The US as Sal’s Pizzeria: When to ‘Do The Right Thing’ is looting
The nice thing about art, novels, and the like is that we can be mercilessly judgmental of our favourite characters and villains if we so choose, precisely because we must always try to be the total opposite for flesh-and-blood human beings. The people who confuse escapist non-reality with sensitive reality are called “actors” and “actresses”, and they are usually insufferable.
Vengeance is the Lord’s, indeed – but social justice is a human construct. This burning reality, was recently on display in the US during the rebellions over police brutality. Without a doubt many burned stores were the result of a lot of score-settling against both abusive small proprietors and impersonal corporate stores.
The only way to judge any single case properly is to know all the facts, but what does an aggrieved community do when the facts are widely known but the government refuses to act?
Answer: Sometimes with organisation (a Cultural Revolution), and sometimes with vigilante justice (like last week), community justice can finally be rendered. Many recoil at the term “vigilante justice”, but the term only definitely implies major flaws within the existing pathways to justice and not within the justice-seekers. Many American jingoists confuse losing faith in the American justice system with citizen treachery, but such are the hysterics of typical reactionaries….
Do The Right Thing, by Spike Lee, was included on my list of the greatest political movies of all time, as it’s a perfect-pitch analysis of how an urban African-American neighbourhood can get enraged into an anti-establishment rebellion. It’s amazing that such an honest movie about US racial politics could actually receive Hollywood backing, but it was not surprising that it was not even nominated for their Best Picture Oscar in 1989, which was awarded to Driving Miss Daisy – a feel-good racial healing movie about a rich Southern White woman and her bond with her chauffeur (or something like that, I have never bothered to watch such tripe). Indeed, where was Kanye West when that award was handed out?
(SPOILERS – If I recall correctly): Briefly, Do The Right Thing centers around a worker (Spike Lee) who toils for a chauvinistic Italian family who runs a pizza parlour in Brooklyn. Sal the owner is charismatic, but authoritarian, disrespectful, greedy and racist. As a result of these reactionary beliefs and practices one of his worker/sons is basically a KKK member, if only the KKK would let in Italians. Again, to be brief in this recap, a central dramatic fulcrum is the refusal of Sal to reflect his African-American clientele to allow some photos of Black leaders up on his parlour’s wall of Italian-American adoration. Sal was defending his legal right to do whatever he wanted with his property no matter whom it hurt, in that very American libertarian way. After a young Black man is murdered by cops in a choke hold, Lee launches a garbage can through the pizza parlour window, igniting a rebellion. Lee and Sal confront each other in the wreckage, with Lee importantly refusing extra wages thrown at him by Sal, as this was obviously not about mere money but issues larger than even a pizza parlour’s wall of pride in my ethnicity but not yours (i.e., capitalist-imperialist “identity politics”).
But in a key way it was not: had Sal been more embracing of his community and customers, then they would not have demanded revenge for his years of abuse and of taking them for granted. The wall of Italian-American adoration represents the way African-Americans are totally shut out of US socio-political life & success, no matter how esteemed their representatives are elsewhere around the world. Sal was not victimised by vigilante justice – he was punished by it for being an arrogant profiteer of the American system which Blacks are oppressed by.
Others will see the movie differently: the cynical, or the racist, or the politically-ignorant will say that there was no political issues at play here – it’s just an example of base criminality, greed, wrath, etc.
It is definitely worth rewatching today, as art can help us peacefully and personally clarify our ideas, but if you have kids – they must watch it. Do The Right Thing should be taught in US public schools because it is an unparalleled example of modern leftist art.
Even amid today’s rebellion, the biggest issue for African-Americans is not police brutality… but the MSM wants to limit it to that
Of course police brutality is an enormous and blisteringly personal issue for African-Americans, but it is a woeful commentary on “capitalism with American characteristics” that it is actually not their main issue. Anyone who says I am wrong clearly has no idea about modern African-American life under the modern US system of “bankocracy”. Take for example the West Side of Chicago, their third-largest city:
The arsons and theft there were not as bad as it could have been for the simple fact that there is nothing there to burn or steal. In these poor Black urban areas one finds only homes and churches – they are very nearly rural areas with huge lots sitting totally empty. There are no stores, no jobs, no community centers and few decent homes because “disinvestment” (really, “non-investment”) is an even worse issue for African-Americans than police brutality.
In the US bankocratic system private bank investment rules completely – as opposed centrally-planned government economic intervention, which is rejected by neoliberalism – and US banks refuse to invest a dime in poor Black areas.
The homes are falling down or abandoned because in American bankocracy it has been decided that these homes are so shoddy and that the land so worthless that no loans can be diffused there. However, investing money is OBVIOUSLY the only way to EVER create value – but the US system could care less about Blacks…and it’s not just their cops. For ever $1 loaned to White Chicagoans (or 68% of all home purchase lending) from 2012-2017 Back Chicagoans got just $0.12 (or just 8% of all such lending). When the “government bank” is non-existent and the “co-op model” is suspiciously viewed as socialism – there can be no future. This is bigger than police brutality.
