#Leftist organizations really need to examine who they let in and represent them

[coochiequeens]

Trigger warning: discusses the sexual assault and murder of a child

A social media account harassing, impersonating, and threatening women critical of gender ideology appears to belong to a trans-identified male convicted of the brutal torture and murder of a 13-year-old child.

On October 24, Reduxx reported that Synthia China Blast had been discharged from his parole with the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision on July 30, quietly marking the end of his sentence and release conditions.

Blast, born Luis Morales, was sentenced in 1996 for the horrific murder of 13-year-old Ebony Nicole Williams. Blast, along with his boyfriend Carlos Franco, were sentenced to 25 years for the crime, one that had both sexist and racist motivations.

Blast and Franco, members of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation gang, targeted the young girl less than 24 hours after she had run away from home. Williams taken to an apartment in Hunts Point where she was held captive.

According to case investigators at the time, Blast and Franco tortured the young girl before stabbing her repeatedly. Realizing she was still alive after having been slashed by Blast, Franco then stomped on the child’s neck until it was broken. Prior to being killed, Blast had reportedly sexually assaulted the girl.

Following her death, Blast and Franco packed the girl’s naked body into a box and dumped it near the Sheridan Expressway. Finally, they doused the box in gasoline, and set it ablaze. A passenger on a nearby train saw the flames and called 911. Blast and Franco were apprehended shortly after the body was retrieved by police.

During the trial, Bronx Prosecutor William Hrabsky said of the crime: “The suffering that this poor child went through is beyond belief and puts this crime in the category of monstrous and barbarous.”

Despite pleading innocence in court and to media in later interviews, Blast had reportedly “bragged” about committing the crime to friends, some of whom would later testify against him on this basis. 

While a rape conviction was never pursued, as the girl’s body had been too severely mutilated for authorities to collect a DNA sample, Blast and Franco both received 25-to-life for the murder of Williams.

One week after the publication of the Reduxx article reporting on Blast’s discharge from parole, Reduxx received an email from an account infuriated that the piece had mentioned the allegations that Blast had raped Williams. The email was sent from an address beginning with the number ‘4300.’

The same day, a Twitter account surfaced with the handle @Code4300, impersonating Reduxx Editor-in-Chief Anna Slatz, using her photo and Reduxx branding. 

While posting highly disturbing, sexualized comments on Slatz, the account began following women’s rights advocates on Twitter in a clear effort to get their attention.

While posing as Slatz, the @Code4300 account claimed to be in a relationship with a trans-identifying male and called for a boycott against, and the banning of, Reduxx. The owner of the account also made several references to Blast and asserting his innocence, using both the female pseudonym and his birth name, Luis Morales.

The account also threatened Slatz, and claimed to have her home address. Within 24 hours, it began cycling through impersonating other female contributors and supporters of Reduxx, using their names and profile photos to post disturbing content. 

Shortly after, @Code4300 was linked to an Instagram account similarly utilizing the ‘4300’ moniker — one which was quickly discovered to belong to Synthia China Blast.

On Instagram, Blast posted about being in a women’s shelter in 2020, which would have been shortly after he was paroled. Around that same time, he advertised a bed available in his apartment for rent, requesting only “men into trans women or women into trans women” apply.

While using the @Code4300 moniker on Twitter, Blast had engaged in repeated calls for violence against women, and in particular women who are critical of the notion that men can become women. 

“TERFs are not only anti-trans they are also anti-men. We must eradicate them before their diseases spread to our young children,” read the account’s description, which has since been changed, along with the username and profile photo. 

Since being exposed as running the account on Twitter, Blast has continued to assert his innocence of the crimes he was convicted of — a trend that follows his previous claims to media that he was wrongfully accused. 

In addition to calling for violence against women, the author made statements suggesting he believes that trans-identifying males are superior to women.

Prior to engaging in the targeted harassment of Reduxxstaff and women associated with the publication, @Code4300 claimed to be in favor of “abolishing prisons,” and celebrated both the shooting of a police officer and the stabbing of a Corrections Officer at Rikers Island.

In the following days, a second Twitter account claiming to be Blast was created using the name HuntingTERFs.

“For the record, my name is Synthia China Blast and I was wrongfully convicted of murder,” reads one post from November 10.

The second account also boasted that another convictionwould see Blast placed in a women’s prison. “If I’m ever again arrested, I go with the females now. No more men’s prison for me,” @KillingTime1235 wrote.

The account appears primarily dedicated to posting screenshots of female-committed crimes, with the intention of proving that “cis women are extremely violent and dangerous.”

In 2014, prominent transgender actor Laverne Cox appeared in a now-deleted promotional video produced by a trans activist prison reform lobbying organization, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP). 

In the video, Cox stated his support for the SRLP and the organization’s Prisoner Advisory Committee (PAC). He then read a letter from Blast which appealed to viewers’ sympathies and described his situation while incarcerated as a “denial of basic human rights.”

Cox later distanced himself from Blast after learning more details about the crimes he was convicted for.

In 2019, one year after Blast was first paroled, he appeared in a video posted to the SRLP’s official Facebook page, and was described as a Political Action Committee member and intern.

“

I came from being in a jail cell to learning about SRLP and its mission, who Sylvia Rivera, as a person, actually was, and … about Marsha P. Johnson, and I was definitely hooked into this movement,” Blast said.

“We all have a voice. And we live in a time, today, where that voice is finally being heard. We haven’t reached that milestone yet. We are all screaming together, and now they are finally listening,” Blast says, then promoting the SRLP as a center which can help transgender people change their names and legal identity. 

“Whenever I find a transgender person, I ask them: Do you know about the Sylvia Rivera Law Project?”

