Obviously Trump != Farrakhan so we should look sideways at Maggie as a first reaction. But Farrakhan still has some prominence. It might not feel like it in white dominated spaces but I don't think it's fair to say he's a nobody or a total afterthought, especially in black America, especially in say Chicago. We should not leap to say he has no appeal.
And I think there's merit to the idea that collectively, we can be responsible and guilty but the game here is pretty transparent.
Two things:
1. That Farrakhan enjoys prominence is something I've written about before in the context of oppositional culture:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...php?p=51246093
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...php?p=51685117
People of relative powerlessness develop political and cultural habits that reinforce the problem. That is, Farrakhan is a conspiratorial and anti-Semitic but he's popular because of white supremacy.
Does Donald J ****ing Trump, billionaire skyscraper owner and President really operate in the same context? Is Trump conspiratorial and angry because he's been victimized by Jews in the same way black America finds appeal in Farrakhan as a radical response to a real problem?
Obviously not. What we can say is that we're all operating in the white supremacist construct these days. Perhaps we can say both Trump and Farrakhan are symptoms of the system. It is, at its core, I think, precisely what Maggie and the other both-sides finger waggers are trying to do. But we can say more.
"Life is just a logic test" will sort of never appreciate the starting positions or at least deeply embedded drastic power imbalances (the whole reason we talk about politics at all, really). So they'll chalk up Trump style white supremacy and Farrakhan black power as two sides of the same coin or both worth of denouncement. But it's critical to note Trump seeks to perpetuate a system of radical inequality and Farrakhan's appeal and prominence is a symptom of it. One is an input, the other an output. IF we take Maggie in good faith that she finds this sort of politics distasteful, it's incumbent that we understand you'll never systemically stop a problem by focusing on the outputs of the system.
As always, I get that we live in complex social symptoms and Trump (and his voters) are both input and output, that Farrakhan perhaps is too, yadda yadda, but again, simply put: in a system where whites clearly enjoy wealth, status, political power there's no justice starting from a "both sides" position.
We all get this intuitively but it's help to articulate it and not simply say "Farrakhan is a nobody." Farrakhan is someone prominent, why he is and what that says about us, why Trump is President, etc. is important to understand. They're both comorbid for America's white supremacist gestalt. You want to stop this system of politics, start with all the people with power and their senile racist President, ****ing obviously, don't start with the victims. Again, we get this, but worth repeating.
2. And then: Trump
fans the flames of anti-semitism, violence erupts like the shooting at the synagogue, a lot of powerful Republicans and right-wingers say nothing in Trump's direction.
Maggie then starts in circling the wagon for the right: oh, well, what about Farrakhan and the left universally denouncing him?
Common diversion tactic: X does a thing, people hold X responsible. X = Trump here, of course. And then the responses start in that -- well tens of millions of people now must do this if there is to be justice, if we are to really have any credibility denouncing Trump.
Hey, the left can hardly get its **** together to vote. Denouncing Farrakhan, when he targets Jews it's essentially punching down, so it is a great idea to stop that, but it might take a while to get all the leftist signatures together. Can President Trump not peddle in anti-Semitic conspiracies in the meantime? He's just one person, can't he control himself?
You get the sense Maggie and people like her understand intuitively we can't quite meet that standard and so the both-sides pose never dies, never can die. There will be white supremacists, a reaction, and Maggie and her style and those who share it tut-tutting in the middle forever.
From here, we can understand that hectoring black people and the left to denounce Farrakhan feels like a cheap shot. See #1 above: the drastic imbalance of relative power between him and Trump is so vast we should rightfully laugh Maggie off. Related, we're responsible for understanding our political culture and so we're responsible for understanding the true underlying cause. "Farrakhan is irrelevant" doesn't quite capture it, we should be clearer. Farrakhan is relevant, precisely because powerful white people like Trump perpetuate a racist political order.
Last edited by DVaut1; 11-06-2018 at 03:59 AM.
