#cornel west

[madamepestilence]

Just as a reminder as I've just noticed myself - arab.org has more pages to support on

In case you're unfamiliar with how this site works, it confirms ad revenue via your clicks, which allows them to donate money to various funds

These go to:

Children -> UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund)

Fight Poverty -> UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)

Environment -> Greenpeace MENA (Middle East and North Africa)

Palestine -> UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency [for Palestine Refugees in the Near East])

Refugees -> UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)

Women -> UN Women

Do more with your daily clicks! You can help each one once per individual (perhaps per IP address?) per day, letting you help out with six things at once?

US-specific advice for helping Palestine below cut.

Side note I'm keeping beneath the cut since it's relevant to US folks only: if you're really determined to help Palestine, vote for Dr. Cornel West, Ph.D. for President of the United States.

He's the most openly vocal about a free Palestine and is the only candidate who has demonstrably shown he is the most committed and prepared to immediately cease US support to Israel.

Joe Biden isn't going to cave if he gets re-elected. We all know that. Voting third party is a lot less risky than you've been taught - the two party system can replace one or both parties with new parties if they lose public favour.

We have both the people and the ability to unseat the Democratic party and install Socialism, and between Socialism and Republicans, Socialism is going to lock in place immediately and become the dominant political force in America.

Cornel West's Platform

Cornel West's Volunteer Events

Cornel West's Ballot Access Tracker and Ballot Access Plans

Tumblr thread I have of Primary/Caucus polling dates in the US (includes US territories)

Not on your Primary/Caucus ballot? Write-in, "Cornel West," on your ballot, or urge your Caucus representatives to do the same.

In a state where it's difficult for Independent candidates to get ballot access? Dr. Cornel West, Ph.D. thought ahead and has created a new party for those states called the Justice for All Party.

(Addendum: Claudia de la Cruz is not a viable alternative. The Party for Socialism and Liberation has a Conservative 5th Column and has frequent issues with discrimination.)

Free Palestine. Vote for Cornel West.

[uboat53]

Well, RFK Jr. is all but admitting his campaign was a ploy to help Trump win, Republican operatives are committing fraud to get Cornel West on the ballot in Arizona, Jill Stein is openly talking up her genuine love for Vladimir Putin, and the Libertarian Party is such a wreck that my most openly libertarian friend has stepped back from their organization.

Is it time to admit that there is no genuine third-party option in America anymore?

[dicapiito]

A starter guide for how US politics work

🗳️ More below 🗳️:

Legislative Branch:

House of Representatives is GOP controlled. Want bills passed? There needs to be 218 in favor of said bill and since the House Speaker is Mike Johnson; he and the GOP are up Trump’s asshole

Senate is Democratically controlled. However, for bills to pass there needs to be a 60 Senate Majority and the Senate is 51-49.

Executive Branch is self explanatory. That said, no the President can’t do whatever they want when it comes to bills because this isn’t a monarchy but a democracy

The Judicial Branch:

SCOTUS. A 6-3 Conservative majority with three seats that will be replaced. Vote so Roe V Wade can be restored and protected. Also want the court expanded and 18 year term limits? Vote Kamala Harris and vote Blue down ballot.

Also all those pesky ass judges that keep helping out their fellow pervs and assholes in the states? Vote Blue and make sure to check out your local elections.

And once again a reminder about third party candidates:

And let’s stop the cycle as to why things don’t get done

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

How Russian colonialism took the Western anti-imperialist Left for a ride

Blindness to Russian colonialism distorts Westerners’ view of the Ukraine war

"Fucking shit Russian car," my driver spat as a Lada sedan passed us on the highway from Georgia's capital of Tbilisi to Stepantsminda during my trip there in 2019, shortly after our long conversation touched on Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia.

His momentary flash of anger was an eye-opening glimpse at the consequences of Russia's steadfast refusal to let go of the 14 nations whose independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union dictator Vladimir Putin infamously called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" – not to mention the ethnic minorities still under Moscow's yoke – and its brutal punishment of Georgia and Ukraine for daring to seek a bright future outside of Russia's sunless orbit.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has cast a long-overdue spotlight on Russian imperialism and colonialism, yet many Westerners fail to grapple with how Russia's colonial legacy continues to this day and is part and parcel to its war against Ukraine and descent into fascism. Consequently, many end up whatabouting, excusing and even overtly sympathizing with an empire whose colonial practices mirror those of historical Western European empires in cruelty, chauvinism, thievery, exploitation, cultural erasure, racism and genocide and that is now ruthlessly attempting to conquer one of its neighbors.