Reduxx previously revealed another trans-identifying male convict who was specifically selected by the SRLP to participate in trans advocacy and prison reform campaigning. Xena Grandichelli, born Jeffrey Willsea, is a convicted child sex offender who has performed community outreach services for the SRLP. In 1994, Grandichelli pleaded guilty to 11 counts of sexual abuse involving a 3 year-old girl.

Grandichelli partnered with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) and was designated as a Movement Building Teammember. In a 2015 letter posted to the SRLP website, Grandichelli described how team members from the organization actively worked to recruit him while he was still incarcerated for sexually abusing a child.

Despite providing advocacy for convicted child abusers, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project receives the financial support of several notable institutions and figures, including the Stonewall Community Foundation and the trans-identifying medical and pharmaceutical millionaire Martine Rothblatt. 

Blast is not the only trans-identified murderer who has been utilizing social media to threaten women critical of gender ideology. 

In 2021, it was discovered that Swedish murdererMagdala Johansson had been targeting Twitter accounts who had posted details about his grisly crime.

Johansson, born Kristoffer, was convicted in 2013 of the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend, 20-year-old Vatchareeya Bangsuan. Johansson stabbed Bangsuan to death before dismembering her and scattering her body parts in a nearby forested area. Some sources have also reported that Johansson masturbated over Bangsuan’s mutilated corpse, spreading his semen on her body parts.

Johansson was ultimately sentenced to 14 years, which was overturned on appeal to 10. He served just 6 years before being released in 2020.

Much like Blast, on Twitter and Instagram, Johansson called himself a “TERF Hunter,” and made misogynistic posts about women critical of gender ideology, sometimes while showing off his gun collection.

By Genevieve Gluck Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[insideanairport]

Éric Alliez & Maurizio Lazzarato’s Wars and Capital

❍❍❍

The book is examining Wars and Capital, with State in between as an important element to constitute the notion of politics (in a Schmittian & Greek sense). I came across the book in an exhibition titled Crossings in Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen this Christmas. The cover description of the book says: “A critique of capital through the lens of war, and a critique of war through the lens of the revolution of 1968.” I have read some of the works of Lazzarato before on notion of sovereignty, which made me interested to read this one.

The book is drawing heavily from the Nazi racist political scientist Carl Schmitt (who was going as far as demanding that all publications by Jewish scientists should henceforth be marked with a small symbol) and at the same time political works of Foucault and Deleuze. Unsurprisingly, Foucault has been criticized for being too liberal, specifically in chapter 7: “The Limits of the Liberalism of Foucault”. That’s also probably, the reason that Schmitt’s Naziism has not been mentioned throughout the whole book. Schmitt has been cited more than 35 times and one chapter is dedicated to him alongside Lenin. (Chapter 8: The Primacy of Capture, Between Schmitt and Lenin)

Alliez and Lazzarato seem to fully agree with Wallerstein’s world-system theory. Creation of the term "War of subjectivity” (which is also another fancy word for identity-politics) is a big part of the concept. Since today everyone has recognized that mostly white-boys are complaining about identity politics (for obvious reasons), writers have become creative in coming up with this new term “War of subjectivity”. However, the essence of the book is pushing for the same good-old critiques: fascism is not so different from Capitalism / Anthropocene is Capitalocene / poor White workers in England suffered as much as slaves in America (page 115, 374) / Postmodernism is bad, class-consciousness is needed… etc. etc.

“During colonization, entire peoples, after having been expropriated from their ‘life as savages,’ let themselves die off rather than fall into a slavery that could include the option of ‘free labor.’ ‘Free labor’ that the practice of working to death in workshops and manufactures brings so close to slavery itself that the Morning Star—the organ of the English free-traders—could exclaim: ‘Our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.’”

The centrality of the debt-economy concept is always present in the background of the book. Also, neoliberalism is defined as the “Global Civil War”. At some point, I questioned myself if he’s just adding the word WAR at the end of anything that capital is to blame for? War here is referred to as “the most deterritorial form of sovereignty”. “War of Subjectivity”, “War of Race, class, gender, sex, etc..”. This is also not a new strategy, orthodox white-boy Marxists have been presenting all sorts of privileges (especially “white-privilege” and “male privilege”) as a divider and a sidetrack for class wars. Borrowing from Giovanni Arrighi, they inserted a passage that clearly shows how they think about colonialism. They blame almost everything aside from the most important element: “racism”.

“The synergy between capitalism, industrialism, and militarism, driven by interstate competition, did indeed engender a virtuous circle of enrichment and empowerment for the peoples of European descent and a corresponding vicious circle of impoverishment and disempowerment for most other peoples.”

Methodologically, the book almost never steps out of Europe. Although there are some great historical references to wars and interventions in developing countries, which are also the intersection of capitalism and colonialism -examples such as Haiti’s slave rebellion of Saint-Domingue. The strength of the book is in identifying all different modes of governmental industrial militarism, or “military Keynesianism”, which enabled colonial power to quite down internal civil war during the process of colonialism. The example of Nazi Germany’s full population employment due to war was very aligned with these analyses. In section 9.6 of the book, the writers argue how post-war welfare states were able to erase the differences between war-time and peace-time, which was part of the larger debate on how “warfare states” transferred to “welfare states”. This is also the same reason I kept reading all the 430 pages of the book.

In 1957 the Nazi Carl Schmitt invited Kojeve to give a lecture addressing representatives of “Rhine capitalism” at an exclusive club in Düsseldorf. The title of the talk was "Colonialism from a European Perspective". Alexandre Kojeve, a right-wing Hegelian bureaucrat, dissected colonialism into two categories of “giving colonialism” and “taking colonialism”. He says: “Thus one must really ask the question today: how can colonialism be economically reconstructed in a "Fordist" way, so to speak? On the face of it, there are three conceivable methods, and all three have already been suggested.” Lazzarato probably turned on by this distinction, references Kojeve alongside Schmitt and replaces the word “colonialism” with “capitalism” to flatten all ambiguities that colonialism is the same as capitalism. Following the reminder that the Capitalist mode of production is simultaneously a mode of destruction.  

