By Pepe Escobar : crossposted with Strategic Culture Foundation
The marriage of post-Lockdown and George Floyd protests has nurtured a rough beast that is still immune to any form of civilized debate in the U.S.: the Seattle Commune.
So what really is the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone cum People’s Republic all about?
Are the communards mere useful idiots? Is this a refined Occupy Wall Street experiment? Could it survive, logistically, and be replicated in NYC, L.A. and D.C.?
An outraged President Trump has described it as a plot by “domestic terrorists” in a city “run by radical left Democrats”. He called for “LAW & ORDER” (in caps, according to his Tweetology).
Shades of Syria in Seattle are visibly discernable. Under this scenario, the Commune is a remixed Idlib fighting “regime counter-insurgency outposts” (in communard terminology).
For most American Right factions, Antifa equals ISIS. George Floyd is regarded not only as a “communist Antifa martyr”, as an intel operative told me, but a mere “criminal and drug dealer”.
So when will “regime forces” strike – in this case without Russian air cover? After all, as dictated by Secretary Esper, it’s up to the Pentagon to “dominate the battlefield”.
But we’ve got a problem. Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) is supported by the city of Seattle – run by a Democrat – which is supported by the governor of Washington State, also a Democrat.
There’s no chance Washington State will use the National Guard to crush CHAZ. And Trump cannot take over Washington State National Guard without the approval of the governor, even though he has tweeted, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game.”
It’s enlightening to observe that “counter-insurgency” can be applied in Afghanistan and the tribal areas; to occupy Iraq; to protect the looting of oil/gas in eastern Syria. But not at home. Even if 58% of Americans would actually support it: for many among them, the Commune may be as bad if not worse than looting.
But then there are those firmly opposed. Among them: the “Butcher of Fallujah” Mad Dog Mattis; color revolution practitioners NED; Nike;
JP Morgan; the whole Democratic Party establishment; and virtually the whole U.S. Army establishment.
Welcome to the Only Occupy Others movement.
Still the question remains: how long will “Idlib” be able to defy the “regime”? That’s enough to cause an alleged “bully”, Attorney General Barr, many a sleepless night.
Real Black Power
Trump and Barr have already threatened to criminalize Antifa as a “terrorist organization” – even as Black Lives Matter has pointed a yellow dagger in the asphalt of 16th St. in D.C. towards the White House.
And that brings us to the across the board legitimacy enjoyed by Black Lives Matter. How’s that possible? Here is a good place to start.
Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 by a trio of middle class, queer black women very vocal against “hetero-patriarchy”, is a product of what University of British Columbia’s Peter Dauvergne defines as “corporatization of activism”.
Over the years, Black Lives Matter evolved as a marketing brand, like Nike (which fully supports it). The widespread George Floyd protests elevated it to the status of a new religion. Yet Black Lives Matter carries arguably zero, true revolutionary appeal. This is not James Brown’s “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”. And it does not get even close to Black Power and the Black Panthers’ “Power to the People”.
The gold standard on civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1968, concisely framed the – structural – heart of the matter:
“The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”
The Black Panthers, young, extremely articulated intellectuals who had mixed Marx, Lenin, Mao, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Frantz “Wretched of the Earth” Fanon took MLK’s diagnosis to a whole new level.
As summed up by the Panthers’ Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver: “We believe in the need for a unified revolutionary movement … informed by the revolutionary principles of scientific socialism.” That synthesized the insights of MLK, who was, crucially, a proponent of color blindness.
Fred Hampton, the target of a de facto state assassination in December 1969, made sure the struggle transcended race: “We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.”
So this is not only about race. This is not only about class. This is about Power to the People fighting for social, political and economic justice under a system that’s intrinsically unequal. It expands on the in-depth analysis by Gerald Horne in The Dawning of the Apocalypse, where the 16th century is fully dissected, “creation myth” of the U.S. included.
Horne shows how a bloodthirsty invasion of the Americas engendered fierce resistance by Africans and their indigenous populations allies, weakening imperial Spain and finally enabling London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607.
Now compare this depth of analysis with the meek, almost begging for mercy “Black Lives Matter” slogan. One is reminded, once again, of Malcolm X’s sharpness: “We had the best organization the black man’s ever had—niggers ruined it!”
To solve the Black Lives Matter question, one must, once again, follow the money.
Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation.
The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter, the organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party machine; adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the 0.001%.