One finds no stores in these areas – a ubiquitous sight is people walking with both hands carrying plastic bags of goods, as they have to walk long distances to find a shop (further adding to the impression that one is in a rural area where stores are far away). As should have been predicted, because the PPP Small Business Program is using private banks to diffuse public money (instead of (non-existent) government banks) this very long-awaited first round of “People’s QE” is bypassing 90% of all non-White businesses. Of course it is: these businesses are in areas which have been deemed for decades to be irredeemably unprofitable to banks, and the US mentality forbids government intervention – thus, perpetual non-investment. This is bigger than police brutality.
One certainly finds no banks – only the disgustingly usurious check cashing shops, with interest rates from 400-800%. What a shame that modern computers make their records of debt-slavery non-perishable….
One also finds no churches. Well, that is not true: African-Americans have Jesus but they have no “church”: The potential strength of the African-American religious community is fragmented – in that American Protestant way – into countless tiny churches with Jesus as their own, personal Saviour. Indeed, besides the occasional school all there are in these areas are churches. Yes, these areas will have a big Baptist church, for example, but they also have plenty of very poor denominations operating out of someone’s home or tiny storefronts. Poor Latino communities in Chicago fared much better during the lootings and I attribute that partially to the fact that they have stronger community organisation because they have just one church – Roman Catholic. As if proving my point, seemingly the only march in Chicago yesterday was a Mothers’ march organised by the Roman Catholic churches of the Black and Latino communities. This fragmentation, individualism and “religious creativity” would not at all be a problem in a modern socialist nation (such as religiously diverse Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, Cuba), but I bring it up because it presents rather another huge obstacle to collective Black action to counteract a US capitalist-imperialist-bankocratic system which already presents them with so many other obstacles. Indeed, it is only anti-socialism combined with hypocritical Western secularism which stops the US government from investing in Black religious establishments in order to immediately improve those communities: one just has to look at Iran to see how religion and socialism can intertwine in lasting and productive economic redistribution. So, is this bigger than police brutality? Yes and no.… Regardless of the comparison: Religious unity would go a long way in providing structures to overcome the perpetual non-investment; direct government aid for African-American religious groups would go a very a long way in community improvement – both ideas appear equally impossible in the US, sadly.
But none of these issues are the eye-grabbing “if it bleeds, it leads” hyper-emotional US news; all of these issues cut so directly to the intractable core problems of “capitalism with American characteristics”; all of these issues reflect the centuries of ingrained biases against African-American institutions and for White ones; all of this surely requires years of Cultural Revolution to reeducate an entire US public so very propagandised against modern socialist ideals. This all explains why police brutality gets MSM airtime – these other larger issues are so, so, SO daunting for those who insist on staying within the confines of the Western liberal democratic/aristocratic system of their Founding SlaveFathers.
There are solutions, but only found in post-1917 societies
Want to prevent Covid-19 from killing African-Americans at rates 2 to 3 times normal? Shut down those urban/at-risk areas immediately – but you’re going to need to be like China and have a bureaucratic, grassroots organisation already in place to bring them food. America has neither the organisation nor even the cultural will, sadly.
Want to create stores, jobs and cheap goods in poor African-American neighborhoods? You’re going to need to be like Iran and create something like the Basij, which operates countless cooperative stores in (formerly) poor neighborhoods (and regardless of ethnic composition). America has neither the organisation nor the cultural will.
Want to provide security when the police force feels overwhelmed? Then you’ll need a Cuban Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (or a Basij) to already be in place and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater community. America has neither the organisation nor the cultural will.
Want to have SOME option other than private banks to reverse non-investment? You’re going to have to be like Iran and create what I called the “1B Sector” ( 1 is public, 2 is private) charity organisations (bonyads)/cooperatives – be prepared to have them constantly assailed as “inefficient” by the same people who say investing in African-American communities is “inefficient”. America has neither the organisation nor the cultural will.
The best hope on June 6, 2020 is that QE finally goes to the people and not still to the 1% – this would provide much needed money, but the US still lacks the necessary organisation, structure and culture to efficiently use it. Still – demand People’s QE and build from there.
But is this the fault of Sal’s Pizzeria? How can you claim to properly judge?
In Dongping Han’s The Unknown Cultural Revolution the anti-Red China West finally got a book from someone on the ground back then and who systematically, statistically, theoretically and fairly described that Chinese leftist era. It took until 2008. There is still no such book for Iran’s Cultural Revolution – maybe in 20 years there will be enough distance from those events to give some US university the confidence to dare to publish my new book on Iranian Islamic Socialism? Mr. Han was kind enough to write the forward to my book on China, but his book is so urgently important during this Yellow Vest era that I wrote an 8-part series dedicated to it last year.
Han was from a rural area, and his book describes scenes of community justice. What Han points out is that the judgment of the community against the local landlord, mill owner, Communist Party official… was usually right and fair. This absolutely, absolutely passes the smell test: yes Han was in a rural area but all politics are local – people in a community know the true character and historical actions of their local shop owner, alderman or pizzeria owner. Justice for Sal was initiated by his own worker, Spike Lee, just as Chinese peasants demanded justice from their local boss.
