Category: ACTIVISTS & HEROES - The Greanville Post

MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON YOU.

“The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.” —

—Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

It is generally accepted that sports, especially spectator sports, serve many social purposes, good and bad, and that they function to distract people from the cares and worries of everyday life, or the “real world.” No doubt this is true. The etymology of the word sport, derived as it is from the word “disport” – divert, amuse, carry away – tells us that. But often a distraction can also be a reminder, even when that reminder remains shrouded in unconsciousness or forgotten in the moment. Sometimes, however, the reminder can be linked to memories that bring a startling clarity to the present.

TIME magazine's dramatic cover of Colin Kaepernick kneeling in protest.

Two recent sports news items have reminded me of incidents from my own athletic past. And those memories in turn have brought my reflections back to the current news regarding the failure of any National Football League (NFL) team to sign quarterback Colin Kaepernick to a contract, and the recent boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor.

Kaepernick’s case is well-known and much discussed. He took a valiant and principled stand last football season by taking a knee during the national anthem to protest the violent treatment of black Americans by the police and American society in general. History was on his side, unless one was a clear-cut white racist and ignorant of American history. But as a terrific football player and a well-known athlete, his stand was unusual in the world of sports where political protest is very rare and not being reminded of the “real” world is the key to success. The NFL, in particular, is a very conservative organization, long infused with a super patriotic ethos wrapped in the American flag and the song that celebrates it, and Kaepernick’s protest was a diversion from the diverting spectacle on the field and not welcomed by NFL owners, to put it mildly.

So as of this writing, Kaepernick, a very good football player who would clearly strengthen an NFL team, remains without a job. That this is because he lacks talent is ridiculous. While pressure against the NFL from multiple media and organizational sources is growing to reverse this situation, even well-meaning writers have implicitly used racist language to describe the situation by saying that Kaepernick is being blackballed. Ironic as it is, our language is filled with such subtle reminders of the white mindset that equates white with good and black with bad.

But there is a deeper irony involved, and language once again reveals it.

First, however, let me briefly tell you of my memories, not because the details are important in themselves, but because they are examples of how we bring to our present perspectives past experiences that can both help to clarify and obfuscate current events. The saying “where you’re coming from” contains truth; our past experiences deeply influence how we see the present.

When I was 19-20 years old, a senior in high school and a Division I college freshman on an athletic scholarship, I was involved in two incidents involving sports and violence. The sport was basketball, not football or boxing, and the violence was minimal, but both are etched in my memory. As a young man, I was rarely involved in fighting, but when I felt abused and disrespected, my Irish temper got the best of me and I would physically defend myself. Otherwise, I was a normal young athlete, fueled by the competitive nature of high-level sports and testosterone. But these incidents taught me that the propensity for violence is in us all, and that certain situations and social arrangements can inflame and promote it, especially when you are most unaware and naïve.

But what do these memories have to do with the news about Kaepernick and Mayweather/ McGregor? What I saw in both sports stories was violence; one quite obvious with boxing, the other involving Kaepernick, less so.

I realized that violence has many faces, whether it be minor or major, fisticuffs or “blitzes,” face-to-face or helmet-to-helmet, physical or verbal, racial or political, institutional or personal, etc. It’s largest and most savage one is war, and endless war and preparations for war are the large canvas within which the others lie. Sometimes remembering one’s individual inclinations toward violence can help one see the larger picture.

As usual, the Unites States is currently waging multiple wars, and is fomenting many others, including a nuclear one. Most of the victims of U.S. violence are considered “other,” the expendable people, as were slaves, Native Americans, and other people of color. Nothing has changed since that other heroic black American dissenter said that America is “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.” And we know that Martin Luther King was murdered by those violent U.S. government forces he criticized in his opposition to war, racial inequality, and economic injustice for all Americans.

I am not equating Kaepernick with MLK, but his protest follows in the King tradition and that of other black athletes who have taken political stands: Mohammed Ali, Tommy Smith, John Carlos, et al. All suffered for their courageous positions.