The Black Lives Matter leadership, of course, argues that this time, “it’s different. Elaine Brown, the formidable former chairwoman of the Black Panthers, takes no prisoners: Black Lives Matter has a “plantation mentality”.
Try to set the night on fire
Set the Night on Fire is an extraordinarily absorbing book co-written by Jon Wiener and the inestimable Mike Davis of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums.
Cataloguing in exhaustive detail the L.A. of the Sixties, we are plunged into the Watts riots in 1965; the antiwar movement joining the Black Panthers to form a uniquely Californian Peace and Freedom Party; the evolving grassroots unity of the Black Power ethos; the Che-Lumumba club of the Communist Party – which would become the political base of legendary Angela Davis; and the massive FBI and LAPD offensive to destroy the Black Panthers.
Tom Wolfe notoriously – and viciously – characterized L.A. supporters of the Black Panthers as ‘radical chic”. Elaine Brown once again sets the record straight: “We were dying, and all of them, the strongest and the most frivolous, were helping us survive another day.”
One of the most harrowing sections of the book details how the FBI went after Panthers sympathizers, including the sublime Jean Seberg, the star of Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan (1957) and Godard’s Breathless (1960).
Jean Seberg contributed anonymously to the Panthers under the codename “Aretha” (yes, as in Franklin). The FBI’s COINTELPRO took no prisoners to go after Seberg, enrolling the CIA, military intel and the Secret Service. She was smeared as a “sex-perverted white actress” – as in having affairs with black radicals. Her Hollywood career was destroyed. She went into deep depression, had a stillbirth (the baby was not black), emigrated, and her – decomposed – body was found in her car in Paris in 1979.
In contrast, there have been academic rumblings identifying the sea of converts to the Black Lives Matter religion as mostly products of the marriage between wokeness and intersectionality – the set of interlinked traits that since birth privileges heterosexual white men, now trying to expiate their guilt.
Generation Z, unleashed en masse from college campuses across the U.S. into the jobs market, is a prisoner of this phenomenon: in fact a slave to – politically correct – identity politics. And once again, carrying zero revolutionary potential.
Compare it once again to immense political sacrifices of the Black Panthers. Or when Angela Davis, already a pop icon, became the most famous black political prisoner in American history. Aretha Franklin, when volunteering to post bail for Davis, famously framed it: “I’ve been locked up for disturbing the peace, and I know you’ve got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace.”
Elaine Brown: “I know what the BPP [Black Panther Party] was. I know the lives we lost, the struggle we put into place, the efforts we made, the assaults on us by the police and government – I know all that. I don’t know what Black Lives Matter does.”
It’s open to endless debate whether Black Lives Matter is intrinsically racist and even inherently violent.
And it’s also debatable whether taking a knee, now a household ritual practiced by politicians (complete with Kente scarves from Ghana), cops and corporations, really threatens the foundations of Empire.
Noam Chomsky has already ventured that the protest wave so far carries zero political articulation – and badly needs a strategic direction, far beyond the obvious revolt against police brutality.
The protests are dying down just as the Commune emerges.
Depending on its evolution that may pose a serious problem to Trump/Barr. The President simply cannot allow a running color revolution to develop in the middle of a major American city. At the same time he’s impotent as a federal authority to dissolve the Commune.
What the White House can do is to dog whistle its own counter-insurgency units, in the form of armed to their teeth white supremacist militias, to go on the offensive and crush the already flimsy supply lines of the wokeness-cum-intersectionality crowd.
Occupy after all took over key areas of 60 American cities for months just to suddenly dissolve into the ether.
Additionally, the Deep State has already war-gamed plenty of scenarios to deal with siege situations way more complex than the Commune.
Whatever happens next, one key vector is immutable. A state of permanent insurrection only benefits the 0.00001% plutocracy comfortably ensconced while the plebs set the night on fire.
Bottom line: America is beyond redeeming.
Pepe’s conclusion is the gem of his walk through our past half-century of dramas in the streets, the violent blend of war, anti-war, civil rights, co-opted social movements, assassinations, police and FBI outrages and the planned despair served as democracy.
If you want the big, brilliant analytical piece on what is going down in all this melange of street theater and cult rantings, Ishchenko has a definitive read for you.
https://www.stalkerzone.org/civil-war-a-natural-result-of-globalisation/
With Pepe’s backgrounder and Ishchenko’s analysis you will reach clarity and understanding.
