We are publishing a transcript of Dr. Anthony Monteiro’s opening remarks from the Saturday Free School’s June 24, 2023 session on Assessing Our Intercivilizational Festival & Discussing 2024 Election. The Free School meets every Saturday at 10:30 AM, and is streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.
This is a topic that we had broached a couple of weeks ago, especially commenting upon Cornel West introducing himself as a candidate for president in the 2024 election. At that time he had announced himself as a candidate of, what now I understand it, the MPP or a Movement for People’s Party. Since then, he has shifted towards the Green Party and we said, in effect, that you could not look at his candidacy separate from the candidacies of Donald Trump and RFK, that the three of them constituted, in political terms, a triad of opposition. And for Cornel to make sense of himself and his candidacy, he would have to see the connectedness of what he is doing with these other movements, and in fact he would have to acknowledge, which he has not yet done, that the Robert Kennedy Jr. candidacy is igniting a movement, as the Donald Trump presidency, and now candidacy of 2024, is igniting a movement. For Cornel West to be successful, he has to understand what he is doing as part of a movement, a political movement of the discontented.
I think this is very important. That the discontented are now launching movements all over this country, but movements that are political. Anyone who wants to demean or trivialize the political essence of these movements of the discontented do it not in order to clarify the path forward in struggle but to obscure it. Now, without going into a lot of things, I think we can go right to the point of trying to deconstruct and understand several of Cornel West’s supporters.
Well, let me just say before I get to them, that Cornel West cannot see this run for presidency in the same way, and taking on the same form, as his public lectures and public speeches. He has entered into a new arena, an arena of struggle, an arena where contesting class and ideological forces are colliding. This is qualitatively different than giving a lecture at a university or in a public space. It is qualitatively different. Once you throw your hat into the ring of the political struggle, even in its electoral form, at this time, you are entering into an intense struggle unlike anything that has occurred in the history of this country. Cornel has not yet fully absorbed that. Cornel has been involved in electoral politics at the national and presidential level for some time, going back to his support in the 2000 Democratic presidential primary of Bill Bradley, who was a senator from New Jersey, and then going forward to his well-publicized support for Bernie Sanders, and Ralph Nader in an earlier time. Later on he voted for various Green Party candidates and for Democratic Party candidates including in the 2020 election for Joe Biden. So he knows something about electoral politics, at least as his throwing support to various candidates in the Democratic Party or in the Green Party. But I don’t think he has completely processed the difference between supporting a candidate and being a candidate, and secondly being a candidate at this moment of deep political crisis.
This is going to require a steep learning curve on Cornel’s part and he is going to have to learn on the job. One of the things he’s going to have to learn is that general phrases and even sloganizing is not what people are looking for in candidates at this time. For example, the claim that “Vladimir Putin is a gangster.” Well besides the fact that we have no evidence of that, and it’s more of a smear job that gives aid and comfort to the American war-makers, it turns a lot of Americans off and it clarifies nothing. Or to claim that “Russia is an empire,” those kinds of general phrases and concepts are not what will cut mustard in this crisis.
I understand Cornel being wed to the Palestinian struggle and there’s no problem with that, but to set it up as a litmus test for RFK Jr., and say that, “Since he does not have my position on the Palestinians, that cancels or disqualifies him as a progressive candidate,” irrespective of his position on peace with Russia and with China and with Iran and with Cuba. Not to mention the fact that in the throes of this ideological political struggle, who is to say that RFK’s position, on the two-state solution or one-state solution to resolve the Palestinian question, which is also an Israeli question, won’t change, or won’t develop. Or, the claim that Cornel makes that Xi Jinping is an authoritarian dictator and that China is an empire. These are general slogans or general phrases. “Russia is an empire” – but no military bases outside Russia. “China is an empire” – but the last time I looked they had one military facility outside of China. And to say then that the war in Ukraine is a matter of two empires colliding, not a matter of U.S. militarism and the attempt to bring down the Russian government or to force it to surrender to Western interests and what the consequences of that are.