Russia displayed that ruthlessness last week when it lobbed missiles at Odesa, damaging port and grain storage facilities as well as its historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

"They're interested in lands and influence and a buffer zone between them and the West, in sea access – but not in people and not in culture," said Ukrainian Parliament adviser Yuliia Shaipova who, together with her husband, Aspen Institute NextGen Transatlantic Initiative member Artem Shaipov, was at home in Odesa after hiding in a nearby bomb shelter.

Yet, Westerners safe from bombardment like long-shot third-party presidential candidate Cornel West continue to accommodate Russia. In a July 13 interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, West called Russia's invasion "criminal" but insisted it was "provoked by the expansion of NATO" and is a "proxy war between the American Empire and the Russian Federation," adding Neville Chamberlain-esque icing on the appeasement cake by proposing Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia.

The tell in West's remarks was calling the U.S. an empire but referring to Russia by its de jure name, implicitly erasing its imperial, colonial character. It's a common tendency among the segment of the left to which West belongs, one that Kazakhstan-born Pitzer College sociology professor Azamat Junisbai attributes to ignorance and a myopic, know-nothing focus on American imperialism to the exclusion of imperialism by other nations.

"They're kind of imperial about their anti-imperialism," Junisbai said. "There's something very provincial and strange about it where you literally do not know anything about what's happening beyond this one issue you care about."

While West and other leftists blame "NATO expansion" for provoking Russia, Junisbai compares NATO membership – which, after all, the former Warsaw Pact and Baltic countries all sought voluntarily – to a restraining order against an abusive partner.

"People don't recognize that there was an abusive relationship, that there was colonialism," he said, speculating that blindness to Russian colonialism could be due to a failure of Western education systems as well as Soviet propaganda and leftist valorization of the Soviet Union as a foe of Western imperialism. Another potential culprit is knee-jerk distrust toward American foreign policy popular among some leftists and alternative media that leads to a simplistic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" worldview.

"People, I think, just get so wedded to their vision of themselves as fighting 'The Man,' fighting the power that they are blinded and taken for a ride by Russia, in this case serving as useful idiots," Junisbai said.

Both Yuliia and Artem Shaipov pointed the finger at academic studies of Russia in the West that view it through Moscow's imperial lens. The two have published articles advocating for a "decolonization" of Russia studies and greater attention to how veneration of the "great Russian culture" – such as the genocide- and conquest-glorifying literature of Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin – has provided a conduit for Russian imperialist ideology to sneak into the Western mind.

"Part of the reason is that it's Western academia that kind of perpetuates this imperial understanding of our region that benefits Russia's imperial policies," Shaipov said, pointing to how Western academic institutions place Ukraine and other post-Soviet nations under Russia's geopolitical umbrella of "Eurasia." "It speaks volumes about the reasons why still many people in the West see Ukraine and other independent states as the sphere of influence of Russia."

The resulting sympathy for Russia's imperial worldview finds expression among Western academics, media personalities and activists who deny Ukrainians' agency in repeating the Kremlin conspiracy theory that Ukraine's 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a "U.S.-backed coup" – as if Ukrainians couldn't have removed outrageously corrupt Kremlin stooge Viktor Yanukovych from office after his security forces murdered over 100 peaceful protesters without foreigners pulling the strings – or characterize former communist nations' NATO membership as provoking Russia rather than protecting them from it.

And it's a mindset rooted in over 400 years of imperialism and colonialism that caused atrocities as horrific as those of Spain or Britain.

Russia's conquest of Siberia starting in the 1580s, for instance, included the enslavement of indigenous peoples whom it forced to pay tribute in the form of furs known as yasak on pain of death, resulting in starvation as people struggled to meet yasak quotas instead of feeding themselves in a system some historians have compared to Belgian King Leopold II's enslavement of the Congo. Russian Cossack gangs raped and murdered while Orthodox missionaries stamped out native religions and alcoholism and smallpox decimated local populations. Today, indigenous people in Siberia and the Russian Far East frequently live in poverty while Moscow strips their lands' rich natural resources to line the pockets of oligarchs and fuel the glitz of cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, while their men disproportionately make up the cannon fodder that Russia sends to the Ukrainian front.

"If we take the Russia that is situated behind the Urals – the Central Asian part of Russia, the far East Asian parts of Russia, the [northernmost parts of Russia] – the cities are just being used for extractive purposes, so [the Russians] don't care even about their own people and minorities that are in Russia itself," Shaipova said, noting how nearly all of their enormous wealth goes to the Russian metropole. "So basically, take Norilsk or Irkutsk – those cities look like an atomic bomb has exploded there."

