Cornel West Thinks We Should Roll Over For Putin, Enjoy Peace For Our Time
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.
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*sigh* No, Stephen, West's words are not only entirely consistent, but imminently reasonable and frankly, I find your own language in this article very slippery, no doubt a side-effect of the contempt with which you hold this opinion. Let's take an example:
"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."
No, what he actually said was what YOU then quote him saying below:
"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.”"
When people like West (and I) talk about 'provocation', we're talking about the attitudes that both the Russian government and the Russian people have towards NATO accepting members closer to Russia over the course of the 90s, something entirely out of the control of any NATO member. This is where all the talk of "agency" often reaches its limits, because much like the cultural memory of China for whom the "century of humiliations" lingers to this day, the post-Soviet collapse represented a crushing humiliation for Russian citizens and its leadership alike. Now you might discard this as irrelevant in the face of accepting requests to join NATO and say they have every right to apply, but you don't get to pretend that Russia's reaction just came out of nowhere, particularly when there are well-documented diplomatic cables that say flat-out that Russia considers NATO expansion an aggressive action and will respond with similar aggression.
This is why these constant analogies to racism and sexual assault are not only tortured, but also insulting, because they're comparing cultural forces and interpersonal crimes to the calculated multi-variable foreign policy of whole nations. It's also why Putin has to be spoken of as a Hitler-like megalomaniac, because if Putin was actually a rational actor making decisions with grounding in reality--wrongheaded as they may be--then this conflict was actually preventable in a way that the Tulsa Massacre or sexual assault would not have been. And if it was preventable, then responsibility doesn't lie entirely with Putin for getting us here.
So no, West didn't "fault Ukraine", he pointed out that NATO's expansion did provoke the escalations that led to this conflict.
And that's just one example. You also said this:
"Last week, he said that NATO providing aid for Ukraine was an escalation that "could lead to World War III.""
And what "aid" would that be? Cluster munitions. Which were a war crime when Russia did it, no reason they wouldn't be war crimes if anyone else did.
But you didn't mention that, did you Stephen?
"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."
Why are those the only two options, Stephen? You're not the only one I've seen lay out this false dilemma, where it's either "Ukraine gets its 2014 borders" or "Putin rules over all Ukraine"? Not sure if you've noticed, but Russia tried to take Kiev and failed miserably. So the threat to the Ukrainian state as an institution has passed and ever since, the battle lines have been largely static, favouring the defenders each time. You may also wish to remember the ultimate goal of this summer offensive, which is not to retake all of Russian-held territory, but to leverage the gains it can make at the negotiating table for an eventual cease-fire. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs knows that and likely Anthony Blinken knows that, although he postures far more hawkishly than Milley has in the past year. The reason West mentions nations like China and Turkey is that they could mediate the negotiations and ensure good-faith on the part of all belligerents involved.
If I have any desire in the discourse surrounding this war--which is so much mental masturbation as it has precious little impact on decisions made way above us--it's for Ukraine-obsessed liberals to interrogate where their obsession comes from and really come to grips with how much 2016 just broke their brains. You see some slippage here and there with folks who simultaneously deny the proxy-war nature of the conflict but also believe that regime-change is the ultimate victory condition, which requires long-term grinding down of the Russian military in an Afghanistan-like quagmire, but is still ultimately focused on the singular person of Vladimir Putin as the man responsible for Donald Trump (note: he is not).
*sigh* But in the meantime, the bloodshed goes on.
I've read and listened to a lot of West in the past. I've always respected him, even if I did not always 100%agree with him.
But here he is contradicting himself. He claims he is being "honest", but why is he not asking Russia to make concessions and stop the war? They were provoked by Nato, but Putin did not attack nato, he attacked Ukraine, who were not in NATO.
This entire thing is intellectually inconsistent with what West has said and written about before, AND inconsistent with his own goddamned statement on this particular event. This has shades of intellectual dishonesty and what I always termed "weasel wording" which is a fucking punch in the gut coming from this guy.