Of course, Colin Kaepernick has a right to play football, just as Ali had the right to beat people up in the ring. Yet boxing, despite the Mayweather/ McGregor extravaganza, has generally been recognized for the brutal “sport” it is, and has grown less popular over the years, perhaps in part because of Ali’s “pugilistic brain syndrome.” Not football. It has grown to become America’s number one sport, despite the growing evidence of what may be called “football brain syndrome,” and all the violence and other crippling injuries suffered by former players, revealed as far back as 1970 when Dave Meggyesy, a former NFL linebacker, published Out of Their League, his expose of the dehumanizing aspects of football.

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut the unspoken truth in the Kaepernick story is that football is the war sport par excellence, extremely violent, and deeply tied to the spectacle of cruelty that dominates American society today and that has caused so much suffering for black people and other people of color for centuries. In the 1960s, Brazilian television, in an effort to distinguish football (soccer) from American football, aptly termed it “military football.” And while it, like other sports, has been an avenue to wealth and “success” for some black Americans (a tiny minority), its war-like structure and violent nature is noted with a nod and a wink. Heck, it’s fun to play and exciting to watch, and is just a colorful spectacle that we can’t do without.

That it’s a conditioning agent for the love of war and violent aggression is usually passed over. Its language, like all good linguistic mind control, becomes powerfully invisible. Colin Kaepernick, like all quarterbacks, is the field general who throws bombs to flankers as he tries to avoid the blitz. Each team defends and conquers the enemy’s territory, pushing its opponent back through frontal assaults and pounding the enemy’s line. This is mixed with deceptive formations and aerial assaults behind the opponent’s line. When none of this works and the enemy goes on the offensive, a different platoon is brought in to defend one’s territory. One’s front line must then defend against a frontal assault and hit back hard. The analogies are everywhere, and as with many aspects of “everywhere,” what’s everywhere is nowhere – its familiarity making it invisible and therefore all the more powerful.

In a society of the spectacle, football is the most spectacular and entertaining mass hypnotic induction into the love of violence that we have. Yes, Mayweather and McGregor beating the shit out of each other satisfies the blood lust of gamblers and a much smaller audience, but boxing is small peanuts compared to football. Most American parents wouldn’t bring their children to a boxing match, but football is deeply ingrained in the American psyche and structured into the fabric of our lives from youth onwards, concussions and violence be damned. It is a microcosm of our militaristic, war-loving culture. Our love of violence disguised as fun.

As an American man, I understand its appeal. I am sometimes drawn in myself, but against my better nature, which embraces MLK’s non-violent philosophy. I appreciate the great athletic prowess of football players, and know that it is enjoyable and a way to recognition for many, and for a smaller number a scholarship to college, and, for even less, a lucrative job in the NFL. But as an opponent of American militarism, I find its violent ethos and the way it disfigures the bodies and minds of participants and spectators alike to be appalling. It functions as an arm of the Pentagon and the growing militarization of the country’s police departments.

As for Conor McGregor, the slum boy from south Dublin, they say he is an artist, a mixed “martial arts artist.” That violence is an art is good to know. I have been living in a bubble, thinking that art was a counterbalance to violence. When I grew out of my adolescent readiness to defend my dignity with my fists and grew into art, I had hoped that the world would grow up with me. No luck. No luck of the Irish. Conor should read our Irish ancestor, the great poet William Butler Yeats, and take the money and run. “Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart.”

So too Colin Kaepernick, whom I greatly admire for his courage to take an ethical stand. He deserves to be offered a job by an NFL team. If he is, I hope he turns it down, and speaks out on the propagandistic nature of the sport that made him famous, on its school of violence and its art of war. In doing that, he would be carrying on the legacy of MLK, Malcom X, Mohammed Ali, and other black leaders who said violence must stop now, war must stop, the violence on people of color must stop, and let it begin with me.

He would be disclosing the taboo truth of an American sporting distraction that does violence to its participants while it brainwashes its fans into the martial spirit. He would be waking an awful lot of people up from the slumber of the spectacle of cruelty that has this country in its grip.

Many people would take a knee in gratitude.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Educated in the classics, philosophy, literature, theology, and sociology, Ed Curtin teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He states: "I write as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. I believe a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore see all my work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding." His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/ .

