Ridiculous praise for John Lewis

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Patrice Greanville

The constant media noise about John Lewis is unwarranted, bloated, misleading, and ultimately ludicrous.

[su_dropcap style=”light” size=”5″]C[/su_dropcap]onsistent with their idpol script of phony racialism, the Democrat-controlled media (the vast majority in the US), has been piously and tediously heaping praise on the memory of a putative hero, an “icon of the civil rights” struggle and —we are too to believe— brave challenger of Jim Crow: John Lewis. After long days of nonstop clips on every TV channel, and copious editorials, Lewis is finally being given funeral rites with extravagant and ludicrous honors that correspond to a genuine people’s champion, a real hero, which John Lewis, long a sellout to the corporate imperial establishment, definitely was not.

There are many reasons to dislike John Lewis, and here’s just a short list:

Lewis was a key member of the CBC, the Democrats’ Congressional Black Caucus, an aggregation of Black politicians that has long been a willing tool of the Democrat sellout leadership, which makes them also a tool for Wall Street and the MIC, a fact that has simply betrayed the needs and aspirations of Black America, the people they portend to represent;
Consistent with this posture, Lewis endorsed Hilary Clinton instead of Sanders in 2016, and, again, Biden in the current electoral round;
As noted by Prof. Akinyele Umoja, Lewis supports absolute nonviolence, a characteristic moral posture of comfortable white liberals. “Contrary to Congressman John Lewis’ revision of history, the notion that the Civil Rights movement was exclusively nonviolent is a popular mythology.” Dr. Umoja is right. As he explains, “After emancipation, Blacks sought arms not only to hunt, but to protect themselves from white supremacist terror. Gun ownership was associated with citizenship and liberty and as a means to protect those principles. The segregationists continued slave-holding society’s practice of attempting to disarm Blacks. Ultimately, Blacks utilized armed self-defense to protect activist leadership and their communities from white terrorist violence. It was a rite of passage for rural Black families taught children to use arms as a means of survival; for food and for protection. Black female youth were trained to shoot for defense from white rapists….In dozens of Southern communities Black people picked up arms to defend themselves. In particular, Black people relied on armed self-defense in communities where Federal government officials failed to safeguard Movement activists and supporters from the violence of racists and segregationists, who were often supported by local law enforcement. Congressman Lewis statement is true for a small number of committed activists who engaged in civil disobedience and voter registration in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. These activists were often protected by grassroots Black people armed with shotguns and rifles. Some members of Lewis’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee picked up weapons and worked with community people to defend their lives against white terrorists.
For decades, Lewis has been a pillar of the corporate imperial establishment. Black Agenda Report’s senior columnist, Margaret Kimberley, a leading black intellectual and a person of integrity, is unsurprisingly not impressed with his resume: “John Lewis has parlayed his 1965 beating at the hands of Alabama police into a phony sainthood, and “now exemplifies everything that is wrong with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Democratic Party and the black misleadership class.” He “parrots every word” of the CIA in blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. There are many reasons to boycott Donald Trump’s inauguration, but “Russia” is the only one mentioned by Lewis, the party hack.” Kimberley continues:

“The CBC said nothing when Barack Obama made grand austerity bargains with Republicans, or used sanctions, jihadists and drone warfare to kill in Somalia and Libya, or when he refused to prosecute killer cops.”

“But, like the rest of the black misleaders, Lewis never stopped stomping on the mildly reformist Bernie Sanders. Sanders signature proposal of providing free university education was rejected out of hand by the civil rights icon. “I think it’s the wrong message to send to any group. There’s not anything free in America. We all have to pay for something. Education is not free. Health care is not free. Food is not free. Water is not free. I think it’s very misleading to say to the American people, we’re going to give you something free.”

Of course all of those things should be free. That statement alone exposed Lewis as a rank opportunist. We don’t know what went through his mind at the moment he was beaten by cops but it doesn’t matter now. He used his experience to win a congressional seat and all the trappings that come with it, including giving paid speeches at Goldman Sachs…” (See M. Kimberley, No Tears for John Lewis).

Yes, it should be clear the tears are badly misplaced in John Lewis’ case. The bloated funeral and prolonged remembrances for John Lewis are part of the Democrat party’s cynical effort to garner some political credit by affiliating itself with the heroic struggles of the civil rights movement. For a party as morally bankrupt as the Democrats, so lacking in genuine progressive deeds, such measures are to be expected.

Update:
Now the political clowns misgoverning this country are gonna honor Lewis in the Capitol Rotunda. His actual funeral (and, we assume, internment) will be next Thursday in Atlanta, where more hot air will be dutifully pumped. That’s about a full two weeks after this guy died. I guess they haven’t honored him enough. Maybe some guy living under a rock for the last 50 years hasn’t heard about this nonsense. Everyone else has. Not even FDR or JFK got such a sendoff. That’s how utterly ridiculous and cynical today’s ruling class, especially Democrats, are.

[su_shadow style=”bottom”][su_note note_color=”#edf0f0″ text_color=”#011115″ radius=”5″]Media critic and geopolitical analyst Patrice Greanville is this publication’s founding editor. [/su_note] [/su_shadow]
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