Attacks on Wal-Marts and other corporations must be viewed as having as much political validity as Yellow Vest attacks on corporate symbols of French importance. The major difference between the Yellow Vests and the US rebellions are the absolute poverty created by asphyxiating disinvestment suffered by the latter – this can make political actions harder to comprehend:
There are countless video scenes of African-American women (likely many mothers) lining up at a supermarket to get some looted food – this is not greedy looting but a reflection of unforgivable structural poverty; this is just one step up from the homeless person on the West Side of Chicago who asks you for a quarter – $0.25 – an infinitesimally useless sum in 2020 but rather a lot to the homeless person totally abandoned by the US state. Because France has a some state intervention in their economy, this type of absolute poverty does not exist there in anything close to the numbers in the US. If there was – there would be similar looting, and many in France would properly insist that their looting be viewed in this political manner.
Are there innocent proprietors who suffered unjustly during the recent US rebellions? I’m sure there are but that can only be judged on a case-by-case method, and it is the community who is the most able judge and not the US aristocrat-favouring and anti-Black legal system. These proprietors are not “guilty until proven innocent”, but neither should “looters” be condemned as “guilty until proven innocent” either. The looting in the US is thus quite, quite complicated – as a result of their terrible economic and cultural systems – and thus defies easy moralising.
One thing, however, is certain: for African-Americans there is no stable recourse to justice of an incredible number of sorts, thus there are occasionally violent outbursts. This is testified to in Do The Right Thing and across the country last week. Police brutality is an issue, but I do indeed hope to shock people into reality with this article by reminding that the biggest issue African-Americans sadly face is actually not police brutality.
And it is certainly not looting.
Postscript
On the day before George Floyd was murdered every American should have already known that their poor Black areas never recovered from the 1968 rebellions after the death of Martin Luther King – that’s what makes these rebellions rather tragic, righteous or not: In the US bankocracy there is no historical foundation to hope that investment will suddenly begin in 2020. African-American politicians are right now begging for businesses and basic goods-corporations to stay, just as they had to beg them to finally arrive. Nothing else could better illustrate the victory of neoliberalism, as well as the undiscussed domestic neo-imperialism aspect of neoliberalism….
Indeed, we can fairly say that always-unchecked police brutality is a sort of American 1%er collusion to ensure explosions which help ensure the continued (debt) slavery of the African-American class. The civil rights movement of the 1960s did much to end African-American disenfranchisement – the goal of ending African-American disinvestment looks much harder to achieve in US capitalist-imperialist culture.
These are indeed depressing assessments, but they should go some way in explaining last week’s events, and America has always been very depressing in countless ways beneath their shiny surface appeal.
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Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis.
Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience? – March 22, 2020
Corona meds in every pot & a People’s QE: the Trumpian populism they hoped for? – March 23, 2020
A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire) March 23, 2020
MSNBC: Chicago price gouging up 9,000% & the sports-journalization of US media – March 25, 2020
Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s? – March 26, 2020
If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone – March 30, 2020
Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution – March 31, 2020
Corona repeating 9/11 & Y2K hysterias? Both saw huge economic overreactions – April 1, 2020
(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown – April 2, 2020
Corona rewrites capitalist bust-chronology & proves: It’s the nation-state, stupid – April 3, 2020
Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus – April 5, 2020
‘We’re Going Wrong’: The West’s middling, middle-class corona response – April 10, 2020
Why does the UK have an ‘army’ of volunteers but the US has a shortage? – April 12, 2020
No buybacks allowed or dared? Then wave goodbye to Western stock market gains – April 13, 2020
Pity post-corona Millennials… if they don’t openly push socialism – April 14, 2020
No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all – April 16, 2020
Same 2008 QE playbook, but the Eurozone will kick off Western chaos not the US – April 18, 2020
We’re giving up our civil liberties. Fine, but to which type of state? – April 20,
2020
Coronavirus – Macron’s savior. A ‘united Europe’ – France’s murderer – April 22, 2020
The same 12-year itch: Will banks loan down QE money this time? – April 26,
2020
The end of globalisation won’t be televised, despite the hopes of the Western 99% (2/2) – April 27, 2020
What would it take for proponents to say: ‘The Great Lockdown was wrong’? – April 28, 2020
ZeroHedge, a response to Mr. Littlejohn & the future of dollar dominance – April 30, 2020
Given Western history, is it the ‘Great Segregation’ and not the ‘Great Lockdown’? – May 2, 2020
The Western 1% colluded to start WWI – is the Great Lockdown also a conspiracy? – May 4, 2020
May 17: The date the Great Lockdown must end or Everything Bubble 2 pops – May 6, 2020
Reading Piketty: Does corona delay the Greens’ fake-leftist, sure-to-fail victory? – May 8, 2020
Picturing the media campaign needed to get the US back to work – May 11, 2020
Scarce jobs + revenue desperation = sure Western stagflation post-corona – May 13, 2020
France’s nurses march – are they now deplorable Michiganders to fake-leftists? – May 15, 2020
Why haven’t we called it ‘QE 5’ yet? And why we must call it ‘QE 2.1’ instead – May 16, 2020
‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty public servant!’ That’s Orwell? – May 17, 2021
The Great Lockdown: The political apex of US single Moms & Western matriarchy? May 21, 2021
I was wrong on corona – by not pushing for a US Cultural Revolution immediately – May 25, 2021
August 1: when the unemployment runs out and a new era of US labor battles begin – May 28, 2021
Corona proving the loser of the Cold War was both the USSR & the USA – May 30, 2021
Rebellions across the US: Why worry? Just ask Dr. Fauci to tell us what to do – June 2, 2021
Protesting, corona-conscience, a good dole: the US is doing things it can’t & it’s chaos – June 3, 2021
Why do Westerners assume all African-Americans are leftists? – June 5, 2020
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the NEW ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.
