Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The cultural sources of black radicalism

Which tactics are appropriate for today’s rebellions can only be determined by a strategic and organizational analysis along the lines [Marin Luther] King proposed, and not according to the moral judgment which he subordinated to that analysis. In fact, with news that Los Angeles is considering cuts in police department funding, Minneapolis city council members openly considering disbanding the police force, and curfews being lifted in several cities, there are good reasons to believe that the current riots are strategically effective. “No justice, no peace,” from King’s vantage point, means that there is no positive peace without justice. Therefore in the context of injustice, there can be no negative peace, in the sense that there must be tension, there must be a “disturbance of the peace” in order to have the presence of justice. Today, when protestors shout “no justice, no peace,” we should understand this as a political principle which takes primacy over the abstract conceptio

“It is worth noting,” [Martin Luther] King said, “that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely. … Our irrational obsessive anti-communism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking.” Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx (Click on Free view when subscription message pops up)

Neoliberal revisionists are sanatizing/sterilizing Martin Luther King Jr.'s radical legacy and portraying him as a moderate. "In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives." Martin Luther King Jr. was radical