Wishful thinking, in my opinion.
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The Big Issue Where Bernie Sanders and Cornel West Go Separate Ways
________________________________________
The Big Issue Where Bernie Sanders and Cornel West Go Separate Ways
By Matthew Pulver [1] / Salon [2]
June 25, 2015
Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is already enjoying success
that few could have predicted. Bernie is a big deal. Well, OK, if you're a
white progressive he's a big deal. Otherwise, you may have no idea who he
is, according to reporting this morning in the New York Times [3]. The
Times' Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin write that "black voters have shown
little interest in [Sanders]" and that "[e]ven his own campaign advisers
acknowledge that Mr. Sanders is virtually unknown to many African-Americans,
an enormously important Democratic constituency."
But as his presidential campaign gains altitude and attention, Sanders may
be on the way to securing the most difficult black progressive endorsement
there is: the blessing of Professor Cornel West, one of America's leading
public intellectuals. Celebrity is rare in American academe, but the
eccentric West (along with MIT's Noam Chomsky) is something of a superstar
scholar. He's our Slavoj Žižek, but with far better hair and a sense of
fashion.
Speaking with Grit TV's Laura Flanders in early June [4], the black academic
icon was asked by the host if he will be supporting the increasingly popular
candidate for president.
"I love brother Bernie," West replied. "He tells the truth about Wall
Street. He really does."
But West, who feels burned and spurned by President Obama, his team, and the
Democratic Party generally, then turned immediately to the specter of
Hillary Clinton. Sanders, though an independent socialist in the Senate, is
running for the Democratic Party ticket, and West worried aloud about
submission to the party hegemon, Secretary Clinton.
"I'm not a Hillary Clinton fan at all," he said resolutely. "So if he uses
his power to hand it over to her I'll be deeply upset."
West, ever-critical and stubbornly conscientious, was an early skeptic of
then-Senator Obama's campaign in 2007-08, only to sign on to the Obama team
and do 65 events for the candidate after a conversation between the two
convinced West of Obama's progressive bona fides. Similarly, West has
withheld a ringing and thorough endorsement of Sanders, citing Sanders'
positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
"But I also think, in terms of foreign policy, on the one hand we have
escalating anti-Jewish hatred around the world, and we've got to fight
anti-Jewish hatred under all conditions," West began. "On the other hand, we
have a vicious Israeli occupation that needs to be highlighted, because
occupations are wrong."
West continued: "I don't hear my dear brother Bernie hitting that, and I'm
not gonna sell my precious Palestinian brothers and sisters down the river
only because of U.S. politics. The truth cuts over and against whatever the
political arrangement is. So we've got to be able to somehow keep track of
anti-Jewish hatred, which is evil, and occupations of whatever sort-in this
case, the vicious Israeli occupation that's evil as well. And I think Bernie
might pull back on some of those issues."
Senator Sanders has caught some flak for what's seen by some as a
less-than-progressive position on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian
territory and its insanely disproportionate responses to extremists' attacks
from Gaza. Much of the recent criticism seems to be founded on a contentious
town hall meeting [5] with constituents in August 2014, when the senator and
progressive pro-Palestine attendees descended into a shouting match, during
which verbal fray he angrily told an interrupting interlocutor to "shut up!"
It must be said that Sanders' positions and rhetoric on the Israeli
occupation are reliably to the left of virtually all of Congress, if only
marginally. But it must also be said, however, that being slightly leftward
of the pack on Israel-Palestine in Washington is a far cry from active
dissent in support of Palestinians' rights to territory and safety. West
voices the frustrations of many who see Sanders' marginal progressivism on
the conflict as much too little to affect the monolithic support which
otherwise characterizes both parties. Some might even see Sanders as a
curious, misshapen crag on that monolith.
Sanders appears a little (but only a little) freer to buck D.C.'s lock-step
approval of Israeli occupation and aggression. The summer 2014 Israeli war
on Gaza, which so angered the Vermont town hall attendees, was endorsed by
79 senators (40 Democrats and 39 Republicans) via Resolution 498, which
Sanders refused to cosponsor. The resolution was adopted unanimously without
a vote, so a refusal to cosponsor is something like a vote against the
proclamation. However, Senators are permitted the right to object (which
Sanders did not) when unanimous support for a resolution is requested,
making Sanders' refusal to cosponsor the measure something like a whisper of
disapproval.