I read it rather differently. Spike was ultimately heavily promoted by Hollywood because of things that are happening now. Namely, the identification of the white lower middle class with racism, even though in the Midwest that means Italians, Germans, and Polish who have no historical memory or guilt for slavery. Elsewhere in the US it may mean Scots or Irish, also slavery virgins.
Meanwhile, the descendants of the successful slave traders enjoy the advantages of the enormous fortunes and dynasties that were created, including control of the press. The descendants of the plantation owners are not as powerful but still doing OK. “Do the right thing” is, in retrospect, one of the worst examples of re-writing history. But alas, we know that there are some people who accuse others of the crimes they themselves committed.
Thank you. There is a piece on unz.com = “The Manufactured Crisis of Police Racism” – today that debunks this “police racist” nonsense. It has a figure that shows how for New York are:
“blacks are 17 times more likely than whites to be victims, 31 times more likely than whites to suspects, and 26 times more likely to be arrested.”
But where in the lying media does one see that?
For once, the lying Iranian media and the lying Zionist media is speaking with one voice. Of course, there are no people of West African ancestry in Iran so they really take the cake when it comes to hypocrisy.
But there are Black people in Iran of East African ancestry, so the problem is not black skin but West African culture?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Iranians
And not definitely not Western culture towards non-Whites?
Nor a capitalist-imperialist class issue of militarisation towards the lower classes.
Preposterous….
Ramin, I read everything you post here, but this has to be the wrongest article you posted. The movie’s message is that things would be so much better if only we could convince old curmudgeons to hang some pictures of Joe Louis (in the place he built by working like a mule for decades). Not by closing bases and living within our means, and not by eliminating central banking.
And to prove to you how wrong you are, here in Michigan several weeks ago armed demonstrators showed up at the Capitol. You praised them. Who do you think they are? They are the children and grandchildren of the curmudgeon. By ethnicity, by class, and by guild, being generally small businessmen who could no longer make ends meet. Meanwhile, the governess, who is forcing everyone else to social distance, and still keeps small businesses closed (do you want a haircut? drive to Ohio), goes out with her Detroit pals to protest the brutality of a police she herself controls (link below), flaunting rules which are for curmudgeons only.
To understand why you were wrong, you have to understand where is the resistance in the USA today. I hope I am right if I assume you want a controlled decline of the Empire, if so these are your allies. The governess is also doing all this to be Biden’s running mate, eventually to replace him once he does a Ratzinger, and she is effectively a carbon copy of Hillary. You may end up a heavy lesson if all this comes to pass.
We can then argue about the curmudgeon being too curmudgeon. I get that, and it used to bother my Mediterranean sensitivity too. But life in the USA is much more brutish than you imagine.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/5/gretchen-whitmer-marches-with-george-floyd-protest/
https://ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2019/08/10/on-racial-bias-in-police-shootings/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
“On racial bias in police shootings”
“A total lack of anti-black bias is also implied by research which compares the behavior of black and white police officers. For instance, Meinfeld et al. (2018) finds that black people account for 33% of those killed by non-white police officers compared to only 28% of those killed by white police officers.”
This number collector have collected data from fbi and other public sources, a ton off charts.
I think you over simplified things in this article Hr Mazaheri, as a halfbreed bastard i have lived with racism my entire life and i despise it. Now i get twice the moronic hatred bc both my bloodlines have fair skin, i get called a Sápmi bastard by norwegians and a white rayzizz monster by the press/politicians and takfiri immigrants. I am luckily thick skinned and roll my eyes at such people, but i think you should do a deep dive and research the anti white/latino racism those blm/ame “peaceful protesters” support and swear too. Twitter will lead you down a rabbit hole filled with filth and hatred that is equal to white racism+ it is supported and endorsed by msm and western ruling class. I say this bc i respect you and hope you will learn something on your way.
Per
Half blood caught in the middle.
Sápmi-Norway☦
Everywhere dogs of color are pushed out of the pack. This is known human behavior.
I’m a white guy world traveler, but have seen “No dogs, niggers, or retards” on the bar’s entrance all over Korea, I know that most Asians despise ‘darkness’ because it means no wealth or education.
Even in India its the color of your skin, to know instantly this persons social class.
Same in Africa, they too wear their hair, or body art to show their tribe, and you are either in or out.
IMHO society’s like Japan are best, traveling the world Japan, is clean, gentle, and safe. They also respect nature having forests of 4,000 year old trees rivaling anything found in USA national parks. Why pray tell? Because some +4,000 years ago they saw trees as ancestors, and thus should not be destroyed.
Much of the problem in USA is not what it seems the real problem, is there is nothing left to destroy. So now competing teams push a hunger-games narrative to get the remaining spoils. USA forests are gone, the land is barren, water table down 100’s of feet, great rivers have ran dry.
