Last year I did a piece on the New York Times forty part series
normalizing communism's past. This week we have a micro-example of the
continuing effort by the Times on this front. It's the article, "
Angela Davis Says She's 'Stunned' After Award Is Revoked Over Her Views On Israel".
The
Birmingham (Alabama) Civil Rights Institute had announced it was giving
Ms Davis its annual human rights award but decided to rescind the honor
due to
“protests from our local Jewish community and some of its allies.” because of Davis' support of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
The Times describes the BDS movement as seeking "
to apply economic pressure to Israel until it ends the occupation
of the West Bank, treats Palestinians equally under the law and allows
the return of Palestinian refugees." In fact what BDS supports is
the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and then the creation of
one state with a Palestinian majority. In other words, the end of
Israel as a Jewish state. These are the same people who, after Israel
ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005 including forcibly uprooting
several thousand Jewish settlers, still insist that Gaza is occupied in
order to justify the continuing attacks of Hamas on Israel. So the
article normalizes those calling for Israel's destruction.
But
that is only the start. Ms Davis is described as an "
activist and
scholar". Now that's an initial tip-off since "
activist" is a synonym for "
leftist". She is also called "
once a global hero of the left who has since earned renown for her scholarship". We'll come back to that one. Davis is also held in high esteem in the right quarters, "
she has been recognized for her scholarship and activism around feminism
and against mass incarceration. Last year, a Harvard University library acquired her personal archive."
And then we come to these interestingly structured paragraphs:
Professor Davis
became a global progressive leader nearly half a century ago. At the
time, she was agitating on behalf of three California inmates accused of
murdering a white prison guard when guns she had purchased were used in
an attack that was aimed at freeing the inmates but left four people
dead, including the assailant.
She
was not present during the attack and witnesses testified that the guns
were purchased for defense, but Professor Davis nonetheless spent 16
months in jail before an all-white jury acquitted her of all charges. In
the interim, “Free Angela” had become a rallying cry.
So, she was a progressive back then and someone some guns she purchased were used in an attack that left several people dead. Interesting. It turns out that at the time of the shoot out at the Marin County Court House in California, Angela Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA and a committed supporter of revolutionary violence. As the Times article mentions she was acquitted of charges of being an accomplice to kidnapping and homicide. However, there are also some relevant (and undisputed) additional facts that give further context.
On August 7, 1970, 17 year old Jonathan Jackson entered the court room where a trial of a Black Panther was underway. Jackson was carrying a sawed off shotgun and handgun in a satchel (it was a lot easier to get into courts in those days) and a M1 carbine under his raincoat. Throwing the handgun to an accomplice, Jackson pulled his M1 out and announced he was acting to free three convicts at Soledad Prison, one of whom was his brother George. It turned out there were four kidnappers in on the takeover.
The kidnappers took five hostages including Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and tried to escape in a van, ending up in a shoot out with police at a roadblock. At the end three of the kidnappers and Judge Haley were dead, and two hostages wounded; a juror wounded in the arm, and Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas who was paralyzed by a bullet in the spine.
Angela Davis had been in correspondence with George Jackson, the older brother of Jonathan, and agitating for his release from prison. Two days prior to the court house incident, Davis purchased the shotgun used by Jonathan, and all the guns he was carrying were registered to her. At the trial it was established that Judge Haley had two wounds, either of which would have been fatal - one was from the shotgun.
Ms Davis was part of the same revolutionary scum that floated around America in the late 60s and into the 1970s (some of whom I wrote about in
The Company You Keep). As a communist party member she was part of an organization under the direction of the Soviet Union, which also financially supported the group, an organization she remained a member of until the Soviet Union was no more in 1991. She ran as the party's candidate for vice-president of the United States in the presidential elections of 1980 and 1984. Talk about collusion!
As a committed communist, Davis opposes human rights. To the extent she supports free elections it is under the slogan, "one person, one vote, one time". Over the years she has consistently been an unapologetic supporter of every bloody Leftist regime in the world. She was a big fan of the murderous, homophobic thugs Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In Moscow she praised the "glorious name of Lenin" and "the great October revolution" (which overthrew the first democratic government in Russian history). Locally, she was a very public supporter of the Reverend Jim Jones and the People's Temple, telling them, "when you are attacked, it is because of your progressive stand, and we feel that it is directly an attack against us as well".
She has also consistently refused to agitate for the release of prisoners held by Leftist governments.
As recounted in his book Chutzpah, when Alan Dershowitz, who worked on
her legal defense, asked her to speak out on behalf of Soviet Jews
imprisoned as dissidents, Davis responded that they were all “
Zionist
fascists” who deserved their fate. In the 1970s, asked to support Czech dissidents imprisoned by the communist regime she responded, "
They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison".
What we have is a problem much bigger than Davis' support for the BDS movement and the attempt of the New York Times to normalize her. It is the determined whitewash of her actual views. Not even considering her position on Israel, it is nauseating that civil and human right groups would bestow awards on someone who has no compunction about lining up against a wall those she disagrees with and shooting them. That's no exaggeration. Remember the line in the Times article about Davis being recognized for her activism "against mass incarceration"? Yet she supports mass incarceration when those being imprisoned are ideological enemies. For her the crucial question is Lenin's, "
Who will overtake whom?". If you are on the wrong side of that equation for Davis it is "
no soup for you!" It cannot be said too often,
Angela Davis opposes human rights.
It also reflects poorly on the degeneration of the academic world. She has had a long and distinguished career in academia despite her repellent beliefs. Remember the quote from the Times article above that she was "
once a global hero of the left who has since gained renown for her scholarship"? Her longest stint was 17 years at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Rutgers University as professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies Departments; which aren't even things! They are simply sinecures in intellectually incoherent and artificial disciplines designed to provide platforms for
agitprop and financial security for its practitioners. She is still the same politically as she was when she purchased guns for Jonathan Jackson, and when she endorsed the imprisonment of dissidents by the left, only now she has the imprimatur of a corrupt academic establishment for her authoritarian philosophy.
With the deterioration of the City starting in the 5th century and accelerating during the Gothic Wars, the buildings and forums of the Republic and Empire were largely abandoned as the diminished population retreated to the banks of the Tiber. For more on the history of the city in those times read Belisarius Enters Rome.
