Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Agenda Radio for Week of November 11, 2019
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
12 Nov 2019
🖨️ Print Article

Ruling Class “Crisis of Legitimacy” is Behind “Bernie Blackout”

The ruling class is attempting “to establish its legitimacy, once again, without the popular mandate of broad sections of the people,” said Duboisian scholar Dr Anthony Monteiro. The corporate media “blackout” of Sanders “and others who represent anti-austerity proposals” like Medicare for All is part of the oligarchs’ repression of dissent. Similarly, Russiagate is designed to stir up a new Cold War and scare people into supporting the continued rule of the rich, said Monteiro.

Class Struggle and Revolution are Inseparable

“If you don’t recognize class oppression, you’re siding with the oppressor,” said Jihad Abdulmumit, chairperson of the National Jericho Movement, speaking to a conference of the Black Is Back Coalition, in Washington, DC. The Jericho Movement fights for the rights of political prisoners, and is part of Black Is Back. “Even among Muslims around the world, we’re not just talking about some rituals; we’re talking about changing the fundamental structures of society, destroying the empire,” said Abdulmumit, a former Black Panther Party political prisoner.

White Supremacy Goes Back to the Crusades

The roots of western European anti-Blackness lie in the Middle Ages, in the Crusades to seize Arab lands, said Cord Whitaker, a professor at Wellesley College and author of “Black Metaphors: How Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking.” It was during this era that “you started to see the idea that darkness of skin, blackness, denoted potential evil,” said Whitaker. “It was still not the racial ideology we have today, but it was an important step in getting there.”

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

 


More Stories


  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Malcolm X and Human Rights in the Time of Trumpism: Transcending the Masters Tools
    20 May 2026
    Malcolm X understood that “oppressed peoples must commit themselves to radical political struggle in order to advance a dignified approach to human rights.” What’s needed is a bottom-up mass movement…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: The Palestine Question: Background and Solution, Edward Atiyah, 1946
    20 May 2026
    “It is impossible to make a national home for one people in a country inhabited by another, except by dislodging the latter.”
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    That Sunday morning Mom cried …
    20 May 2026
    "That Sunday morning Mom cried …" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Tamanisha J. John
    Annexationist Chauvinism: There is No Justification for the Venezuela-Guyana Essequibo Border Dispute
    20 May 2026
    The Essequibo dispute benefits Exxon Mobil and the Pentagon while crushing anti-imperialist solidarity.
  • Roger Harris , Sara Flounders
    Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
    20 May 2026
    The same week Cuba mobilized millions to defend its revolution, the White House imposed even more illegal measures in an effort to strangle the country into submission.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us