ED CURTIN As usual, the Unites States is currently waging multiple wars, and is fomenting many others, including a nuclear one. Most of the victims of U.S. violence are considered “other,” the expendable people, as were slaves, Native Americans, and other people of color. Nothing has changed since that other heroic black American dissenter said that America is “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.” And we know that Martin Luther King was murdered by those violent U.S. government forces he criticized in his opposition to war, racial inequality, and economic injustice for all Americans.

[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

ADDENDUM

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

BE SURE TO PASS OUR ARTICLES ON TO KIN, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

Our frequent contributor Caleb Maupin is not given to painting futuristic visions of society, history usually contradicting and surpassing most visionaries' predictions, but in a recent debate, he provided the sketch below.

Caleb Maupin

Is an American journalist and political analyst. Tasnim News Agency described him as "a native of Ohio who has campaigned against war and the U.S. financial system." His political activism began while attending Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. In 2010, he video recorded a confrontation between Collinwood High School students who walked out to protest teacher layoffs and the police. His video footage resulted in one of the students being acquitted in juvenile court. He was a figure within the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. Maupin writes on American foreign policy and other social issues. Maupin is featured as a Distinguished Collaborator with The Greanville Post. READ MORE ABOUT CALEB MAUPIN HERE.

What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by VIJAY PRASHAD

In Durham, North Carolina, militants of a small Left party destroyed a statue of a Confederate soldier. Takiya Thompson, a member of the Workers World Party, climbed the statue and helped pull it down. She, along with seven other activists, was arrested by the police. Just before her arrest, Thompson said of her action: “I chose to do that because I am tired of living in fear. I am tired of white supremacy keeping its foot on my neck and the neck of people who look like me.”

Hundreds of people marched to the Durham County Courthouse asking to be arrested for the destruction of the statue. This was a largely symbolic gesture. Serena Sebring, who did not go to the initial protest when the statue was torn down, was among the throng who came to be arrested. “All of us are willing to share the cost of our freedom,” Serena Sebring said. She is the regional organiser for Southerners on New Ground, an anti-racist organisation based in Atlanta (Georgia). “All of us are here, and we are willing to take whatever responsibility, whatever consequences come along with the removal of that statue.”

Takiya being arrested. Others would soon join her.

Between 1861 and 1865, a brutal civil war threatened to tear the United States apart. The main fault line was the attitude of the different states in the U.S. towards slavery. The southern States—the Confederacy—were rooted in a plantation economy that relied upon slave labour. The Confederacy was defeated by the armies of the north, which were driven partly by anti-slavery sentiments but also by the interests of industrial elites against those of the agrarian elites of the south. Slavery was substantially ended with the defeat of the Confederacy, although nostalgia amongst southern whites for the plantation era remained powerful.

The statue of the Confederate soldier in Durham was not erected in the immediate aftermath of the war. It dates from 1924, during a period of struggle by African American and other minorities to attain civil rights. The bronze statue was part of a wave of such monuments that were installed in prominent parts of southern cities. When Thompson and others pulled at the statue, it fell and bent at its base with great ease—those statues were cheaply produced in 1924 to be erected hastily across the country as a mark of the resilience of White Power over Civil Rights.

Charlottesville

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he conflict in Durham followed that in Charlottesville (Virginia), three hours’ drive north. Not far from the campus of the University of Virginia, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the U.S., sits what was known as Lee Park. The park is dominated by a 26-foot-high (eight-metre) statue of Robert E. Lee, the leader of the Confederacy, on a horse. The statue, like the one at Durham, was not erected right after the Civil War, but in 1924. That year, Charlottesville hosted the conventions of the Confederate Veterans and Sons of Confederate Veterans. Local dignitaries, including the entire higher administration of the University of Virginia, joined the ceremony to instal the statue. Judge R.T.W. Duke, a member of the Sons of the Confederacy and a former Circuit Judge, was the master of ceremonies. He called Lee “the greatest man who ever lived”. From the nearby Shenandoah Valley came President Henry Lewis Smith of Washington and Lee University, named for Robert E. Lee who went there to head the college after his defeat in the Civil War. Smith called Lee a “Christian saint” at the 1924 installation.

