'Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more. . . . Whatever our doubts, for that moment [of his election] each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity. . . . Obama’s victory is a sign of history in the triple Kantian sense of signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognosticum. A sign in which the memory of the long past of slavery and the struggle for its abolition reverberates; an event which now demonstrates a change; a hope for future achievements."
Here are some words from Amiri Baraka, from the interview of him by Clairmont Chung is his book, Walter Rodney:A Promise of Revolution. some of these words of Baraka are among the dumbest I have ever read, far more foolish than those of Zizek:
"As a matter fact, I’m writing an essay, my last essay of the set, maybe not the last one. But I wrote about six or seven essays on Obama since 2007, early in 2007, and the one now [2008] to sum it up just before the inauguration: where we are. We are still fighting with some people who want to say Obama’s election is just to preserve capitalism, and so forth and so on. I mean, to be that simple-minded. Some of these nationalists that want to call themselves the black left believe that anarchism or Trotskyism makes them militant. You know what I mean? And it doesn’t. You couldn’t say that about when we were getting killed to integrate bathrooms and lunch counters. We were going to jail to integrate bus terminals. Do they think that Obama’s presidency is less significant? You know what I mean? It’s just too crazy, and you have to see things as they actually are and see that things proceed in stages, step by step, and you have to be able to understand at what stage you’re at and then seize the next level to go forward.
There is no such thing as a sweeping revolution. This is not nineteenth-century Russia or twentieth-century China. This is the twenty-first century in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. So, unless you approach it that way, then you’re always on the margins making quotes. But the actuality of power, which is what revolution is supposed to be, to seize power, never comes to pass. So there are people who still maintain this kind of soggy nationalism, who refuse to embrace the whole question of scientific socialism. What do we do to transform this country into a socialist country? What do we do? You don’t think that the election of Obama makes us a step closer? The Right does. They know that. I mean, a fool in Michigan, on the day after the election, is standing on a corner in a Klan uniform, a Republican delegate, who, when they ask him, says that, “Obama is an Islamic communist, a black Islamic communist.” I mean, he needs to die three times.
But it’s still that kind of murky question of are you a nationalist or are you a socialist? And I think that is something we still have to thrash out here, in the twenty-first century. We’re still going to have to thrash that and fight that and get some clarity on it and make demands of people in terms of clarification of the ideology.
You see, King and Malcolm X are both representatives of the African American people, different ideological aspects of them, but they killed them both. How much greater would it have been if we had been in one party and we could’ve argued those things endlessly inside that. You understand. The same thing with Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois—they exiled both of them. Wherever you thought you were standing in that, you have to see that it’s the whole thing that’s offensive to the oppressors, not this aspect or that aspect, but the whole thing. And until you can find a way to unify that whole, like I mean 98 percent of people, of black people, voted for Obama, that’s the kind of unity we’re going to need to get rid of the rest of this. And I think that that’s why, right now, the main push has to be to get a big united front for a democratic coalition and government and to get rid of the legacy of racism and white supremacy and also to end the complete domination of monopoly capital over the people’s needs.
I mean, if we give a trillion or two trillion dollars to those people, then I don’t want oversight over those banks, I want to own those banks. See, I don’t want to give 250 billion dollars to the auto industry and say we have oversight over it. If we give them 250 billion, we got to own it: the United States Auto Companies. You know what I’m saying? All those mortgages should be paid to the government. Those banks should not be allowed to be out there like that, you understand? If you want private enterprise, then deal with it privately. You can’t tell me about the market system and free enterprise and then you going to come to me with your tin cup for two trillion dollars. I’m not making twenty million dollars a year. There was some hearing on television the other day. The guys from Lehman Brothers, bankrupt company, he left with 580 million dollars. So, then, he argues with the guy who questioned him, “That’s not accurate, those figures are not accurate.” Well, how much did you leave with? He goes, “380 million dollars.” So, I mean, if you could play with that kind of money, beautiful, do that. But then when you stub your toe, don’t come to me. See, who has millions of starving people, unemployed people, to deal with and take care of? You understand what I’m saying? Those are the things I think this Obama thing [is connected to] and why we have to finally connect this nationalism and socialism that these people are talking about, these divisions, because now we have to unify the majority of people into a position: black ones and white ones to end white supremacy, end racism, pass some laws against it.
You understand, we are at that point right now, when Obama talks about a post-racial coalition we should see that. When the people are angry about these monopolists getting two trillion dollars, we should seize on that. Those points are clearer in people’s minds. I don’t mean leftist or revolutionist. The people now understand that it is time to get rid of racism. It’s time to get these people off our backs, you see. And if there is any leadership, among the people that are so-called revolutionary, they should be trying to fight for the leadership of that rather than be sitting on the side criticizing Obama before he even gets into office. It’s incredible, incredible.
Like this whole thing about Rahm Emmanuel as the Chief of Staff, the Jewish dude, I thought it was a great thing. Because who do these people think they’re going to be criticizing? They already are calling the president Hussein. You know what I mean? And that he’s Muslim and all kind of stuff. Who better to get to sit at your door than a pugilistic Jew who is a close friend of his? I mean, you got to understand politics, man. It’s not a glee club or a tea party. You’ve got to use the weapons that you can think up, and he’s been right so far. The decision not to take public funds, that was correct because it didn’t limit him in his monies. His decision to use the Biden thing and then to put Hillary and them outside of the inner circle, that was correct. So we’ll see.
But, with Rodney that’s just part of the kind of intellectual legacy of the Pan-Africanist movement. I mean, when you have people like C. L. R. James and Rodney and Carmichael, as well as Malcolm and people like that, you have to see that as the intellectual legacy that you can borrow and use anytime you want to.
Well, that’s what I’m saying; the whole Pan-Africanist struggle in essence is for what—self-determination, equal rights. Wherever in the world, it’s the same thing. The so-called focus of any revolutionary is the seizure of power. Not to see Obama related to that is not to understand the movement. You see, to have a black dude as the president of the United States is important. How we utilize that, that’s on you. That’s on us. But he obviously knows what he’s doing. The question is, do we know what we are doing?
And I wish Walter Rodney was alive so he could dig this. I know it would crack him up, you know. Very funny. Stokely, I know, he would laugh and laugh. Because, ultimately, what it is, what these people don’t understand is that that boy is smart. And they don’t know about black people. There are a million of us around this planet who are as smart as Obama and who know exactly what this is and what needs to be done to it. Walter Rodney’s thing about “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” is a textbook, a primer to learning about colonialism and international oppression. And so, we have to see from that how monopoly capitalism underdevelops the Afro-American community, the Latino community, and the Caribbean community, and now, the United States is multinational, multicultural. There are so many Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Jamaicans, and Haitians in this town, in New York, it’s incredible. You can’t be anywhere, at least in the Northeast where I live, that’s not definitely multinational, multicultural. And that’s part of the weight we bring to this now. It’s not just us anymore. It’s not just black Americans anymore. All these people are exploited, you see."