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Books by Wilson
Jeremiah Moses
Golden Age of Black Nationalism,
1850-1925 (1988) /
The Wings of Ethiopia
(1990)
Alexander
Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent
(1992) /
Destiny & Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898
(1992)
Black
Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary
Manipulations of a Religious Myth (1993)
Liberian Dreams: Back-to-Africa
Narratives from the 1850s
/
Afrotopia: The Roots of African American
Popular History
(2002)
Creative Conflict in African American Thought (2004)
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A
Time for Peace—A Time for War
By
Wilson J. Moses
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One of Barack Obama’s
first acts as president was to say that
Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon
after, he said that the Israeli settlements
must go. They expanded. . . . President
Obama, who had traveled far already from his
origins when he reinstituted military
tribunals and defended the treatment of
Bradley Manning, is now seen to have cast
his lot with a long history of secret wars
and overthrows and kinetic military
operations extending back to Iran in 1953,
Guatemala in 1954, Vietnam in 1963, and
Nicaragua in 1984.—David
Bromwich, Yale Professor, expert on
Political Writing |
What continues to
amaze me is that anyone can be surprised by those
actions of the President that Professor Bromwich
catalogues. Those voters who thought that Obama would
be able to deliver much-needed legislation on socialized
medicine were perhaps too optimistic. But those who
thought he could or would modify the thrust of American
foreign policy, especially Middle East policy, were
completely unrealistic and naive.
Bromwich is,
perhaps, too young to have clear memories of Lyndon B.
Johnson. I voted for Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater
out of the White House, supposing Johnson would be a
lesser warmonger than Goldwater. Maybe he was.
Goldwater had promised to use tactical nukes. All I can
say with certainty is what actually happened. Johnson
got 60,000 American soldiers killed. I have boycotted
most elections since 1964, and I voted for Obama only
because I thought it might be symbolically significant
to have an American mulatto in such an historically
unique position on the world stage.
I therefore
regarded with somewhat mitigated bafflement the
enthusiastic crowd that greeted Obama in Berlin in
2008. Both the "Berliners" and the world press seemed
to see a Kennedy reincarnation in Obama. I have
difficulty understanding what was so important about
Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. I suppose the
Germans found Kennedy's malapropism heart-warming, as
they often do my own frequent corruptions of German
idiom and syntax. Both Kennedy and Reagan earned places
in Bartlett's Quotations with their Berlin
speeches that have been tiresomely repeated by mindless
hagiographers. Actually these were two empty statements
by the two most overrated of American presidents.
There was a better
occasion, on which for Obama to usefully (or cynically)
exploit the Kennedy myth and symbolism; that was when he
was offered the Nobel Peace Prize. With strategic
humility he might have declined the Nobel Prize,
referencing Kennedy and recycling Kennedy's famous
citation of Ecclesiastes: "There is a time for peace
and a time for war." Think of how useful
he would find those words at this moment, invoking
simultaneously the Bible and the martyred Kennedy. Just
thinking about it gives me goose-bumps!
4 April 2011
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Wilson Moses Remembers Manning Marable
How tragic, and yet
how beautiful, that Manning Marable should leave us at
this moment of heroic triumph. He has had few rivals
and no scholar has been more important. His book How
Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America was
celebrated by myself and others as the brilliant and
widely heralded complement to the paradigm of his
colleague Walter Rodney, who monumentally demonstrated
the European underdevelopment of Africa. When I taught
as a guest professor at the Free University of Berlin
in1984, I was gratified to learn that Marable's work The
Second Reconstruction in Black America had
gained him the respect of leftist intellectuals
internationally.
Death comes to us
all, and few of us welcome its coming, but some of us
hope that it will arrive when our powers are intact, and
we are satisfied with the results of our labors. At
the moment of his departure, Manning Marable's scholarly
triumphs were universally acclaimed. The publication
of his definitive biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is not
only destined to transform our perception of its
subject; it will force us into a more critical and
realistic perception of black nationalism in the modern
world.
Marable was a
principal shaper of the Pan-African methodology in
scholarship, and a model citizen of the borderless
Republic of Letters. His legacy will be his example of
dedication to the pursuit of truth, wherever that
pursuit may lead.
2 April 2011
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Obama’s Libyan Choices
By
Wilson J. Moses
Dear Friends and Relatives,
Years ago, when I
was an undergraduate English major, I encountered the
following definition: “Tragedy consists in a situation
where a protagonist’s choices are limited to only two
alternatives, both of which are unacceptable.”
With time being of
the essence, and the fall of the last bastion of the
Libyan rebels impending, Obama had the choices of either
standing still to witness a possible humanitarian
disaster or staging an at least symbolic military
intervention.
Pressured by
humanitarian interventionists on the left, militarists
on the right, and a silent cast of cynical oil
merchants, Obama initially imposed a no-fly zone over
Libya, bombed several tank columns and a few military
truck convoys, and called on Gaddafi to resign his
presidency.
Liberals felt
obliged to defend Obama, despite their opposition to
American involvement in yet another war in the Muslim
world. But some liberals are now calling for Obama to
arm the Rebels. Leftists, however, attacked Obama for
allowing himself to be pressured into military action by
the Right. One faction of Afrocentrists responded with
outrage, for some (but not all Afrocentrists) view
Gaddafi as an African, and are inclined to defend him as
an African brother. This segment of Afrocentrists apparently
preferred complete non-interventionism, which may have
been correct. Other Afrocentists are cynical about
Gaddafi, pointing out the history of Arab involvement in
the slave trade and in East African plantation slavery.
The Republican
Party responded cynically and opportunistically. They
have been aggressively wishy-washy, advising
interventionism one day, and non-interventionism the
next. They call for firmness of action while
themselves flipping, flopping, vacillating and
equivocating. Within the space of every news-cycle the
Republicans have been consistently inconsistent, several
times condemning the “Obama Doctrine,” and several times
accusing Obama of having no doctrine.
The fact is that no
American knows how to respond to the crisis in Libya,
because there is little reliable information about the
cast of characters or about the understudies, waiting in
the wings. Nobody knows what to expect when
Gaddafi is
replaced at whatever time or by whatever means.
Obama was elected
to be president of the United States, which means always
putting American interests first. But what are American
interests in the long run or in the short run? That is
largely up to the President of the United States to
decide. When Obama asserts that it will serve American
interests for
Gaddafi to be removed, he is referring to
the diverse and competing interests of the American
business and industrial master classes. Thus his
position is as unavoidably contradictory and illogical
as was the position of James Madison, when he launched
the ill-advised and catastrophic war of 1812.
American energy
needs are currently being debated in an atmosphere
polluted by emissions from Fukushima Daiichi, and by the
persistent lies and cover-ups of the international
energy cartels. We have no reliable information
concerning the energy resources of the United States,
whether this involves natural gas, petroleum, or nuclear
power. Everything is contaminated by the lies of the
energy industries, and the financiers who speculate on
energy futures. And let’s not forget the difference
between business and industry; these are distinct,
albeit overlapping concepts, which few people have
contemplated, thanks to the deliberate fogginess of the
terminology.
One thing is
crystal clear, however. Regardless of who occupies the
White House, United States policy will inevitably be
determined by the economic interests of the masters'—or
politicians' perceptions of the masters' interests.
In 1913,
Charles
Beard, the greatest of all American historians told the
simple truth about the nature of the Constitution of the
United States; it was intended to defend the interests
of an economic elite.
James Madison, the “Father of
the Constitution,” bluntly stated that the purpose of
the Constitution is to negotiate the interests of the
propertied classes, that is, the classes that Adam Smith
refers to as, “the masters.”
The executive
responsibility of the President of the United States is
by definition, the advancement of the interests of the
propertied master-class. Only a Tea-Party populist
could be so naive as to think otherwise.
31 March 2011
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The Reagan Doctrine of National Suicide
/Open
Letter to President Barack Obama
A Time for
Peace: A Time for War
/
Obama’s Libyan Choices
The Country We Believe In
(Obama)
/
Tea
Party,
Schmee
Party
(Moses)
Cornel West and the fight against
injustice /
Cornel West Calls Out Barack Obama
Rehabilitating U.S. Military Intervention in the Age
of Obama
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 |
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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The Predator State: How Conservatives
Abandoned the Free Market, and Why Liberals
Should Too
By
James K. Galbraith
Galbraith, noted economist and son of the
late economist
John Kenneth Galbraith, offers his views on the gap
between conservative ideology and its use
and abuse to cover up the George W. Bush
administration’s Predator State, which takes
advantage of the public sector and
undermines public institutions for private
profit. Galbraith reports that although most
academics have abandoned conservative
principles such as free trade, deregulation,
and tax cuts for the wealthy, politicians
from both parties continue to advance
policies that, in reality, have turned
regulatory agencies over to business
lobbies, allowed the subprime mortgage
foreclosures and banking crisis, and created
Medicare’s drug plan, which legislates
monopoly pricing for drug companies. |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 3 April 2011
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