If I could count on fingers for everytime a friend’s dad said to me…
‘Jesus was black…but they don’t tell you that do they?’.
I’d have three fingers…
Co-Intell-Pro was the name of the F.B.I. Operation to dismantle and foil the black activist movement of the 1960's & 70's. The campaign included the warning from J.Edgar Hoover to prevent any emergence of a Black Messiah.
Events of the period have been lovingly commited to film in high profile cinematic dramatisations. Spike Lee’s heavily stylized fawning ‘Malcolm X’. Ava DuVernay’s reverent ‘Selma’ & Shaka King’s substansive ‘Judas & the Black Messiah’.
All of which have convincing solemnity. The directors engaged in these projects take thier work very seriously. There are still questions to ask.
Why the fuck do so many of these black luminaries have to be played by Black British actors ? Did the USA run out of black male acting talent ? This fact gives pause for concern.
Dr Martin Luther King – played by David Oyelowo from Islington. Fred Hampton – played by Daniel Kaluuya from Camden. Nelson Mandela – played by Idris Elba from Loofa (i mean from Hackney).
WTF ?
This should invoke suspcion. Timothy Spall once verbally bitch-slapped fellow actor Eddie Redmayne for invoking the ‘British spirit of thespianism’ against the american counter part. There is a fake pompus allure and temptation to imbue inate quality. Britishness relates to Shakepeare, Chaucer, therefore UK black actors are needed for top African and African-American Biopics.
Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X depiction suffered because he was not British ?
Actor David Oyelowo is overated.
Idris Elba has presence and charisma yet he was the wrong choice for Mandela.
Daniel Kaluuya as black panther leader Fred Hampton delivered a tour de force performance, in the best of these films ‘Judas and The Black Messiah’.
His performance only diminished by being upstaged by Lakieth Stanfeld, a black american actor playing Hampton’s assassin. (Almost a monochrome mirror case of Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Jesse James being upstaged by his assassin Robert Ford aka Casey Affleck.)
Does any of this matter when its only a depiction rather than the history ?
Yes.
In September of 2021 Time Out magazine published a list of top 50 World War II films. A top 50 list ? It begs the question how many have been made ?
Startlingly almost none of the films made about World War 2, – that were made within 30 years of the war ending, actually depicted any foul treatment of Jewish people. Hollywood studios of the time such as Waner Bros (Verner Bros) being Jewish themselves were sensitively shy about the subject for decades.
This kind of avoidance could eventually lead to…
A director like Steven Speilberg making a film about Abraham Lincoln’s abolition of slavery; yet being to shy to vividly depict the suffereing of slaves, thus robbing the historical memory of meaning …..oops.
This kind of romantisism could eventually lead to…otherwise brilliant activist directors, such as Spike Lee, doing promotional work for sports wear firms like NIKE; who used modern slave labour sweat shops, to produce chic products for black lifestyle elitism……. oops
… leads to black activist groups defunding policing of poor black neighbourhoods, where its needed most, and embelzzling funds to buy mansions, spending thousands on personal security, while sloganeering the insubstancial-low-bar that certain live merely ‘matter’. Cats and dogs lives also matter …….oops
… leads to a black U.S. President being elected, who does fuck all for black americans, purely used as a front man to carry out imperialist foriegn policy, bomb foriegn black and brown people, deport more than all predecessors……..oops.
Where does the statement to “prevent a black messiah” stand in light of all this ?
First we must say fuck off Hollywood Babylon.
When Roman emperors failed to obliterate christianity they opted to bastardise and adopt it.
If 400 years of slavery was’t able to keep black people subdued, J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I. wasn’t likely to succeed. Although if he’d have survived into the new millenial century, he wold have been able to protect himself by claiming victimisation, he was closet trans and non-binary fluid after 10pm (among trusted freinds and haberdashers..) Just as the Roman Empire eventually clothed itself in christianity and became the church of Rome, the U.S. Estabilshment has clothed itself in ‘black lives motto’ producing company men leaders who say all the right things and bomb all the right n-words, in all the right shitholes.
It has been observed that the USA has achieved something never before witnessed in recorded history, or prehistory. A slave underclass subdued and brutalised for so long has survived to achieve parity with general society.
The Hebrew slaves in ancient Egypt were captives for 400 years. Blacks in America for a comparitive time period.
Blues music is folk music. If folk music can be defined as music which encapsulates the particular experiences of a people, over one or more lifespans. Blues music is likely the worlds youngest folk music form.
