When Princeton Professor Cornel West (shown, in suit) was arrested on Monday for blocking the entrance to the Thomas F. Eagleton Federal Courthouse in St. Louis, not far from Ferguson where protesters turned violent Sunday night and early Monday morning, the media bent over backwards to keep from exposing his radical Marxist background. Celebrating what the media called a “national day of civil disobedience,” West was referred to by CNN as a “scholar,” a “civil rights activist,” and an “intellectual” while the Associated Press limited its descriptors to just “scholar” and “civil rights activist.” USA Today, in its reporting of the incident, called West an “author” and “activist” and let it go at that.
To be better informed, however, one must look beyond the mainstream media to learn what the Princeton professor is really all about. Educated at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Union Theological Seminary, West is a professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton. Many of his books are required reading in college classes across the country, and he claims close relationships with anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and President Obama’s favorite preacher, the incendiary Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
He calls himself a “progressive socialist” and has written that “Marxist thought is an indispensable tradition for freedom fighters” like himself.
West considers the United States a “racist patriarchal” nation where “white supremacy” continues to oppress blacks:
White America has been historically weak-willed in ensuring racial justice and has continued to resist fully accepting the humanity of blacks…. [This has resulted in blacks who are a] degraded and oppressed people hungry for identity, meaning, and self-worth…. It goes without saying that a profound hatred of African people … sits at the center of American civilization.
Naturally, West is a good friend of President Obama, who, as presidential candidate in 2008, named him to his campaign’s Black Advisory Council.
West appears to have an agenda much more far-reaching than just wanting to celebrate a “day of disobedience.” From his own mouth come words that expound his agenda: “In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people’s needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism.”
And this: “We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation — and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately.”
And this: “Very much like alcoholism, drug addiction or racism, patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.”
And this: “Like [Martin Luther] King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.”
And finally, this: “The high visibility of Jews in the upper reaches of the academy, journalism, the entertainment industry, and the professions … is viewed less as a result of hard work and success fairly won and more as a matter of favoritism and nepotism among Jews.”
Photo: AP Images
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics.
