RIP Muhammad Ali

[Left-Wing Nutjob]

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"

- Muhammad Ali, on his refusal to fight in Vietnam.

[John Nada]

From Soviet But Not Russian, p.85:
Boxer Muhammad Ali visited the Soviet Union in 1978 while training for the fight in which he regained the heavyweight championship from Leon Spinks.

"I saw a hundred nationalities. No such thing as a Black man or a white man, or 'you nigger,' or get back. People say,'Oh, well, they just showed you the best.' You mean all of those white folks rehearsed, said: 'Muhammad Ali's coming! [...] Muhammad Ali's coming! Everybody walk quietly and peacefully. All hundred nationalities, pretend you get along. Muhammad Ali's coming! All the police take your guns off- I don't want more than two of you in the whole city. Muhammad Ali's coming!' 'They just took you where they wanted to go.' I know that's a lie. I got in my car and told my driver where to go. Lying about the Russians."

"I jogged in the mornings in strange places where they hardly ever saw a Black man. I ran past two little white Russian ladies who were walking to work. They didn't look around and ask what I was doing. I can't go jogging in some streets in America in the morning in a white neighborhood. If they see a Black man coming down the street, they wonder who I'm going to jump. I love things like this that I notice. Late at night, I was running down the street, and I looked back, Again, there were two Russian ladies. They didn't even look back to see why a Black man was out here running."Ismail scanned it somewhere. Good book. Kind of depressing when you think about what happened to the fSU just 6 years after the book was published. Racism and national chauvinism just exploded after the final completion of the counterrevolution.

[Antiochus]

My father studied in the USSR (hes white), however, his best friend who also studied there (both are Cubans) was Black, this was roughly 1990, so as the breakup was happening. He told me that monkey chants in the metro was a common occurrence and if the harassers were inebriated, they were likely to attack the person. Apparently my dad "looked Chechen", which was also a thing.

I think it would be interesting to study the pervasiveness of racism in the USSR at its collapse, because it was certainly there, I don't think it could have just "popped" into existence suddenly. This was in Leningrad btw.

[RedSonRising]

Ali was a huge and important symbol of anti-imperialism and the fight against white supremacy. Glad to see him being remembered for that as a counter to the routine white-washing that civil rights heroes often get.

[GLF]

My father studied in the USSR (hes white), however, his best friend who also studied there (both are Cubans) was Black, this was roughly 1990, so as the breakup was happening. He told me that monkey chants in the metro was a common occurrence and if the harassers were inebriated, they were likely to attack the person. Apparently my dad "looked Chechen", which was also a thing.

I think it would be interesting to study the pervasiveness of racism in the USSR at its collapse, because it was certainly there, I don't think it could have just "popped" into existence suddenly. This was in Leningrad btw.

I know we don't like to think about these things but the truth is that the USSR was in many ways very racist and quite unabashed. East Germany, while nothing like Germany under the fascists, was still rife with pro-German attitudes and reactionary style symbolism and even today North Korea is spilling over with racism. The truth is that communists of the past took it for granted that racism can only arise under capitalistic conditions and as a result were pretty much oblivious to it when it reared it's head within their ranks. The case in North Korea is probably just born out of resentment of the south and their embrace of bourgeois decadence and western cosmopolitanism - two things they have every right to despise.

Personally, I think China under Mao Zedong is probably the best representation of how a socialist state should operate. But to this day there has never been a successful transition to communism. Under communism, racism cannot exist. Under socialism, it is vestigial but does still exist. It's important to understand so we can fight it. Our forebearers were not perfect, and in many ways were products of their time and place. It's important to keep these things in perspective.

As for Muhammad Ali, I have mixed feelings. I do not like that he was a segregationist, but can we really blame him for not wanting his people to have anything to do with whitey? Also, I like that he refused to go to war and fight our comrades in Vietnam. But I don't like that he was very dismissive of the third world in some of his attitudes. Again, he was very much a product of his time and place. RIP though for sure. Great man.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

I read that he endorsed the genocidal Ronald Reagan in 1984 because he thought he was "keeping God in schools", as well as some other right-wing Republicans. What the hell was up with that? Kind of undermines the argument that he was this radical revolutionary whose legacy is now being recuperated by the political establishment, if he went in that direction himself. Surely his actions during the U.S. war on Vietnam were extraordinary, but it just seems like a major inconsistency.

[ckaihatsu]

I read that he endorsed the genocidal Ronald Reagan in 1984 because he thought he was "keeping God in schools", as well as some other right-wing Republicans. What the hell was up with that? Kind of undermines the argument that he was this radical revolutionary whose legacy is now being recuperated by the political establishment, if he went in that direction himself. Surely his actions during the U.S. war on Vietnam were extraordinary, but it just seems like a major inconsistency.


This, I'd say, goes to show how much of a *wild card* religion can be -- I've been beginning to see religious sentiments and social relations as a kind of generic *populism*, politically, but it also tends to *dilute* any more-pointed / more-focused leftward directions in politics, unfortunately -- as towards class-analysis-based *revolutionary* politics -- since religion can be so culturally hegemonic and insular.

[Antiochus]

I mean, lets not kid ourselves at all.