In the Caucasus, where Russia vied with the Ottoman and Persian empires for power, the Muslim Circassians, who had inhabited the area for millennia, resisted Russian domination. So in 1857, Tsar Alexander II ordered their expulsion to the Ottoman Empire under a proposal by Count Dmitri Milyutin, who said it would "cleanse the land of hostile elements" and open their farmland for Christian settlers. The result was the Circassian genocide in which nearly the entire Circassian population was killed or expelled to the Middle East, where most Circassians live today.

Junisbai's own life is a testament to Russia's thorough colonization of his country, which began in earnest in the 18th century after Russia conquered it. His mother tongue is Russian rather than Kazakh thanks to generations of Russification that made learning Russian essential to get ahead while casting indigenous languages by the wayside. That led to him being conditioned to look down on Kazakhs who could not speak Russian properly while growing up in Almaty, whose population during the Soviet era was about four-fifths Russian and had only two Kazakh-language schools in the early 1980s, while Kazakhs largely lived in rural areas. Meanwhile, his great-grandfather was a member of the Kazakh intelligentsia, for which the Soviets executed him at Omsk in 1935 during Stalin's purges. Consistent with Russia's pattern of extractive relationships with its colonies, Moscow picked Kazakhstan as the place to test nuclear weapons, Junisbai's mother growing up only a couple hundred miles from a testing site.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought to the forefront the issues of language and Russian colonialism that Junisbai had been thinking about for a while. Today, he spells Kazakhstan's name as "Qazaqstan," reflecting the native pronunciation, rather than the more common Russian-based spelling.

"This invasion – just the scale of it and how blatantly imperialist it was – was a point of no return," he said, regarding how it got him thinking more about those issues. "Like how strange and horrible it is that I am stuck with Russian, and it's like having something stuck in my body, and I cannot remove it."

In contrast with its terrestrial empire building, Russia didn't have as much luck overseas, as its North American and Hawaiian colonies proved unsuccessful, along with its lesser-known attempt to partake in that most infamous example of European colonialism, the 19th-century Scramble for Africa.

Russia's covetousness toward Ukraine differs somewhat from its other colonization activities, but comes from the same underlying desire to subjugate. It stems from the popular myth that Russia is the legitimate heir to the medieval state of Kyivan Rus, centered on modern-day Kyiv, which Putin cited in a July 2021 pseudohistorical essay denying Ukraine's right to sovereignty, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." But as Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy points out in his new book, "The Russo-Ukrainian War," although the Grand Principality of Moscow – later called Muscovy – derived much of its culture from Kyivan Rus, 15th-century ruler Ivan the Great invented the myth of Muscovy's inextricable link to it by declaring himself the sole legitimate heir to the Kyivan princes in order to justify his conquest of the Republic of Novgorod.

"The independent Russian state, born of the struggle between Moscow and Novgorod, resulted from the victory of authoritarianism over democracy," Plokhy writes.

Shaipov said Muscovy inherited its political culture not from Europe, but from the Mongol Empire of which it had long been a vassal.

"This is their political tradition of authoritarianism, oppression and continuous imperial conquest," he said.

Ukrainians learned that the hard way in the mid-1600s when Ukrainian Cossacks rebelled against their Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth rulers and established an independent state, seeking protection from their Orthodox co-religionists in Muscovy. But after helping them achieve victory, their Muscovite allies sought to dominate them, leading to another Ukrainian Cossack rebellion in 1708 that soon allied with Sweden. Muscovy defeated them at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and in 1721, under Tsar Peter I, Muscovy became the Russian Empire.

In other words, Russian claims of lordship over Ukraine are about as credible as if British leaders called decolonization a "geopolitical catastrophe" and then dredged up medieval manuscripts to make the case against Irish independence.

The Russian Empire collapsed with the 1917 October Revolution, but that tradition of authoritarianism, oppression and imperial conquest persisted as the empire got a new coat of paint, trading tsars for commissars and rebranding as the U.S.S.R.

Numerous nations under Russian rule for centuries declared independence – including Ukraine as well as Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, the Tatar-led Idel-Ural State and others. But the Bolsheviks quickly invaded nearly all of them, forcing them into the newly established Soviet Union, which reoccupied the Baltic nations after World War II, leaving only Finland independent. In Ukraine, Stalin caused the Holodomor, a genocidal famine that depopulated most of the country's east, allowing its resettlement by Russians. In 1944, he accused indigenous Crimeans – for whom even the term "Crimean Tatars," Shaipov noted, is a misnomer with colonialist undertones – of collaborating with the Nazis and deported them all, allowing Russians to become a majority in Crimea too.

