38:22
Speaker 1: always to continue to support the real news and ralling
38:24
Speaker 1: the bars because guess what, we're actually the real news