Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- Unlikely Stories

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 16:55:40 12/11/02 Wed
Author: jp
Subject: Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate
In reply to: The Concubine of Satan 's message, "Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate" on 11:02:19 12/11/02 Wed

>
>I have read this poem several times and been reading
>the ongoing "debate" about it. You know,
>close-mindedness is darkest in the form of
>reactionism. In the inability to see any other issue
>or side of a concept or an argument because you have
>already decided that the way you see it is the only
>way to see it.

Mm-hm. In a debate-type situation, if your arguments are powerful and valid, you don't have to preface them by implicitly accusing your opponents of reactionary philosophy. If your opponents are reactionary, they'll bring this fact out with their own words. If not, you have no case.

As you well know.

>This poem has struck me from the first and continues
>to strike me as being about the American government,
>capitalism, and the shadow governments capitalism
>gives birth to.

I don't disagree with this statement, but think it's clear he's referring to a specifically Zionist conspiracy of "shadow governments." I'll be more specific further down.

>It's not a very good poem, LeRoi has
>always ridden the coattails of the Beats and made a
>name for himself by scribbling lines and being in the
>right place at the right time. With all of this
>discussion on his poem, he has gained more notariety
>than is rightfully his due.

No shit. But hey, talking about him kills time.

>In my opinion, the references to Jews are about the
>State of Israel and the issue that the American
>government continues to protect the rights and lands
>of people it has invested money in while ignoring the
>rights of anyone else, period.
>
>Who got fat from plantations
>Who genocided Indians
>Tried to waste the Black nation
>
>Who stole Puerto Rico
>Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
>Australia & The Hebrides
>Who forced opium on the Chinese
>
>British settlers, the first Americans, the American
>government, capatilism born...
>
>Who killed the most niggers
>Who killed the most Jews
>Who killed the most Italians
>Who killed the most Irish
>Who killed the most Africans
>Who killed the most Japanese
>Who killed the most Latinos
>
>This section struck me as speaking of all in
>power...Mussolini, Hitler, the Brits and the Potato
>Famine, our CIA dealings in South America and all over
>the world...
>
>Who got rich from Armenian genocide
>
>This would be the Turks and the American government
>who turned a blind eye, and the companies involved who
>made money and protected their interests...
>
>Who the biggest terrorist
>Who change the bible
>Who killed the most people
>Who do the most evil
>Who don't worry about survival
>
>Who invaded Grenada
>Who made money from apartheid
>Who keep the Irish a colony
>Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
>
>Great Britain, America...protecting monetary interests
>and political power...
>
>Who put the Jews in ovens,
>and who helped them do it
>Who said "America First"
>and ok'd the yellow stars
>
>Were the Jews responsible for this?

Baraka doesn't appear to be accusing all Jews of being in on the conspiracy. He is accusing the conspiracy of being Jewish. As any Third Reich history book will tell you, when the Nazi party first gained in power, the Zionist Party in Germany tried to work with the Nazis to have Jews semi-voluntarily to Israel. They realized their mistake quickly, of course, but it's easier to claim that Zionists are responsible for the Holocaust than claiming American capitalism is to blame.

>Who blew up the Maine
>& started the Spanish American War
>Who got Sharon! back in Power
>Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
>Chiang kai Chek
>
>Again, this is all dealing with capitalism and shadow
>government...

Yeah, OK, but whose shadow government? Not America's, to be sure. Those guys weren't/aren't in America's best interest.

>Who would tell Sharon and Israeli workers to stay away
>from the WTC? Our government would. We have money
>invested there. We have an American friendly
>government in place in the Middle East. The only one.
>Without Israel the government loses a lot. Special
>interest groups that lobby for the companies that
>continue to make money in a mostly untapped market
>would lose a lot.

This is really a stretch. First off, both Clinton and Bush have expressed dissatisfaction with Sharon as Prime Minister. America would only be assisted if he were bumped off. Second, I find it absurd that the CIA would choose to save Israelis and not the Pentagon if they had that power. The only way our government would assist Israelis but sacrifice their own resources is if Israel, too, knew of the 9/11 attacks. If that was the case, the American government wasn't needed at all, and we're back to a Zionist conspiracy.

>And if you decide to take the poem out of a literal
>meaning and look at it metaphorically, I feel he is
>saying that while the Bin Laden and the terrorists we
>have pointed fingers at are responsible, it is
>capitalism, our goverment, any government, every evil
>perpetrated in the name of money and power is
>ultimately responsible. In short, we brought this on
>ourselves by being the bullies on the block from the
>start.
>
>And in my opinion, he'd be right.

How can we possibly take this poem metaphorically? It's a literal list of grievances against the oppressed of the world. There's nothing in it to remotely suggest metaphor. Indeed, if this were read at an open mic night, I would turn to you and mutter that our reader had no idea what metaphor was.

Unquestionably, Baraka is accusing /someone./ The possible culprits include:

1. Everyone. I maintain that the accusations of the poem are too specific to apply to "everyone."

2. The American government. Certainly, there are huge tracts of this poem that could refer to the American government. If the poem does refer to the American government, though, it cannot also refer to "all in power." And the American government has never, to my knowledge, been accused of changing the Bible, looking like Jesus, backing Hitler or Sharon, blowing up the Maine, or causing the Holocaust. If they did, it could only have been as a pawn of...

3. An international Zionist conspiracy, working throughout history, to its own nefarious ends.

He could, possibly, have been talking about 4. All of capitalism. The poem works that way. But that's not the most obvious conclusion, and any political writer worth a damn is going to present his points in an obvious way. Baraka is a bad writer, but he's not so inept that he'd write a poem inciting capitalism, and accidently lead us to believe he was talking about the Jews. I can only conclude that the anti-Semetic overtones were deliberate.

Ugh, my spelling is really sloppy today. Please forgive any errors you find.
>

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- The Concubine of Satan, 17:12:59 12/11/02 Wed
- Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- jp, 18:28:36 12/11/02 Wed
  - Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- jp, 11:42:57 12/17/02 Tue
    - Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- jayro, 18:45:08 01/03/03 Fri
      - Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- jp, 19:41:39 01/04/03 Sat
        Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- madd, 13:23:13 07/27/03 Sun