The biggest problem that I have with the book, is that it equalizes the poor white workers of the 17-19th century in Europe to the slaves in Africa and the Americas. I call this act “theoretical colonization”. While race-blindness remains an issue in the book, it’s another problem to reduce the suffering of racial slavery in order to equalize them with Western white workers.

It’s very comical that in one instant they called Foucault’s theory “Eurocentric” and also “British-centric”!? Showing that they actually have no clue what these terms mean or where it's coming from. I agree with Spivak that to some extend Foucault’s work is slightly Eurocentric, but to hear this from a conservative white boy like Lazzarato is admittedly a bit humorous.

What came to my mind during reading Wars and Capital was the film “Lincoln (2012)”. By attacking 19th-century-liberals, the film made all the right-wing people happy (including those radicals who hated Obama and later in 2016, voted for Trump). In the background of this recollection is also the most racist film of all times "The Birth of a Nation (1925)” by D. W. Griffith, which depicted the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens very negatively.

The writers attack the liberalism of John Locke and his support of slavery. By using this 17th-century example, they are constructing a case that centrism (the equivalent of today’s conflicts of subjectivity, which for them falls under the bigger umbrella of liberalism) is the secret motor of liberal governmentality. What Lazzarato is neglecting is not class consciousness but the fact that what constitutes an abolitionist position in the West, is not the race-blindness of homo oeconomicus but is a consciousness of race, culture, and colonialism.

Expectedly and appropriately, there is no actual examination of what racism is in the book. Similar to other orthodox leftists, writers refuse to get into any analysis of racism. They hijack the notion of racism when it intersects with wage-gab, or harsh working conditions in Europe. The only race that exists is the race of workers, problem solved! Classic! In most cases, they use the word racism as a supplement to show the intensity of a particular concept (environmental racism, anti-labor racism, war-racism, eugenics of labor force). The ultimate aim is to reduce racism solely to market-violence. In other words, all sorts of social inequalities are a side-effect of the world’s economic system and therefore fall under the same category of social reproduction.

Éric Alliez and Maurizio Lazzarato are so orthodox that for them the radical white kids from ’60s are heterodox. 

They are so orthodox when mentioning Korea, they don’t put south or north before it. 

They are so orthodox that for them talking about “Black Power” is the same as talking about “White Power” because it is talking about race!

What Marxism needs is not another corps of the orthodoxy wrapped in the cutting-edge hip and fancy vocabulary, but a fresh inclusive, race-conscious framework that acknowledges people’s differences and culture prior to the call for unification of the workers. That’s the only way it can come out of the dark archaic place where it is now. Similar to Carl Schmitt critique of liberalism in the “The Concept of Political”, today, the same critique comes from people such as Bolsonaro, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and the rest. 

Here is a selection on Griffith’s work, from Sergei Eisenstein in the collection of essays, titled: Dickens Griffith and the Film Today (1944). The critique of liberalism seems to do nothing but to direct attention to the position of the writer. This passage precedes a description of a video made in mockery of Menshevik addressing in the Second Congress of Soviets.

“The role of Griffith is enormous, but our cinema is neither a poor relative nor an insolvent debtor of his. It was natural that the spirit and content of our country itself, in themes and subjects, would stride far ahead of Griffith's ideals as well their reflection in artistic images. In social attitudes Griffith was always a liberal, never departing far from the slightly sentimental humanism of the good old gentlemen and sweet old ladies of Victorian England, just as Dickens loved to picture them. His tender-hearted morals go no higher than a level of Christian accusation of human injustice and nowhere in his films is there sounded a protest against social injustice.”

The depiction of abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in the racist film “The Birth of a Nation 1915” by D. W. Griffith.

The depiction of Thaddeus Stevens in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln (2012)″

The depiction of “The Birth of a Nation 1915” in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman (2018)″

Bib.

De Vries, Erik. 2001. “Alexandre Kojeve, ’Colonialism from a European Perspective’ 29 (1):”, no. 29 (1) (January), 115-30. Eisenstein, Sergei. 2014. Film Form. HMH. Koonz, Claudia. 2003. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Schmitt, Carl. 2008. The Concept of the Political. University of Chicago Press.

[96thdayofrage]

https://medium.com/@hasan.ali.ibrahim.fb/talib-kweli-the-hypocrite-that-rupert-murdoch-funded-e29b26f535cf

For months, Talib Kweli Greene has been on a smear campaign against a lineage-based political movement called American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) and a woman named Yvette Carnell who helped coin the term. The basis of his smear is founded solely on a conspiracy theory and has seemed to gain traction among the detractors of said movement. The idea being that at one time, Carnell was on the board of an organization financed by a now deceased white supremacist. The organization is called Progressives for Immigration Reform and the white supremacist is John Tanton. Kweli has spread the idea that ADOS is financed by rightwing groups and, in this new era of red scare hysteria, his idea has taken hold. At this point, Carnell and ADOS have been investigated by journalists who can’t find any proof of such a conspiracy. Yet, daily, Kweli can be found on his social media repeating the assertion.

Earlier this year, Talib Kweli had a somewhat infamous run-in with Yvette Carnell. Kweli made a tweet dismissing the idea of taking support away from the Democrat party if they wouldn’t meet the demand of reparations. This seems a strange position from a rapper who’s boasted about a “no voting” stance for most of his career. In response, Carnell said celebrities were “loud and wrong” about these types of political takes because they don’t understand the data. She also questioned why people listen to celebrities like Kweli when it comes to politics. Kweli, who’s profession often includes trading verbal insults back and forth with other rappers, seem unable to handle that his political position was even mildly challenged. He’s since gone on to attack the credibility of Yvette Carnell, anyone she’s associated with and the political movement she sparked with Antonio Moore around the justice claim for American Descendants of Slavery. Kweli has been consumed by arguing with the people of ADOS and misconstruing their positions as right-wing xenophobia, going as far as calling them MAGA. Seemingly the only basis for his assertions is: ADOS refuses to act in lockstep with the Democrat party nor leftist ideas about how black people should view politics.

