Stokely Carmichael-response to d horowitz

Ron Jacobs (rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu)
Tue, 17 Nov 1998 10:00:06 -0500

At 02:46 PM 11/16/98 -0800, David Horowitz wrote:

>> Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael is dead of prostate cancer at the age
>> of 57. This was a bad man, and the world will not miss him. A West
>> Indian immigrant to America, Carmichael hated his adopted country from
>> youth to old age, and never bothered once to acknowledge the immense
>> privileges and personal recognition it undeservedly gave him.

Perhaps the racism and personal hatred he felt from individuals and that
country's government and police agencies overshadowed the "privileges" you
speak of, Mr. Horowitz. If you look beyond the personal recognition for
the reasons he achieved such attention, you would see very clearly it was
because he spoke out against the racism endemic to his "adopted country."

>> In 1967, when Israel was attacked by six Arab nations,
>> Carmichael announced that "the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist," and
>> became the first prominent American figure since Senator Bilbo in the
>> 1940s to spew anti-Semitic bile into the public arena.

I can't support his statement that the only good Zionist is a dead one
(if he did indeed say it), but his perception of Israel seems to be
pretty close to the current truth---while the US threatens Iraq with
further destruction of its infrastructure, Israel continues to ignore
UN resolutions against its expansion and peace agreements it made only
last month. As for his role in SNCC--it seems to me that it was time
for a radical edge in the civil rights movement to come forth when it
did. Sure, mistakes were made, but the mistakes the combined forces
of MLK's moral force and the "Young Turks" insurrectionary acts and
rhetoric certainly moved things forward. Otherwise, we'd still be
back in the dark ages of the fifties.

>> This led to his expulsion from the Panthers and a ritual beating
>> by his former partners. Shortly thereafter Carmichael left the United
>> States for Africa.

And where is your proof of a ritual beating? Your critiques of the
Panthers always include some allusion to a beating or a
murder--unfortunately, because it did happen a couple of times (which
I note with regret), you seem to think you can always throw in
somethin like this, hoping that no one will challenge you. Thereby,
your little half truth/lie becomes truth through repetition.

>> Returning to the United States in the late Eighties, he took to the
>> lecture circuit as a racial hate-monger, attacking Jews, whites and
>> America to approving audiences on American university campuses. In the
>> end he found a fitting refuge in the racial sewer of the Nation of
>> Islam, as a protege of its Jew-baiting, America-hating, racist leader
>> Louis Farrakhan. Carmichael's farewell shot was to accuse "the forces of
>> American imperialism" of causing the prostate cancer that would have
>> killed him much sooner if it had not been for the creative medical
>> contributions of so many Jews, whites and Americans.

This last bit is not worthy of response---given its content of
vitriol. (And I don't agree with Farrakhan, just so you can't try and
locate me with him and his hatred.).

-ron jacobs