From 1930’s the USA elite-factory owners pushed ‘mobility’ so workers would flood job markets with private-auto’s, today 2020 we have ‘COVID’ and/or social-distancing to be pushed, as now there are no jobs, and the elite (owners) just want people to stay-home, aka “Keep the Roads Free of Poor People”. Of course today the USA has no factory owners, they all have been pushed the factors to China, and in that past 40+ years all the Chinese moved from farms to city’s, … Sound familiar?
I love Spike Lee, I loved his ‘X’ movie which was 100% right-on.
Note today there is nobody ‘black’ telling the truth, that’s what got X killed, and MLK, today nobody is even close to telling the truth.
In general Spike Lee’s movies told the truth, but let’s be honest, his audience is&was the choir.
Spike is delivering a message to his own people, not unlike the Al Sharpton speech a few days ago at the funeral of GF, do you all think that the rednecks even listened to that speech? Or when Mattis said Trump was a “Juvenile” this week, nada a comment anywhere, not even on ZH
Movies are a form of relief, I think PTB knows who watches ‘Lee’ movies, but they know his people need to vent, and need hope.
Right now ain’t about GF or COVID its about China, and the future of the USA penal colony.
IMHO Lee, COVID, and GF are all about distractions, so that people don’t realize their lifestyles are descending into hell
…
Investing in Real Estate is the only way USA people can keep their wealth and get rich, in the past 200+ years, 99% of all great wealth in USA came from Real Estate.
Trump got rich in Real Estate, that’s what he is a slum-lord.
I have lived in China for years, first all the Chinese only buy city flats, and they can always rent or resell. Sure there are ‘ghost citys’ but the USA is full of ‘ghost malls’ so what? or Ghost-Factory’s all over the USA. So what?
Buying RE is rather new in China, that said everybody has the ‘family farm’ but that land isn’t what’s going up, all of ASIA is unique like Hong-Kong, where an apartment floor is $10K/sq-ft, wrap your head, but an average decent hotel room is $500/night, and if you have window, it faces an air-vent crawlspace to service the building. In ASIA for the past 40+ city-land buildings has skyrocketed, my experience is land owners never sell, they pass on to children, but by lease many buildings come&go on the land, and of course people buy new condo’s like USA on lottery, and speculate.
+30 years ago most in China were rural and poor, today most in China are middle class, and have every material comfort a human can want, but in the USA in the past 30 years factory jobs are gone, and kids can’t find a good job when they grad; USA is some 250 years old and the experiment is dead, as the elite own 99%, and are not going to ‘share’.
China the system is confucius, a ‘gentle father’ system not unlike ancient Greece.
The USA is a failed penal colony, to slave-colony, back to prison-colony. There is no comparison, everybody in China is happy, and everybody in the USA is drugged and fed BS.
Actually, Trump did not “get rich in real estate” – he was given 400 odd million by his dad (who was a slum lord yes). It’s been calculated that he would have more money today if he had just invested that in the market.
I forgot to add in this article I rather tossed off, thus the more typos than usual:
A lot of these looters are giving away their goods for free – that’s community redistribution of wealth and not greed. Quite an important political component to consider….
Ramin, you have to remember that the real looting that took place in the USA happened back in March with the $6 trillion corporate bailout. This heist was conducted by the 1% against the rest of us. Much of the rage you see in the streets right now is not only black rage, but lumpenproletariat rage at having been impoverished and marginalized in whatever economic recovery happens this summer. They are fully aware that they’ve been made superfluous in the new economy. They are now out in the streets burning and looting. Can you really blame them?
These looters play the exact same historical role as the Lazzaroni, the Naples underclass, decried by Engels. They are used by the elite to beat the middle class (in this particular case what is left of the lower middle class). They are disliked by the working class, black or white, and they themselves don’t work. As a socialist, being on the workers side should be your first instinct. The looters are part and parcel of the war party, too.
The Saker tag team description is particularly apt (Trump/repubs destroying from the outside, dems destroying from the inside). I would like to add to it. Looters, academia, and genderistas work to destroy war readiness long term, white resistance is all we have to counteract new aggressions over the short and medium term. It is prudent these days to worry about short and medium term conflagrations. It is not difficult to figure out who is resisting: just go to any US mainstream news site, and look at who they demonize. those are your friends, at least temporarily.
Marx describes the lumpenproletariat as “generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy, sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society.” They may include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them the “most radical” because they are the “most exploited,” but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle.
They have subsisted by menial labor which has largely disappeared in the “new economy” as small businesses go bankrupt and they are thrown into destitution. There is no social safety-net in the USA like there is in Canada and Europe and they are rioting because they have nothing left to lose. Can you really blame them?
Personally, I do not blame them, specially since, as mentioned above, I live in Detroit and I am very familiar with many situations. But it is a political weapon pointed in a certain direction. Both they and the lower white middle class are struggling to stay alive. Ramin’s manichaean depiction is way off the mark.
MOD: I’ve cleaned this post up a bit, rather than trashing it. I’m always glad to help a new poster out a little. Further, beyond the poster’s observations, I’d personally be very interested in hearing what the poster thinks we can do to improve the situation.
