Here is West’s conversation with writer and Presbyterian minister Christopher Hedges:
Some key West quotes from the Hedges interview:
“I’ve always viewed myself as a jazz man in the world of ideas as well as a jazz man in politics, which means I have to improvisational. I can’t be dogmatic. I can’t be ossified and petrified in my analysis or in my praxis so I always find myself going in and out….I’ve always tried to be flexible and fluid enough, but it’s always tied to putting precious poor people and priceless working people of all colors, at the center of my vision and praxis. So I’m thoroughly convinced now that, at this historical moment, you never defeat fascism with milquetoast neoliberalism. Neoliberalism will simply put it off for a while. You’ve got to get to get at the roots of fascism and the two-party system, the corporate duopoly impedes and obstructs the empowerment of poor people….”
“So [in] this particular moment, I’m just giving all that I can to mount this third party bid to, on the one hand, be head of the empire and then to win and begin to dismantle the empire in the name of poor and working people here and abroad.”
Hedges asks why West cannot achieve the aforementioned goals through the Democratic Party. Here’s West: “The Democratic Party has proven now that its corporate wing will always snuff out the progressives, the Bernie Sanders… [The Sanders campaign in 2016] made it very clear that the progressives will always be a window dressing, especially every two years and every four years during elections. Corporate interest, military interest, the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Big Tech–they’re all at the center of the Democratic Party….”
“I’m in deep solidarity with the oppression of the Russian brothers and sisters who are going to jail against the [Ukraine] invasion. See, that’s serious moral witness. That speaks deeply to me. So I don’t view Russians in any homogeneous ways, there’s always a variety of different voices. Same way in Israel. You’ve got some Jewish brothers and sisters who are in solidarity with the Palestinians, not their government, but you never view the Jewish community as a homogeneous community. There’s always a variety of different voices. So to keep that moral and spiritual dimension at the core mean everything to my own candidacy….”
“So the very litmus test of progress, let’s say, in relation to race, [is] how many middle-class Black folks you got? What kind of representation do you have at the top? So you end up with a more multiracial and even later multicultural status quo that still has contempt for poor people, contempt for working people, militaristic presences abroad, and yet now Black folk are ‘represented’ and included in an unjust order, but slightly less unjust because it’s not as racist as it was before….The breakthroughs have been made for the Black middle classes, for the Black bourgeoisie, for the Black professional managerial class. Absolutely unprecedented opportunities. That cannot be denied. You can’t account for Obama without telling that story. But at the same time, when you have the vision that I am concerned about, which is the vision of the plight and predicament of what the Bible calls ‘the least of these’–the poor, the working classes, those in the hoods, in the barrios, our poor white brothers and sisters in Appalachia, and so many other places still catching hell.”
“When you have your baby crushed or your mother killed on the West Bank, there’s not a big difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.”
“What is at the center of my campaign is to reintroduce America to the best of itself.”
In the end, West is a prophet. Prophets are meant to speak truth to power. Prophets do not pursue power or advance their agendas (if they have them) through power. West obviously has little chance of winning the presidency. It is unlikely he will get on a debate stage in the Fall of 2024. So what is he doing? I don’t know. But if his candidacy is as successful as Jill Stein in 2016 or Ralph Nader in 2000, there is a good chance the GOP candidate–it may be Donald Trump–will be president again. Hedges never addresses this issue with West.
Below is West’s recent interview with Laura Ingraham on FOX News. Ingraham suggests that West, because of his commitments to getting Wall Street out of politics, ending the Russia-Ukraine War, and pushing for criminal justice reform, is closer to “populist conservatism” (i.e. Trump) than most of the Democratic Party. Can’t West acknowledge, Ingraham asks, that Trump’s policies while president raised the plight of poor people?
Watch West’s response:
The Ingraham-West interview is much better than the Hedges-West interview. Hedges throws softballs and West crushes them. Ingraham forces West to be nuanced. What is his campaign about and what isn’t it about?