Over the past century, small towns and cities across States in the southern U.S. have had to reconsider the monumental legacy of the Confederacy. Serious attempts to remove statues and to rename streets have been scuttled by the old power brokers. The statues in question were not always of Confederate generals or soldiers of the “lost cause” but also horrendous ones such as that of “Uncle Jack the Good Darky” (1927) in Natchitoches (Louisiana). This statue depicts an African-American man who deferentially tips his hat to passers-by. A fight over its presence led it to be donated to the Rural Life Museum, where it greets visitors.

These are not fringe issues. The Confederate flag flew on official buildings after the Civil War—and remains aloft in many places. Fights in South Carolina to remove the flag seized the political imagination and tore the already divided population along race lines. As recently as 2015, the establishment of the American Right fought against the removal of the flag of the Confederacy from public buildings. William Kristol, editor of Weekly Standard, a right-wing magazine, bemoaned the “Left’s 21st century agenda to expunge every trace of respect, recognition or acknowledgment of Americans who fought for the Confederacy”. Stoking the idea of “respect” for the pro-slavery wing of the Civil War is one way that the American Right has appealed to white voters. It suggests that the Confederacy and its history of pro-slavery is integral to the heritage of whites in the U.S.

After the murder of Trayvon Martin by the police in Missouri in 2012, Charlottesville city councillor Kristin Szakos went to the Virginia Festival of the Book. At this literary event, she pointed out that it might be time to reconsider the presence of the monuments of the Confederacy. There was a gasp when she made this comment: it was as if, she pointed out, that she had said it was “OK to torture puppies”. Last year, another city councillor, Wes Bellamy, moved the council to remove the Lee statue and rename the park. The council, early this year, agreed to remove the statue and in June named the garden Emancipation Park. The Lee statue’s removal would have been significant because it is perhaps the most prominent of the Confederate memorials.

The election of Donald Trump was widely welcomed by the repellent sections of American politics, from the American Nazi Party to the heritage associations of the Confederacy. At a National Policy Institute conference in Washington, D.C., in November 2016, its leader, Richard Spencer, beamed as his audience chanted “Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!” in an echo of “Heil Hitler”, the German Nazi chant. Spencer and his fascist friends feel that Trump’s comments in favour of “white rights” advantaged them. No wonder then that the various Nazi and Confederate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and militia groups, decided to march on to the campus of the University of Virginia and to Emancipation Park to make their stand against the removal of the Lee statue. Bathed in racism, these groups found it intolerable that the symbols of the Confederacy be touched.

What they did not count on was the emergence of a wide and deep sense of antipathy to their politics. Ordinary people, anti-fascist groups and various Left organisations took to the streets to confront their arrival in Charlottesville. The fascists attempted to provoke violence, and indeed one of their adherents drove his car into the anti-fascists, killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old activist, and injuring many others. Justin Moore, the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said plainly: “I’m glad that girl died.” Andrew Anglin, editor of the website The Daily Stormer, wrote that he was also glad that Heather Heyer died because she was unmarried and had no children. Anglin found her life, therefore, of “no value”. The harsh invective from the American Right combines hatred of women with hatred of minorities. It is a kind of toxicity that is familiar from the White House.

Steve Bannon

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]onald Trump’s senior adviser, Steve Bannon, hastily left the White House a few days after the events in Virgina. By all accounts, he had planned to leave in the next few weeks. The Nazi rally in Charlottesville, greatly embarrassing for the Republican Party, hastened his departure. Bannon had come to Trump’s side a year ago from his perch at Breitbart News, a pillar of the Nazi-style American Right. He had shouted about the decline of white power and of the erosion of America’s role in the world. Bannon wanted Trump to withdraw from trade deals and to be more aggressive with U.S. military action abroad. Multilateralism and globalism remain the enemies for Bannon. His close association with the “alt-right”, the Nazi variant of the American Right, meant that Trump was being isolated increasingly from even moderate Republicans. Bannon had to go.