Their conclusions converge.
This is about power, total control of this society and the global structure to come—Feudalism.
@Larchmonter445
Interesting read from Ishchenko. Thanks for the link.
”Welcome to the Only Occupy Others movement.”
Haha, excellent summary 😀
”Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation.”
The ’beauty’ of this is that Western supremacists, being the faithful bootlickers of Western banks and corporations that they are, won’t resort to blaming JP Morgan Chase and Kellogg for ’communism’, nor filing obscene lawsuits against them. They might not like the messages coming from their formerly deeply revered US corporatocracy, but slanders and frivolous lawsuits are to be applied strictly in accordance with the spirit of the Only Occupy Others approach.
”The President simply cannot allow a running color revolution to develop in the middle of a major American city.”
Why not? The power of Soros resoundingly beats Trump’s, whose will to even interfere in the former’s mischief is merely asserted, mind you.
”A state of permanent insurrection only benefits the 0.00001% plutocracy comfortably ensconced while the plebs set the night on fire.”
Absolutely nothing of the sort. The disintegration of the entire US fabric of society is exactly what will trigger a tidal wave of liberation everywhere else.
Your last sentence is totally correct. Your second-last sentence is totally false.
Escobar wrote not about “liberation everywhere else”, but about the implausibility of “disintegration of the entire US fabric of society”.
“Absolutely nothing of the sort. The disintegration of the entire US fabric of society is exactly what will trigger a tidal wave of liberation everywhere else.”
-Depends on what you mean when you say liberation of course. USA is the core of the liberal world order. What liberal means in this context is different for different regions. In western Europe, liberal means And with liberal I mean anti-white, anti-male, anti-family, anti-christian, anti-sovereign, pro-radical feminist, pro-LGBT, pro-massimmigration.
So without USA influence. Nationalism, will likely rise like a tidal wave in W.Europe.
In E.Europe things will probably simmer down as it was mostly USA that agitated Poland/Baltics/Ukraine against Russia.
The tidal wave of liberation of course means the death of liberalism. The US is the clamp that still holds the rotten liberal edifice together. But now, with the US engulfed by irreversible rot, decay, total incompetence, and internal strife, the occasion for the oppressed parts of the world to end Western imperialism is approaching.
Bit of a pickle; isn’t it. “Depends on what you mean when you say liberation of course.” announces that you will comment on what Nussiminen meant. Then you comment on what you, Anonymous, mean.
Worse, you pretend “liberation” and “liberal” are the same word. They are not. Of course, they look similar; and they are historically related. But they have different grammatical functions. More importantly, their root meanings have drifted far apart. Also, I think that your word “liberal” should be capitalized, “Liberal”, because you refer to a messy tangle of modern political and economic philosophies and propaganda, only obscurely related to the historical meaning of “liberal”.
It is not necessary to guess, or impute, what Nussiminen means. The structure and content of the one sentence itself imply “liberation” means something along the lines of “freeing” or “coming of freedom”. What you later say, “without USA influence”. What Che Guevara said.
The problem with this tactic is that it only slows the inevitable. When the War Hawk Joe Biden gets to the White House he will go on a crusade to crush the street movements. Black Lives Matter will endorse, seeing that they are a psy-op to squash the Black Rights movement. It tends, more often than not, to backfire, since the increased poverty, unequality and unemployement tends to kindle the class hatred on those who will feel betrayed by their new leadership, and this time the power will not be on Trump’s hands, but on a candidate with a lot of black voter’s acceptance like Biden. If Black Lives Matter try to squash the insurrency, which will not stop when Biden gets to the White House, they will spark a class war inside the afro-americans. The Democratic Party and the Deep State is playing a dangerous game kindling the fires of insurrection which, like Robespierre, tends to backfire on the opportunistic leadership.
The ongoing events in USA pose a great danger to the existence of the hegemon. What started as a routine exercise by the empire standards, has provoked uncharacteristic global anti empire demonstrations. For the first time we witnessed a spontaneous act of public disapproval sparked by a repulsive display of indifference to human life by USA police . The wound caused by the devilish act was so profound that even the “divide & rule shield temporarily failed in it’s duty of hypnotizing the public into inactivity whilst human killings (collateral) are going on. Antics of the empire’s counter revolutionary apparatus (press,NGO’s, politicians, etc) are over leveraged , hence it evoked other tools in it’s arsenal, the most potent being a skillful manipulation of certain known divisive traits ( archetypes) in the collective human psyche. At the moment nothing is certain as the empire is imploding.