The ADOS agenda:

Yvette Carnell previously worked as an aid in Washington for the Democrat party and says she left because of frustration with the disregard Democratic politicians have shown the black community who have consistently been their most loyal supporters. She was able to find a like minded partner in Antonio Moore, who felt it necessary to refocus black politics after reviewing staggering economic data about wealth among black Americans who descend from slavery. They are simply echoing a sentiment that has been around in the black community since the establishment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is that the government hasn’t done enough to even the socioeconomic playing field. More specifically, after 60 years of black voters giving at least 80% of their support to Democrats with no results and very little attempt to fight for them, many in the black community are questioning our loyalty to this political party and it’s ideologies. Carnell and Moore are making a concerted effort to educate black Americans about the economic data to change the course of our politics. Their detractors seem to imply that black people can’t have differing opinions from traditional Democratic sources without also having nefarious intentions. Carnell and Moore argue that drastic measures have to be taken since the median wealth of black families is set to hit 0 by 2053.

With data in hand that shows a different economic story for blacks who descend from American slavery versus black immigrants, Carnell wants to redefine the conversation about race in America to include discussions of ethnic lineage. Ultimately, she suggests that native black Americans have a justice claim for reparations and she relies heavily on the research of Duke University’s Dr. Sandy Darity. Part of this conversation is reimagining what being an American citizen means for the descendants of slavery and our claim to the resources of the most powerful nation in the world. In ascribing value to American citizenship for this purpose, it is logical that native blacks have to distinguish ourselves from immigrant blacks however difficult it is to explain this position without it being misconstrued as xenaphobic. Carnell has also made many videos reframing race in an attempt to move it from the top priority surrounding discussions of black Americans in favor of our experiences as an ethnicity. From her perspective, we have allowed our unique experiences to get diluted into vague stories of the minority struggle in America. That vague minority struggle means that, sadly, many of the governmental attempts to address the harm done to black people have been co-opted by other groups, constantly and systemically leaving American descendents of slavery without the resources intended for us.

Essentially, Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore spend a great amount of time trying to shake loose black people’s need to conform to the ideas of the Democratic party, traditional ideas about race, lineage and what black citizenship in America should mean, particularly for the descendants of slavery. They do this by presenting fact-based and data-driven arguments with hopes that American descendents of slavery will align our politics with our own self-interests.

At some point we have to break loose from this concept that it’s unreasonably selfish when black Americans focus on helping ourselves versus being the people with the least trying to help the most. We must also get over the notion that black Americans can’t be at odds with both major political parties. It is an incomplete conversation to express our disdain with criticisms anchored to the Republican party alone. All parties are complicit in the anti-justice movement against black Americans, even black politicians and black media mouthpieces aren’t above being taken to task. Our dissatisfaction must be spread around not only to our enemies, but also to the allies who have failed us.

The Music of Symbolic Revolution:

If you listen to Kweli describe his music, he will say something like:

“My lyrics are aggressive. My lyrics are not passive. My lyrics ain’t let’s all get along, let’s be happy. My lyrics are ‘fuck the status quo, fuck white supremacy, I’m pro-black, I’m pro social justice. That’s what my whole lyrical output is.” (https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.48093/title.talib-kweli-breaks-down-rap-fans-hypocrisy-on-lyricism-racism)

Kweli’s started in the era after the East Coast/West Coast beef. Shiny suits and getting “jiggy” were setting up the path for the southern takeover of the Bling era that was the early 2000’s. In 1998, Mos Def and Talib Kweli made their debut album through nontraditional music imprint Rawkus Records. On the surface, Rawkus was like a beacon of light for hip hop fans thirsty for the grounded traditional flavor of the golden eras of hip hop. Their roster was full to the brim of what were labelled conscious rappers. Now that we can look back at Talib’s career, it’s hard to justify that label. His catalog of music is full of bad attempts to crossover with small doses of comfortably safe revolutionary fever that come across with the same inauthenticity as a studio gangster. But this has been the con game of rappers like Kweli; he offers the most milktoast approach to saying things that will “shake up the system” in his actual music but paints himself as the Khalid Muhammed of rap.

During Kweli’s era, rappers ran from the label conscious because by the time rappers like Kweli became the face of “consciousness”, their work redefined the term in a way that was the essence of uncool. Gone were the records so politically charged that they would cause the FBI to tap your favorite rappers’ phone. Insert a crew of choir boys preaching about cleaning up our acts instead of pinpointing how to overturn the fabric of this unjust society. So inauthentic and purposeless that soon they were going whichever direction the wind blew to try and shake the moniker of consciousness. Kweli was more than willing to drop having a message in his music at all by going with the “sometimes people just want to party” sentiment. In retrospect, Kweli never had the song-making ability, the substantive political depth, nor a hard hitting perspective that could make his faux “revolutionary” music appeal to the everyday black American. Kweli and his music have always given off the impression of a soft, thin-skinned college kid from the Boule society of a middle class upbringing. And no…this isn’t an attempt to black check Kweli by saying blackness can only be understood through the lense of struggle or militancy. The grander issue that has made his music come across hollow and soulless is that after all these years and tunes, we still have no idea what really encompasses Kweli’s politics nor philosophy on life. It’s as if he is an outcast begging to be down and using tidbits of pro-black jargon as a shield against any examination of what he truly represents. Basically, Kweli is the “revolutionary” rapper that people vaguely recall and who only appeals to us in theory.

