>
>Even so, please, I am trying to avoid the aggressive sort of note that you
>posted here. Please cool it.
I see aggression in what Spivak once called in a moment of clarity
"sanctioned ignorance", i.e., what can be safely ignored. Note Max's
refusal to reply to "Jain Carowan's" well reasoned criticism of the
use of trade sanctions for the enforcement of the Core Conventions or
Doug's and Liza's refusal to investigate the consequences of the
Harkin bill, the protectionist clauses and unilateral quota denials
for which the same UNITE that is bankrolling the student anti
sweatshop movement is militating.
It's not as if either could have been ignorant of such concerns--they
just chose to ignore them just as Hitchens somehow forgot that
Chancellor Bob Kerrey's account had been contested when first asked
to comment on the allegations of a war crime (I guess for some here
it was no big deal that Hitchens had at first actively ignored those
who were contesting Kerrey's account, but from my perspective this
was an act of aggression--maybe you see my point, maybe you don't).
At least, Hitchens did eventually think through the implications of
Kerrey's account being contested, though not as eloquently and
profoundly as did Reed, Schell and Falk.
Such haughtiness and aggression are only invisible to those who are
not subjected to it. I think it's a huge mistake that Robert Pollin
and James Galbraith want to make themselves the intellectual
champions of the student do gooders--the newest American jingolos (I
was surprised to read in Doug's account that Galbraith seems to have
lent his unqualified support to the student protests). Today they are
crying about the US import of cheap foreign goods, Andrew Ross, once
a general in the science wars, has now joined in the war against
sweatshops; tomorrow after they make sure the MFN and system of
agricultural protection aren't truly relaxed in 2005 they'll have set
the stage for a campaign against the direct import of foreign labor.
Hasn't Dana Frank laid out the historic connections in detail?
Someone suggested to me offlist that I don't have much a future with
the internet left because of the way I am always carping about its
racism (of course Proyect is convinced that I am an anti black racist
and went to the length of fabricating a dossier against me, which was
then used in an employment application; and even after this, Michael,
you not only did not kick Proyect off your list, you never asked him
to promise that he would never do such a thing again as condition for
remaining).
At any rate, I actually think this stuff about racism makes up a
very small part of what I post. But it's true I don't expect much
support. Even Charles who never thinks there has been enough
discussion of anti black racism has ever said a word--as far as I
know--about how easily American blacks join in with general anti
immigrant sentiment and national chauvinism.
Oh by the way, here are the putatively racist things I wrote about
Malcolm X which had Proyect trying to defame me...with no price to
pay. He was not kicked off this list for what he did.
here is what I wrote on Malcolm X:
Jan 4th and 5th, 1999 LBO
Ah, so my memory is not as bad as I feared. For some bizarre reason, Louis
P didn't type in the whole FBI file on Malcolm Little from 5/17/61. Here
it is (some standard abbreviations are used; what is below is de facto
verbatim):
[Bureau Deletion] advised on Jan 30, 1961, that certain Klan officials met
with leaders of the NOI on the night of Jan 28, 1961, in Atlanta, GA. One
of these NOI identified himself as Malcolm X of New York, and it was the
source's understanding that Malcolm X cliamed to have hundred seventy give
thousand followers who were complete separationists, were interested in
land and were soliciting the aid of the Klan to obtain land. During this
meeting subject stated that his people wanted complete segregation from
the white race, and that land obtained would be occupied by them and they
would maintain their own businesses and government. Subject further stated
that the Jew is behind the integration movement, using the Negro as a
tool. Subject was further quoted as stating that his people would do
anything to defend their beliefs and promote their cause and in his
opinion there would be violence some day. Subject was further quoted as
saying at this meeting that if one of his people went against their
teachings, he would be destroyed. Subject also stated that if his people
were faced with the situation that the white people of Georgia now face,
that traitors, meaning those who assisted the integration leaders, would
be eliminated."
In Clayborne Carson, Malcolm X: The FBI File. Intro by Spike Lee. NY:
Carrol and Graf Publishers, 1991.
__________________________
I can't access old messages on this topic from this program. So here is a
general reply (and remember I have joined this list to make as many
friends as I can). I am still finding it a bit creepy that Louis P didn't
cite the whole FBI report of Malcolm X's meeting with the Klan while
continuing to insinuate that I was a liar. But such creepinenss is deeply
embedded after so many years as a party hack, I imagine. Give no support
to your enemy--calumny, bile and caricature!!! The same modus operandi is
evident in his criticism of Adolph Reed Jr for putatively attempting to
shut up an independent struggle against racism.
