Im-Politic: A Chinese Link to Black Lives Matter?

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Alicia Garza, Black Futures Lab, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter Too, BLM, China, Chinese Progressive Association, election interference, Heritage Foundation, Im-Politic, race relations, racism, reparations, structural racism, systemic racism, The Federalist, wealth gap, white fragility

Our times are so racially fraught that even I (someone who rarely feels defensive about my views) feel the need to start out this post by specifying that I am not a systemic or structural racist or even an unwitting example of white fragility. Indeed, I’m so woke on the issue of continuing racial discrimination in America that I’ve come out for reparations to remedy what I see as one recent example of open-and-shut racial injustice whose victims would be relatively easy to identify and compensate. And I’ve called attention to the still yawning racial wealth gap. 

I don’t even have significant problems with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) – although I like “Black Lives Matter, Too” because it avoids the possibility of either-or interpretations while making clear that there’s a still a racial gap that must be eliminated.

But the various organizations and coalitions invoking this phrase that have sprung up lately? I’m not so sure about many of them, especially since their proclaimed agendas often go far beyond securing racial justice. (See, e.g., here.) And just yesterday I found out about another potential problem with these groups that seems to support a point I made in a recent article about the massive and under-reported scale of Chinese interference in American public life – signs of close connections between a key BLM organization the Chinese government.

As reported in The Federalist, a conservative publication, based on research by the equally conservative Heritage Foundation, an outfit called Black Futures Lab (BFL) is funded mainly by an organization called the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA). The Lab’s own website, moreover, confirms this finding.

It’s true that BFL is only one group in the BLM constellation. But it’s no ordinary group. Its “Principal” is Alicia Garza, who describes herself, and is credited in news reports, as a founder of the BLM movement.

It’s also true that the CPA isn’t officially affiliated with the Chinese government. But Beijing is certainly a fan of what’s been described as its Boston chapter, as this article (cited in the Heritage Foundation report) from its official mouthpiece demonstrates. One charge I could not independently corroborate – the claim that the Chinese flag-raising event the article mentions was “hosted by the Consulate General of China in New York.”

Consulate officials clearly attended the other event – a flag-raiser – and spoke. But unike the aforementioned Boston passport-focused event, I was unable to find evidence that they played any organizing role.

So maybe the cooperation doesn’t go any further than attending (and sometimes organizing) the kinds of celebrations that might simply be ethnic solidarity events. But according to this study (an undergraduate thesis, but one from Stanford University by a student with clearly progressive sympathies), the admiration between CPA and the Chinese government is decidedly mutual:

“The CPA began as a Leftist, pro-People’s Republic of China [PRC] organization, promoting awareness of mainland China’s revolutionary thought and workers rights, and dedicated to self-determination, community control, and ‘serving the people’.

Further, although “Its activities were independent of the Communist Party of China or the US,” it “worked with other pro-PRC groups within the US and San Francisco Bay Area.”

Again, the prospect can’t be ruled out that Beijing is content simply to admire CPA’s efforts to improve social services for Chinese Americans or even help organize Chinese American events with the group. But given the influence I thoroughly documented in the aforementioned magazine article that China has gained over major American institutions; and given the unusual interest displayed by a group like CPA, which is exclusively focused on Chinese Americans (as it makes clear) in an organization that says it’s exclusively focused on African Americans (especially since serious problem of poverty and discrimination still clearly dog Chinese Americans, according to CPA), grounds for further investigation don’t exactly seem to be lacking.

Indeed, as known by anyone with legal or law enforcement experience, or most fans of detective stories, showing that defendants have had “motive, opportunity and means” is a venerable framework for investigating and determining wrongdoing. When it comes to fomenting racial tensions in the United States, the Chinese government surely has all three. So let’s hope that the federal government (both the Exective and Congress), as well as the supposed watchdogs of our democracy, the news media, look into China’s involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement as aggressively as it’s looked into other charges of improper foreign interference in America’s politics.

Im-Politic: The Establishment Keeps Doubling Down Against Populism

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2016 election, American politics, Ben Domenech, Bernie Sanders, Brexit, Donald Trump, establishment, Im-Politic, Jonathan Rauch, Populism, special interests, The Atlantic, The Federalist, think tanks, United Kingdom

Brexit underscores the belief that I have expressed throughout this presidential campaign cycle that opponents of the populist wave breaking all over the high income world have two basic choices: They can demonize the populists and their champions, or they can propose policies capable of addressing constructively the legitimate grievances of these voters. A lengthy article just posted on The Atlantic‘s website adds to the evidence that the American political establishment has overwhelmingly opted for choice number one.

Author Jonathan Rauch makes clear in his title how he interprets the rise of anti-establishment candidates like presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and unexpectedly strong Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders: “How American Politics Went Insane.” His explanation: Well-intentioned reformers across the nation’s ideological spectrum went way overboard in removing the flaws in the formal and informal political systems that on balance served the United States well for decades, and wound up proverbially throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Rauch is certainly correct in pointing out that various recent changes mandated in U.S. politics have backfired, or at the least had damaging unintended consequences. He’s also correct in noting that the results have too often strengthened extremist impulses and weakened their moderate counterparts.

But the author is completely off-base in claiming that all would be set right if the nation only recognized the dangers of the transparency and openness in government it’s insisted on, and resolved to return to the days when “institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees…historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time.”

As these intermediaries’ influence fades,” Rauch continues, “politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns and in the government itself.”

Ben Domenech of The Federalist has written a wonderful takedown of Rauch’s establishmentarian bias. Especially devastating is his observation that the practitioners of “insider politics” – including “influence peddlers,” other types of “middle men,” and particularly the wealthy, entrenched special interests they served – used the system to enrich and empower themselves even further. In the process, of course, they left more and more of their compatriots on the outs.

Domenech could have gone even further, however, and pointed out that the author’s establishmentarian bias is actually self-serving. After all, Rauch is not only a regular contributor to establishment publications The Atlantic and National Journal. He’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a mainstay of a Washington, D.C. think tank world that, as I’ve written, has turned into a dedicated “idea laundering” machine – advancing the policy preferences of its corporate and other one-percent-er funders by cloaking them in quasi-academic, objective-looking garb.

But Domenech’s dispositive argument entails Rauch’s almost complete neglect of substance. Domenech calls Rauch’s thesis “bereft of data and thoroughly at odds with the data we have.” I’d emphasize the converse: Rauch is almost completely process-oriented – which of course reflects the establishment worldview that the major, strategic issues are all being handled just splendidly, and that the only remaining questions concern some mechanics.

Domenech does a nice job of listing the substantive establishment failures Rauch glosses over: in addition to Vietnam and Watergate, “Impeachment. 9/11. Iraq. Katrina. Congressional corruption. Financial meltdown….Stagnant wages.” (Domenech also includes Obamacare and the president’s “failed stimulus,” but in my view, those cases are far from screamingly obvious.)

It’s true that Rauch, and his defenders, can point out that for all those troubles and even crises, the United States is still chugging along, and that the vast majority of its citizens enjoy living standards that remain the envy of most of the rest of humanity. At the same time, it’s crucial to remember how many immense built-in advantages the United States has always enjoyed, including generally friendly and, more important, weak, neighbors; abundant natural resources; and a national creed that has encouraged wealth creation and equal opportunity (however often the latter has been absent for major groups).

That is, the United States remains immensely difficult to damage fatally both geopolitically and economically. In fact, given the record cited above – and the crucial policy mistakes were supported by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike – the most important question raised by this year’s American political tumult arguably isn’t it’s reached such proportions. It’s what took so long.