Dude, the fact of the matter is very simple. Our alleged government acts as a foreign occupation force upon our land. It’s about that simple. The vast majority of our population, who actually works (in the flesh) to produce an actual thing which can be measured (and put on a ship, a truck, or a rail car) is absolutely xxxxxx (by ‘income taxes’, suppressed wages, and artificially inflated cost of living). The ass clowns that present themselves as our options for ‘elected officials’ are exactly that, ass clowns. There really is not any viable alternative between xxxxxx, and really xxxxxx. When anyone takes to the streets to voice their displeasure at the status quo, well… have we not been watching the news? What would any rational human being believe about this situation, if their brainwaves were not being scrambled by the ‘digital broadcast signal’ and assorted emf interference emissions (24/7)?
The potential strength of the African-American religious community is fragmented – in that American Protestant way – into countless tiny churches
The fragmentation and the isolation of the blacks is undoubtedly deliberate, and by design. A rebellion of the unified black bloc (10 – 15% of the US population) would be total chaos. The blacks would lose if the white majority were sufficiently genocidal, but America would burn for years.
So that was why Martin Luther King had to be assassinated: he was unifying the blacks. It didn’t matter that he wanted peaceful protests: he was unifying his people and was therefore an enormous threat. So he had to die.
And that is why the black population is so fragmented today: so nobody could be a unifying force again.
The blacks have few allies, and this is quite deliberate as well. At one time, Asians and blacks were sympatico; that is why the golfer Tiger Williams, who is half black and half Thai, exists. But the blacks themselves have done a very good job of alienating Asians; black-on-Asian violence is almost encouraged these days. So the Asians are completely turned off, and the blacks remain isolated.
Isolation, fragmentation, powerlessness: for the blacks, this state is deliberate.
Tiger Woods is the golfer you speak of, but point taken. A larger point might be that pro sports, basketball and football in particular, appear to have been targeted as African American special economic development zones of late, in order to relieve the mounting racial pressures. Yes, that was a long term trend anyway, but perusing the NFL Network in the past week or two, the effort seems to have been kicked up several notches overnight. Almost like Goodell and the fat cat NFL owners were plugged directly into the elite zeitgeist driving all this madness – imagine that!
I am starting to firmly believe that America is headed towards a civil war.
Think about it. If the people rise up and the power of the Neocons / Zionists is threatened, how do you think they will react?
What if we do end up electing someone like Tulsi Gabbard? Do we really think they will just give up and won’t attempt a coup against her?
And when it comes down to it, I can guarantee you they will authorize the use of deadly force against innocent civilian protesters if their power is threatened.
Sadly I don’t see any way to get rid of the Neocons / Zionist stranglehold on America without it devolving to a civil war-like scenario at some point. There is no way they will give up peacefully.
Some portion of the police and the military are going to have to side with the people or else I’m afraid we might lose the war.
Any thoughts?
Believe in the laws of nature, they can overwhelm anything.
I think we’re there already and just don’t realize it yet. No, the battle lines aren’t clearly drawn and the sides haven’t (for the most part) taken to the streets shooting at each other just yet, but that’s not necessarily what modern warfare looks like anymore. Especially in a former “first world” state that still fashions itself as such. I’m also not sure that a broad brush label such as “the people” applies anymore. The ANZ Globalists have successfully atomized the population to such an extent that no clear alternative agenda even exists now, other than a very loose, somewhat ill-defined, anti-globalist agenda among some. But even that is far from universal. Police and military are really up against it. Side with “the man” and risk total alienation from their own people, or give up the job and security and get an express one-way ticket into the same fetid economic stew with the rest of us. That’s exactly how divide and conquer is intended to work.
Local police forces across the US are now in the process of being consolidated into one national police force under the control of Washington D.C.
”Many American jingoists confuse losing faith in the American justice system with citizen treachery, but such are the hysterics of typical reactionaries”
Precisely. To these people, American political reaction in all its manifestations domestically and internationally is good but never good enough. Total contempt of Life as could be expected in absence of a resounding defeat right at home at the hands of the ”Axis-of-Evil”. The US is beyond redemption.
If you want to see “contempt of life” you need to take a stroll through a black neighborhood in America (make sure your health insurance is up to date first!) and witness how American blacks treat people. Themselves especially.
Support for the “protests” is by definition support of international Anglo-Zionist imperialism. If you have the same politics as Pepsi, McDonald’s, Viacom and Mad Zog Mattis you are not fighting the system, you ARE the system.
Hi Ezra,
I think you are perhaps confusing the politics of the marketing departments of Pepsi, McDonald’s, Viacom and even Mattis with their actual policies and practices.
I got to “abusive small proprietors” and stopped reading. Mazaheri is pushing a “kulak” narrative – and all the ideological and extrajudicial baggage that it carries – with such a phrase here, and I don’t buy it for one second. These “abusive small proprietors” have developed a healthy suspicion of “customers” who rob them at gunpoint and pilfer their goods through shoplifting and other forms of theft and fraud, e.g. passing counterfeit bank notes. The people who called the police on Floyd were non-white immigrants, by the way.
“abusive small proprietors”
Ramin Mazaheri is a Socialist. He believes that it is OK to steal from people who provide services or create wealth. That is par for the course. But a lot of Americans think the same way.
