Senator Cory Booker’s recent 25-hour Senate speech is hailed by some as an act of resistance. Really, it exposes the moral bankruptcy of neoliberal politics, as his performative progressivism clashes with his unwavering support for militarism and apartheid.
“It is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so.”
So wrote the epochal scholar and thinker W.E.B DuBois as part of his elegant polemic of the father of Black accommodationism and an ancestor of the Black Misleadership Class, Booker T. Washington. Whereas Dr. DuBois was diplomatic with his opprobrium of Mr. Wasington, I cannot offer the same semblance of benevolence when it comes to Senator Cory Booker, who represents a pernicious manifestation of bootlicking and an exemplar of the fact that white “supremacy” ideology can be upheld and exercised by anyone regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or other identity.
Last week, Senator Booker, a useful negro tool of Big Pharma and Big zionism, took to the floor of the United States Senate and spoke for 25 hours and 4 minutes straight. For far too many, the spectacle and intermittent soliloquy served as proof that the Democrat party has finally found its footing and is tapped into the mood of the people demanding acts of “resistance” against Trump’s regime and draconian policies - especially after the recent capitulation by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and nine other Senate Democrats who voted to allow Trump to proceed with his legislative internecine that continues to take a slash and burn approach to government agencies and functions, rather than force his hand with a government shutdown. However, a closer look at Booker’s boolicking brouhaha reveals the nadir of neoliberal opporcoonism, abject tartuffery, and how desperate and pathetic Democrats and their liberal acolytes are in a moment when its been irrefutably elucidated that they are not a legitimate opposition as much as they are complicit in the toxic panoply of suffering and oppression being shouldered by poor, working class and colonized people in the United States and abroad.
During his speech, Booker the Boot had the nerve to quote Martin Luther King in a feeble attempt to lift up the need for more humanity. In handpicking Dr. King quotes, in the same way that AIPAC hand picked him like a piece of capitulatory cotton, it must not have occurred to Senator Booker that he has become the white moderate that Martin King admonished us of in his legendary Letter from Birmingham Jail. Moreover, Booker is the “respectable negro who would rather be invited to the White House than invited to the cause of justice” King eviscerated in a speech about the repugnant Vietnam War. Booker’s cognitive dissonance that provided him with the temerity to quote legendary Civil and Human Rights champions like King on the Senate floor while condemning righteous acts like Boycott, Divest, and Sanction and proclaiming his unconditional and inexorable support for the Israeli war machine is no different than white supremacists quoting King as part of their condemnation of so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Affirmative Action. White “supremacy” indeed gets its power from invisibility, triangulation, and Blackface costumes such as those worn by Cousin Cory Booker.
And to be clear, it wasn’t morality holding Booker upright during his 25-hour minstrel show on the Senate floor as much as it was the strings of his zionist alabaster puppet masters at AIPAC who have furnished him with close to one million dollars in blood money throughout his career. Booker’s moral bankruptcy was on full display when just one day after his Senate floor remix of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah he voted against a resolution introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders to block nearly $9 billion in military aid and equipment to the zionist ethnostate. This should come as no surprise though - after all, Booker is fond of posing for pictures with war criminals like Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, both the recipients of International Criminal Court arrest warrants for war crimes in Gaza.
What is surprising, though maybe it shouldn’t be, is the effect Booker’s 25-hour blathering marathon of moral mendacity is having on the numerous number of DNC plantation negroes and white liberals who are heralding him as a hero. The effect is more pernicious than one might realize as a chorus of liberal negroes and their white liberal counterparts took to social media after his speech to post selfies with big smiles in a pathetic demonstration of approval as if Booker should be the new face of Miles Davis’ seminal album, “Someday My Prince Will Come.” Far too many of these DNC plantation dwellers even castigated their own people who took umbrage with Booker’s one man Amos and Andy rendition by retorting with sophomoric statements and questions such as, “at least he’s doing something, what
are you doing for the cause?” To these sad and lost liberals I will actually concur that Booker did indeed do something - he legitimized genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid by remaining silent about the zionist war machine’s crimes against humanity in Palestine, he legitimized Trump rolling out the red carpet to welcome an accused war criminal, Benzion Mileikowsky aka Benjamin Netenyahyu, to the White [people’s] House, and he legitimized the white “supremacy” ideology that continues to effectuate a global campaign of imperialism, neocolonialism, war, and economic and environmental malfeasance.
The Booker effect also continued into last weekend when Democrat-aligned liberal nonprofits held a series of demonstrations across the country declaring “Hands Off.” These perfunctory protests should have been dubbed, “Hands Off Morality,” as the demands said nothing about ending genocide, ethnic cleansing, and illegal occupation in Palestine, nothing about ending a feckless, fossil-fueled war between Ukraine and the Russia, and even provided qualified immunity for the criminal and colonial entity known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Many of the attendees noted that Booker was on their minds and inspired them to take to part.
In his polemic of Booker T. Washington, Dr DuBois declares, “But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.” This duty is now bestowed upon us as Black and all people of conscience, to expose Booker for all that he is and has always been, a silver tongue with a dark heart, a melanated mask that still fails to obscure the fact that he is a willing agent of white “supremacy,” and an enemy of oppressed people the world over. Failure to do so will allow bootlickers like Booker to continue to be seen as the apotheosis for Black leadership and liberation rather than anathema to them.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate/environmental liberation and racial justice advocate and practitioner, a writer, and policy expert who resides in the United States with his family and mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST
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