Suspension of disbelief: An interview with Glen Ford about barack obama

March 4, 2009

(There’s an old saying in baseball: "You can’t tell the players without a scorecard. Many of the so-called political "left" spout their views, many of which are half-baked, without knowing the players. For instance, ask a leftist who is the Obama-appointed UN Ambassador, and few will know either the person or her past. The same goes with many other Obama appointees. Currently, Obama is holding a high acceptance rate, particularly from people who espouse their views to be left-of-center. Most, however, don’t know Obama’s voting record in the U.S. Senate or the careers of the people whom Obama has appointed.

However, Glen Ford, a journalist with many years of experience and who is executive editor of Black Agenda Report, not only has a scorecard, but he scrutinizes the players in a comprehensive manner. His publication recently ran an article about a letter titled "Hands Off Zimbabwe." People were urged sign it to support Zimbabwe’s independence and to tell Western governments to stop intervening in Zimbabwe’s affairs. I begin the interview with Ford by discussing the letter and the quandary of some of the signers of the document.)

ML: I’m going to start with a quote from your recent article: "Obama supporters make a great noise about imperialists in general while pledging undying solidarity in the struggle against such criminals, yet in their daily practice, labor mightily to absolve President Obama of culpability for his crimes." How did you come to that conclusion?

GF: It was quite simple. I was attracted to the petition in calling for an end to sanctions against Zimbabwe, hands off Zimbabwe, no intervention in Zimbabwe. I was attracted to the letter itself. Then I looked at the signers and I recognized five people with whom I had been debating recently about Barack Obama and his policies. And there they were. These were Barack Obama supporters. I’m not just talking about people who just tended to give the new regime a break, but some of whom behaved as if Barack Obama was the second or third coming, or the very last coming. The final coming.

It was just amazing to see those names of those Obama worshippers juxtaposed with a letter that charged that those who have initiated sanctions against Zimbabwe are war criminals. The letter was fine, it was the signers who were all wrapped up in contradictions.

Zimbabwe is just one part of the vast contradiction. Within that letter, the signers talk about the people of Zimbabwe and the people of the United States facing a common enemy and they point the finger at the bankers, etc. Well, who is in bed with the bankers? This administration, that surrounds itself with bankers. Bankers are the crafters of this administration’s economic policy. This administration seems to exist for the purpose of resuscitating the investment banking class.

Yet these black Obama supporters have the nerve to say that they are in solidarity with everybody who is being oppressed by the banks. It makes no sense. It’s maddening, in fact.

ML: How do they explain themselves when you confront them with this?

GF: They don’t. That is what is so frustrating. They will not explain themselves. At the last debate in December, in Harlem, some of them were saying, "Black people have spoken." And that was it. "Black people have spoken," that is Obama got 94% of the black vote, so therefore, "Shut up."

They refuse to do an analysis because they know. I’m sure they know that they show up badly in their own analysis. If they were honest, they would say that. But, if they were honest they wouldn’t have had those contradictory views in the first place.

Our great frustration was that they would not put forward a coherent argument. That’s one of the reasons, quite frankly, that we wrote that article … To call them out and we’re going to continue to call them out by name.

We are going to have those debates on both coasts. We are daring them to come. They can come or not come, but we are going to talk about these issues. They can punk out if they choose, or they can arrive and defend their positions.

ML: How much of Obama was created by his followers and how much is actually a con by his changing views? For instance, all these progressives said, "Obama is great for this and that," and I said he wasn’t. I said, "Look at his voting record." I have not met a leftist or progressive, or whoever, who knew the answer to this question: " Did you know that Obama supports the death penalty?" The responses were, "Really?" That’s one of the key issues for the left. How can such a blatant thing like that pass them by? How much was it Obama’s supporters not wanting to know the truth and how much of it was Obama himself? Did he know this and did he use this denial astutely in his campaign?

GF: He’s a very clever guy. I think we ought to really separate his black support from his progressive white support. People can get to the same place from very different roads. Obama knew very well that at the end of the process, that if he got far enough along in the process to become "viable," he knew very well that he was going to get the vast majority of the black vote. I’m sure he was clever enough to know that.

Certainly, Bruce Dixon, my managing editor, and I did back in 2003 when we first began to scrutinize Obama. It was clear that his senatorial campaign, as it was evolving, made the assumption that he would get the black vote, and, therefore, made no real outreach to it. It was the correct assumption. He was not required by anyone to make any substantive outreach to black folks. That is to address, up until this campaign, a perennial demand for a Marshall Plan for the inner cities. He has never made a real endorsement of affirmative action. Not a real endorsement. Always a hedged one.