That is why Iran is culturally-incapable of emulating China and all those other successful countries in Asia. The embargo merely gives a pretext for the Mullahs to hide behind their incompetence. If the Tudeh (Iranian Communists) had been in power, it would have been almost the same.
People defending their shops is really intolerable. But ex-newscasters living in gated communities and encouraging looting and arson is OK.
“A former ESPN reporter was criticized on Twitter for slamming protesters who tried to storm a gated community near his California home — days after supporting the efforts of Minneapolis demonstrators who ignited a building.”
https://nypost.com/2020/05/31/ex-espn-reporter-called-out-for-views-of-george-floyd-protesters/
Our narrator and the hordes of Africans and Middle Easterners who have invaded France. They have destroyed the country I loved. I lived in Paris for 15 years. I do so with they would go back where they come from and carry out their mayhem there.
”Our narrator and the hordes of Africans and Middle Easterners who have invaded France. They have destroyed the country I loved. I lived in Paris for 15 years. I do so with they would go back where they come from and carry out their mayhem there.”
C’est dommage ce qui s’est passé avec ton amour pour la France, mais ta méprise est de ne pas te rendre compte qui est l’envahisseur et l’instigateur du chaos. Je soupçonne que pour toi le simple fait que l’immigration du tiers monde est encouragée délibérément par les impérialistes eux-mêmes est 100% insoutenable/inacceptable.
Translate via Google – Mod
It’s a shame what happened with your love for France, but your mistake is not realizing who is the invader and instigator of chaos. I suspect that the simple fact that third world immigration is deliberately encouraged by the imperialists themselves is 100% unsustainable / unacceptable.
Flooding Europe with uneducated sub Saharan Africans is exactly the Coudenhove-Kalegi plan to destroy European culture from within. Thank you Frau Merkel and Teresa May.
I am a socialist too, and I can see a variety of political systems working today. But the problems with the article have nothing to do with ideology, and everything to do with propaganda, mis-interpretation of who is pushing for what today in the USA, and outcomes of processes. But I get it, Ramin is young. I participated in the 1977 rebellion in Italy, and I got to regret it only when I understood that it was part of a larger process instigated by imperial forces, only 5 years ago.
Do you live in the US? because if you do then your rejection of what Mazaheri wrote up above is surprising? That ‘Kulak’ term you used though has no bearing to this situation. In the ghettos of the mid west and many other US cities, the new immigrants have been defacto thrust into opening convenient stores in primarily black neighborhoods. These stores get robbed left and right but are quite profitable. There is no other real business options for most of these new investor immigrants than to run the gauntlet of opening these small convenience stores or restaurants. Race relations are terrible in these neighborhoods between the predominantly black communities and the Korean, Arab or Indian store owners. Hence Mazaheri’s apt description of ‘ abusive small proprietors’…they do get abusive towards the black community due to rampant violence….there are a lot of homicides, burglaries, assaults etc committed by black youth in robbing these stores and these are absolutely true facts. You’d be hard pressed to find a single white owned/ operated convenience store in large black cities like Philly, Cleveland, Gary, Atlanta, Detroit or South side of Chicago. Half a century ago the millions of new immigrants who invested in the real estate markets of the many currently defunct inner cities across the US have seen their investments fail. The white flight to the burbs and the ghettoization of the down towns, an all too familiar story.
White people don’t operate convenience stores because it’s a lot of grunt work. Society continually stratifies itself and people move up and on towards more profitable and prestigious jobs, or, have a talent to spot whats lucrative because of their network and go on ride the “first mover” advantage.
To the immigrants, who, if they are refugees, they clamor for peace, stability and ownership. They are willing to take the risk for a small reward as long as safety is guaranteed. For one from Iraq or Syria, any where in USA is heaven. Add to that the ready availability of a convenience store business, where the building is owned by someone, the stock is provided by someone, is managed by someone and the city is willing to set them up on their path to “fortune”. They are happy to manage.
Do declassify who they are, it’s pretty much Arabs now. You may be tempted to ask what the blacks do then…
True, no argument with you, but I was trying to explain to ‘kolchak’ that these Lebanese/ Korean/ Indian/ Palestinian owned enterprises in the ghettoized US inner cities are not illegal! These migrants running them work within the framework of capitalism provided by the state. They take considerable risks in running these businesses and are more often than not killed or injured by the residents of these ghetto’s. It’s not even about envy or a feeling of domination or exploitation……its just about plain old capitalism. The police has not taken a stand on this, and largely refuses to intervene, as its high risk and the city councils and police departments refuse to be proactive or get involved because resolving this crime issue is beyond their capabilities. These new immigrants are brought into the US to start these businesses (with their own money), buy up real estate (with their own money) or else these inner city areas will well and truly collapse. Now if the proprietors get abusive with the residents due to rampant crime, then whose fault is it? Can’t blame the business owners can ya? They are there to make a buck, unless we are questioning capitalism itself here? Why critique Mazaheri’s factual narrative on this issue?
Yup, the usual.
«Don’t look at Apple, Microsoft, Facehug… The problem are those guys over here, who don’t get bailouts or above-law treatment, and get raided by swarms of bureaucrats.»
