The Democrats have almost replicated philosemitism with Black people and use a caricatured image of them to push very right wing politics. The mass base of this is old Black voters and the Democratic state-NGO complex that employs the Black middle class. Since Bill Clinton, the Congressional Black Caucus has been a distinctly right wing force to where now it is using ridiculous identity politics to back fascist ghouls. The right wing tendency in the Civil Rights movement (e.g. Bayard Rustin) has metastasized into the only form of organized Black politics, which is mediated through the Democratic Party. This is essentially the thesis of Robert L. Allen’s Black Awakening in Capitalist America. Back in 2003, Aaron McGruder said that this had used up the political 'moral currency' of Black leaders. It's hard not to see the state of Black politics today as the final endpoint of this trajectory. Jim Clyburn endorsed a serial sex pest and genocidal freak against a pretty mild social democrat

The original function of right wing Black political leadership was to domesticate and channel the Black struggle into the non-threatening Democratic Party. This has succeeded so well that the Black struggle is very ill. CLR James said it has a validity and vitality of its own—this is no longer the case. The story of Black Lives Matter (BLM) is illustrative. What began as a heroic struggle against the police state turned into a grift and funnel to elect Biden. The radical elements have survived in Stop Cop City—which deserves far more attention than it's getting—but it's difficult not to conclude that militant Black politics is a severely ill state, in no small part due to what I'm talking about. Everyday Black political consciousness is mediated through the Democratic Party and has taken on a very right wing character.

Since 1990, there has not been a single Democratic nomination who did not receive the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus and thus all of right-wing Black leadership. The Black Caucus is the quiet muscle of the Democratic party. Their backing is essential even in mayoral and congressional races. Enough time has passed that we can bluntly say that Bernie Sander’s 2016 presidential campaign was fucked over by the Black caucus, along with the Black middle class and hangers on. This significantly distorted the path of US politics from that point onward. Since then, Black political leadership and their mass base of mainly older voters have served as a key element of the Democrats' fight against the Left. Again, recall Representative Jim Clyburn endorsing Cuomo or Governor Paterson convening the NY Dems to stop Zohran Mamdani, actively sabotaging his own party's candidate in the most important city in the US.

What’s struck me about so much anti-Zionist organizing is that Black people aren't a key force leading it. I don't mean in the identity politics sense, but that Black politics has been so degraded, especially since Obama’s administration, that the impulses which once animated Black radical politics are very weak. In the past, Black people were usually at the forefront of important struggles, but not so here. I also suspect the proliferation of Afropessimism was a deliberate Democratic plot to kill universalist and humanist impulses in Black political consciousness. It's no coincidence that self professed Afropessimists are very right wing Democrats. That idiot Frank Wilderson once said Palestine could be solved within the framework of global white supremacy, but not Black oppression. That must be why there's a free Palestine….

It's not all doom and gloom. I alluded to Stop Cop City above. This is a key flashpoint against the Black political machine, of which Atlanta is possibly the capital. The struggle there is against precisely what I describe above and it is occurring within the Black community, with lines being drawn generationally (i.e. the young vs. the old). This has been the main faultline for most things in US politics, so it's unsurprisingly the case with Black people as well. Young Black voters broke for Bernie Sanders twice, and they just went for Zohran. Black youth are very involved in anti-Zionist struggles. In all cases, they are not only fighting the white establishment, but their own. Zionism is unintentionally a key part in delegitimizing and destroying right wing Black leadership. Their job has become to support Zionist supremacy, rather than to advocate for Black people on even token grounds. Ordinary Black people will soon conclude that their own political leaders are the enemy because they make their lives worse. Ghouls like Hakeem Jeffries are helping us destroy what remains of the Democratic Party’s credibility, which creates space for reviving Black radicalism.

Regards,

R. Ashlar