The period in the presidential campaign leading up to South Carolina was quite ugly because it was not about substance. It was about labeling the Clinton campaign as racist. In fact, the Clinton campaign deserved that label on occasion. It didn’t have anything to do with urban issues or historical black issues. The fact that these two were essentially identical meant that we didn’t have a substantive discussion on anything in the latter part of the campaign.

ML: Didn’t we hear Obama consistently mention God and how many times he goes to church during the campaign?

GF: That’s right. That’s what happens when you get two Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) candidates running against each other. There’s no light between them. The only difference was race.

ML: How about the supporters in the black community and in the leftist community who praised him immensely? Some are now saying, "We didn’t know he’d do this."

GF: They made it all up. On the black side, one of the signers of that Zimbabwe letter, Dr. James McIntosh, told black audiences that Obama is "winking at them." And he actually believes this. He actually imagines as Obama makes these statements that are centrist, or right-wing, that Obama is simultaneously winking at black folks, meaning, "I have to do this, but my heart is with you. Don’t worry about it, it’s going to come out all right in the end."

ML: I’ve heard the same excuse from many people: "He has to do this to get elected."

GF: Now he is elected. Now why is he doing it? They’ll keep that up and then they’ll say, "Well, watch what he does in his second term when he doesn’t worry about getting re-elected. Then you’ll see the real Obama." I remember when there were certain elements saying that about Clarence Thomas. Despite all the evidence that he really was what he seemed to be, a reactionary tool of the worst elements of the right in this country, once he got that lifetime job that he could not be fired from, some black folks said, "We’ll see the real Clarence Thomas." Certainly if there were some black folks who could believe that with a specimen as vile as Clarence Thomas, there would be a much larger group who believe its own wishfulness with a specimen as attractive and clever as Barack Obama.

ML: We heard the same about Bill Clinton: "Once he gets in office, he’s going to change." He did change. He went further to the right.

GF: Obama goes steadily further to the right every day. Although he didn’t have to step too far. Bruce Dixon and I first zeroed in on Barack Obama in June 2003. Two things happened in the first week of June. I was going through my perusal of the membership list of the Democratic Leadership Council to check and see what new black recruits they’d gathered. Whose name do I see but Barack Obama’s? I called Bruce Dixon, who was in Atlanta. I was eager to give him this news and he said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’ve got something to tell you." He told me that he just went to Barack Obama’s campaign website and Obama had taken down his famous anti-war speech of October. Of course, we know what that meant. These things don’t just happen by accident. So, he backed off his anti-war speech by taking it off his website. Remember, by this time, Bush had announced "Mission Accomplished." The polls now switched because Americans love a war they think they’ve won. The war was now popular and he took the anti-war speech off his website and the DLC was bragging that he was a member.

Certainly, we had to challenge him on this. Bruce, having been to Obama’s wedding and worked with him on the 1992 massive voter registration campaign, had his number. We called him and we confronted him At first, he denied that taking the speech off the website meant a change of heart on his part. He just said it was routine. We knew that was a lie. Then he denied that he knew that the Democratic Leadership Council had put his name on their list and he said that he wasn’t a member. We urged him to have them take it off immediately. He actually hemmed and hawed. It took two or three weeks for him to finally request that they do take his name off. We went back and forth with him on the phone. He also sent us two or three letters, which we published. One can go to the archives of Black Commentator and read them.

After about three weeks of this, we gave Obama a test. We decided that he wasn’t being straight with us about his views on the war or his affiliation with the DLC, but we couldn’t prove it, so, why don’t we give him a test? We called it a bright line test. We presented him with three questions: If he is elected to the senate will he introduce legislation for universal healthcare. Two, to withdraw immediately from Iraq and three, to withdraw from NAFTA. If he answered these questions correctly, then he shouldn’t be in the DLC. If he answered them incorrectly, he ought to be in the DLC. That was our bright line test. He actually flunked the test with sleazy, slimy, dodgy, hemming and hawing answers, but, I gave him a passing grade because we didn’t want to seem to be the crabs in the barrel, holding the brother down. We rationalized it by saying, "Let’s see how the campaign progresses." He hadn’t even won the Democratic nomination for the senate. Actually, we punked out on him. That’s a great admission on our part. Not too long after, as he kept going further and further to the right, we finally did change our ways and behaved like real reporters and real citizens of the left and did an honest analysis of him. But most people on the left never did.

ML: They didn’t know how he voted and what he stood for in the Senate.

GF: They didn’t want to know.