Undeveloped Politics:

Kweli often boasts about a lifetime of pro-black advocacy but it’s substanceless. There seems to be a lack of strategy to Kweli’s so-called “activism” which has come in the form of making music, doing concerts, giving money to nonprofits, speaking at rallies and sit-ins. If you look at the causes he has advocated for over the last decade or so such as Occupy Wallstreet, ending police brutality, freeing political prisoners, ending “Stop and Frisk”, and cessating “Stand Your Ground” laws, it’s questionable if Kweli’s activism has any form of impact, yet he will claim authority in that space. What doesn’t help Kweli’s case for being a real activist is that he will quote his own rap lyrics as his qualifications. In Talib’s mind, because he rhymed with the word “reparations” in a verse from 20 years ago that no one remembers, he can now claim he’s been in a 20 year fight for reparations. You don’t see much in the way of shifting laws that adversely affect black people or even a trail of working class black folks who would point to Kweli as someone who has helped improve the quality of their lives. He shows up for a photo opt, says some words that rhyme and nothing changes, then Kweli pats himself on the back for being a revolutionary.

We are far removed from the days of grassroots activism such as that of the Black Panther Party. Somewhere along the way, the black celebrity became the voice of our politics, with or without the equipment to understand what it takes to be in that position. Especially in the case of the rapper. If you could rhyme S.A.T. words and keep a rhythm, all you needed to do was reference a history of pro-blackness and some people would shamelessly compare you to Huey P. Newton. This empty rhetorical attempt at politics has left a void in the place of advocacy that is greatly needed by black Americans. Instead of strategic calls to action around a goal, the celebrity class has tainted our politics and made it hard to galvanize people. It is no wonder media outlets and politicians love propping these people up as tools to infiltrate the rest of us with confusion. Rhyming words over a beat only qualifies you to rhyme words over a beat. It doesn’t make you an expert on political action. In losing the strategic political planning, entertainment has been our biggest distraction from black empowerment and politicians have run amok rolling back almost everything that real pro-black movements fought for years ago.

For the politically immature, buzzwords, cliche slogans from 40-50 years ago, and waving off all political involvement has been considered black activism and Kweli has mastered all 3 things. You can search video streaming platforms and find old interviews of Kweli arrogantly saying he doesn’t vote because he saw the whole system as white supremacy followed by some vague message about “the people” without saying what “the people” should do instead. Anyone who wasn’t dazzled by celebrity and rhetoric would wonder what’s the point of Kweli’s “activism” because it sounded like he was apolitical with no pathway to offer his imaginary revolution. The problem with undefined political positions is that you can easily be co-opted into any half baked ideology. And these days Kweli has changed his tune about voting to become a shill for anything Democratic. It’s probably because his brother, Jamal Greene, is working with the Kamala Harris campaign. And that is the same Kamala Harris who can be seen in that viral clip responding to a question about reparations by saying, “...I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m going to do something specifically for black people…. NOOO.''

What is Mr. Greene’s real agenda?

In his campaign against ADOS, Kweli hasn’t attempted debating political perspectives in good faith. He’s taken people out of context and avoided any tough questions about his positions. One of his laziest attacks comes from a video where Yvette jokingly put on a MAGA hat. An image of it has been screenshotted and now Talib Kweli uses it as if it’s some Bohemian Grove initiation ceremony into the evil kabal of White Supremacy. Yvette has regularly made unconventional statements and done stunts to break the lovefest our people have with the Democratic party and underdeveloped ideas about “blackness” in America. She’s also fought this idea that we have to be allies with groups who don’t reciprocate support for us and our causes. She argues that we don’t owe anyone after decades of black Americans getting on the frontlines for other people’s causes. What Kweli doesn’t seem to understand with all his hollow arguments is that political advocacy means that you sometimes have to be at odds with the people who approach you with a smile. They will talk as if they are fighting for your interests but really they are trying to manipulate you. This concept seems to fly over the heads of the anti-ADOS crew. Kweli’s politics seem so unsophisticated that he only questions the intentions of people he deems as hostile to him. Yet, in his arguments, he acts as if he is guided by strict principles instead of hurt feelings. The issue is usually someone with principles isn’t easily shown to be a hypocrite.

It’s odd that Kweli attacks Yvette for this hat stunt when he should be logical enough to know better. More strange than his reaction to Yvette in a MAGA hat is that Kanye West is Kweli’s friend and longtime collaborator. Kanye has gone well beyond wearing the MAGA hat. In the same breath, Kanye is also responsible for Kweli’s only hit record, “Get By”. In every way possible, Kanye has supported Trump to the point of calling Trump his Daddy. Yet, you can see Kweli on DJ Vlad speaking about how he continued to work with Kanye during the Pro-Trump fiasco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMJnjgxKT3s). Kweli even worked on a demo for Kanye recently while at the same time claiming that he was telling Kanye that the people around him were white supremacists. Beyond that, the choice to go to DJ Vlad for this interview is extremely problematic when the surface level optics of Vlad’s platform is about promoting an awful caricature of black life through the lense of unstable black celebrity. Also, DJ Vlad is being sued by a former black employee for a host of things including making racially and sexually inappropriate remarks such as, "Black people aren't slaves anymore", "racism isn't as bad anymore", and that the employee "should get ass shots, or whatever it is women are putting into their behinds these days" (https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5c494e13342cca0d53c62dc6).

