Authored by Chris Hedges through Scherpost.com,

Woke tradition, devoid of sophistication consciousness and a dedication to face with the oppressed, is one other instrument within the arsenal of the imperial state…

The brutal homicide of Tyre Nichols by 5 Black Memphis law enforcement officials ought to be sufficient to implode the fantasy that id politics and variety will remedy the social, financial and political decay that besets the USA. Not solely are the previous officers Black, however the metropolis’s police division is headed by Cerelyn Davis, a Black lady. None of this helped Nichols, one other sufferer of a modern-day police lynching.

The militarists, corporatists, oligarchs, politicians, teachers and media conglomerates champion id politics and variety as a result of it does nothing to deal with the systemic injustices or the scourge of everlasting battle that plague the U.S. It’s an promoting gimmick, a model, used to masks mounting social inequality and imperial folly. It busies liberals and the educated with a boutique activism, which isn’t solely ineffectual however exacerbates the divide between the privileged and a working class in deep financial misery. The haves scold the have-nots for his or her unhealthy manners, racism, linguistic insensitivity and garishness, whereas ignoring the foundation causes of their financial misery. The oligarchs couldn’t be happier.

Did the lives of Native Individuals enhance on account of the laws mandating assimilation and the revoking of tribal land titles pushed by by Charles Curtis, the primary Native American Vice President? Are we higher off with Clarence Thomas, who opposes affirmative motion, on the Supreme Courtroom, or Victoria Nuland, a battle hawk within the State Division? Is our perpetuation of everlasting battle extra palatable as a result of Lloyd Austin, an African American, is the Secretary of Protection? Is the navy extra humane as a result of it accepts transgender troopers? Is social inequality, and the surveillance state that controls it, ameliorated as a result of Sundar Pichai — who was born in India — is the CEO of Google and Alphabet? Has the weapons business improved as a result of Kathy J. Warden, a lady, is the CEO of Northop Grumman, and one other lady, Phebe Novakovic, is the CEO of Common Dynamics? Are working households higher off with Janet Yellen, who promotes growing unemployment and “job insecurity” to decrease inflation, as Secretary of the Treasury? Is the film business enhanced when a feminine director, Kathryn Bigelow, makes “Zero Darkish Thirty,” which is agitprop for the CIA? Check out this recruitment advert put out by the CIA. It sums up the absurdity of the place we’ve ended up.

Colonial regimes discover compliant indigenous leaders — “Papa Doc” François Duvalier in Haiti, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Mobutu Sese Seko within the Congo, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran — keen to do their soiled work whereas they exploit and loot the nations they management. To thwart standard aspirations for justice, colonial police forces routinely carried out atrocities on behalf of the oppressors. The indigenous freedom fighters who battle in assist of the poor and the marginalized are often pressured out of energy or assassinated, as was the case with Congolese independence chief Patrice Lumumba and Chilean president Salvador Allende. Lakota chief Sitting Bull was gunned down by members of his personal tribe, who served within the reservation’s police drive at Standing Rock. When you stand with the oppressed, you’ll nearly all the time find yourself being handled just like the oppressed. For this reason the FBI, together with Chicago police, murdered Fred Hampton and was nearly actually concerned within the homicide of Malcolm X, who referred to impoverished city neighborhoods as “inside colonies.” Militarized police forces within the U.S. operate as armies of occupation. The law enforcement officials who killed Tyre Nichols are not any completely different from these in reservation and colonial police forces.

We reside below a species of company colonialism. The engines of white supremacy, which constructed the types of institutional and financial racism that hold the poor poor, are obscured behind enticing political personalities similar to Barack Obama, whom Cornel West known as “a Black mascot for Wall Road.” These faces of range are vetted and chosen by the ruling class. Obama was groomed and promoted by the Chicago political machine, one of many dirtiest and most corrupt within the nation.

“It’s an insult to the organized actions of individuals these establishments declare to need to embrace,” Glen Ford, the late editor of The Black Agenda Report advised me in 2018.

“These establishments write the script. It’s their drama. They select the actors, no matter black, brown, yellow, pink faces they need.”

Ford known as those that promote id politics “representationalists” who “need to see some Black folks represented in all sectors of management, in all sectors of society. They need Black scientists. They need Black film stars. They need Black students at Harvard. They need Blacks on Wall Road. However it’s simply illustration. That’s it.”

