{"id":20551,"date":"2020-06-03T13:22:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T17:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=20551"},"modified":"2020-06-03T13:24:13","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T17:24:13","slug":"americas-moment-of-reckoning-cornel-west-says-nationwide-uprising-is-sign-of-empire-imploding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=20551","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAmerica\u2019s Moment of Reckoning\u201d: Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of \u201cEmpire Imploding\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY .<\/p>\n

An interview on June 1 by Democracy Now<\/a> (\u00a0Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License)<\/p>\n

As thousands from coast to coast took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black people, and the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, professor Cornel West calls the U.S. a \u201cpredatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money.\u201d He also makes the connections between U.S. violence abroad and at home. \u201cThere is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nCornel West<\/center><\/p>\n

(This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.)<\/p>\n

NERMEEN\u00a0SHAIKH:<\/strong>\u00a0Dr. Cornel West, could you respond to what professor Yamahtta Taylor said? You agree that, of course, the murder of George Floyd was a lynching. You\u2019ve also said that his murder and the demonstrations that have followed show that America is a failed social experiment. So could you respond to that and also the way that the state and police forces have responded to the protests, following George Floyd\u2019s killing, with the National Guard called out in so many cities and states across the country?<\/p>\n

CORNEL\u00a0WEST:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, there\u2019s no doubt that this is America\u2019s moment of reckoning. But we want to make the connection between the local and the global, because, you see, when you sow the seeds of greed \u2014\u00a0domestically, inequality; globally, imperial tentacles, 800 military units abroad, violence and\u00a0AFRICOM\u00a0in Africa, supporting various regimes, dictatorial ones in Asia and so forth \u2014\u00a0there is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally. Same is true in terms of the seed of hatred, of white supremacy, hating Black people, anti-Blackness hatred having its own dynamic within the context of a predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money, domination of workers, marginalization of those who don\u2019t fit \u2014\u00a0gay brothers, lesbian sisters, trans and so forth. So, it\u2019s precisely this convergence that my dear sister Professor Taylor is talking about of the ways in which the American Empire, imploding, its foundations being shaken, with uprisings from below.<\/p>\n

(continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nReaders’ comments are welcome. See the form below.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
\n <\/p>\n

(continued from left column).<\/p>\n

The catalyst was certainly Brother George Floyd\u2019s public lynching, but the failures of the predatory capitalist economy to provide the satisfaction of the basic needs of food and healthcare and quality education, jobs with a decent wage, at the same time the collapse of your political class, the collapse of your professional class. Their legitimacy has been radically called into question, and that\u2019s multiracial. It\u2019s the neofascist dimension in Trump. It\u2019s the neoliberal dimension in Biden and Obama and the Clintons and so forth. And it includes much of the media. It includes many of the professors in universities. The young people are saying, \u201cYou all have been hypocritical. You haven\u2019t been concerned about our suffering, our misery. And we no longer believe in your legitimacy.\u201d And it spills over into violent explosion.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s here. I won\u2019t go on, but, I mean, it\u2019s here, where I think Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Heschel and Edward Said, and especially Brother Martin and Malcolm, their legacies, I think, become more central, because they provide the kind of truth telling. They provide the connection between justice and compassion in their example, in their organizing. And that\u2019s what is needed right now. Rebellion is not the same thing in any way as revolution. And what we need is a nonviolent revolutionary project of full-scale democratic sharing \u2014\u00a0power, wealth, resources, respect, organizing \u2014 and a fundamental transformation of this American Empire.<\/p>\n

AMY\u00a0GOODMAN:\u00a0<\/strong>And your thoughts, Professor West, on the governor of Minnesota saying they\u2019re looking into white supremacist connections to the looting and the burning of the city, and then President Trump tweeting that he\u2019s going to try to put antifa, the anti-fascist activists, on the terror list \u2014 which he cannot do \u2014 and William Barr emphasizing this, saying he\u2019s going after the far left to investigate?<\/p>\n

CORNEL\u00a0WEST:<\/strong>\u00a0No, I mean, that\u2019s ridiculous. You know, you remember, Sister Amy \u2014\u00a0and I love and respect you so \u2014\u00a0that antifa saved my life in Charlottesville. There\u2019s no doubt about it, that they provided the security, you see. So the very notion that they become candidates for a terrorist organization, but the people who were trying to kill us \u2014\u00a0the Nazis, the Klan \u2014 they\u2019re not candidates for terrorist organization status \u2014\u00a0but that\u2019s what you\u2019re going to get. You\u2019re going to get a Trump-led neofascist backlash and clampdown on what is going on. We ought to be very clear about that. The neofascism has that kind of obsession with militaristic imposition in the face of any kind of disorder. And so we\u2019ve got to be fortified for that.<\/p>\n

But most importantly, I think we\u2019ve got to make sure that we preserve our own moral, spiritual, quality, fundamental focus on truth and justice, and keep track of legalized looting, Wall Street greed; legalized murder, police; legalized murder abroad in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Africa with\u00a0AFRICOM, and so forth. That\u2019s where our focus has to be, because with all of this rebellious energy, it\u2019s got to be channeled through organizations rooted in a quest for truth and justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY . An interview on June 1 by Democracy Now (\u00a0Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License) As thousands from coast to coast took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black people, and the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest … Continue reading \u201cAmerica\u2019s Moment of Reckoning\u201d: Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of \u201cEmpire Imploding\u201d<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,14],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-20551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-america","category-tolerance","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}