…”What the White House can do is to dog whistle its own counter-insurgency units, in the form of armed to their teeth white supremacist militias, to go on the offensive and crush the already flimsy supply lines of the wokeness-cum-intersectionality crowd.”…
Not too hard to stop this shit really! Well placed quick set cement in key sewer manholes will do it. Try to flush baby, baby flush. Eat, but cannot poop without living in it. Problem solved. No bloodshed, and living in their shit will stop their crap going forward.
Cheers.
The following views offer a radically different interpretation of what is really going on in the USA.
The first view sketched in Pepe’s last sentence :
”A state of permanent insurrection only benefits the 0.00001% plutocracy comfortably ensconced while the plebs set the night on fire.”
The second is given by Nussiminen as answer to Pepe’s last sentence :
“Absolutely nothing of the sort. The disintegration of the entire US fabric of society is exactly what will trigger a tidal wave of liberation everywhere else.”
Pepe confirms his vision by citing… “Noam Chomsky has already ventured that the protest wave so far carries zero political articulation – and badly needs a strategic direction, far beyond the obvious revolt against police brutality.” This is the traditional leftist vision about taking power away from the 0.00001% (big capital).
In Nussimen’s vision there is no longer any power to take in the USA. Collapse is the death of the American experiment with societal atomization and this opens the door to the flourishing of the creativity of the rest of the world…
I think that Nussimen’s vision is closer to the reality of the societal evolution that is taking in front of our eyes. What happens is: the West falling out of history and this is liberation for the rest of the world.
“What happens is: the West falling out of history and this is liberation for the rest of the world.”
Exactly. At such an historical juncture as this, I remember the blogger poiuytr and his superb forum Insurrection daily. The global insurrection against Western occupation, which lasted until 2012. The guy had a truly unsurpassed understanding of “Western values” as they actually manifest themselves in concrete reality. I owe much of my vitriol to him and the other participants there.
A slightly less pleasant yet very amusing (Schadenfreude!) memory is provided by poiuytr‘s exact opposite: Kim “La Russophobe” Zigfeld and her bunch of drooling, inarticulate soulmates from Poland, Ukraine, and — of course — the US. It was quite common there to be called all sorts of names, and you can imagine the hilarity to watch their reactions when I told them “Yes, I am a stinking piece of garbage — why do you think I’m attracted to this blog?”.
Kim Zigfeld thought the US unbeatable and flawless, while Russia was a failure in every possible sense and forever “on the brink of collapse”. Putin wouldn’t survive for another year. Took the menopausal loon 10 years before she threw in the towel. Probably not very happy with today’s developments.
“Power to the people! That’s what they’re screaming—Freedom of the soul! Pass it on, pass it on, to the young and old!”
Jimi Hendrix
What is taking place in Seattle is something years in the making. Go back to the sixties when the young were protesting against the status quo. Then look at what is going on in Seattle; but under a different mood.
We have a situation today where the young are protesting against the status quo but are too naive to realize it so they go along with the latest occurrence that stimulates their subjective resentment against the status quo. This latest stimulant was a video showing a white police officer putting his knee on a subdued black man and apparently murdering him. Now we have demonstrations in many cities. Notice that the media is always trying to steer us into a narrative about black lives matter but carefully watch the videos and one can see that the narrative is really deeper.
All lives matter. Our country is going through a period of transition. This is not the time to be subjective…it is the time to be objective. Our country is rich in resources, mineral, agricultural, technological and in general a population educated enough through our school system to go on and educate themselves with the knowledge they have. The internet is the master school when one knows how to do it.
I can physically see that we are headed into a depression. Not only us but worldwide. A big change is happening in the world that is affecting all of us. So now is the time for all of us to step back and look at our situation; not subjectively as we are used too, but objectively without our viewpoint corrupting it.
What is happening in Seattle is a tragedy that could have turned into something positive but the people running the show on all sides are too compromised or stupid to see the path to a resolution. Educated idiots vs two brained beings ie pointless logic vs emotion & instinct. I think this may require a military solution.
What the 0.0001% have planned for the USA is Libya. Ditto for the rest of the western world. The elites are transnationals, they use and discard nations when they can no longer serve them. They use the media to create new realities and orchestrate the masses. A world of disconnected, squabbling minorities is what is proposed with the NWO government and its armies controlling it all with high tech surveillance and brute force.