But Bannon had already indicated that he wanted to go. He felt that Trump’s agenda had been hijacked by the multilateralists and globalists acting through Trump’s family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. They had been able to influence Trump and bring him closer to the U.S. consensus. Bannon met with his close allies, the billionaire Mercer family, who indicated that they would finance Bannon’s return to his “killing machine” at Breitbart from where he could both go “thermonuclear” against the globalists and put pressure on Trump. It is being said that Bannon might create a mainstream television channel from where he can reach a wider audience than from his website. Bannon believes that “Donald Trump” was his creation and that without him there will be no backbone in the White House.

Resistance

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he fight-back in Charlottesville was repeated across the country. Decent people joined the Left groups to ensure that the American Right is not allowed to use the fig leaf of “free speech” to command public space. A massive demonstration in Boston (Massachusetts) ensured that the gathering of the American Right had to hastily disband. It was simply run out of town.

The resistance is not merely in the north but also in the south. In Knoxville (Tennessee), the Vanguard group of Nazis tried to rally for their fetid ideas of white power. They were met by the Anti-Racist Action’s clown bloc. When the Nazis chanted “white power”, the clowns asked “white flour?”. They danced around throwing flour in the air, disrupting the Nazi sternness with calculated fun. When the Nazis repeated their slogan, the clowns changed their question to “white flower?” and danced around throwing white flowers in the air. “White Power”, the Nazis chanted in desperation. The women among the clowns now said “We understand” and unveiled new signs that read “WIFE power”. They skipped about chanting “wife power” as the leader of the Nazis, Alex Linder, was arrested for trying to attack them.

About the Author

This article originally appeared in Frontline (India).

[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

By subscribing you won’t miss the special editions.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

window.newShareCountsAuto="smart";

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by YOAV LITVIN

Following the tragedy at Charlottesville, Virginia, in which Heather Heyer was murdered by a White nationalist terrorist, President Donald Trump revealed his true self.

In his words:

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. It’s been going on for a long, long time… What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives…”

“Many sides”, “not Donald Trump”, “law and order.”

False moral equivalency, no accountability, neofascism.

Coming from the leader of any country, not to mention the only global super power, these words are a recipe for disaster.

Many Sides

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]onald Trump’s condemnation of violence on “many sides” is the quintessential false moral equivalency. It is a fallacy that is used to polarize groups and endorse the violence that is likely to follow.

Equating the long history of right-wing terrorism in the United Stateswith the comparatively negligible violence carried out by some “black bloc” anti-fascists (AntiFa), i.e. shoving, property damage and the occasional punching of neo-Nazis is absurd and dangerous.

It is false to qualitatively compare an organization that explicitly seeks to exterminate certain ethnic groups with another whose goals are to protect those very people and their rights. Further, though AntiFa are stigmatized as activists whose sole purpose is violence, they are in reality engaged in a multitude of other tactics that are aimed at combatting fascism. Finally, a simple quantitative comparison of the violence perpetuated by these groups, their targets and results, proves the complete moral bankruptcy of drawing such an equivalency.

Let us examine Charlottesville as a case study. There, neo-Nazis marched with torches across the University of Virginia campus chanting “blood and soil” (a Nazi slogan), “Jews will not replace us” and “white lives matter”, paraded alongside militiamen in full combat gear and assault rifles, fired at counter protesters unimpeded by police, threatened clergymen and women, and finally drove a car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others. What’s more, a recent article has shown that some of the fascists at Charlottesville were planning for murderous violence in advance.

In contrast, counter protesters were predominantly nonviolent and used defensive, not offensive tactics other than publicly shaming members of the other side. Cornel West went so far as to say that AntiFa activists saved his life as well as the lives of other clergymen and women trapped in a church.

A Response to Chris Hedges

Earlier this week, Chris Hedges chimed in with an extremely unfavorable analysis of AntiFa in a piece titled “How Antifa Mirrors the “Alt–Right” published by Truthdig. This is not new ground for Hedges, who has previously villainized anarchists as “the cancer of the Occupy movement”.

Straight off the bat, Hedges’ title conveys the gist of the piece – precisely reiterating Trump’s false moral equivalency. He then spells it out:

“Behind the rhetoric of the “alt-right” about white nativism and protecting American traditions, history and Christian values is the lust for violence. Behind the rhetoric of antifa, the Black Bloc and the so-called “alt-left” about capitalism, racism, state repression and corporate power is the same lust for violence.”