And whispers don't stop wars.
The war on Gaza officially sanctioned by the U.S. Senate left more than
2,100 Gazans dead [6], 500 of them children, with the Israeli citizen death
toll at 6, one of whom was a child. The (very much bipartisan) narrative
that Hamas and other extremists' rocket attacks share any sort of
commensurability with the Israel Defense Forces' assault is vehemently
rejected by American leftists and many progressives-that is, much of the
base on whose support Sanders' campaign relies.
Sanders was also the first senator to boycott Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's address to congress in March of this year, just half a
year after the Gaza war. But Sanders explained his rationale [7] in terms of
partisan etiquette, not moral objection to the Netanyahu government's
actions. Sanders cited the crass campaigning he saw in the prime minister's
visit, what he viewed as the "Congress of the United States being used as a
prop or a photo opportunity for [Netanyahu's] reelection campaign." The
internationally recognized criminality of the Israeli state's occupation was
left unmentioned as a reason to boycott the address.
That doesn't cut it for West on Israel and Palestine. But even a passing
grade from Professor West is tantamount to an endorsement these days, as
West's critical blade has been ground to a razor-sharp edge in the years
since President Obama's inauguration. West has weaponized his singular
word-smithing and placed the president in his verbal crosshairs, calling
Obama a "war criminal," [8] a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," [9] a
"global George Zimmerman," [10] a "black mascot of these Wall Street
oligarchs," [11] a "drone presidency" and a "counterfeit." [12]
Senator Sanders is constitutionally incapable of committing most of the sins
West attributes to Obama. While Obama might have been labeled a "socialist"
by Republicans, he is in many ways [13] a defender of the neoliberal status
quo [14]. Sanders is a proud democratic socialist. A Sanders foreign policy
would very likely look less hawkish than Obama's [15], and his would
certainly be less trigger-happy than a potential Clinton Pentagon.
Though he's become something of a pariah [16] in black academic circles,
West is still a captivating and rousing speaker and Sanders could perhaps
use West on the campaign trail. He might not be someone Sanders brings along
in Iowa or New Hampshire, but once the campaign trail swings south and to
the cosmopolitan coasts, West might be a valuable voice in places Sanders'
unpolished, heavily Brooklynite earnestness doesn't work as well. And
Sanders could be the candidate West thought he was getting in Obama.
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [17]
[18]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/big-issue-where-bernie-sanders-and-cornel-west-go-se
parate-ways
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/matthew-pulver
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-lags-hillary-cl
inton-in-introducing-himself-to-black-voters.html?hp&action=click&pg
type=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=to
p-news
[4]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHsHhj329T4&feature=youtu.be&t=4m52s
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xZqBXzYz4U
[6]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-50da
y-war-by-numbers-9693310.html
[7] http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/video-audio/netanyahu-boycott
[8]
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/cornel-west-obama-a-war-criminal-87702
.html
[9]
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cornel-west-obama-a-republican-in-blackface-black
-msnbc-hosts-are-selling-their-souls/
[10]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/cornel-west-barack-obama_n_3635614.
html
[11]
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/04/11/cornel-west-calls-obama-a-black-
mascot-of-wall-street-oligarchs.html
[12]
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/24/cornel_west_he_posed_as_a_progressive_and_tu
rned_out_to_be_counterfeit_we_ended_up_with_a_wall_street_presidency_a_drone
_presidency/
[13]
http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&
context=jiae
[14] http://www.salon.com/2014/01/13/chomsky_tpp_is_a_neoliberal_assault/
[15]
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/30/bernie-sanders-could-push-hillary-clinto
n-into-uncomfortable-foreign-policy-territory/
[16]
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-ex
citing-black-scholar-ghost
[17] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The Big Issue Where
Bernie Sanders and Cornel West Go Separate Ways
[18] http://www.alternet.org/
[19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The Big Issue Where Bernie Sanders and Cornel West Go Separate Ways
The Big Issue Where Bernie Sanders and Cornel West Go Separate Ways
By Matthew Pulver [1] / Salon [2]
June 25, 2015
Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is already enjoying success
that few could have predicted. Bernie is a big deal. Well, OK, if you're a
white progressive he's a big deal. Otherwise, you may have no idea who he
is, according to reporting this morning in the New York Times [3]. The
Times' Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin write that "black voters have shown
little interest in [Sanders]" and that "[e]ven his own campaign advisers
acknowledge that Mr. Sanders is virtually unknown to many African-Americans,
an enormously important Democratic constituency."