Muhammad Ali was an ideologue of the petite-bourgeoisie Black nationalists. Nothing more. I like him as a boxer and all but this needs to be 'understood'. Yes, its nationalism of 'the oppressed' but its still reactionary. Muhammad Ali did 'good' things regarding the Vietnam War but he simultaneously wanted (as did the Nation of Islam) to "separate" from Whites and to prevent miscegenation. Like Malcolm X, he might have seen Islam as some sort of tool to "overcome" racism, but this is bullshit of course.

So no, Ali wasn't a revolutionary in any meaningful form, but you know, neither was Martin Luther King or Garibaldi. It doesn't mean they aren't worth looking at. What is curious is how Ali's more 'radical' political opinions are swept under the rug after his death by politicians and the media and he is presented as a sort of messianic American 'hero'.

[GLF]

Yes, black nationalism is reactionary. You would be amazed at how much respect white nationalists have for black nationalists, and vice versa. I've been in countless arguments with white and black nationalists and you'd be amazed at how fast they team up against the commie.

With that said, I do have sympathy for the black nationalists because if I were in a black person's shoes, I'd probably feel the same. I have no sympathy for white nationalists. Of course if the roles were reversed, and it was a society where whites were treated poorly I would sympathize with white nationalists. For me it's not about race. There is still much injustice in the west and I think it's too easy to just condemn black nationalism when what we should be doing is condemning and fixing the conditions that give rise to it.

But this is really neither here nor there because I believe Muhammad Ali left nationalism behind when he left the NoI.

[ckaihatsu]

[I]ts nationalism of 'the oppressed' but its still reactionary.




Muhammad Ali did 'good' things regarding the Vietnam War but he simultaneously wanted (as did the Nation of Islam) to "separate" from Whites and to prevent miscegenation.


I'm sorry, but I really can't see black nationalism as 'deleterious' to leftward political momentum.

If you're recognizing it as 'nationalism of the oppressed' then that's acknowledgement of it being national-liberation, similar perhaps to Cuba or Venezuela, etc.

At *worst* we can describe black nationalism as being one instance (of many) of *identity politics* -- which I regard as being as 'left' as mainstream political sentiment can go, as within the context of the Obama Administration.

Without a militant-labor and *class* analysis the leftward 'paths' merely inevitably *splinter* into numerous types of leftist-separatism -- unfortunate but entirely predictable.


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals



http://s6.postimg.org/6omx9zh81/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/cpkm723u5/full/)

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

This, I'd say, goes to show how much of a *wild card* religion can be -- I've been beginning to see religious sentiments and social relations as a kind of generic *populism*, politically, but it also tends to *dilute* any more-pointed / more-focused leftward directions in politics, unfortunately -- as towards class-analysis-based *revolutionary* politics -- since religion can be so culturally hegemonic and insular.

I don't think it has to do with being religious so much as harebrained. I mean, when Muhammad Ali was praising Reagan for "keeping God in schools", the latter was backing right-wing governments, such as in El Salvador, that had a nasty habit of massacring, torturing, and raping nuns and clergy associated with liberation theology.

[Antiochus]

I'm sorry, but I really can't see black nationalism as 'deleterious' to leftward political momentum.

If you're recognizing it as 'nationalism of the oppressed' then that's acknowledgement of it being national-liberation, similar perhaps to Cuba or Venezuela, etc.

At *worst* we can describe black nationalism as being one instance (of many) of *identity politics* -- which I regard as being as 'left' as mainstream political sentiment can go, as within the context of the Obama Administration.

Without a militant-labor and *class* analysis the leftward 'paths' merely inevitably *splinter* into numerous types of leftist-separatism -- unfortunate but entirely predictable.


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals



http://s6.postimg.org/6omx9zh81/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/cpkm723u5/full/)


So the Nation of Islam is "left of center"?

[ckaihatsu]

I don't think it has to do with being religious so much as harebrained. I mean, when Muhammad Ali was praising Reagan for "keeping God in schools", the latter was backing right-wing governments, such as in El Salvador, that had a nasty habit of massacring, torturing, and raping nuns and clergy associated with liberation theology.


Yup -- I'm saying that if religion is the *common denominator* for a number of people then there's easily a conclusion of cross-class support for one or another 'God' sectarian culture, instead of a militant-worker one.





So the Nation of Islam is "left of center"?


I'm not going to defend any *organizations* -- offhand I'd say NoI is a *competitive-nationalist* organization, so, no, not *necessarily* historical-progressive.

Black nationalism in *general* -- in the abstract -- *is* nominally progressive in that it can be anti-racist and serve to politically unify a cultural minority, the black diaspora -- as in the U.S.

But its inherently separatist leanings put it more in the direction of a cross-class black 'identity', rather than a black-and-others *proletarian* militancy.

[RedSonRising]

I think Ali's support of Reagan came from bad advice (which he says himself), a lack of formal education (and thus familiarity with formal politics), and a limited circle within which he perceived and considered political matters. He later regretted it. No doubt he did not support Reagan's terrible policies. Ali had a fundamental understanding of power relations at home as well as on a global scale, but he never spoke in concrete historical terms or articulated alternative institutions or structures for society. And that doesn't make his struggles for justice any less legendary or important, it just shows that he was missing that last piece of what we would consider essential understanding, that capitalist exploitation and accumulation is at the heart of inequality, racism, and imperialist war. But, so what. Many with the same lack of understanding of the economic underpinnings of injustice have done more good in the world for working class people than a lot of Marxist pseudo-scholars.