You have seen it so many times in books, movies and tv series, how can you not recognize it when it is staring you in the face?
I get the feeling that no one here Has been on the streets? Black lives matter is running none of this, nor is the NAACP. They may have run the first days big marches, but that was it. This is now anarchists and Black block folks and young people. From the get go the status quo has been shunned. The intersection of empire and the Democratic Party And capitalism, has been acknowledged at every event I have been to all over my state. Liberals were taken to task at the event, I was at last night teach in; and every single speaker, Went after the liberal left. and the effort to to infiltrate by the liberal groups and politicians Has been slammed. The formation of Black blocks is how they are keeping out these forces. Social media is not aloud at their actions. During the civil rights movement in Selma the youth were ready to go to war the adults and the church’s provided training and leadership and helped the youth go into It with strength and controlled anger. The one difference I see is the adults are not doing that here it is all young people. You can feel the anger in these young people they understand that they will have nothing in there future if the system stays the same. There was a protest that had all the long guns boys show up what ended up happening over the hours is conversations between the 2 groups Then hugs then they all chased off some people dressed in KKK hoods. I don’t know but my guess it they realized they were all on the same page, and agreed to disagree on everyone having guns. These young people are missing the power of words and leadership, I believe in large part to keep out the middle of the road liberals. Technology makes this whole battle much harder, cops are actually hunting down what leadership there is and threatening people in their neighborhoods and homes, work places. This is not black live Matter, those are the words they use they belong to no one and everyone. Even in my white liberal world Most of us know BLM the organization is sold out. The big greens are sold out. I would say most of the people I have worked with over the years are feeling threatened by this, they think reforming the police is good they do not just like the Democratic Party see the need to crush it I am an outlier of my age and race. I believe the cops need to be gone along with our government as it now stands.
The police were created in this country to keep slaves in line and then to keep them in indentured servitude .the mentality has never gone away and it never will they now serve their new corporate masters and harass and kill the poor the people of color the mentally ill with no though what’s so ever. They do not serve to protect unless you are upper middle class and up
Well, give the US and or European students, say ninth graders or 18th agers a text theme to develop at the class rooms:
“Do you support a pull down and brake apart in your country of older monuments which represent a History period or ideas now rejected by society or by a significant part of society in your country”?
And challenge them to write down a piece of 25 lines with their arguments on the subject.
A challenge just to measure how far our education system and our media goes.
Wonder: will the commune be treated the way the Waco people were some 25 years ago?
Well, to be sure , depends on how revolutionary and how logical their struggle behaves.
Right out of the ballpark @Pepe.
MLK identified the interrelated flaws in the US system of racism, poverty, militarism and materialism. The US masses are kept divided by the invocation of racial tension, classicism/fascism which is protected by so called capitalism which is nothing but corporate racism as beautifully explained by Ramin Mazehari in this blog. This keeps the masses divided with the promise of working hard to achieve the American dream. This puts the middle class — which is rapidly declining by the way as the pie is sliced ever more smaller for them — against the lumpen proletariat aka dregs of society. They keep on saying they are the way they are due to laziness, criminals or stupidity without seeing how their opportunities are rapidly disappearing.
Kudos to Fred Hampton for the identification of a system that is intrinsically unequal. Those who support this system think that they derive some benefits from it — which some do —- but what they don’t realise or outright ignore, is that the system is gamed against them too. It’s a race to the bottom, but in the end, the bottom they shall reach if they don’t wake up. Case in point —- the millennial generation is seeing through the system more and more, as they can see that the opportunities that were afforded the boomer generations are not available to many of them. Like owning a house has become a dream for many.
Militarism is of course used to attack the rest of the world in order for them to toe the “rules based world order” which is nothing but a scam to follow western diktat. @Pepe is right in that this BLM will go nowhere in terms of revolution, but what a break it may end up in giving the ROW from US militarism that is aimed at appropriating illegally the wealth of other countries. This is the stuff that destroys empires. This divisions they formented for keeping the plebs at each others throats has so divided the nation such that no group can agree to be ruled by the other ; irreconcilable differences. Now what? Counterinsurgency can’t be allowed and yet we see the markings of a color revolution. The Democrats have proven their refusal to be subservient to the “nationalist patriots” and the nationalists are preparing for a civil war ; Bogaloo as in civil war 2.0. What a time, because for the first time ever, the “divide and rule” principle is now home to roost in the US. Can the rest of the world break free of the imperialist York? Will the US break apart into parts as they have sought to do elsewhere? Definitely worth monitoring and pondering, wouldn’t you say?