But as his presidential campaign gains altitude and attention, Sanders may
be on the way to securing the most difficult black progressive endorsement
there is: the blessing of Professor Cornel West, one of America's leading
public intellectuals. Celebrity is rare in American academe, but the
eccentric West (along with MIT's Noam Chomsky) is something of a superstar
scholar. He's our Slavoj Žižek, but with far better hair and a sense of
fashion.
Speaking with Grit TV's Laura Flanders in early June [4], the black academic
icon was asked by the host if he will be supporting the increasingly popular
candidate for president.
"I love brother Bernie," West replied. "He tells the truth about Wall
Street. He really does."
But West, who feels burned and spurned by President Obama, his team, and the
Democratic Party generally, then turned immediately to the specter of
Hillary Clinton. Sanders, though an independent socialist in the Senate, is
running for the Democratic Party ticket, and West worried aloud about
submission to the party hegemon, Secretary Clinton.
"I'm not a Hillary Clinton fan at all," he said resolutely. "So if he uses
his power to hand it over to her I'll be deeply upset."
West, ever-critical and stubbornly conscientious, was an early skeptic of
then-Senator Obama's campaign in 2007-08, only to sign on to the Obama team
and do 65 events for the candidate after a conversation between the two
convinced West of Obama's progressive bona fides. Similarly, West has
withheld a ringing and thorough endorsement of Sanders, citing Sanders'
positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
"But I also think, in terms of foreign policy, on the one hand we have
escalating anti-Jewish hatred around the world, and we've got to fight
anti-Jewish hatred under all conditions," West began. "On the other hand, we
have a vicious Israeli occupation that needs to be highlighted, because
occupations are wrong."
West continued: "I don't hear my dear brother Bernie hitting that, and I'm
not gonna sell my precious Palestinian brothers and sisters down the river
only because of U.S. politics. The truth cuts over and against whatever the
political arrangement is. So we've got to be able to somehow keep track of
anti-Jewish hatred, which is evil, and occupations of whatever sort-in this
case, the vicious Israeli occupation that's evil as well. And I think Bernie
might pull back on some of those issues."
Senator Sanders has caught some flak for what's seen by some as a
less-than-progressive position on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian
territory and its insanely disproportionate responses to extremists' attacks
from Gaza. Much of the recent criticism seems to be founded on a contentious
town hall meeting [5] with constituents in August 2014, when the senator and
progressive pro-Palestine attendees descended into a shouting match, during
which verbal fray he angrily told an interrupting interlocutor to "shut up!"
It must be said that Sanders' positions and rhetoric on the Israeli
occupation are reliably to the left of virtually all of Congress, if only
marginally. But it must also be said, however, that being slightly leftward
of the pack on Israel-Palestine in Washington is a far cry from active
dissent in support of Palestinians' rights to territory and safety. West
voices the frustrations of many who see Sanders' marginal progressivism on
the conflict as much too little to affect the monolithic support which
otherwise characterizes both parties. Some might even see Sanders as a
curious, misshapen crag on that monolith.
Sanders appears a little (but only a little) freer to buck D.C.'s lock-step
approval of Israeli occupation and aggression. The summer 2014 Israeli war
on Gaza, which so angered the Vermont town hall attendees, was endorsed by
79 senators (40 Democrats and 39 Republicans) via Resolution 498, which
Sanders refused to cosponsor. The resolution was adopted unanimously without
a vote, so a refusal to cosponsor is something like a vote against the
proclamation. However, Senators are permitted the right to object (which
Sanders did not) when unanimous support for a resolution is requested,
making Sanders' refusal to cosponsor the measure something like a whisper of
disapproval.