Meanwhile, did CNN go froth-on-mouth against bailouts? And then, Gilead’s friendly researchers were sweeping HCQ under the rug, and it was all quiet right until Trump attracted attention to this. Hmm.
Back in 2016 a professor at Harvard and former treasury secretary and director of Obama’s National Economic Council was exasperated enough to write the article named “Why Americans don’t trust government” for Washington Post — when he noticed that in the Progressive Vatican itself it became impossible to get done even something as basic as repair of a bridge. But no, for some that’s still too sane, need more of socialism. =)
China just published a White Paper on the COVID-19 fight against the virus.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-07/Full-Text-Fighting-COVID-19-China-in-Action-R7xr2aKsyA/index.html
You can download the .doc at this link.
CGTN which you can watch on its streaming link has done interviews with Doctors (male and female), Nurses and the reporters who were inside Wuhan the entire 76 days of lockdown. Truly amazing stories of fear, courage, perseverance and professionalism in the face of the first explosion of the virus. There are links to some of these news stories and some documentaries the network put together that are illuminating since it was real-time from within the blockaded city.
Most all the CGTN reporters (male and female) and camera and sound crew were very young, early 20’s. They recorded the Truth of what transpired. It is good to sample some of the material to counter and clear away the total BS, propaganda, lies and slander spewed by Pompeo, Cotton, Rubio, MSM, Navarro, Bannon, and Trump.
It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses’ exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a n—–. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. Karl Marx
The founders of socialism were all racist.
Mr. Mazaheri: Finally, you did ground your discussion in an actual description of life in Chicago South and East side. Now, go to Baltimore and learn why they did not riot this time. And then Atlanta. The scene in the US is much more nuanced than what you want to shove into a tight foot gear with your ideological shoe horn.
Chicago is notorious–read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle ” about Democratic Party cronyism and corruption in how 1920;s Chicago was run. And know this: that when the Afro American community really did attempt via the Black Panthers to set up a community based local network: the leadership was murdered in their beds.
Placed in context, then, these riots have become a nihilistic and top-down manipulated ( for a week? who lets riots run for a week?) act of despair.
Go to a Latino or Puerto Rican barrio, too. Family is big and cultural connection strong. Economic and social Oppression the same.
As for settling scores…please. Are you going to lay the canard of “revolutionary justice” on us? Just expropriate the land, let them leave ( a la Cuba) and move on But I see no merit in extolling the execution of the Czar or the abasement of some Chinese landlord. Or even claiming that it was necessary.
Neither of those two actions just ” got out of hand”–No they were either ordered or allowed. And both by the leadership of the movements of the times.
Dear Mr. Mazaheri, I cherish your articles as an interesting perspective of an Iranian journalist on our western society and politics. But affiliated to the ruling elite of Iran your view becomes rather myopic concerning an enlightened society craving for real democracy and giving your “good advice” is not very different in principle from advices given by western journalists to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I myself know enough persians personally to know the racism in your own country. Which is no difference to other countries with several ethnicities. This is because hominids without this trait are not our ancestors – a fact which may be unfamiliar for you as a presumably devout shiite muslim.
But the rulers know of this fact and use it to their advantage. The Black in the US are es well racists as are the Hispanics, the Asians or the Jews. Only the White are not allowed – by instilling the feeling of guilt – to show their racism in spite of their behaviour preferring to live in a white community and sending their kids to white schools. For the ruling class this fact is the condition that the white majority will – maybe grudgingly – tolerate the growth and the segregation of ethnicities as a prerequisite for the divide-and-conquer-game. A game the Anglo-Saxons played for hundreds of years successfully.
Ignoring these fact leads to false diagnosis. You are right as even Warren Buffett openly said that there is class warefare. But he is also right that his class the class of the rich is winning. And proposing the way of your country having created a new class of beneficiaries in a islamic-socialist society is definitely the wrong way for a society of free thinking citizen even if it is the right way for your country and its tradition.
The open acceptance of the inborn racism and an enlightened handling of this fact with a respectful acceptance of the differences between the indiviuals is the prerequisite for a united resistance against the ruling class. But without a visible leadership and tangible ideas for a new form of the institutions of government no renewal of democracy will happen. The oligarchs with their political foundations (aka. NGO) know this pretty well and steer them accordingly.
Mr Heinrich, to discuss ethnic and racial issues in Iran is very much frowned upon, in a society made up of many ethnicity’s. New additions to this are the 4 million Afghans and possibly a million or so Lebanese, Iraqi’s and Pakistani’s. It is rare for the majority in Iran to impose its will on the Azeri, Kurd, Arab or Baloch people. The only time the center intervenes is when there are security, drugs/ gang violence issues. Other than that, free enterprise is allowed. It’s the law! Iran has literally lost half its territory over the last couple of hundred years to encroachment by czarist Russia/ British Indian empire. The leadership is aware of this, and will prevent any further loss of territory due to racism and/ or sectarian reasons.
A precise description of Chicago’s west side and its problems, and many other cities besides.
So, was Mr. Byrd (whom Mrs. Clinton thanked for advice and who also was a high ranking KKK member) a “reactionary”, or what? This just look weird.
Thank you so much for this article. I am disgusted and sick of reading claptrap on any number of sites blaming the looting on black genetics and/or culture.