He called the war in Iraq "dumb." He made it quite clear that he was not against war. Certainly, he does not admit that the U.S. is an imperialist power. He just thought it was a dumb war. Give him the war and he’ll do something smart with it. And that’s what he thinks he’s doing now.

ML: How do you see the militarizing of the U.S. culture? Today, kids dress in military camouflage. The San Diego Padres wear camouflage jerseys in some of their games. The playing of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch at major league parks has been replaced with "God Bless America."

GFI think we can see the surge of militarism from the first Gulf War from that long buildup of bombing, which made war look sanitized, look like a video game, look like what kids like to do. Certainly, there was no blood and gore and people screaming with their intestines all over the ground. That blended in quite well with television culture. I think that was kind of a watershed moment. It needs to be said at this point in the conversation there were five military public high schools in Chicago, put together under Barack Obama’s now Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, when he was superintendent of schools in Chicago. Five schools that are directly run in conjunction with the U.S. military. These are public schools. The military is not just in the schools, it has essential control of five of them. This is Obama’s great friend and education secretary.

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Part Two

Malcom Lagauche

March 10, 2009

(There’s an old saying in baseball: "You can’t tell the players without a scorecard. Many of the so-called political "left" spout their views, many of which are half-baked, without knowing the players. For instance, ask a leftist who is the Obama-appointed UN Ambassador, and few will know either the person or her past. The same goes with many other Obama appointees. Currently, Obama is holding a high acceptance rate, particularly from people who espouse their views to be left-of-center. Most don’t know Obama’s voting record in the U.S. Senate or the careers of the people whom Obama has appointed.

However, Glen Ford, a journalist with many years of experience and executive editor of Black Agenda Report, not only has a scorecard, but he scrutinizes the players in a comprehensive manner.)

ML: Let’s discuss the Faith based initiative. From its beginning to 2006, more than 1.7 billion dollars was given to groups to perform overseas missionary work. Since then, it is probably much more. I’ve seen that some of the money, along with imbedded spies, has gone to Iraq. I see the same for Africa as well. Why is everybody so complacent about this initiative: "It’s there. It does a lot of good." However, it is very damaging. If you look at some of the groups who took the money, they don’t need to have any qualified people on staff and they can discriminate in hiring. It’s been a cash cow for many people. Why isn’t the public even bringing the issue up?

GF: It should be understood that the Faith Based Initiative was part of a two-pronged strategy specifically for black America that came out of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is responsible for formulating much of George Bush’s domestic strategy and all of his African American-oriented strategy. As it related to black America, the Faith Based Initiatives were designed to buy off a segment of the black church; to split a portion of the black clergy from the historically social gospel black church, which had been politically dominant ever since Dr. King’s time. The theory was that if they could bribe enough of these more conservative and greedy-minded black preachers, they could create a counterpoint within the church which would diminish the influence of social gospel more progressive black preachers. That was the purpose.

I remember that there was substantial resistance in the black political community to the Faith Based Initiative because people knew that the purpose was to give the greedy preachers a bribe and turn them into Republicans. The Bush people were so uncool in dangling these millions in front of these greedy preachers that it was quite obvious what the game was. It was a game of bribery. However, once you have established these bribes and you’ve institutionalized them, it’s very difficult to withdraw them, It’s very difficult for a good congressperson who had opposed the Faith Based Initiative when Bush first introduced it, to now call loudly from Capitol Hill for those preachers, many of whom are in their districts, to be cut off from the spigot. It becomes a fait accompli. I’m speaking in terms of the great dilemma that it causes in black America where churches have outsize political influence relative to white America.

The Faith Based Initiative was created to split black folks to weaken the progressive social gospel among black people. In the same way, the subject of school vouchers is primarily a black issue, a black Republican issue, a wedge issue to split black voters and teachers’ unions. If you can split black voters and teachers’ unions, you’ve put a knife in the heart of the democratic mechanisms in urban America.

The Republicans understood how black voters revere education, how they see it as a singular tool of uplift in ways that white folks do not. To use that to turn black people against public education is the most cynical thing that I can possibly imagine. But that’s what they did.

The corporate right, the Republicans, put a great deal of money into creating in black America a movement for school vouchers where none has ever existed before. Nobody every marched for school vouchers. Nobody ever demonstrated for school vouchers. School vouchers were never on anybody’s list of demands. Historically, school vouchers were associated with segregation academies in the South. They were a tool of the enemy and certainly were not listed on any black person’s menu of demand. But, the Bradley Foundation, who funds many think tanks, realized that this was a potential wedge issue that could be very powerful. They put millions of dollars into creation of a vouchers organization totally populated with hand-picked blacks, or self-selected blacks, called the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

It was born in the Bradley Foundation, joined by other far right foundations, who created the organization, paid the salaries of the officers, paid for its coming-out party which cost about a million dollars, then paid for a nationwide political campaign announcing the Black Alliance for Educational Options political program. The whole bit was totally a creation of white corporate right-wing white folks. But they succeeded in creating the impression that there was grassroots black movement in favor of vouchers, where there had never been one in the past.