German classical composer Johannes Brahms sent his Czec student Antonín Dvořák to America in the 1800's to study black music
Brahms felt black american music would become the future of the musical arts. Antonín Dvořák who would eventually become a celebrated composer in his own right absorbed those influences and recomended that other classical composers studied the music developing out of black america..
Antonin Dvorak & the Funk
- Dvorak hits the Streets Opens in a new tab
The creation and emergence of blues is the equivilent in the arts of what splitting the atom is to science.
It is the underlaying power of modern music. Blues is a fundamental constituent of Jazz, Gospel, Rock, Soul. All the world recognises the history of black america through the art of its music. All the world celebrates and relates to personal struggle through it and is invited to culturally appropriate it. This is the power J.Edgar Hoover feared. A roughneck liverpudlian from an insect boy band could lead striking worker marches in New York and require termination.
Jamaican Rastafarians could empower the common man to get up, stand up for himself.
Unlike a black puppet president, Martin Luther King could not be voted out of power. His power was not a conspiracy of paperwork in ballot boxes. He was uniting black and white people in common cause. Requiring termination R.I.P.
Malcolm X was not at risk whilst recalcitrant, yet started moving toward common cause for all races, a threat requiring terminnation R.I.P.
All the while, for such a momentus event in the modern history of politics, no one seemed to notice much, the startling lack of interviews with childhood freinds of the first black president of the USA. Such an incredible thing happening would warrant that for the historical record.
People tend to notice what they are told and shown more than what is missing and puppets without seams are made out of whole cloth.
The fact that so many luminaries of Africa and African America are exploited on film by british actors might be indicative of a stranger more sinister concern lost in the present narrative. The evils of Empire.
The British Empire to be more exacting.
Would the Nazis have been less evil if they had decided they would no longer target purely Jewish folk for destruction but rather everyone would now be elegeble for the Gas chamber ? By certain political narratives it would seem less evil even, if more people would be killed, because the element of race has been removed. This is the quality of Empire. The British Empire would be more pertinently named the “London Empire”. Like The Roman and Babylonian Empires eminating out of a city based politic rather than a country.
The poor white working class people of England seem to have suffered in equivilence with the Indian and African victims of Empire.
How often is the British Empire which lasted over a century invoked as a historical evil, compared with the Nazis whose regeme was less than a decade ? The industrialiesd nature of the murder of the Third Reich has guaranteed its place in the historical record. The British Empire created a living hell of theft of the worlds natural resources and the theft of outsourcing manpower to Asia and Africa.
Who are the modern day theives of natural resources ? China’s manpower ? Mongolia and Afganistans rare earth minerals ? Who are the plunderers of Iraq’s oil ? Both the political left wing and right wing of the USA and UK voted for war in Iraq. When it is no longer tenable to have a Texan oil man in the White House he is then replaced by a black house servant president who whilst continuing the plunder and bombing of the unwashed masses is free from accusations of racism. So now we can all be raped by the banks and continue bombing whilst we are absolved of rascism. The Nazis are no longer racist but will gas all of us. Vax all of us. Hurrah !
Hilary Clinton appears to be ready to start WWIII with Russia purely over her failure to gain the Presidency. At least she wasn’t racist ? (She is racist). War with China through Trumpism is as likely yet easier to conflate with race rather than Empire.
We need a new word for this. “Racite.”
A "Racite" unlike a "Racist" does not necessarily believe one race is superior over another. A "Racite" is a person who believes they can use race for whatever predetermined outcome they choose..
Jo Biden the dementia riden peado-pres claimed he was able to revoke a persons racial identity if they did not vote for him. “You are no longer black”.
A “Racite” is as equally appalling abuse of race as a racist.
One of the most famous victorious warriors over the British Empire Mohandas Ghandi was given a warm welcome when he visited the Cotton mills of Lancashire. Even though the workers there suffered because of his boycott of British goods they understood his struggle. The poor whites of Europe and The USA are not inherently racist or ‘racite’, they are only ever driven to it by overlord benefactors. When commentators on the political left such as film maker Michael Moore, The Young Turks make claims the the first black US president did little to nothing for either the working class and black america take note. When BLM leaders start buying mansions for themselves and hiring armed personal bodyguards all the whilst arguing for less police for (worse for black on black crime) you might have a Racite on your hands.
Dr Martin Luther King had a dream and in that dream Joseph Biden is looking alot like Freddie Kruger complete with finger needles.
Amandala!