On to the crux of his argument:

“The two opposing groups, largely made up of people who have been cast aside by the cruelty of corporate capitalism, have embraced holy war.”

And later in the piece he writes:

“The white racists and neo-Nazis may be unsavory, but they too are victims. They too lost jobs and often live in poverty in deindustrialized wastelands. They too often are plagued by debt, foreclosures, bank repossessions and inability to repay student loans. They too often suffer from evictions, opioid addictions, domestic violence and despair. They too sometimes face bankruptcy because of medical bills. They too have seen social services gutted, public education degraded and privatized and the infrastructure around them decay. They too often suffer from police abuse and mass incarceration. They too are often in despair and suffer from hopelessness. And they too have the right to free speech, however repugnant their views.”

Here, Hedges relies and promotes a proven falsehood, one that implies that Trump won the presidency due to a disillusioned, poor/working-class base, which gravitated towards his “anti-free trade”, “anti-imperialist” and overall “anti-establishment” policies. Notably, this myth has been debunked again, again and again, showing that Trump’s support came predominantly from affluent white Americans.

Additionally, the “alt-right”, who took on a major part of the events at Charlottesville, is composed largely of educated millennials, not disparaged members of the working class.

Hedges relies on these myths because they support the horseshoe theory that validates the equivalency he promotes between the tactics of AntiFa and extreme right-wing violence, the very same immoral equivalency promoted by Donald Trump.

Hedges goes on to describe AntiFa activists thus:

“The protests by the radical left now sweeping America, as Aviva Chomsky points out, are too often little more than self-advertisements for moral purity. They are products of a social media culture in which each of us is the star of his or her own life movie.”

In contrast to Hedges’ claims here, black bloc tactics are about a collective not an individual, AntiFa and anarchist activists are often anonymous (wearing masks) not self-aggrandizing, and AntiFa’s history dates back to the early 19^th century, well before our current self-obsessed culture of social media.

Accountability and Uniting the Left

The tragedy of Hedges’ arguments is that they fracture the left and whitewash those who are truly responsible for the hate and violence – fascists, the state and their representatives in the police force.

Instead of supporting members of AntiFa and their courageous efforts against the violence and racism of the right, Hedges feeds into the false and immoral equivalency between right- and left-wing violence and promotes myths regarding Trump’s populist appeal and working class base.

Now is the time for public intellectuals like Hedges to work at uniting the left, by applying pressure on police to do their jobs, not on activists to cease protecting communities against fascists.

The left is faced with the predicament of a looming fascism and oppression that requires a reassessment of strategy, which embraces all forms of resistance, defensive aggression included.

Activists in the streets need guidance and encouragement from intellectuals like Hedges, not beratement and villainization. Their energy should be harnessed alongside, not in contrast to, traditional movement building efforts on the left with the underlying goals of thwarting fascism and promoting a future of justice and equality in America.

About the Author

Yoav Litvin is a Doctor of Psychology/ Behavioral Neuroscience.

The left is faced with the predicament of a looming fascism and oppression that requires a reassessment of strategy, which embraces all forms of resistance, defensive aggression included. Activists in the streets need guidance and encouragement from intellectuals like Hedges, not beratement and villainization. Their energy should be harnessed alongside, not in contrast to, traditional movement building efforts on the left with the underlying goals of thwarting fascism and promoting a future of justice and equality in America.

[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

window.newShareCountsAuto="smart";

MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON YOU.

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]ead, decaying industrial cities, teeming with illicit drugs, prostitution, and desperation. Condemned, dilapidated factories and foreclosed, rat-infested houses, offering temporary shelter to disposable, hopeless, unwashed minions. Back alleys where life is cheap. Where they wouldn't think twice about cutting your throat for a buck, and leaving your carcass for packs of hungry dogs. A very dangerous place.

Prison yards, where hope is but a distant memory, and neither innocence nor guilt have meaning. Where you learn to do as you're told. Slave to the guards and gangs. Thrall to corporations which exploit your labor. Unwilling bitch to a beastly cellmate, you learn to bend over and take it like a man. Tiptoeing lightly, as if on broken glass, wishing the time would evaporate, hoping in vain for parole. Or death. An extremely dangerous place you'll never want to be.

