Barack Obama and the "End" of Racism

The Bush regime was and remains an expression of a conscious plan by the far right – especially of the Christian fascists under the leadership of Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and co-founder of the Moral Majority - to crush everything that came to life in the upheavals of the cultural revolutions of the 60s era.  They meant, as they consciously expressed it, to counter the counter culture, the culture of hope, and offer a new “hope” of a “purpose driven life” in the context of the old traditions of oppression. They meant to, as they put it, “reframe this struggle as a moral struggle, as a transcendent struggle, as a struggle between good and evil” along traditional Christian lines. 

The Christian Fascist strategist Eric Heubeck wrote, “We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left.  We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment's rest.  We will endeavor to prove that the Left does not deserve to hold sway over the heart and mind of a single American.  We will offer constant reminders that there is an alternative, there is a better way.  When people have had enough of the sickness and decay of today's American culture, they will be embraced by and welcomed into the New Traditionalist movement.” 

The regime of Bush the Lesser was the pinnacle of this effort – he carried the agenda as far as it could go, before it began to fracture and collapse under the weight of its own madness – before it met the determined resistance of society’s most vulnerable, scapegoated and openly stigmatized targets, as they marched in their millions refusing to be victims.  The combined force of the Christian fascist juggernaut, the repressive powers of the State, and the US war machine looked unstoppable until it met this opposition at home, and until it met the mad and fierce resistance of the people of Iraq who have, however chaotic and horrifying their tactics, refused to be conquered.  With these events, the aura of invincibility and unstoppable momentum was destroyed, the lid of repression began to crack, and what had been suppressed in us rose again to the surface.  Literally, in terms of time in office, and as a sweeping reactionary social agenda, the Bush regime is coming to an end.  With its end, inevitably, comes a wave of hope and euphoria. 

This is the wave Obama is riding, the ocean of energy he is trying to steer into an acceptance of the same old deal, the same old wars, the same old systemic racism, packaged as if it were something new.  This wave of energy is not something he’s inspired, it’s something he’s riding and that he is uniquely qualified to channel toward his own ends – which are not our ends. 

As we have seen, Obama doesn’t represent peace – he represents an expansion of war and the power of Empire.  He’s even more extreme on this than Bush himself, except in his public rhetoric.  He doesn’t represent the real and legitimate needs, desires and hopes of Black people - he refuses to speak openly of the most fundamental issues affecting Black people.  He doesn’t represent the “end of racism,” but the perpetuation of oppression in a new guise. 

Obama doesn’t represent a new system or the new way of life we dreamed of and fought for and that has been suppressed - he represents the old one.  He represents a system that is fundamentally rooted in exploitation, oppression and destruction on a global scale, and he is living proof that no fundamental change for the better can – or will - come about under the system he represents and upholds.  It doesn’t work that way.  To tell the truth is to betray the system, and he can’t bring himself to do it, even though he is far too conscious not to know it.  

Attaining authentic freedom requires, as its barest starting point, the naming of what keeps us subjugated. What keeps us subjugated is the very system Obama wants to rule. The system, even with Barack Obama as its first Black emperor, is not our hope. It’s our enemy, the enemy of the world, and, because this system is rapidly undermining the ability of the planet to foster and sustain life, it is the enemy of all Life on Earth.  This is exactly the understanding that the Christian fascists like Weyrich and Heubeck wanted to crush out of our awareness, and the lack of such awareness is exactly what Barack Obama depends on if he is to remain a symbol of the impossible dream that the system can be something other than what it is. 

http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2008/02/barack-obama-and-end-of-racism.html 

Juan Santos is a Los Angeles based writer and editor.  His essays can be found at: http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com /.  He can be reached at: JuanSantos@Mexica.net.

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