Why America can’t move constructively forward
Excerpt, minor edit, comment by Carolyn Bennett
His foulmouthed presence I found disturbing years ago and I was surprised that the University of Maine’ s flagship university
had given him prominence in a lyceum lecture series. This was the late 1990s
or early 2000s, pre-911. Fred Mazelis’ article “Amiri Baraka (1934-2014): Poet,
playwright, black nationalist” rings true for me and clears the fog a bit.
New Jersey native Everett Leroy Jones aka LeRoi Jones aka Imamu Ameer Baraka aka Amiri Baraka, was “a
somewhat troubled and alienated black intellectual” whose narrow-minded “race-based” views “fatally afflicted his
literary and political efforts, essentially determining the character of his
life and legacy,” Fred Mazelis writes.
In the 1960s, the troubled Jones/Baraka “expressed his
backward conceptions in various forms:
… Anti-Semitism, homophobia and
vicious attacks on women
“All of these exercises, through which Jones attempted to
demonstrate his ‘revolutionary’ credentials, have more than a passing resemblance
to fascist demagogy,” Mazelis writes.
“Baraka’s legacy is part of the unsavory legacy of the
middle class radicalism of the 1960s. Cut off from the working class by the
betrayals of Stalinism and the trade unions, the mass movements of workers and
young people against the war in Vietnam, poverty and inequality were succeeded
by the reactionary politics of black
nationalism and various forms of identity
politics.”Citing evidence of the role played by what he terms the “pseudo-left,” Mazelis reports, “outfits like The Nation magazine, its editor Katrina van den Heuvel, rushed into print after Baraka’s demise to call attention to the magazine’s earlier connections with the poet, and to claim that ‘Jones celebrated the cultural achievements and dignity of African-Americans while unblinkingly exposing the grave injustice of this country’s condescending attitude toward and often-brutal treatment of his people.’” [Emphasis I added]
“Black nationalism and the pseudo-left,” Mazelis continued, “share a profound agreement:
…a hatred of the working class, and
… a bitter opposition to genuine struggle against capitalist exploitation and inequality …
“Their professed opposition to racial discrimination, Mazelis
says, “is in fact based on support for the profit system and the demand that a
small privileged layer of the black population share more equally in its
spoils.”
Well, now. I’d say
that sheds critical light on a frequently-staged American farce: foulmouthed faker
Everett Leroy Jones/LeRoi Jones/ Imamu Ameer Baraka/Amiri Baraka held up as messiah
by equally fraudulent, mendacious fawners. Fred Mazelis’ full article is worth reading.
Sources and notes
“Amiri Baraka (1934-2014): Poet, playwright, black
nationalist” by Fred Mazelis, January 18, January 2014, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/18/jone-j18.html
Writer, activist, politician Fred Mazelis was a founding
member of the Worker’s League. In the 1992 and 1996 U.S. presidential election
years, he was Socialist Equality Party candidate for U.S. vice president; the
presidential candidates he ran with were Helen Halyard and Jerome White,
respectfully. In 1984, Mazelis was the Socialist
Equality Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate from Michigan; and in 1989, a
candidate for New York City mayoralty. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Mazelis
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