Cornel West Thinks We Should Roll Over For Putin, Enjoy Peace For Our Time
Did this guy alway suck?
Cornel West, Ivy League academic and quixotic beard tender, has launched his own third-party campaign for president under the Green Party standard. This concerns many Democrats, including party chair Jaime Harrison who warned, “This is not the time in order to experiment. This is not the time to play around on the margin.”
It’s probably never a good time to support a moron’s presidential campaign. The first Charlie’s Angels movie premiered November 3, 2000, and everything was all sunshine and rainbows. The next Tuesday was Election Day and soon we were drowning in hanging chads.
Like most third-party candidates, West isn’t serious about leading the free world. He’s an irritating backseat driver, or YouTube critic. He has plenty of criticism but no valid solutions.
West has shamefully joined the loudest anti-Ukraine voices on the Right and suggested that somehow this peaceful nation is at fault for Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Last week, he said that NATO providing aid for Ukraine was an escalation that "could lead to World War III."
During an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, West shoveled some classic Stalin-era propaganda. He conceded that Russia’s invasion was “criminal” but claimed it was “provoked” by an “expansion of NATO, which is an instrument of US global power.”
In reality, Putin invaded Ukraine with zero provocation because of his mad dream to restore Russia to its Soviet Union “glory days” that weren’t so glorious — entirely justifying NATO’s existence for any of you who might have previously vaguely assumed it was the bellicose one.
West’s proposed fix is similar to Donald Trump’s: Ukraine should “make concessions” to the despot who attacked a sovereign nation and butchered its people.
When “Sister Kaitlan,” as West annoyingly called Collins, asked the afro genius how he’d resolve the situation, West replied:
“Oh, what I would do, I would bring in the Chinese, the Turks, the African rulers. I would sit down with the Ukrainian leaders and say, we must stop this war, stop these war crimes, cluster bombs on a variety of different parties and make sure that we begin a diplomatic process for a just peace.”
This “just peace” would have the Orwellian outcome of enslavement under Putin’s boot. Ukraine is a firm “no, thanks.”
“There’s going to be debates over the territory. There going to be some kind of concessions over the territory, but stop the killing. Why? Because the Ukrainian brothers and sisters are precious and they are bearing so much of the suffering with this proxy war between the American empire and the Russian Federation.
“So there’s responsibility and blame across the board. But the American empire does bear a significant responsibility here, even though it is not the sole or exclusive responsibility. And it’s in no way a pro-Putin [talking point.] I’m trying to be morally consistent. I’m trying to be a person that has some integrity and honesty.”
Looks like you failed, “Brother” West.
It’s not uncommon for leftist academics, secure in their own peace and prosperity, to blame the US like a teenager’s parents for everything wrong in the world. However, it’s worse coming from West, a Black man born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of the devastating 1921 race massacre. What “concessions” should the Black residents have made to stop the white mob’s attacks?
Throughout American history, racists have insisted that Black people somehow “provoked” the violence inflicted upon them. Segregationists claimed the beatings at Selma were “provoked.”
An editorial in the December 13, 1955, Montgomery Advertiser declared:
The bus boycott here is a painful economic injury to the company. But as a matter of the facts of life, Negro leaders should reckon with two realities: The white man’s economic artillery is far superior, better emplaced, and commanded by more experienced gunners. Second, the white man holds all the offices of government machinery. There will be white rule for as far as the eye can see. Are those not facts of life?
This is so very similar to the pro-Putin Republicans who insist Ukraine “can’t win” and is only delaying the inevitable Russian victory. If Ukraine doesn’t accept Russian rule now, then its leaders share the blame for the resulting loss of life. It’s perverse.
I’d say that Cornel West should know better, but the proof of such a claim is lacking.
Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.
Catch SER on his podcast, The Play Typer Guy.
>> "I’d say that Cornel West should know better,
>> but the proof of such a claim is lacking."
Ouch.
Still, it's well deserved. One point that you didn't make, SER, is that ***even if West's thesis and moral reasoning about Provocation were to be taken as correct*** the USA and/or NATO provoking Putin is not the same as Ukraine provoking Putin. (Nor is a leader of a country equal to that country. "L'état, c'est moi," is remembered for its utterance after the truth of that had clearly changed, not because it is a truth we cling to today, but set that aside.)
So.. in this case the one innocent victim here is Ukraine. If Neighbour One provokes Neighbour Two to shoot up Neighbour Three's barbecue, how is the just solution to this problem getting Neighbour Three to agree to give up his backyard to Neighbour Two? What the fuck did N3 do wrong here?
West is capable of reasoning through this: he just doesn't care.
A few things.
1. Russia bullies its neighbors all the time, which is fueling NATO expansion. We don't really have anything to do with it. Nobody wants to become the next Georgia, Chechnya, or Ukraine. If Russia really wanted to stop NATO expansion, they would stop being assholes to everyone in the region.
2. Ukraine choosing to fight, even if the battle was hopeless, is still their choice to make a a nation. Hell, I can see why a nation would collectively say "I'd rather die than deal with Putin's bullshit"