You just can’t continue that way, especially when Trump and RFK have specific proposals on this matter. The other thing is both RFK and Trump have attacked the security state, in particular the intelligence services and the FBI, CIA, and National [Security] Agency and the other networks and institutions in this architecture which has reduced civil rights and civil liberties and democracy in this country to a hollow claim. In other words, given the overarching power of the deep state, of the security state, how can you call this a democracy? RFK and Trump have attacked this in the name of democracy, freedom of speech, civil liberties, and so on. Cornel has not.
Now, that does not nullify the potentiality of his candidacy. He must grow. He must evolve. He must become more sophisticated, and part of that growth would be listening to the people. If you would have asked me, I would say, at this point, just listening to Cornel’s rhetoric, he is behind the people. Especially that fifty, maybe more, percent of the American people who say that the ruling elite should not be allowed to continue to govern and rule the American people – and that’s what they are saying.
I think part of the problem, also, are some of Cornel West’s advisers. In particular recently listening to an interview with Chris Hedges, who is a nihilist and a cynic. Who proceeds from the concept of the idea that we are all doomed: “The people do not have the capacity to reverse the trajectory of American imperialism and the authoritarian forces that rule this country.” He sees Cornel West’s campaign as an effort to announce to the people that, “You all have failed, that there is no hope, and just get ready for the hell and the doom that awaits you.” Well I don’t know too many people who want to hear that.
The other thing is that Chris Hedges represents a type of American intellectual who comes out of the establishment. As you know, Chris Hedges was a journalist for The New York Times for over 20 years reporting from the Middle East and South America and even in Europe, especially during the Kosovo wars and the bombing of Yugoslavia by the United States. When he became a “leftist” is not clear, if he is even a leftist. But he leaves The New York Times for reasons I’m not yet clear about, and he becomes a public intellectual. He writes books and speaks. But, as far as I can see, there is no history of involvement or commitment to any movement for social or political change in the country including the Civil Rights and Black Freedom movements. I don’t know what his relationship was to the anti-Vietnam War movement. I don’t know what he did before the 2000s, when he appears as a public intellectual. But whatever that was, the conclusions that he has drawn are so out of step with what is possible and what the American people are looking for politically and ideologically; that to have him be a major advisor to Cornel West to me suggests that Cornel West’s presidential project is doomed to failure and disappointment especially for Cornel West. He is still not the Green Party candidate, they have a nominating process and we won’t know whether he is the candidate until the summer of 2024. So he’s speaking as an aspirant to the nomination of the Green Party. He still doesn’t have that.
Now given the instability and uncertainty of the Green Party and Cornel West’s relationship to it and a whole number of other things, there is no guarantee that Cornel will continue to be the candidate even going into 2024. We have no guarantee of that. And then with people like Chris Hedges advising him and giving him political and ideological framing of his project, he might encounter opposition that is so great that he might just withdraw. And I see that as a possibility.
Then of course I was reading a short essay by Norman Finkelstein where Finkelstein is addressing the question of “Will Cornel West be a spoiler?” In other words, will Cornel West throw the election to Trump? Which is another way of asking in Finkelstein’s and in Hedges’ thinking: Will Cornel West assist a “neo-fascist,” i.e. Trump, in winning the election? So Hedges believes that we can’t stop fascism – what he calls fascism, that is Trump. He says, “I fight not because I think I will win, I fight because I must.” It sounds good, but where was all your fight all this time? But that’s another question.