The toll taken by company capitalism on the folks these “representationalists” declare to signify exposes the con. African-Individuals have misplaced 40 p.c of their wealth for the reason that monetary collapse of 2008 from the disproportionate affect of the drop in dwelling fairness, predatory loans, foreclosures and job loss. They’ve the second highest fee of poverty at 21.7 p.c, after Native Individuals at 25.9 p.c, adopted by Hispanics at 17.6 p.c and whites at 9.5 p.c, in accordance to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Division for Well being and Human Companies. As of 2021, Black and Native American youngsters lived in poverty at 28 and 25 p.c respectively, adopted by Hispanic youngsters at 25 p.c and white youngsters at 10 p.c. Practically 40 p.c of the nation’s homeless are African-Individuals though Black folks make up about 14 p.c of our inhabitants. This determine doesn’t embrace folks residing in dilapidated, overcrowded dwellings or with household or buddies because of monetary difficulties.  African-Individuals are incarcerated at almost 5 instances the speed of white folks.

Id politics and variety permit liberals to wallow in a cloying ethical superiority as they castigate, censor and deplatform those that don’t linguistically conform to politically right speech. They’re the brand new Jacobins. This recreation disguises their passivity within the face of company abuse, neoliberalism, everlasting battle and the curtailment of civil liberties. They don’t confront the establishments that orchestrate social and financial injustice. They search to make the ruling class extra palatable. With the assist of the Democratic Celebration, the liberal media, academia and social media platforms in Silicon Valley, demonize the victims of the company coup d’etat and deindustrialization. They make their main political alliances with those that embrace id politics, whether or not they’re on Wall Road or within the Pentagon. They’re the helpful idiots of the billionaire class, ethical crusaders who widen the divisions inside society that the ruling oligarchs foster to keep up management. 

Range is essential. However range, when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed, is window dressing. It’s about  incorporating a tiny section of these marginalized by society into unjust buildings to perpetuate them. 

A category I taught in a most safety jail in New Jersey wrote “Caged,” a play about their lives. The play ran for almost a month at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, the place it was offered out almost each evening. It was subsequently revealed by Haymarket Books. The 28 college students within the class insisted that the corrections officer within the story not be white. That was too straightforward, they stated. That was a feint that enables folks to simplify and masks the oppressive equipment of banks, firms, police, courts and the jail system, all of which make range hires. These techniques of inside exploitation and oppression have to be focused and dismantled, irrespective of whom they make use of. 

My ebook, “Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Jail,” makes use of the expertise of writing the play to inform the tales of my college students and impart their profound understanding of the repressive forces and establishments arrayed towards them, their households and their communities. You’ll be able to see my two-part interview with Hugh Hamilton about “Our Class” right here and right here.

August Wilson’s final play, “Radio Golf,” foretold the place range and id politics devoid of sophistication consciousness have been headed. Within the play, Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated actual property developer, is about to launch his marketing campaign to turn into Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor. His spouse, Mame, is angling to turn into the governor’s press secretary. Wilks, navigating the white man’s universe of privilege, enterprise offers, standing searching for and the nation membership recreation of golf, should sanitize and deny his id. Roosevelt Hicks, who had been Wilk’s school roommate at Cornell and is a vp at Mellon Financial institution, is his enterprise accomplice. Sterling Johnson, whose neighborhood Wilks and Hicks are lobbying to get town to declare blighted to allow them to raze it for his or her multimillion greenback improvement challenge, tells Hicks: 

You recognize what you might be? It took me some time to determine it out. You a Negro. White folks will get confused and name you a nigger however they don’t know like I do know. I do know the reality of it. I’m a nigger. Negroes are the worst factor in God’s creation. Niggers obtained model. Negroes obtained blindyitis. A canine is aware of it’s a canine. A cat is aware of it’s a cat. However a Negro don’t know he’s a Negro. He thinks he’s a white man.

Horrible predatory forces are consuming away on the nation. The corporatists, militarists and political mandarins that serve them are the enemy. It’s not our job to make them extra interesting, however to destroy them. There are amongst us real freedom fighters of all ethnicities and backgrounds whose integrity doesn’t allow them to serve the system of inverted totalitarianism that has destroyed our democracy, impoverished the nation and perpetuated countless wars. Range when it serves the oppressed is an asset, however a con when it serves the oppressors.

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