Silence of the Lambs? Liberal Hypocrisy & the Complicity of the Left

Published in Issue 340 of The Black Commentator on September 3, 2009
Republished in worldproutassembly.org (2005-2011) on September 7, 2009
Republished in Born Black Magazine in November 2009
Republished in wrongkindofgreen.org under the name Flashback: Silence of the Lambs? Liberal Conspiracy & the Complicity of the Left on October 29, 2012

By Larry Pinkney

It’s time to stop pretending.

The deafening silence and hypocrisy of liberals and many so-called progressives, and the concomitant complicity by much of the left, in their tacit support for the criminal, smoke & mirror economic policies and ongoing war strategies of the Obama / Biden administration is absolutely indefensible. Moreover, those who espoused so-called “critical support” of the empire’s Barack Obama were intrinsically wrong a year ago and they are wrong now.

There will be no sorely needed single payer universal health care in this nation because fundamentally Barack Obama, and his administration, are pandering to the private profit oriented pharmaceutical and insurance company executives and their avaricious corporate cohorts. The needs and desires of the people be damned, as Barack Obama demonstrated by his reprehensible support for the outrageous bail-out of the gluttonous Wall Street robbers a few short months ago. No one should be surprised, but everyone should be incensed.

It is the very height of absurdity and hypocrisy to be gleeful about the Obama attorney general, Eric Holder’s, announcement that some kind of supposed limited review / investigation will be conducted into U.S. torture interrogations, in view of the fact that Barack Obama has himself has extended and in fact broadened the illegal, amoral, and self-defeating international U.S. program of kidnapping and torture, known as “rendition.” It’s time to stop pretending.

Even as innocent civilians continue to increasingly die, and body bags with the remains of dead soldiers steadily come back from the bloody U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, nothing has changed. Amazingly, some of the rhetoric is beginning to sound eerily similar to that of the previous administration. Going on a year into the Barack Obama presidency, essentially the same inane and insane justifications and policies of the G.W. Bush administration are being used now by Obama to continue the bloodletting that is being horribly paid for by the peoples of the aforementioned nations, and by the economically poor of this nation, who are the cannon fodder for Obama’s policies of continued U.S. empire abroad.

The corporate media of course continues to play its insidiously important role of distraction, obfuscation, omission, and disinformation. It acts essentially as the propaganda organ of the Obama administration, just as it did for the previous G.W. Bush administration.

One is reminded of the recent arrogantly contemptuous August 18th, 2009, remarks by ABC ‘news’ anchor Charles Gibson about Cindy Sheehan’s valiant planned action at Martha’s Vineyard to draw attention to the rising death tolls due to Barack Obama’s continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Gibson whimsically said “Enough already,” inferring that Obama should be unaccountable and politically untouchable, and that Cindy Sheehan should just go away. To Charles Gibson I say: “’Enough already’ of you and the insidious corporate media establishment of talking heads that you are a part of and represent!” Yes, enough already! Enough death, destruction, and subterfuge. Enough empire!

And by the way, where were the bulk of mealy-mouthed, hypocritical liberals and the god damn pious-assed left?!! They should have been there at Martha’s Vineyard standing massively with Cindy Sheehan, if not in physical presence, then at least with strong and uncompromising words of support. As a long time leftist myself, it is disgusting to witness this shameful complicity and collaboration with U.S. empire, especially by those who know better.

Then of course there are those, masquerading as so-called progressives, including the clever, closet-Zionist liberal Amy Goodman, of the Democracy Now show. That’s right, Amy Goodman, whose Democracy Now show gave regular and inordinately favorable coverage to the pro apartheid Zionist, militarist, Wall Street-backed candidacy of then presidential candidate Barack Obama; with relatively minimal coverage to the very important third party candidacies of Cynthia McKinney / Rosa Clemente and Ralph Nader / Matt Gonzalez. The Democracy Now show’s coverage of McKinney and Nader was pathetic. The historical McKinney and Nader candidacies and campaigns should have been enormously and consistently at the front and center, but instead were relegated to the side lines compared to Democracy Now’s coverage of the Wall Street-backed Obama. But this is how the foxy liberals play their game. In the Summer of 2007, I telephoned the Democracy Now Show in New York about the show’s bias in favor of Obama. When I asked the Democracy Now representative on the other end of the telephone line “why” Amy Goodman was giving such overwhelming time and coverage to the “pro-apartheid Zionist, militaristic, Wall Street-backed Barack Obama,” the Democracy Now representative told me that my question was “out of line” and somehow “disrespecting” Amy Goodman and then abruptly hung up on me. This prompted me to write and send a letter to Amy Goodman, which was and remains, unanswered by Goodman or the Democracy Now staff, though it was published elsewhere.

It is ridiculous to believe that liberals such as Amy Goodman and the producers of Democracy Now were unaware that then candidate Barack Obama was the Trojan Horse war candidate of the U.S. power elite. Liberals are adept at playing the game of two ends against the middle or bait and switch, and thereby fostering the de facto continuance of the status quo of empire. It is September, 2009, and this nation now has Barack Obama as head of the U.S. empire; with the U.S. wars continuing and expanded by him. And as previously mentioned, the illegal and outrageous program of kidnapping citizens from other nations, known as “rendition,” has also been extended and expanded by Barack Obama and his administration. So much for the bogus hope and change rhetoric. It’s time to stop pretending.

Last, but by no means least, is the stomach turning sell out by the black elite of the populous Black underclass in this nation. The quoted words of Chicago Green Party activist LeAlan Jones bear paying close attention: “The selflessness of  leaders like Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Harold Washington and Medgar Evers has produced selfishness within the elite African-American leadership….” As Chris Hedges insightfully wrote pertaining to the observations of author and historian Houston A. Baker Jr.: “Baker excoriates leading public intellectuals including Michael Eric Dyson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Shelby Steele, Yale law professor Stephen Carter and Manhattan Institute fellow John McWhorter, saying they pander to the powerful…These elite African-American figures, Baker argues, long ago placed personal gain and career advancement over the interests of the black majority…” Hedges elaborates by writing that “The most prominent faces of color, such as Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, mask an insidious new racism that, in essence, tells blacks they have enough, that progress has been made and that it is up to them to take advantage of what society offers them. And black politicians and intellectuals, including Obama and Gates, are the delivery systems for the message. We blame the victims, those for whom jobs and opportunities do not exist, while we orchestrate the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history.” Jones, Baker, and Hedges are absolutely correct. In fact, the black elite (working in conjunction with the white elite) are key linchpins for the deepening unemployment, economic oppression and disenfranchisement of the masses of everyday Black people, and indeed all economically oppressed and disenfranchised people. None of this is mere happenstance. It is ever so deliberate.

“Principles are not subservient to opportunism or political expediency, nor should they be. However, principles are the one thing that Barack Obama and his Democratic and Republican colleagues overwhelmingly lack.” [Reference ‘Barack Obama: The Empire Strikes Back,’ The Black Commentator, March 27, 2008.]

I know that some are uncomfortable with these observations. However, comfortable people do not make change, and real systemic change is precisely what this nation, and world must have. None of us should be comfortable with the empire’s status quo. None of us!

Onward sisters and brothers! Onward…

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)