Those malign political traditions continued after 1991 as Russia crushed the fledgling Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Tatarstan and sponsored pro-Russia breakaway states in Moldova's Transnistria region and the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where Russia used false accusations of genocide as a pretext for its 2008 invasion, a tactic it would rehash in Ukraine six years later.

And they live on today in Russia's nationalist, imperialist, bloodthirsty and downright genocidal "Z" propaganda for domestic audiences.

Even Russian liberals remain far from untainted. While Westerners lionize Alexei Navalny as a freedom fighter, Junisbai highlighted his history of racism toward Central Asians.

"Navalny is not really well-liked in Central Asia because he's the person who contributed to hate crimes against Central Asians in Russia," Junisbai explained, lamenting how many Westerners continue to see that part of Navalny's past as marginal.

Navalny also drew scorn for a series of tweets on July 25 in which he called Russian war criminal Igor Girkin a "political prisoner" following his arrest for criticizing Putin.

Shaipov and Shaipova pointed to how Jan Rachinsky, the head of Memorial, rejected the idea of Russian repentance for waging war against Ukraine in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture last year.

"This understanding of themselves as an empire is part of their national identity, and this is also what concerns the so-called Russian liberals," Shaipova said.

At the same time, Junisbai said people inside Russia consistently fail to acknowledge their nation's colonial history.

"The surest way to offend a Russian person is to talk about colonialism or Russians as colonizers," he said

Instead, Russians overwhelmingly view themselves – in true colonialist form – as having civilized Central Asians, believing they were illiterate before Russia introduced Cyrillic, despite Junisbai's grandfather having written in Arabic script, and that if not for Russia they would still be riding horses and living in yurts.

"It's just like, 'we built your schools, we built your hospitals – how dare you be disrespectful, how dare you not appreciate us,'" he said.

This lack of self-awareness stands in stark contrast with European nations that decolonized and, although in fits and starts, today seek to atone for past injustices. In 2021, Germany formally apologized for genocide in Namibia in the early 1900s, while Queen Camilla declined to wear a crown at King Charles' coronation bearing the Kohinoor diamond, which Britain plundered when it ruled India.

Shaipov and Shaipova said Russia must also undergo decolonization, a process the world should not fear.

"In order for them to heal, they need to go through this healing process and repentance so that they can reconcile with neighboring countries and with the peoples that populate the Russian Federation," Shaipov said.

But Russia must first remove the Harry Potter-like invisibility cloak that has long allowed its colonial legacy to go unnoticed.

"Once you tear it off, then people can see the horribleness – like, how could people side with an abuser and against someone who's trying to take out a restraining order against this abuse," Junisbai said.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸🇵🇸 🚨

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DR. CORNEL WEST SLAMS US COWARDICE AND LACK OF LEADERSHIP ON GAZA IN FIREY SPEECH IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIANS UNDER SIEGE

"The least we can do with this moment of overwhelming vulgarity is have a ceasefire. And yet you got these cowards in #Washington DC talking about a humanitarian pause. Please, get off the crack pipe, wake up!"

Presidential candidate Cornel West gives a powerful speech during a protest at the UN plaza protest.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[spartanlocke]

Hi so if you see this post on twitter, do not listen, do not retweet it.

I understand people think voting third party will magically solve our problems, but it won't. Mainly because the electoral college is quite literally rigged by Democrats and Republicans against third parties to prevent them from winning. And this mindset that "if just enough people vote third party we'll win!" is one of the major reasons Trump won in the first place.

And I need to you listen, ok? I need you to listen closely.

If Trump wins, we'll lose the entire Democratic party, he'll have personal control over the military to go after anyone who opposes him, including other politicians and protesters. Pornography will be criminalized alongside surrogacy, contraceptives and divorce. KOSA will be implemented and anything even slightly "unchristian" will be censored on the internet. Women will be forced to marry their rapists, immigrates will be forced out of the country, queer people will be massacred, and PoC and disabled people, all of us, will lose our rights.

This. Is. Not. The time. To be gambling. With third parties.

Additionally, Cornel West is only available on ballots in two states, meaning most people can't vote for him. On top of that he supports Russia and wants to disband NATO, praised Reagan, and owes half a million in taxes and child support. He's not going to fix our problems, and with so few states even offering the option to vote for him, he's basically already lost.

Do not vote third party. Do not gamble our future. Biden is our best chance at stopping Trump and Christofacism, just vote for him.

