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

We Can't Have A Party of Our Own Because Poor People Can't Be Trusted?
Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
01 Jun 2019
🖨️ Print Article

We can’t afford a new party. More specifically poor people cannot have a new party. Why? Because Donald John Trump is uniquely evil, a threat to the planet and its people so singular, and so unprecedented that he must be stopped at any cost, even if it means replacement by an only slightly better lying neoliberal warmonger. And we hve to do this for the really poor among us. I’m not buying it.

I will concede that Trump is definitely evil, but that’s been making the rounds a long time now. Nixon and Reagan were evil. The Bush dynasty was nothing if not evil, and so are Bill and Hillary Clinton. Christian Bale, accepting an award for his starring role in the movie “Vice” thanked Satan for his inspiration on how to play the role of Dick Cheney. Arguably, what’s uniquely evil here isn’t Donald John Trump, it’s the centuries old US ruling class. It’s hard to find much of anything unique about Trump beyond his balls to the wall vulgarity.

I know it’s a low bar because before he came into office the US already had fleets in every ocean and troops in about 120 or more countries, but uniquely evil Trump hasn’t found any new countries to invade or bomb, though he has instituted a US Space Force, presumably to bomb other planets, but he doesn’t get extra evil points for that, because it’s merely aspirational, something he would do if only he could.

The truth is that Trump is only marginally worse than other Republicans and Democrats. Obama extended US special ops troops and drone bases to every nation on the African continent except Zimbabwe and Eritrea abroad and saved the banks while hundreds of thousands of black mortgage holders were evicted, something a Republican president could never get away with. Bill Clinton jacked the black prison population up to an all time high of a million.

Nonetheless we hear a lot of chatter from people like our leftish friends at DSA about how Trump is soooo bad, soooo evil and sooo awful that absolutely any Democrat would be better, for the good of the planet and especially for the good of the people at the very bottom of North America’s economic and social pyramid. Those are real people, the argument goes, and we owe them a vote for any Democrat because they just cannot afford to be hurt any more than they’re already being hurt.

Therefore, the argument holds that poor people building a third party with their own votes, their own labor and financed by their own membership dues like poor people do in every other nation on this planet is a bad idea, something that the poor and oppressed here cannot and should not even try. After all, the ballot access portion of such an effort alone would take a million signatures and might split the Democratic party, electing a Republican to the presidency.

It’s hard to miss the reeking racism and classism of this nonsensical proposition. Aren’t poor people smart enough to make their own choices, not just for this year, but for years ahead, if that’s what it takes? The old heads like Charles Hamilton Houston were not afraid to map out a strategy for tackling Jim Crow that took decades. Why was this wise for these law school grads but unwise for poor people today?

The left will never become a mass phenomenon in this country until it finds raises up its own voices, and funds its own independent political party. Despite what our friends at DSA tell us, and tell each other, that will not happen inside either one of the billionaires parties, and it won’t be funded by the people who fund those parties.

 

Democrats

Related Podcasts

ADOS Shrinks Reparations Politics to Fit the Narrow Horizon of Tribalism
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
ADOS Shrinks Reparationist Politics to Fit the Cramped Horizon of Tribalism
15 March 2019
“ADOS followers throw away the internationalism of their forbears, embracing instead a sometimes polite, but always frank hostility toward
Black Agenda Radio, Week of February 11, 2019
Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Black Agenda Radio, Week of February 11, 2019
12 February 2019
Democrats are neith
Was This Really The Most Important Mid-Term Election of Our Lives? Maybe Not.
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Was This Really The Most Important Mid-Term Election of Our Lives? Maybe Not.
09 November 2018
For an occasion so momentous, not much has changed.

More Stories


  • More Surveillance Won’t Stop White Supremacy -- It Will Target Activists of Color
    Anoa Changa
    More Surveillance Won’t Stop White Supremacy -- It Will Target Activists of Color
    17 Mar 2021
    Violence from people of color and other marginalized groups – or even simply fear of such violence -- is dealt with immediately and with the harshest of consequences.
  • The Somali Election Impasse in Historical Context
    Abdirahman A. Abdalla
    The Somali Election Impasse in Historical Context
    17 Mar 2021
    Somalia’s current corruptionist comprador bourgeoisie has no independent socio-political base and is therefore totally beholden to Western imperialist interests.
  • Who’s Afraid of Hugo Chávez? Race, Empire, and Chavismo’s Revolutionary Subjectivity
    Lucas M. Koerner 
    Who’s Afraid of Hugo Chávez? Race, Empire, and Chavismo’s Revolutionary Subjectivity
    17 Mar 2021
    What is it about Chávez and the national-popular movement bearing his name that is so threatening to the US Empire to this day?
  • Can We Listen to the Voice of the Haitian People?
    Mireille Fanon Mendes France
    Can We Listen to the Voice of the Haitian People?
    17 Mar 2021
    The West’s treatment of Haiti confirms that white supremacy has still not abandoned its plan to impose a racially racist, violent, capitalist and imperial world order.
  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 15, 2021
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 15, 2021
    15 Mar 2021
    Community Control is Best Route to Abolishing Policing As We Know It
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us