If you enjoy certain kinds of danger, you might want to emulate the recent feat of 31 year-old Alex Honnold, who made the first solo, rope-free ascent of Yosemite's El Capitan. A vertical 3000 foot granite face where few humans have dared to tread. Equipped with only sticky climbing shoes and a bag of chalk, Alex completed the impossible climb in just under four hours. The slightest misstep would have transformed him into a broken, bloody bag of bones. But the danger he encountered pales by comparison to the most dangerous place in The United States.

They enter the clean, tiled hallways, confident of finding help with their deadly problems. Met with friendly, smiling receptionist faces, their optimism is boosted, and hope springs anew. They're plagued by a plethora of diseases. Victims of stroke, heart attack, coronary artery disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, hyperthyroidism, lupus, anemia, myasthenia gravis, kidney malfunction, eye disorders, prostate-breast-colorectal cancers, or simply uncontrollable obesity. They come seeking a cure, but find instead, a broken system in which "cure" is the most dreaded four-letter word. In the world of Big Medicine, there is no profit in finding cures, but handsome rewards in treatment, or preferably surgery. The most dangerous place in The United States is your local doctor's office. Enter with care and a healthy dose of skepticism.

Here's the part where 95% of my readers look elsewhere for enlightenment or entertainment. This is the part where I proclaim loudly and confidently that, in most cases, every one of the above listed diseases, and more, could have been entirely avoided by a radical change of diet. This is where I make the seemingly ridiculous claim that nearly all of these life threatening conditions may be reversed and eliminated by adopting an exclusively plant-based diet. This is the place in the article where nearly everybody says bullshit, and heads out to their closest McDonald's for a Big Mac & fries, or to Pizza Hut for a large pepperoni with extra prostate/breast cancer...I mean cheese.

These are the undisputable facts:

Exhaustive studies by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. John McDougall, and T. Colin Campbell, PhD. prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a plant-based diet prevents most incidents of the above mentioned diseases, and...
In many cases, a plant-based diet has been shown to reverse and even cure those same diseases.
A four year course in medical school typically includes only 1 or 2 hour credits in nutritional studies, and (T. Colin Campbell quote) "When nutrition education is provided in relation to public health problems, guess who is supplying the 'educational' material? The Dannon Institute, Egg Nutrition Board, National Cattleman's Beef Association, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, (and) Baxter Healthcare Corporation."
The animal food industry, healthcare for profit, and Big Pharma also fund and regulate all the research, upon which the entire medical curriculum is based. This research includes virtually no nutritional studies.
Because of the obvious, blatant conflict of interest involved in doctors being schooled in nutrition by multi-trillion dollar animal food industry, healthcare for profit chains, and pharmaceutical corporations, they put out their shingles knowing as much about nutritional health as the average toddler.
Esselstyn, Ornish, McDougall, and Campbell met with brick walls within the medical establishment throughout their careers. To question the basic accuracy of the medical/pharmaceutical status quo is not allowed. Nor is the use of that dreaded four letter word: cure.
In 1976, Senator George McGovern and five other powerful senators from agricultural states drafted recommendations that less fatty animal foods be consumed by the public. Their bids for reelection met with failure in 1980, thanks largely to efforts by the powerful animal foods industry. Nobody who publicly questions the healthy goodness and necessity of meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy will be allowed to hold high office for long.

Behind the walls of the most dangerous place in The United States, your family doctor detects a bruit (murmur) in your carotid artery. He refers you to a nearby cardiologist. Within the equally dangerous office of the cardiologist, you are told that you have 65% blockage in your carotid. He patiently explains to you that cardiovascular disease is irreversible, and that you should be prepared for future surgery. He prescribes statin drugs and sends you on your way, without mentioning that statins are completely useless in 98% of cases, have horriffic side effects, and are possibly the biggest multi-billion dollar scam ever dreamed up by Big Pharma. Visions of a catheter being shoved up into your heart dance through your head. Lasers, stents, possibly valve replacement. You imagine yourself face up on the operating table. Chest sliced open, ribs ripped and spread far apart, doctors cutting, stitching, chuckling, talking about their golf handicaps. Weeks in recovery. Months in rehab. The sad hand you've been dealt, but nothing you can do about it. You begin putting your affairs in order, and await the grim reaper.