And whispers don't stop wars.
The war on Gaza officially sanctioned by the U.S. Senate left more than
2,100 Gazans dead [6], 500 of them children, with the Israeli citizen death
toll at 6, one of whom was a child. The (very much bipartisan) narrative
that Hamas and other extremists' rocket attacks share any sort of
commensurability with the Israel Defense Forces' assault is vehemently
rejected by American leftists and many progressives-that is, much of the
base on whose support Sanders' campaign relies.
Sanders was also the first senator to boycott Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's address to congress in March of this year, just half a
year after the Gaza war. But Sanders explained his rationale [7] in terms of
partisan etiquette, not moral objection to the Netanyahu government's
actions. Sanders cited the crass campaigning he saw in the prime minister's
visit, what he viewed as the "Congress of the United States being used as a
prop or a photo opportunity for [Netanyahu's] reelection campaign." The
internationally recognized criminality of the Israeli state's occupation was
left unmentioned as a reason to boycott the address.
That doesn't cut it for West on Israel and Palestine. But even a passing
grade from Professor West is tantamount to an endorsement these days, as
West's critical blade has been ground to a razor-sharp edge in the years
since President Obama's inauguration. West has weaponized his singular
word-smithing and placed the president in his verbal crosshairs, calling
Obama a "war criminal," [8] a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," [9] a
"global George Zimmerman," [10] a "black mascot of these Wall Street
oligarchs," [11] a "drone presidency" and a "counterfeit." [12]
Senator Sanders is constitutionally incapable of committing most of the sins
West attributes to Obama. While Obama might have been labeled a "socialist"
by Republicans, he is in many ways [13] a defender of the neoliberal status
quo [14]. Sanders is a proud democratic socialist. A Sanders foreign policy
would very likely look less hawkish than Obama's [15], and his would
certainly be less trigger-happy than a potential Clinton Pentagon.
Though he's become something of a pariah [16] in black academic circles,
West is still a captivating and rousing speaker and Sanders could perhaps
use West on the campaign trail. He might not be someone Sanders brings along
in Iowa or New Hampshire, but once the campaign trail swings south and to
the cosmopolitan coasts, West might be a valuable voice in places Sanders'
unpolished, heavily Brooklynite earnestness doesn't work as well. And
Sanders could be the candidate West thought he was getting in Obama.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [17]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[18]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/big-issue-where-bernie-sanders-and-cornel-west-go-se
parate-ways
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/matthew-pulver
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-lags-hillary-cl
inton-in-introducing-himself-to-black-voters.html?hp&action=click&pg
type=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=to
p-news
[4]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHsHhj329T4&feature=youtu.be&t=4m52s
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xZqBXzYz4U
[6]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-50da
y-war-by-numbers-9693310.html
[7] http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/video-audio/netanyahu-boycott
[8]
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/cornel-west-obama-a-war-criminal-87702
.html
[9]
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cornel-west-obama-a-republican-in-blackface-black
-msnbc-hosts-are-selling-their-souls/
[10]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/cornel-west-barack-obama_n_3635614.
html
[11]
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/04/11/cornel-west-calls-obama-a-black-
mascot-of-wall-street-oligarchs.html
[12]
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/24/cornel_west_he_posed_as_a_progressive_and_tu
rned_out_to_be_counterfeit_we_ended_up_with_a_wall_street_presidency_a_drone
_presidency/
[13]
http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&
context=jiae
[14] http://www.salon.com/2014/01/13/chomsky_tpp_is_a_neoliberal_assault/
[15]
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/30/bernie-sanders-could-push-hillary-clinto
n-into-uncomfortable-foreign-policy-territory/
[16]
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-ex
citing-black-scholar-ghost
[17] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The Big Issue Where
Bernie Sanders and Cornel West Go Separate Ways
[18] http://www.alternet.org/
[19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