Sadly, Kweli has defended the Vlad appearance by chastising people with tweets about how they won’t watch his show. These are the inconsistencies in his politics and there are more…

Kweli has to think he is more intelligent than the average black person bred from American bondage or at least that we are incapable of thinking for ourselves. He has created this grand conspiracy theory that ADOS is a white supremacist front that hundreds of thousands of native black Americans can’t see through after engaging hours upon hours of material from Carnell and Moore. Kweli is smarter than us all because he was able to figure out this fiendish plot within moments of his twitter exchange with Yvette. His greatest piece of evidence for this theory is held together by shoestrings. He claims that Yvette Carnell’s previous involvement on the board of a group called Progressives For Immigration Reform (PFIR) must mean ADOS is a front for white supremacists. Carnell has addressed this issue by saying she was not paid by PFIR at any point, that her role on the board has been consistent with her position about the value of citizenship in America and that she used this position to advocate for the black Americans who get passed up by an immigrant population. It is very easy to make this simplistic deduction that Talib presents and write ADOS off without attempting to engage with their arguments, but I question Mr. Greene’s political savviness after witnessing his endless crusade.

What if he is wrong and in the process he is alienating the very type of black American who would support him in this new era of rekindled pro-black “wokeness”? The reality is that Kweli’s bread and butter over the years has been a young, white progressive audience and he has been co-opted to appeal to them. It’s much like how the term “woke” has been co-opted and bastardized from a variation of the rallying cry at the end of Spike Lee’s School Daze… a message for black youth to “wake up” and become socially aware about the issues facing black American society… now changed to being the marching orders of Borg-like drones for white progressive politics. Is Kweli pro-black or progressive? Is he able to accept that sometimes these things can be in alignment but other times they can be at odds? More importantly, is he willing to upset his white lefty friends to advocate the best policies for the American Descendants of Slavery?

Maybe there isn’t a concern about black people at all and Kweli’s been a manchurian candidate this whole time?

Let’s say it’s valid to theorize about people’s agendas in the way that Kweli has done. Investigative journalists haven’t sniffed out these links to a rightwing machine as far as the origins or day-to-day ativities of ADOS are concerned but that hasn’t stopped the wacky theories. Maybe this is projection and we should question Talib Kweli Greene’s roots? Kweli currently hosts a podcast on Uproxx which is a company that was started by Brian Brater and Jarret Myer, who are the same guys who signed Kweli to Rawkus Records. But there’s some forgotten history about Rawkus Records that no one has mentioned during all of this back and forth between Kweli and ADOS. Rawkus started without a focus on rap music and went a couple of years experimenting based on $10,000 investment from the two entrepreneurs but when the company floundered financially, Brian Brater and Jarret Myer turned to hip hop and the family of Rupert Murdoch for help. The Fox News mogul ended up buying 80% ownership in the company and this is the business move that financed the rap career of Talib Kweli.

[nickyschneiderus]

What makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s platform so progressive?

With the exception of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and perhaps Cynthia Nixon, 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most prominent socialist in America. While Nixon’s fame as an actress and Sanders’ tenure in the Senate predate the resurgence of socialism in America, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez platform has become synonymous with the rise of socialism in American political life.

Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and she was the first DSA-endorsed candidate to break through in the 2016 midterm primaries after she defeated longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th district. It is unproductive, however, to view American socialism and DSA as monolithic.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez platform: Everything you need to know

There are active disagreements on a number of issues within DSA, and in fact, DSA and Ocasio-Cortez diverge on several issues. While all socialists believe in a class struggle between the rich and the poor, fighting oppression resulting from factors like race, class, and sexual orientation, and ownership of the means of production by workers, they often have different strategic ideas of what that can look like in our current political moment.

Rather than thinking about what Ocasio-Cortez believes as defining socialism, look at her policies as one vision of socialism.

And while Fox News might engage in scaremongering around her political beliefs and those to the left of Ocasio-Cortez might express frustration that her stances don’t go far enough, an examination of her positions reveals that she at once represents a radical shift in American politics and presents a set of ideas that are not so far off from the existing progressive wing of the Democratic party.

Healthcare

On her website, instead of the heading “Healthcare” Ocasio-Cortez uses “Medicare for All.” When Ocasio-Cortez arrives in Congress, she will be one of the most outspoken, unequivocal supporters of Medicare for All. Unlike some watered-down versions of universal healthcare floating around Washington, Ocasio-Cortez backs a system that would include “full dental, vision, and mental healthcare” and would allow “all people in the US to buy into a universal healthcare system.”

Medicare for All, articulated by figures like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders, is also one single public program that is free at the point of service (no copays).

Like Randy “Ironstache” Bryce, who also supports Medicare for All, Ocasio-Cortez had a personal experience that led her to support truly universal healthcare.

Her father died after a prolonged battle with small-cell carcinoma in 2008. She told Rolling Stone about what it’s like to “have medical debt, but you also have credit card debt for the things that the medical debt doesn’t cover.” She added, “Unlike most members of Congress, I know what it’s like to be making $30 or $40K and have to pay almost $200 bucks a month for an $8,000 deductible.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/Facebook

Immigration

Ocasio-Cortez made national headlines when she took time during the home stretch of her campaign to visit an ICE detention center on the Mexican border. Abolishing ICE has been a centerpiece of her immigration platform from early in her candidacy, and as a Latinx woman representing a largely Latinx district (New York’s 14th is 60 percent Latinx and 40 percent speak Spanish as their primary language), we can expect that she will continue to frame immigration as a signature issue in office.

Ocasio-Cortez begins describing her immigration platform by saying, “It’s time to abolish ICE, clear the path to citizenship, and protect the rights of families to remain together.” She goes on to compare the inhumane treatment of immigrants today to pre-Patriot Act immigration enforcement by INS and points out that today, ICE is not under the jurisdiction of the DOJ.

Some on the left say that abolishing ICE while giving its duties to an INS-style department wouldn’t fix the problem. Ocasio-Cortez has clarified this point in an interview with The Intercept, in which she said:

I’m starting to see, particularly, other congressional candidates say: ‘Let’s return to the INS.’ And that I want to make sure is not correct either. This is not about going back to the INS. This is really about, in some ways, we need to go all the way back to the root of our immigration policy to begin with… I think to reimagine our immigration services as part of an economic engine, as part of an accommodation to our own foreign policy aims and, where necessary, enforcement of serious crimes like human trafficking and so on.