Comment above should read “corporate facism ” and not “corporate racism”
Ishchenko’s piece is an excellent read. The Corporate donors to BLM have transformed it into a racial supremacy group and not a left wing group. In short run this helps the 1%, but the rise of violence and insecurity will only lead to Civil War. This should collapse the Empire rapidly.
To solve the Black Lives Matter question, one must, once again, follow the money.
Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation.
The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter, the organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party machine; adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the 0.001%.
The Black Lives Matter leadership, of course, argues that this time, “it’s different. Elaine Brown, the formidable former chairwoman of the Black Panthers, takes no prisoners: Black Lives Matter has a “plantation mentality”.
Makes total sense when comparing how the US CIA, FBI, etc viciously attacked and killed off the Black Panthers. Another words, Black Lives Matter is a wimpy/political joke.
Here are a few articles which agree with this article by Pepe Escobar
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/12/15/kellogg-foundation-supports-group-headed-by-cop-killer-loving-black-lives-matter-founder/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/12/01/kellogg-foundation-provided-nearly-1-million-support-black-lives-matter/
Breitbart is a right wing media outlet. Are we to assume that Pepe Escobar is a right wing lunatic because he writes articles which align exactly with some right wing media outlet?
See the slur by association is just a cheap trick which anyone can use.
Yes! Black Lives Matter does not have a radical political program compared with say the Black Panthers! But who does? Many organisations have sprung in recent years which just concentrate one or two political issues and have no distinct central leadership. Because they have learnt from the lessons of the past, and realised that parties with more developed political programmes, and a central political leadership, can and have been easily co-opted and destroyed by simply co-opting the leadership. How difficult is that to understand? How difficult is it to understand that corporations see an opportunity to promote their brands by funding such organisations? Of course its cynical. Just like this article is cynical.
Is it really fair to compare Black Lives Matter to Black Panthers? Come on! So what do these corporations get in return for their funding of Black Lives Matter? Black Lives Matter keeps quiet about the sweat shops they run in the Far East? Is that it?
It remains to be seen whether their funding of Black Lives Matter can co-opt them in any way shape or form, given that they have no distinct central leadership. They are difficult to attack in this way as with other more formal political parties. As indeed this article is find it very difficult to attack for the same reason.
You clearly recognise that they have contributed, amongst others, to wide social unrest and protest against a government with harsh and cruel domestic and foreign policies, which you have spoken out against on many occassions. You clearly recognise that the sight of Democrat politicians kneeling is an embarrassing political theatre. Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, also took part in this embarrassing political theatre. But you refuse to acknowledge that Black Lives Matter, amongst others, put them in that embarrassing position. And try to insinuate that they are somehow tools of those very same politicians and corporations?
So Black Lives Matter only wants justice for Black people murdered by the state and reform of the police. So they don’t want to solve all of the problems in the US let alone the world. It is a Strawman Argument to say they ever did. Will justice for these people and reform of the judicial system in the US solve the world’s problems? No! But it is a start! And thank God for that!
This is not in anyway shape or form an attack on Pepe Escobar.
Pepe Escobar is otherwise, apart from this article, a very wise astute commentator whose political analysis is always appreciated.
This is very true:
Whatever happens next, one key vector is immutable. A state of permanent insurrection only benefits the 0.00001% plutocracy comfortably ensconced while the plebs set the night on fire
Sadly we have learned nothing over the years. The government seems to do nothing, perhaps take a knee. What is really going on is the Surveillance State is using various methods to determine who the leaders are. Then as in WTO Seattle and Occupy, the leaders are rounded up and the movement dissolves.
Thanks for all your work
Excellent, PE, as usual. Though, one quibble:
“Occupy after all took over key areas of 60 American cities for months just to suddenly dissolve into the ether.”
From what I recall, it did not “suddenly dissolve,” but was brutally suppressed. One early morning in NY, the police stormed in and pouff, occupy no more (would not normally link to DK, but this has some videos):
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/3/28/1373942/-Crushing-the-Occupy-Movement-How-Wall-Street-Used-Government-Forces-to-Suppress-Political-Dissent
There is also this:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy