Cornel West

His field is as a pragmatist philsopher and religious studies professor, so that's where he's actually a richer writer than on cultstud where I think he's a bit of a wash -- he articulates some decent sentiment about popular culture tho it tinges even by my standards on a sort of kneejerk populism meets nationalism, but then he doesn't follow through on the analysis since its not his area.

(this q. might be better on ILE by the way)

http://www.cornelwest.com/

We mustn't forget about the pain that all our right-wing brothers and sisters across america are feeling right now.

daaaaaamn........

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-exciting-black-scholar-ghost?utm_content=bufferd4fd7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

http://ak1.polyvoreimg.com/cgi/img-thing/size/l/tid/36640413.jpg

This is a well-written piece, but it is kind of hard to ascribe whole credibility to an argument that essentially reads as "I defend him up until the point that he turned on me, personally."

@jacobinmag
How Cornel West went from liberal media darling to pariah.

We live in an era in which Clinton — who proudly supported mass incarceration and the obliteration of welfare — declares that a social-democratic program of financial reform and single-payer health insurance “won’t end racism.” A recent WikiLeaks publication of internal Clinton campaign emails reveals another line they were testing out against Sanders: “Wall Street is not gunning down young African Americans or denying immigrants a path to citizenship.”

It’s a sentiment that would’ve bewildered civil rights veterans like A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr, John P. Davis, Bayard Rustin, and Lester Granger, all of whom were committed to social-democratic politics as a crucial means of putting racism on a path towards ultimate extinction. The tragedy of West isn’t that he’s “full of bitterness,” as his liberal detractors claim. It’s that the politics of West’s “black prophetic tradition,” try as he might to wield them for socialist ends, will today find their strongest, clearest articulation in the same old quest of “interpreting the drums” for a mostly white ruling class.

Earlier in the primary season, during an interview on the Real News Network, West directly called out the black elite — whom he calls “the lumpenbourgeoisie” — for abandoning “the black prophetic tradition” for “individual upward mobility” and the “formation of the black professional class.” As he put it, “Black folk for the most part became just extensions of a milquetoast neoliberal Democratic Party. But Adolph Reed and a host of others told this story many years ago. It’s becoming much more crystallized. We have to be willing to tell the truth no matter how unpopular it is.”

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/everybody-hates-cornel-west/

I thought everyone hated Cornel West for doing the Matrix movies instead of any academic work, then lambasting anyone who criticized him for trying to be famous instead of doing any work

White people doing that would just be profiled in People magazine.

I see this guy all the time. He comes into the store I work in and goes to the Starbucks I go to. Nice guy.

enjoyed the joe rogan podcast

all kinds of mayhem on fox news this week tho

"It is a new day," says @CornelWest of the beginning of the Biden presidency. "I’m just now suspicious of the capitulation to the neoliberal greed and lies and hatred, now that we’ve pushed back the neofascist forms of greed and lies and hatred." https://t.co/zuhqQhfBnU pic.twitter.com/xnnDwYMOmV

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 21, 2021

love this guy

he's a cool guy

He runs for President.

I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself - fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for… pic.twitter.com/u3NYGUbG1S

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 5, 2023

The People’s Party is the horseshoe theory front group associated with both tankies and Ron Paul zombies right?

I missed this one from West at the time.

Brother Bernie and Brother Trump are authentic human beings in stark contrast to their donor-driven opponents.

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) August 25, 2015

not entirely wrong tbfttl

People’s Party was created by Jimmy Dore iirc

i only interact with viborg to occasionally note that he's definitely not recovering

On a personal level, cornel west is the nicest and seemingly most genuine person I’ve ever met. The way he comports himself in public, like at the bookstore where I worked and got to know him as a customer, is how I strive to live. Sounds cringe but you would have to meet him to know what I am talking about.

Does this mean he should be president? Idk. Maybe.

I've always had the deepest respect for @CornelWest and I support a 3rd party run for POTUS. Happy Medicare for All is in his platform. He'll no doubt carry on much of Bernie's policy vision of a country that works for ALL not just the few.

But People's Party is an instant no… https://t.co/fOfzKxYQct

— The Bern Identity (@bern_identity) June 5, 2023

Peoples Party is a weird choice

Hm, i hadn’t heard of it. Too bad. I wish he would run a primary campaign against biden pushing medicare for all—carry the bernie torch. In our system that seems like the only way to move anything. Bernie’s gotten some concessions—his two runs were not for nothing.

i only interact with viborg to occasionally note that he's definitely not recovering

Map still doing his best to dumb down every thread he joins, nice. Taking the same dumb tack as the right wing shitposters on Twitter with his knee jerk personal attacks as he…actively defends Putin propagandists?

Countdown to map going full circle and stanning for Ron Paul. 3…2…1…

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/20/lfjm-f20.html

The ukraine situation is complicated. I imagine map has no affection for putin’s imperial ambitions nor his naked aggression against a sovereign country. However, flooding ukraine with guns to prolong the war as long as possible might not be the best thing in the long run, especially if it’s not yet clear what “victory” would look like to ukraine. Eventually there needs to be a negotiated peace.

This is what cornel west thinks too. He is not pro-russia he is anti-war.

There are all kinds of complications that come into this. The anti-imperialist left is often guilty of seeing all conflict as a vector for us interests, characterizing ukraine as the us’s pawn. I don’t think this is what is going on—ukraine is defending its sovereign territory. But when will it end and how can it end?

And when i was talking about “cancel culture” it was this kind of stuff—saying that a perhaps grouchy leftist is defending “putin propagandists.” Like why not just take him on his own terms and say the US anti-imperial left is myopic and fails to appreciate the right of self-determination of small countries, that not everything is about Us imperialism? That is a real argument.

I don’t know why you need to be Captain Save-a-map here but okay. I’ll assume the “grouchy leftist” here is Cornel West and not the mindlessly toxic troll.

Don’t really want to get lost in another endless discussion about how Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be brought to a close but the issue here is that by joining the People’s Party, West has taken up the mantle of the worst and most cynical of the Putin-sympathetic “anti-imperialist” left, those who are so lacking in principles that they ally themselves with the most cynical, dishonest and absolutely pro-corporate representatives of the right wing.

I like map.

And if that affiliation extends to actively defending him as he targets me with the laziest personal attacks against me it would seem to imply you don’t like me, okay thanks for clearing that up. I don’t think I’ve ever personally slighted you so it would appear your animus is based on our ideological differences.

Is treeship a mod? Should I just give up.

But wait…let’s talk about books. Here’s some relevant context.

Seems kinda sus to me pic.twitter.com/JaVk6Y27bz

— DoomerVonDoomington 🇺🇦 (@DoomerVon) June 6, 2023

I like you too. I didn’t understand map’s comment here. I do know that he is sometimes kinda prickly.

Ok that is weird. DeSantis is not a defender of the western canon and the enlightenment tradition, he is the enemy of these things.

Treeship: I also met Cornel West once. He called people (who were absent) "My Brother". Edward Said? "My Brother Edward!" I enjoyed his company and felt honoured to spend a little time talking with him.

The People's Party is a conservative and Christian-democratic political party in Spain. Don't know if West can technically run for president of Spain but it'd be pretty rad.

he's my American hero for calling that smug awful melt "A Rockefeller Republican in Blackface" and stating correctly that his fiscal policies were further to the right than Nixon's. Fuck yes, inject that angry political rhetoric into my veins. If he's offending some melts then good for him.

west is a talking head in a not-very-good coltrane doc from 2017-ish: there to gab abt jc's cultural importance even tho he clearly knows v little abt music in any helpful or concrete sense -- anyway (to semi-quote a review i wrote at the time) cw's contribution was one of twinkly down-with-the-streets bullshitting that was at least somewhat signalling that he knew the doc was p bad and was playing along with that (for you to spot and the director not to)

i didn't like the doc but i did kind of enjoy his role in it, the sort of thing that's these days (incorrectly) termed "performative": a mode which reflects elements of his cultural politics i think, and how you should carry yrself in the world

I can't read the Cornel West piece because WSJ is paywalled but the opening paragraph does give some context fwiw - the thing he seems to be praising DeSantis for is allowing for Clasic Learning Test scores to be submitted in lieu of SATs to get scholarships. Considering the racially fraught history of the SATs I can easily see how someone like West would find that a good move. That being said though, it's not really something to write an op ed about when DeSantis is currently also pushing through horrifying legislation, and West should know better than to think that the WSJ wouldn't frame it in reactionary terms; guessing he was probably aware of the title, too.

People's Party seems a total mess yeah, agree with treesh that trying for a primary within the dems would have been a better choice; frankly even the greens would be a better choice, also a mess but at least they have wider reach. I don't think signing up with them will have any effect on the actual elections but I do worry a little about what hanging out with pieces of crap like Jimmy Dore is going to do to West's thinking on issues he's been previously distant from but sound on, such as trans rights.

People party only has ballot access in3 states so far

I thank my dear brother Russell Brand for providing the stage for my presidential announcement! He is a progressive gem! https://t.co/vhJNqeSp9Y https://t.co/lzAhJDwEus

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 6, 2023

For some reason it is a reactionary genre, even though people who are funny in conversation are hardly ever this way

I'm not gonna defend stand up comedy on ilx because that's a losing battle but it is not a "reactionary genre", there's tons of high profile progressive comedians, queer comedians like Hannah Gadsby and Mae Martin are huge, etc. There's also successful reactionary choads sure, think there might be an example or two of musical artists that fit that bill discussed in these forums over the past months.

It doesn’t absolutely have to be that way but most stand-up seems to me to making fun of others from some sort of safe, above-it-all position.

At some point I developed some kind of allergy to hearing the Comedy Channel of whatever it is called on XM. Whereas years ago I always enjoyed the comedy block segment of typical FM programming.

I’m sure there are no doubt tons of great open-hearted stand-ups out there I just haven’t heard and I am only focusing on the negative.

https://i.ibb.co/jz0bPJz/Screenshot-2023-06-07-at-05-14-51.png

Cornel in the WSJ, not sure who the other guy he wrote the article with is though a quick twitter search shows in re-tweeting Matt Walsh.

he's the guy who created the Classic Learning Test

I’m sure there are no doubt tons of great open-hearted stand-ups out there I just haven’t heard and I am only focusing on the negative.

The long and short of it is that the stand-up world went through the same social justice debates over the past twenty years or so that the rest of society has, prompting a preoccupation with giving more space to comedians from marginalized backgrounds, soul searching about the various isms about famous comedian's material (the whole punching up/punching down framing comes from stand-up)...and of course also the backlash to that stuff and ppl positioning themselves as brave truth tellers against the liberal orthodoxy etc. As a rule of course the alt comedy scene is gonna be more inclusive than the big stadium acts but some of those alt comedians are pretty huge (even moreso in the UK where I think there's very little differentiation - James Acaster certainly the biggest name amongst younger ppl and famously trans inclusive).

I’m sure there are no doubt tons of great X there I just haven’t heard/seen/read and I am only focusing on the negative.

― CeeLô Borges (James Redd and the Blecchs),

forgive the editing but i reckon this covers 98% of ilx swipes at broad genres, disciplines, ethos(es?), methods, modes /everythings/ these days

it is a relentlessly negative place and it celebrates that and i think its too big a topic for any one thread

No it isn’t

wins otm

wow im cancelled

I think poster Darragmac is broadly correct, though I would say the real problem is not negativity so much as nastiness.

Tell you one thing I am negative about, poster dm’s shtick.

I was making a targeted statement about a certain virulent strain of toxic comedy that ends up in raw dog, shock jock nonsense that still seems pretty prevalent in certain large bands of the airwaves and etherwaves. He then edited my post into some very broad brush about negativity, and when wins and I pushed back he did his little po’ mouth celebration and said “oh, look at me! Cancelled.”

Why don’t you fix my post again, my friend, to distort whatever I said into what I really meant, according to your lights and then give me static if I respond again?

Daniel_Rf, on the other hand, provided some very thoughtful positive content and actual information and not just rude 'tude.

it wasnt at all meant to focus on your statement as a single item and apologies that it might have come across as that, i found it an interesting sentiment that did dig at something at the heart of where ilx has been heading for a good while

i noted the edit in that spirit!

and its not quite what pinefox says, i do mean the conscious/unconscious focus that ilx (as far as it is an entity or zeitgeist or w/e) puts on finding the possible downside to anything and then somewhat insists that that is the main/only focus that can be applied

again apologies for it coming across differently, no intent to do so

now

reading again

in fact

your approach is very much "standup is this in line with what was already being said on thread so yes a broad and i suspect you know yourself nonsense statement but allowable

what youve done subsequent to my post, which was as ive said and apologised for possibly too open to being misread, is misread my response to wins as anything other than reasonably easily spotted riff on the current cancelled thread and discourse as opposed to my actually bemoaning cancellation after a fairly light wins tweaking

i dont think thats anything other than you reading cloudily but its a poor reading and the responsibility for it rests with you not me, enjoy it tho

deems i feel like the least you can do is offer the exact same generosity of spirit that others would deny you here; consequently i'd say that the best thing to do here is wish good morning and not litigate because who loves court frankly

speaking of generosity of spirit, that seems to be Cornel West's entire thing and it seems pretty laudable to me

the initial irritation is a fair cop and lets not tbh

ofc, and 'i am not loving poster dm's shtick' is copy-pasted nu-ilx let's-agree-to-ostracise by the absolute book, but scrapping shdn't be our game was my thought, we play joga bonito now, and more importantly we show it can still be played, you get me

No it isn't

Who am I to ostracize anyone? Was just responding to one tiny string of posts. This is ridiculous.

fuck, i went too near the courtroom. it has such gravity

jaysus lj

guys THIS GUY IS NOT MY LAWYER

my point is you gotta play the ball not the man, saying someone has a 'shtick' is automatically ad hominem, gets everyone antsy. in this case it was clear you were just talking about punch-down stand-up, but in the same breath claiming without basis that (i paraphrase) 'most stand-up is this' whereas the real picture is much more complicated clearly, deems made the valid point that often on nu-ilx, guilt by association is a powerful vibe, safer to throw the baby out and so on, then had a bit of a yuck with wins, def all just a bit of light eyerolling, nobody got hurt

also i call to the stand uh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNyrYiljeIw

dm — commonly known as “dagz” — is an essential part of what makes ilx ilx. You can’t “not like his schtick” and still like the site imo

On the point of standup comedy though, I actually disagree with him. I think it sucks.

it usually does but then you see neil hamburger and you realise it can be the greatest of all artforms

One of my students said I should do standup after I told a funny anecdote and I gave them a detention

I was making a joke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkG4oIPT7tU

pretty funny wins, maybe you should try stand-up comedy?

Not with this crowd

i found it an interesting sentiment that did dig at something at the heart of where ilx has been heading for a good while

Interesting dmac, I think these kinds of analyses are always shaped not just by the place but also by where the analyser is mentally at. I've always found ILX a place that tends towards the negative*, mostly because it's always been populated by intelligent, prickly, critical types, and as such cannot really relate to the idea that it's been "heading for" this as opposed to always having been there. ILM I think was def more positive in the 00's - the poptimists get a lot of flack, but they were very good at getting collectively excited about a new release, or perhaps I was just less jaded then. UK politics threads obviously less negative during the Corbyn years, tbf the only positivity I can bring to that subject currently is deeds not words - i.e. mutual aid and activism can still produce a positive charge but discussion not so much. Anyway I think there's plenty of pockets of positivity - mostly on lit and niche music threads, the "your current five" thread is an oasis of positivity, ppl are really happy about that new spidey film.

* this is less of a diss than it might seem tbf - I've also been in online communities that tend very militantly towards positivity and frankly after a while the smarminess and hostility to critical thought can get unbearable

I think these kinds of analyses are always shaped not just by the place but also by where the analyser is mentally at.

tbc this is more me giving the disclaimer that I am in a much more chill place mentally in current ILX than I was when reading it in the 00's rather than trying to psychoanalyse you

no, good post and fair points

otoh “your current tight five” thread nothing but negativity

Wouldn't say ILX is that nasty either (not me though).

This place is chill as fuck compared to the rest of the internet and rather supportive!

Yeah, it's cool here. A bunch of white people can take over a thread about a black intellectual and talk about their posting issues.

Once every few months I remember that Cornel West was in the Matrix sequels playing himself ("Councilor West"): pic.twitter.com/1EWmYkPrr1

— Ben Burgis (@BenBurgis) June 7, 2023

my point is you gotta play the ball not the man

the opposite is true. play the man not the puck

saying someone has a 'shtick' is automatically ad hominem

no

lmao President Keyes

he's the guy who created the Classic Learning Test

Looks like Cornel is on the board there so thats probably the connection

West has decided not to run with the people's party, eyeing a green party bid instead it seems.

Now gone full COVID truther

Brothers and sisters, it's time we commit to understanding and addressing the role of pharmaceutical influence in public policy. I propose a COVID-19 Truth Commission to explore the disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, seek reparations, and ensure justice and… pic.twitter.com/XteB3MBBBg

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) August 25, 2024

is this brainworms, ugly nasty pragmatism, or is he just a fucking colossal idiot. Who knows and who cares about this insignificant fool anymore

COVID most definitely had a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, but the problem wasn't that the vaccines weren't safe or sufficiently effective to be worthwhile, because everyone who got the vaccines, including the wealthy and the middle class, all got the same stuff injected. If he thinks that Big Pharma influenced the federal government agencies to direct the initial vaccines away from poor communities, I'm not sure what their business interest in such a choice would be.

If he's got some evidence of deliberate inflicted harm done, or even some anecdotes, why is he keeping them under wraps? Sounds more like he's flailing to acquire some political relevance.