Shifting Tides, Shifty Obama-ists

[We are not accustomed to quoting the Bible, but sometimes the biblical words have become part of common culture, as in this:  “Matthew 7:15-20, ‘You Will Know Them by Their Fruits’ — ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?  Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Therefore by their fruits you will know them.'”  Which is appropriate warned, when perusing the shifting claims and tides of Obama-ists like Angela Davis, whose latest statement (read down to her Guardian article) reaches into more radical territory to restore credibility.  Davis, who partially broke with the path of the revisionist CPUSA many years ago, and who has made contributions to the growing prison abolitionist movement, still has promoted electoral-democratic-reform illusions about the imperialist system against revolutionary strategies. (our highlights, for emphasis). —  Frontlines ed.]

• From Black Agenda Report, by Glen Ford — March 27, 2012 — “Angela Davis Lost Her Mind Over Obama” —  The “delusional effect” that swept Black America with the advent of the First Black President has warped and weakened the mental powers of some of our most revered icons – and it has been painful to behold. Earlier this month, Angela Davis diminished herself as a scholar and thinker in a gush of nonsense about the corporate executive in the White House. The occasion was a conference on Empowering Women of Color, in Berkeley, California. Davis shared the stage with Grace Lee Boggs, the 96-year-old activist from Detroit. The subject was social transformation, but Davis suddenly launched into how wonderful it felt to see people “dancing in the streets” when Barack Obama was elected. She called that campaign a “victory, not of an individual, but of…people who refused to believe that it was impossible to elect a person, a Black person, who identified with the Black radical tradition.”……There was a hush in the room, as if in mourning of the death of brain cells. Angela Davis was saying that Barack Obama is a man who identifies with the Black radical tradition. She said it casually, as if Black radicalism and Obama were not antithetical terms; as if everything he has written, said and done in national politics has not been a repudiation of the Black radical tradition; as if his rejection of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was not a thorough disavowal of the Black radical tradition. In his famous 2008 campaign speech in Philadelphia, Obama blamed such radicals for compounding the nation’s problems.
• From Democracy Now, January 21, 2013  —  Addressing the Peace Ball in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, the renowned author, educator and political activist Angela Davis urges those content with President Obama’s re-election to continue pushing him for social change. “This time around we cannot subordinate our aspirations and our hopes to presidential agendas,” Davis says. “Our passionate support for President Barack Obama … should also be expressed in our determination to raise issues that have been largely ignored or not appropriately addressed by the administration.”
• And Angela today, adjusting her tone, more accurately and radical, to the shifting tides, as anger and defiance grow…………

“From Michael Brown to Assata Shakur, the racist state of America persists”

by Angela Davis, The Guardian, Saturday, 1 November 2014 

 

Although racist state violence has been a consistent theme in the history of people of African descent in North America, it has become especially noteworthy during the administration of the first African-American president, whose very election was widely interpreted as heralding the advent of a new, postracial era.

Philippines: Chinese CP says it has disowned local rebels

[For over 30 years–since the death of Mao Zedong, when the revisionist coup led by Teng Hsiao-Ping overthrew socialism and restored capitalism–the Communist Party of China has been “communist” in name only.  A policy of suppressing revolutionaries inside China has been matched by opposing and disavowing, internationally, revolutionary movements, parties, and communists (including “Maoists”).  The following article spells out this policy in more detail:  the CCP disavows relations with communists who are banned and illegal (ie, those who wage armed struggle and have not committed to legal and electoral reform within capitalist and oppressive regimes).  While this policy is not surprising for a regime which has reversed its earlier revolutionary path, what does surprise is that, around the world, some so-called “communists” and so-called “Maoists” continue to disingenuously refer to China as “socialist,” “communist,” or “anti-imperialist’, despite the mounds of evidence to the contrary. — Frontlines ed.]

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‘ZERO’ TIES WITH CPP
Chinese communist party says it has disowned local rebels
By Jerry E. Esplanada, Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 27th, 2011

BEIJING—The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is no longer a concern of the 90-year-old and 80-million member Communist Party of China (CPC), according to a top party official.Shen Beili, director general of the international department of the Bureau of Southeast and South Asian Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, has described as “zero” the Chinese ruling party’s ties with its Philippine counterpart.Shen told a group of visiting Asian and African journalists—including this reporter—taking part in a two-week media program sponsored by the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the CPC, that the party’s relations with the CPP “have been severed since the 1980s.”“The CPC and the CPP used to have relations in the 1960s and 1970s. But in the 1980s, we made adjustments in our party policies and our relations were severed,” she recalled.Shen emphasized that “as long as our counterpart groups in other countries (like the CPP) are banned or considered illegal by their host governments, then we cannot have normal party-to-party relations.”