This is an important point of discussion because, while the left is united in abolishing ICE, there is by no means an agreement about what the future of immigration policy looks like after that happens.

Jobs, housing, and the economy

Rent control has become such an important issue in crowded urban areas like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco that serious progressive politicians in those areas have come to view housing on par with the issues like jobs and the economy when shaping their platforms.

Ocasio-Cortez believes that “Housing is a Human Right,” and as such, she supports a low-income tax credit for housing, funding the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and looking at options like rent control and vacancy taxes as avenues to housing justice.

A federal jobs guarantee is one of Ocasio-Cortez’s signature economic priorities. For her, this would guarantee of a $15 minimum wage, full healthcare, and child/sick leave. While there is some support for a jobs guarantee on the left, leftists policy analysts like Matt Bruening have been critical of jobs guarantees for a variety of reasons: foremost among them being the requirement of “work” in an era of increased automation.

Her other major economic proposals represent a more unified vision from the left. Ocasio-Cortez wants to restore the Glass-Steagall Act and vigorously regulate Wall Street, she rejects the idea of a bank that is “too big to fail,” and she wants to revitalize the postal service by adding banking functions to the USPS, a policy proposal that generally enjoys approval from the left.

READ MORE:

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Could Bernie Sanders run—and win—in 2020?

Where does Beto O’Rourke stand on policy?

Will Kamala Harris run in 2020?

Criminal justice

The criminal justice priorities of Ocasio-Cortez read like a blueprint for solid left-wing reform. She sets ending mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and the school to prison pipeline as her broad goals.

As a means of achieving these goals, she favors legalizing marijuana, ending for-profit prisons, releasing non-violent drug offenders, bringing an end to cash bail, and demanding full investigations when an individual is killed by law enforcement.

Some strategic moves she wants to make in the legal system as she works toward these goals include better funding for public defenders and ending corporate arbitration.

Wikimedia Commons

Foreign policy

In terms of domestic policy, Ocasio-Cortez is in line with the broader left, however, she has received criticism from left-wing organizations, and specifically members of DSA, for her foreign policy. While DSA fully supports Palestinian liberation and the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement against Israeli occupation, Ocasio-Cortez has sometimes played both sides of the issue. It is worth noting that Bernie Sanders has faced similar criticism.

On other foreign policy matters, Ocasio-Cortez is more closely aligned with left-wing orthodoxy. She is a staunch critic of what she views as a colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico (where she has relatives). She has outlined a five-point plan that would mark a sweeping shift in the U.S. relationship with Puerto Rico, including a “Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico” that would involve “helping the island not only recover from Hurricane Maria but thrive with modern infrastructure and renewable energy systems.”

Ocasio-Cortez also advocates for what she calls a “Peace Economy.” In outlining her foreign policy platform, she states that she “believes that we must end the ‘forever war’ by bringing our troops home, and ending the air strikes that perpetuate the cycle of terrorism throughout the world.”

Women’s rights

As we’ve learned from the likes of Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), being a woman does not guarantee a progressive stance on women’s issues.

Ocasio-Cortez has one of the most intersectional and progressive platforms in American politics when it comes to women’s rights. Her priorities include equal pay, paid parental leave, decriminalization of sex work, and complete reproductive freedom.

In her policy proposals, she explicitly mentions protections for POC women, indigenous women, immigrant women, trans women, and Muslim women. She uses the forward-thinking phrase, “women of marginalized genders” when articulating her policies around patriarchal oppression.

Ocasio-Cortez outlines policy demands that call for “open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion, birth control, and family planning services, as well as access to adequate, affordable pre- and post-natal care, for all people, regardless of income, location, and education.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/Facebook

READ MORE:

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Higher education

“It’s now time to expand our national education system to include tuition-free public college and trade school,” Ocasio-Cortez writes, kicking off one of the most progressive higher education plans in American politics. In addition to tuition-free college, she also supports a “one-time policy of student debt cancellation” which involves federal loan forgiveness and the buy back of privately owned loans. She argues that such a movement would stimulate the economy, boosting GDP by hundreds of billions of dollars.

All told, the platform provides one vision of what a socialist movement in America could look like, even if it’s not completely in line with what some DSA members believe.

Editor’s note: This article is regularly updated for relevance.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-platform/

[rightsidenews]

UPDATE: It’s Not Okay to Be White in South Africa

The story of a spicy meme, leftist bigotry & white genocide.

Pip R N Stanton

In November of 2017, those clever boys over at 4chan devised a meme that would cause controversy across the western world and expose the left's true anti-white colors. It was simple and effective. It was a blank piece of paper with the words “It’s okay to be white” written on it.

The reaction of the left spoke louder than the meme itself ever could. These innocuous words posted all over college campuses and the streets of America have done more to expose the left's racist vitriol towards whites than years of debate and discourse. The leftist outrage that flooded social media unanimously said the same thing. This is racism! But why, what about these words are racist? Is it not okay to be white? The liberal media’s overwhelming response to the meme was unanimous and resounding. No, it’s not okay to be white- and in doing this their agenda has been illuminated for all to see.

#ItsOkayToBeWhite was a big win for the cause of free speech. It caused the left, once again to expose themselves with their usual emotionally driven reactionary response. Like any whiny child, the leftists never think before blurting out something they later come to regret- and oh boy, they will come to regret this one.

What has this got to do with South Africa?

And that’s a good question. Allow me explain. On my journey of discovery into the left's hatred for anything white, I noticed the a deafening silence coming from liberal media. It is not like the liberal media to be quiet about anything. Pink hats, a tax bill that will crack the planet in two, Matt Damon being correct. All these things whip the media into a frenzy. And yet, around the subject of whites in South Africa being murdered on an unprecedented scale there is nothing. Nada. The Election of new ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa received glittering coverage. Nothing for the slaughter of the white.