[creature-wizard]

Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates such as West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

...

Trump has offered praise for West, calling him “one of my favorite candidates.” Another is Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Trump favors both for the same reason. “I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%.”

[disappointmentthemusical]

there's no perfect candidate, but there's better than biden and trump

following @decolonize-the-left's example and officially throwing my lot in with claudia de la cruz.

do i have opinions on the psl? yeah.

but am i going to let those opinions fuck us over and stick us with one of two fascists? no fuckin way.

cuz the thing is, there's no perfect candidate, and there's not gonna be. not this year. we have less than four months — 116 days — until november 5, and if y'all are serious about not electing a fascist this year, then we're gonna have to grow up and pick somebody.

i'm picking de la cruz.

[coolclaytony]

I tried so hard to find a candidate that's better than biden, but the best I can find a guy named Cornel West.

Mr. West is not an ideal candidate to me. His religious leanings informs a bit too much of his politics for my comfort and he endorsed PETA on at least one occassion.

But he's also a major voice in socialist activism, endorses climate-change solutions, is aligned with Palestinian liberation, and he was on Bernie Sanders' campaign team at least twice. But most importantly, he's the only candidate who doesn't set off a billion red flags in my head when I read over any information I can find about him.

So I guess I'll endorse him as a presidential candidate. Whether I'll vote for him or not really depends on what happens come next November.

[odinsblog]

I’ll believe it when I see it, but yeah, good.

And no matter what Republicans claim they’re gonna do, that doesn’t give everyone else the excuse of staying home or voting for trash ass, Republican funded “candidates” like antivaxxer RFK Jr or Harlan Crow fanboy, Cornel West.

We cannot afford to have a second Trump term, or a first DeSantis term, or any Republican in the White House.

[madamepestilence]

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE

FREE PALESTINE

[theculturedmarxist]

NOOOO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WE HAVE TO VOTE FOR BIDEN THERE'S NO ONE ELSE THERE'S NO ONE ELSE THERE'S NO ONE EL

[dicapiito]

Leftists need to study this map and realize that their third party candidates will not get the required 270 Electoral votes for their leftist candidate. Not like they were trying to win; they’re just trying to grift and help Trump win

If Kamala Harris doesn’t get to 270 electoral votes; it becomes a House decision and then a SCOTUS decision which = Project 2025

Third party candidates are not on all state ballots and they do not have nearly enough states to even entertain that number.

Exhibit A:

🤡 West.

At most , which is a long shot; he gets to 166 electoral votes.

Well 156 because no way is Walz’s state going to screw him for any third party candidate

De La Cruz AT MOST could get to 227

Oh wait. 55 of those electoral votes are California and Harris is from California so that state is out. Same with Minnesota since Walz is the Governor.

227-55-10=162 AT MOST which she will not get

And last but not least. The leftists favorite white lady.

Technically she does have enough states as of now to get to 270.

Remember, California alone is 55 electoral votes; those votes will go to Harris, and Walz in Minnesota with 10 electoral votes, she’s already down 65.

Add that red states aren’t entertaining her bullshit just like blue states; she would never remotely reach the required electoral votes needed to win.

Voting for her and all third party candidates = a vote for Donald Trump

Also fun fact as to why many leftists are never on the ballot in all states?

Now which leftist would be getting to 270?

Answer: NO ONE

California always goes Blue. North Carolina might actually go Blue along with Florida since DeSatan is a dipshit.

The Midwest states are definitely not voting for a leftist and places like Mississippi are always nearly Blue and don’t have time for leftist candidate bullshit. There’s too many communities that will be affected by Trump and Vance

Vote:

And vote Blue down ballot.

[battleangel]

FUCK AN ELECTION!

Fuck an election.

Fuck “anticipatory despair”.

Fuck nihilism.

Fuck “being depressed about the election”.

Its about a struggle. Long termism. 500 years. The blood of our ancestors.

Liberation. Revolution. Palestine. Genocide. Ecocide. War crimes. White supremacy. Police brutality. Mass incarceration.

No reparations. Hearts on fire. Lynchings. Mass rapes. Terror campaigns. Forced famines & starvation.

War machines. Two shots in the dark. Duopoly. Monopoly.

Struggle. Resist. The blood & tears of our ancestors being avenged.

Whats left my conscience said?

Revolution!

Redemption…

[fish-in-need-of-a-bicycle]

If you are voting third party this election, congrats! You are doing exactly what the republicans want you to do. https://apnews.com/article/4089fb0c9ebb16002e56a1c254a21b0e