• Makan ☭ CPUSA
    link
    33 years ago

    You may think I’m showing off or talking through my ass here, but Glen Ford radicalized me during my very early years, before I became a communist, near the end of Obama’s first term. Basically, I was getting into media sources that were anti-imperialist or non-MSM. I saw a video of Glen Ford giving a great speech about Obama’s corruption and the corruption of the Democrats/Republicans, though it’s a very old video and I’m not sure if it’s up by now. He was commemorating the birth of the organization he and a few others were apart of, even despite the retreat of the 1990s/2000s.

    Long story short, I started following Black Agenda Report shortly afterward and it was one of the few “alternate media” sources that I knew about (I’d say I knew about, maybe 4 or 5 during 2011 or maybe it was 2012). I even kinda pride myself on being an “original fan” of Black Agenda Report, back when they had a comments section lol. They even made me look for more sources and outlets like it, but even when I did, it was still “up there” for me, still big in terms of quality.

    A lot of what I found was basically anti-imperialist, but also anti-communist and even right-wing, sometimes downright Duginist, and whenever I discovered this over time, I moved away from those sites. I always viewed Black Agenda Report as “one of the good ones.” It also helped that I was always sympathetic to communism (though the outlet isn’t communist) which made me interested in people like W.E.B. DuBois and, especially, sympathetic to Africa and curious about the continent.

    Maybe I’m overstating Glen Ford’s influence now that he’s passed away, but the outlet and the other organizations that were promoted by Black Agenda Report (Friends of the Congo, for example) helped me find other leads and other information on things. Hell, I’m not kidding when I say: I knew about AFRICOM way back in 2011 or 2012 way back when nobody else seemed to know about it.

    The other website that got me “started” in terms of politics that wasn’t tied or directly tied to the Democrats/Republicans was Mint Press News, which is still good, but now it’s tied to Caleb Maupin’s CPI and I hate that guy and his organization.

    lmao

    It seems that a lot of the anti-imperialist/anti-war outlets that weren’t explicitly leftist or Marxist or socialist/communist or even anti-racist during the early 2010s woud turn out to be right-wing or turn in that direction and become pro-Putin outlets almost exlusively. Right after the death of the 2000s anti-war movement against the Iraq war, the “alternative media” outlets from before the 2010s would either lose their domain or just close shop or morph into right-wing, sometimes even pro-white supremacist websites albeit with vulgar anti-American and pro-Russia/pro-Putin bent to them. They were also very conspiracist and while I believe that conspiracies, at least to some degree, do exist, they seemed to have no class or superstructure analysis of how the “elites” worked. I guess the only “radical” thing about them was that they still questioned the narrative of 9/11 while also talking up Alex Jones and singing his praises, at least eventually (I would, again, drift away or leave the outlets after this would start happening).

    So, sites like Black Agenda Report sort of remained the “main” outlets that I looked forward to every week during my pre-Marxist-Leninist days. Sometimes I got distracted with other things and didn’t look at their articles for months, but always I came back to them eventually and I’ve pretty much remained a “fan” or at least a reader of their articles here and there for 10 years or nearly 10 years, so pretty much when they started. I’m not kidding when I say that I literally remember the days when I first found their website and they had only 3, 4, or 5 articles in total, all on the front page without any back pages.

    Eh, I’m reminiscing at this point, and Black Agenda Report is one influence out of many, many, may other influences. That said, the fact that they’ve been great up to this point while all the anti-war or anti-West or anti-imperialist outles from the 2010s and especially 2000s have gone to shit (or are gone completely) says something, I think. I’d say that the independent media/journalism movement in the Anglophone countries is much better than it was even 5 years ago when it was pretty much dominated by the “Save our troops by bringing 'em home” crowd or the anti-communist/socialist leftist crowd. But back then, sites like Black Agenda Report were an oasis in a desert, looking back. Keep in mind that this was all when people were getting their anti-imperialist news and analysis from RT (which also became more right-wing, unfortunately, over time).

    I still remember those days (the 2000s/2010s era).

    Still, it’s no surprise that communism would find a foothold during the 2010s after the Great Recession and especially after the 2015 - 2016 election and Trump years (never mind the brewing disappointment over Obama). The 1990s really fucked up the international communist movemet. CPUSA, for example, went through the Sam Webb years (till 2014) and a lot of the CPs outside the United States also went through weird periods in their history where they considered dropping Stalin/Mao or dropping Lenin or dropping certain fundamental aspects of communism/socialism in order to “adapt” to modern times.

    The 1990s/2000s era was pretty much the time when communism was all but dead. I mean, I exaggerate a bit, but it certainly felt that way. Basically, the “lost decade” or “lost generation” of the movement. The 2010s and especially the last 5 - 6 years pretty much changed that. We partly owe it to the anti-imperialist media of the 2010s (which, again, mostly turned out bad over time for those that weren’t explicitly socialist/communist or at least leftist). I still remember the days when Trots dominated and were growing the the Marxists movement.

    Frankly, I feel like you could even mark Glen Ford’s death as the end of an era, the end of a generation or time-period (1991 to 2021) where communism or even what we call “radicalism” or anti-imperialism was pretty much dead in the water, even if some of the sentiments were still there.

    Welp, done rambling, but I hope you all read through or at least skimmed through my 11-paragraph “essay” or whatever. @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml

    Ciao.