But for Finkelstein the question becomes, and this is hypothetical: let us say that Cornel running as the Green Party’s candidate leading up to the election, has 20% of the electorate voting for him. Now that’s a wild speculative claim. If Cornel can get 2% of the voting population voting for him, that will be a tremendous achievement. But Finkelstein says let’s say it’s 20% and that Biden is losing, and the presumption is that Biden is the candidate. Biden is losing, let us say a month out from the election in 2024. What should Cornel West do? Well Finkelstein says that Cornel West should go to Biden’s people and say that, “Here are my demands for me to throw my support to you and these are non-negotiable and these demands are Medicare-for-all, doubling the minimum wage, and an investment in infrastructure.” Then Finkelstein says, well Biden being desperate will say, “Yes, I will go along with all of those things,” but then after the election, Biden will not fulfill any of it and then Cornel West should call upon the people to take to the streets (and this is Finklestein) as was the case in the Civil Rights Movement. Well the whole thing is wild speculation. Cornel West has never called anybody into the street and there’s no evidence that his merely saying that we should take to the street will eventuate in people doing just that.
What Finkelstein is saying, and this is the key thing. Let us say that Cornel runs up until the election and has 1% or 2% of the vote, according to polls. What they’re saying, and this includes Hedges, is that really Cornel’s presidential bid is to push Biden to the left, or the Democrats to the left, and after that has been achieved in a close election, he will drop out and support Biden, which would be something similar to what Bernie Sanders would do. That’s a Bernie Sanders move: run until you can’t, until it is obvious they are not going to let you win and then support the people who rigged the system against you and are the greatest warmongers and anti-working class forces that we’ve seen. And so you go to them, betraying all of those people who supported you and voted for you.
The alternative for Cornel – and I don’t know that he is emotionally or intellectually and politically able to make this move – to see himself as part of the people, that great coalition of the discontented, that over 50% of the American people – most of whom thus far vote for Trump. So the question for Cornel, and it is a moral, political and ideological question: are they fascist? Or do they represent a populist movement of discontent? Let us take RFK, the same kind of populism and discontent. Do you see your candidacy as one with his? Is there a common fabric, a common purpose? Then the final question, I guess, is this question of fascism. Either you use it accurately or you need to take it out of your vocabulary. You can’t keep going around here calling everybody you don’t like a neo-fascist without any understanding of it. I mean, what the hell are you talking about? Are you talking about 1920s Italy where the word fascism comes from? Or are you talking about the Nazi party in Germany? And if you’re talking about either of them, they were movements to seize power. The most right-wing, authoritarian, war-like forces in American society already have achieved power. According to Robert F. Kennedy, and he’s accurate here, the great coup against democracy, the coup d’etat against democracy, took place in the 1960s, with the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and others. He considers that accurately. A coup d’etat of the deep state against democracy.
The other iterations of this were moments in the consolidation of the authoritarian wing of the ruling class, and it has been consolidated with the complicity of both the Democratic and Republican Parties and that is the political history of the United States from the 1960s up till today. Donald Trump is not leading a fascist movement. If you want to use the word fascist, I think this is something way bigger and more dangerous than the Nazis in Germany or the fascists in Italy. Power was already taken, democracy has already been compromised. If you point the finger to Trump you are obscuring who the actual anti-democrats are. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton, just to name a few in the Democratic Party, have always served the interests of this deep authoritarian state. Not Trump, who is attacking them. Not RFK, who is attacking them.
The stakes are high. If you enter into this struggle at this time Cornel, it must be mature, it must be well thought-out and you must seek alliances. Chris Hedges talks about how Cornel is running as a Green Party candidate, but “we’re going to have a united front.” A united front of who? Socialist Alternative? The Revolutionary Communist Party and a couple of other unknown sectarian groups? You call that a united front? Or are you going to go to the people? People whose views you might not always agree with – whose lives, the way they live, you don’t know about. You don’t know nothing about rural Pennsylvania. You don’t know anything about Kensington in Philadelphia. So I’m just saying, and I think I’ll just end on this. The crisis demands more of all of us, and certainly [more] of Cornel West, than he, up to this point, shows a capacity to rise to. Can he do it? And does the language that he has used over all of these years meet the ideological challenges of this time?
Avant-Garde: A Journal of Peace, Democracy, and Science 
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