In this so called Rainbow Nation there is a purposeful and politically driven persecution of whites that at best is an attempt at a reverse apartheid and at worst is ethnic cleansing of the most savage variety.

White people living and working on farms are set about with hammers, kidnapped, stabbed and murdered in brutal ways with the de facto approval and encouragement from the S.A Government.

Nothing from the left about raising awareness of this fact, nothing coming from the very group that claims to fight for persecuted minorities. The left is oddly silent on the subject, which seemed counter-intuitive to everything they claim to uphold. We see protesting in the streets against what perceived oppressions of minorities in America and yet barely a single word of dissent in the West for the very real persecution of white minorities in South Africa.  Shame on us all.

The genocide of whites in Africa must enter the Western discourse.  If we can meme It Is Okay To Be White into the world then surely we can bring forth news of a very real white genocide. The consciousness of the average citizen must be opened to the reality that not only can whites be victims of racism, whites can be victims of ethnic cleansing too. So-called privilege will not protect you. Shine a light on to the liberal hypocrisy.

What is really happening over there?

Whites in South Africa account for less than 9% of the population. Despite this they make up 40% of all homicide victims, more than 70,000 whites have been murdered and untold numbers have been robbed, raped and tortured since Nelson Mandela and the communist African National Congress (ANC) ascended to power in 1994.

Around 50 people are murdered every single day in South Africa, whites make up around 20% of the victims. South Africa is not Chicago. This is not an example of white on white crime. There are very few white gangbangers in South Africa.

According to the human rights organization Genocide Watch, The murder rate of whites in South Africa is 4 times higher than the average.

A considerable number of crimes are not reported due to the corruption in the South African police force. Hence, the only information we can get is outdated and probably under-representative of the real statistics. On the ground investigation is essential and urgent to bring this story further to light.

Poverty

Around 400,000 white working class citizens live in White Squatter Camps. These camps often have nothing but wooden and metal shacks for homes and no electricity. Many struggle to find food and water to feed their families.

Due to South Africa’s affirmative action program Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), many whites are refused work for the color of their skin. This program ensures every place of employment has a demographic representation of 80% black South Africans. So much for diversity. Creating a situation where people are hired based on skin color rather than skill requirements has caused a major brain drain. 95% of white working age people have been forced to flee the country in search of employment. The South African economy has taken a huge hit and only unskilled workers are available to fill the highly skilled vacant jobs. Driven by the rage against the Apartheid regime, black South Africa is abandoning progress in favour of self-destruction.

Danie Brink, chief executive of the Solidariteit Helpende Hand aid organization said:

"The public sector is supposed to give jobs to all the people of a country, but affirmative action keeps our people out.[It] prevents our people, Afrikaners, white people specifically, to get into jobs- specifically in the public sector."

South Africa has the biggest welfare state in the world, where 6% of the population contribute to 99% of all tax revenue. Hardline socialist economic policy strips the prosperous whites and distributes the wealth to the blacks.

(Picture: James Cheadle/Solent News & Photo Agency UK)

Retaliation is racist

White activists in South Africa hold #BlackMonday protests to raise awareness Of the white farmer murders that have been taking place. The African National Congress (ANC) declared the protest to be racist stating

"The myopic call for the protection of farmers, referring in particular to white farm owners, points to an ill-conceived sense of special entitlement, gives a biased racial character to crime, brutality, and violence which affects all South Africans and ignores and undermines the deaths of farm workers and other persons on farms."

(Picture: David Harrison/AFPSource: AFP)

The dehumanization of whites

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, there has been an effort to demonize whites. This has played a massive part in justifying the murder, rape, and torture of white South Africans for more than 23 years.

Here is renowned terrorist and liberal golden boy Nelson Mandela with his communist ANC comrades singing

“We the member of the M.K. have pledged ourselves to kill them, the ama-BHULU (whites)”

  Children in school singing 'Kill the Boer' in 1990

Chairman of Genocide Watch Dr. Gregory Stanton explains how whites have been dehumanized.

Kill the Boer. It is not about liberation from Apartheid any more. This is retribution. Retaliation.

When asked about the murders of white farmers in his country, former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said;

“Yes, we have those who were killed when they resisted. We will never prosecute those who killed them. I ask- why should we arrest them?”

Despite his recent removal I suspect not much will change for the plight of whites in South Africa.  Despite this example of what happens to African countries when you exterminate the producers of wealth, there seems to be no desire to expunge this racist and nationalist form of socialism from the continent. The racist murders will continue.

At first glance, it would seem out of character for the bleeding heart liberals to ignore such atrocities. The left’s hatred for all things white extends even to the point where they will sit back and let a genocide unfold before their very upturned noses.

There needs to be a concerted effort to raise awareness of what's happening. If like me you care about the plight of the white South African people, and believe in standing up against real persecution of minorities, then we need to make more noise.

When you have slaughtered all the white farmers, what then? Foreign aid? From the whites you despise? #Zimbabwe. #plaasmoorde http://pic.twitter.com/45nAXTOJMH

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) December 19, 2017

We need to shout it from the roof tops and let the world know what’s happening, we need to force our politicians to raise this issue in government.

We need to let the liberal hypocrites know that we won’t let our fellow white man be slaughtered and ignored just because of the colour of their skin.

We need to let the world know that It is most certainly not okay to be white in South Africa. Currently there is no U.S Ambassador to South Africa, but the British have strong links there.

Stand with the white farmers against ethnic cleansing. You can help by tweeting this article to Nigel Casey, who is the British High Commissioner to South Africa, and request that he urgently examines this dreadful matter.

It is okay to be white. Save the Boer.

http://bit.ly/2DoKtmu