I also find Arthur McGee's response, filled with gutter language, rather
troubling. In responding to me, he can't even get right that it was
Malcolm X himself who felt ashamed of what he done as a member of the NOI,
not the white left who shamed Malcolm X. Indeed we find here a reluctance
of the white left, starting with the SWP, to express criticism of
Malcolm. Of course the right will dis him for his violence, but the white
left seems hardly bothered by his separatism, black belt secessionism,
open support for nascent third world fascists, and ill defined black
nationalism. We are just happy to have him as a hero and assimilate him
into all our multiculti syllabi.
Malcolm X's criticism of the Kennedy administration, the Civil Rights
establishment, and Farce on Washington--while accurate in many ways--is
compromised by the positive vision that undergirds that criticism: a
racially defined black nationalism or separatism to be achieved through
violence. That is, his criticism is not simply of the non violence or the
reformism of the civil rights movement but (as already suggested) of the
goal of desegregation and integration itself; after all, he declared that
the NOI would kill Black Muslims who assisted the integration leaders and
was not willing to even attempt to actually organize the armed self
defense of civil rights workers until he broke from the NOI. That is,
Malcolm X's criticism is in many important ways a radical one from the far
right vision of complete racial separatism. This is why I prefer James
Forman's criticism, though I am sad that late in his life James Forman has
himself moved to support of black secession--despite his earlier
criticisms of Stokely Carmichael and other black nationalist types.
Louis P is correct that I think this NOI vision which Malcolm X accepted
and never fully broke from is accurately characterized as black fascism.
Or to put it another way, it was only in the form of the NOI radical
sounding demagogue Malcolm X then and Louis Farakhan now that Jim Crow or
apartheid generally could appear in respectable form to blacks and non
racist whites.
Ken is bothered that I would raise such criticism of Malcolm X's radical
criticism without mentioning another alternative or guide to action. But
there were rank and file voices within SNCC which called for armed self
defense and militance. Ken argues that militants drew inspiration from
Malcolm X's defiant speeches and that they understood NOI Malcolm X's
speeches (incorrectly it turns out) as a call for arms in the struggle to
end apartheid; yet there is also the question of how his anti white
demonology did damage to the movement and the determination of what the
long term goals actually were and are.
Malcolm X never broke from black separatism; he was not sure what he meant
by black nationalism at the end of his life. He moved back and forth from
support of violent secession through guerilla warfare to control of
businesses in the ghetto perhaps through set aside programs by black govt
officials to be put into power by the ballot. The latter strategy has been
tried, thanks to Richard Nixon, and has proven not to be helfpul to
ghettoized blacks. Indeed the black urban regime--one goal that followed
from Malcolm X's revised black nationalism--has turned out be a nightmare.
In the Joe Wood, ed. volume, Patricia Hills Collins raises some tough
questions about the meaning and limits of Malcolm X's most developed ideas
on black nationalism.
Malcolm X's internationalism reduces to the support of emergent national
bourgeois leaderships in the third world without any sense of the new
reign of oppression that they would inaugurate. This follows from a racial
theory of history in which the concept of class is eclipsed, and here
Malcolm X proves less prescient than Fanon. It also follows from his
vision of blacks as a nation waiting to realize itself in the black belt.
If one reads Malcolm X's speeches from Jan and Feb, 1965, it is clear that
his exposure of the NOI/Klan links is what brought the wrath of Farakhan
and Elijiah Muhammed down upon him. After all, Malcolm X should have
known that he would be killed for exposing this link since he himself had
articulated that NOI policy years before. And Malcolm X did know and
indeed predicted his assasination.
I also find it dishonest of Malcolm X and Alex Haley that *The
Autobiography*, now everywhere on syllabi, includes no discussion of the
NOI/Klan link that Malcolm X would later die for exposing. While as a
political theorist I think Malcolm X is deeply flawed, I do think
Malcolm X is a hero for feeling shame over his meeting with the Klan
and consciously facing his death in order to expose the very NOI that has
now ascended to respectability or at best endures usually lame criticism.
But he is certainly not more of a hero than those who did not phrase
monger, did not meet with the Klan and did risk their lives collectively
every day in the civil rights struggle. In Race and Class more than five
years ago, Barbara Ransby has expressed how bothered she was by the
worship of Malcolm X at the expense of many forgotten heroes.
Daniel contines to argue that factoid history matter less than what
Malcolm X meant then and now. Yet it is over the meaning he wanted to give
to the contemporary NOI as an anti racist organization that this
discussion of Malcolm X's politics began.
I also think Malcolm X's radical anti white speeches were actually
intended for whites. Or perhaps to get a rise out of them in order to
entertain blacks. But in so far as his attacks on whites--as evil because
of their race, genes, Ice Age Ancestry--implies the deep difference of
blacks due to their race, genes, Sun Land Ancestry, I think this kind of
anti white mythology (or essentialism!) is quite disturbing both in the
attitude towards truth it encourages and in the psychological games it
plays with black people.
I do welcome all criticism, and if I have failed to respond here to honest
criticism, it is only because I don't have the previous messages with me.
yours, rakesh