ML: You’re a big supporter of Cynthia McKinney. Over the past 20 years or so, there have been some very good people running as third party or minor party candidates. This is the first year it took me two days to find out how many votes McKinney and Ralph Nader received. The mainstream used to at least acknowledge the minor party presidential candidates the day after the election by publishing the number of votes received by all candidates. This year, the press did not even carry that. What is your idea of honest and decent people running either as independents or candidates of minor parties and what will their chances be in the future?

GF: I don’t see third party candidacies being worthwhile unless they are connected to movements. Elections provide an opportunity for an occasion in which the people are supposed to be addressing issues. Even the corporate media are a little bit more open to reporting on "left" ideas, if they’re connected to a candidacy. Ideally, you’d like to have your voice in the cacophony of voices during that little election period. But, it really doesn’t make much of a difference unless that’s part of an ongoing movement. So I supported Cynthia because I saw her campaign as an extension of a movement for peace and social justice, not just a campaign for president.

ML: In the past, Ralph Nader’s message of corporate interference in politics had an audience, although he came nowhere near winning the presidency. People also listened to him speak about safety in the workplace. Today, the media ignore him, as they ignored Cynthia McKinney, even though they both represented movements. When there is absolutely no publicity given movements that good minor party candidates bring forth, is it worth even running?

GF: It may be that the corporate media will further amend its own rules and totally ignore these candidates and if so, that may mean that there won’t be any rationale for spending that kind of time and money with a third party electoral candidacy. After all, if that’s the only good that it does, that it gives an opportunity that doesn’t usually exist to air a left analysis, if that can’t happen, then, why do it?

ML: Do we have a solution?

GF: I would like to have a progressive like Cynthia McKinney, specifically Cynthia McKinney, back in the Congress. I think that Cynthia McKinney in the Congress was a valuable asset for us. She did not accept the dictates of the powers that be on Capitol Hill. That is why the Congressional Black Caucus back-stabbed and turned their backs on her, rather than making solidarity with her when she was under such intense attack. It’s worthwhile having a Cynthia McKinney in office.

I think that it’s worthwhile to run candidates for offices that they will clearly not win if the election can serve as a megaphone that is not otherwise available for a left analysis. If helps the ongoing movement activities of the left to field a candidate, then go ahead and field one. If the corporate media is going to flat out ignore the left campaign, there may come a time when it’s not worth it. There may come a time when going into an electoral campaign mode actually amounts to taking a vacation from movement politics and therefore is counter-productive.

ML: For some reason, the minor parties take glee in stating that their candidates got 2% of the vote for a congressperson. They rarely look at the local offices that are up for grabs and actually have power. For instance, in my area, most planning groups are highly influenced by developers. In the 1990s, three groups had Green Party members (with no support from the national party) form a majority. Overnight, the developers lost their former unquestioned power. What do you think about leftist candidates running for offices such as school committees or planning groups?

GF: The right learned in the early 70s how they were going to make their big penetration and take over the Republican Party. But they started off with these school board elections because they saw that typically school board voter turnout is in single digits: eight or nine percent. That whole group, if well-organized, would take control of school boards.

ML: Any further comments.

GF: I sometimes think there is a great and cruel irony at work here in our recent history. At the very moment when I believe we can see, through the myths, the end of capitalism, as we have seen the death of the investment banks as we knew them, they are dead. They are zombies. All that might mean in terms of how long capitalism will maintain its edifice, at that very moment we get a Barack Obama. Such a clever man. Such an attractive candidate. And who appears to be an answer to African Americans’ historical dreams, then he arrives at this very juncture when the crack in capitalism is so evident, and as a result of his arrival, neutralizes the most consistently progressive group of citizens in the United States, black America, without whose activism there cannot be a viable progressive movement in the United States. In other words, at precisely the moment in history when we should be running as progressives, running through that crack in the wall of capitalism, we have been neutralized, and certainly we on the black side, and put to sleep by this singularly attractive, clever, and I think ultimately, dangerous, president

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If you want to read more of Glen Ford’s views, as well as those of an astute staff of writers who have researched matters thoroughly, go to www.blackagendareport.com. There is no fluff on the site, only well-presented articles written in an honest and thought-provoking manner.