OR...

Behind the walls of the most dangerous place in The United States, your family doctor detects a bruit (murmur) in your carotid artery. He refers you to a nearby cardiologist. Within the equally dangerous office of the cardiologist you are told that you have 65% blockage in your carotid. He patiently explains to you that cardiovascular disease is irreversible, and that you should be prepared for future surgery. Lucky for you, between these appointments, a friend loaned you a copy of "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. After reading about his research, you followed up with the studies of Doctors Esselstyn, Ornish, and McDougall. You question the cardiologist about the possibility of coronary artery disease reversal if you adopt a plant-based diet. He shakes his head slightly, with a condescending smile. "The blockage in your carotid artery is there for good. It cannot be reversed." he insists. You fire him on the spot, leave the most dangerous place in The United States, and immediately adopt a plant-based diet. Six months later, you've lost 20 unneeded pounds, feel stronger, younger, and happier. Cardiovascular disease is history. It is a food-borne illness, and you've sent it packing.

The unholy alliance linking the Animal Food, Pharmaceutical, and Healthcare industries is the quintessential, synergistic, capitalist scam. Self-sustaining, it resists all assaults upon its misguided dictums and principles, guarding its power fiercely on all fronts. Identical in structure to The Military/Industrial Complex, The Big Food/Pharma/Quackery Consortium preys on innocent lives, turns blood into money, and does so with complete impunity. Doctors shoulder little blame. They've been taught a system built upon lies, and are soon hooked on the money, power, and status. Few would think to question the status quo. Why should they? Anyway, I have a doctor to thank for sewing my nose back on my face after a bad car wreck a half century ago. Occasionally they're nice to have around. Of course the cardiologist in the examples above is going to do everything he can to get you into surgery, split open your chest, make a few adjustments, sew you back up, and pocket a hundred thousand bucks or so. It's business. Nothing personal.

The doubt out there is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. But you'll likely need that knife to slice tonight's rib eye steak into bite-size pieces. It's a difficult task overcoming a lifetime of false nutritional information, and a huge chore to change dangerous eating habits. Besides, you're saying, I need to eat meat. It's the only way to get enough protein to maintain my strength. Along with your rib eye, here's a helping of food for thought: Alex Honnold, the young man in paragraph three above, who accomplished the impossible feat of completing the first and only solo, rope-free ascent of Yosemite's El Capitan...Alex Honnold, pound for pound, possibly the strongest, fittest man on earth, is a vegetarian.

Alex Honnold: vegetarian, environmentalist, and atheist.

About the Author

JOHN R. HALL, Senior Contributing Editor John R. Hall is a street-trained agnotologist with an advanced degree in American Ignorance. Other hats include: photojournalist, novelist, restaurateur, mountaineer, grocer, nurseryman, and janitor. He’s written three novels which have been read by almost nobody: ‘Embracing Darwin’, ‘Last Dance in Lubberland’, and ‘Atlas fumbled’. An untrained writer and college drop-out, he began his short career in journalism writing the ‘Excursion’ column for The Jackson Hole News & Guide. More recently he penned the ‘Left Column’ for The Molokai Island Times; appropriately on the island once known as a leper colony. John currently resides, writes, and protests injustice in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and walks among the spirits of those who once occupied the 79 Disappeared Pueblos. Read more John Halls’s articles.

You fire him on the spot, leave the most dangerous place in The United States, and immediately adopt a plant-based diet. Six months later, you’ve lost 20 unneeded pounds, feel stronger, younger, and happier. Cardiovascular disease is history. It is a food-borne illness, and you’ve sent it packing.

[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

The Unspoken Truth behind the Colin Kaepernick Story

Caleb Maupin: What a Socialist America Would Be Like

Standing Up to Nazism

AntiFa’s Moral Superiority and the Potential for Left-Wing Unity

The Most Dangerous Place in The United States