An Annoying Paradox for Communist Rappers
Boots explaining how his attempt to jumpstart a revolutionary communist movement through his hip hop music has “gotten a lot better”:
MARK: Do you think we’re making any progress? Things have gotten a lot worse in a lot of ways since you started in 1991. Wealth inequality, for instance…
BOOTS: Really? In 1991, we were having demonstrations with ten people. So, things have gotten a lot better. Now we’ve got thousands of people, all with the idea that we need a systematic change, with class analysis being a part of it. Things have gotten better.
MARK: I wasn’t thinking about the numbers of people in the street. I was thinking about wealthy inequality, the fact that our public schools are being systematically dismantled…
BOOTS: The numbers are the only thing that matters, though. What matters is not how the state is working, or how the system is working, but the point at which the movement is that could change the system.
MARK: I can see you point, and there’s potential there. A movement is starting to build. But, at the same time, you see the public school system being systematically taken apart, our wealth being siphoned off by for-profit charter schools, the growing, racist “patriot” movement in America…
BOOTS: Yeah, and all of those things are going to happen as long as we don’t have a movement. So none of that surprises me. As long as you don’t have a movement, any of the gains that you make are going to be dismantled. And that’s why a revolutionary movement that fights for reform, on the way to making revolution, and sustains the movement… That’s why you chart your progress relative to how the movement is growing, not on how strong the system is that is attacking you.
Boots concludes by warning about the potential prison time for those joining his movement:
MARK: One last question… Were do we have the most leverage? Where should we be focusing right now, if we really want to make long term, systematic, sustainable change?
BOOTS: Well, it’s like we were talking about earlier. I think right now what people want are material gains. They need to see victories. And they need to see it done in a certain way. We need a radical, militant labor movement that uses direct action and work stoppages to gain some of these things. We need for it to be connected to the community, and not just built around wages. But using labor and work stoppages to effect change in other areas, that would normally be considered community things – community organizing. An example is how the ILWU shut down the port of Oakland in protest of the Oscar Grant verdict. They might have done it in a safe way, but that’s an example. And there need to be sympathy strikes. That’s got to become a tool. And union leaders are going to have to be down with going to jail, just like anyone else on the line is down for it…
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Ah, but the beauty of being a leftist is that you never, ever have to apologise for logical inconsistency. Che hated Mexicans and homosexuals, but he was cool and dreamy and heroic. Communist ideology murdered 100 million innocent people, but it was humane and progressive.
If a rock star said “Yes, I’m a Nazi”, that would be the end of his career (and rightly so). Say the same thing about Communism and it just establishes your street cred. So long as we have this double standard, we will have moral idiots like this lecturing us. I can put up with his arrogant stupidity and his fondness for genocide, but I really don’t want a lecture about how he cares so much more than I do.
most obamabots will parrot anything their earthly deity spews out. understanding what he has in mind for them is another matter. useful idiots for sure. these brainless non-talented rappers only wish they could sing. so do i.
i fear that hard times are soon upon us all, the common folk. maybe some actual suffering will lend talent and legitimacy to their otherwise callow voices.
They sure as hell are not getting any of MY money.
Leftists– a lot of time it’s Ends Justify the Stupidity with (of course, they often hurt a lot of people along the way). This left/libtard is just plain that, though.
“I am a communist. I have been a communist/socialist since I was 14 years old. I think that people should have democratic control over the profits that YOU produce.”
He had a typo there in one of the quotes
I think The Coup had one song I liked and other than that they made crappy unlistenable music. Boots Riley is a joke of a rapper who’s got no style, swag or even decent rapping ability add to that his BS Communist slant and the guy reminds me of those rich highschool kids that wanted to bring down the system that had them living a very nice lifestyle. Now that he’s got his he wants to make sure no one else has a shot to get it, what a clown.
okay, I really did try to understand what he was saying. WTFACE? HOW much salvia has that guy been smoking?
All of these pretentious communist rappers are full of it. They read here like adolescents camping on a hillside somewhere staring into the fire as they exhale the spent marijuana fumes. Cool….man….soooo coool. Yawwwnnn.
But what they seem to be saying is all so very circular; it seems (like) they don’t have the wit to understand that “to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities”….while all sitting around “making/building” and “taking/consuming” all so very selflessly, is, like, man, totally, like, man, against, like, human nature, man.
Yawwwwnnnn.
What have they observed about the Soviets’ gulags, or maybe the neo-Maoists’ kids driving Lamborghini’s.
Sigh. Play it agin’, Tokkie…cough….cough.
Anyone historically and economically illiterate enough to be a commie is not going to be deterred by a paradox.