r/blowback • u/isawasin • 25d ago

Acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates has a knack for spelling things out in no uncertain terms.

300 Upvotes

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u/American_Exception 25d ago

Unless the subject is capitalism. Coates amassed a fortune by being the liberal anti-racist darling who essentially laundered racial capitalism by divorcing racism from its origins within the US system of capitalist oligarchy. That's why he got that sweet post at The Atlantic and the MacArthur Genius ($$$) award and why his book was well-reviewed enough to be the #1 chart topper in the liberal white guilt genre.

All that said, it's good that he is using his Fuck You money to say "Fuck Zionism."

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u/EffortlessFlexor 25d ago

he might've also realized he was wrong

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u/American_Exception 24d ago

If so, this is something he either will not admit or is only subconscious. I have never heard him state or imply that he has changed his views and is now on the side of the Black Radical Tradition when it comes to opposing imperial capitalism first and foremost.

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u/shane_4_us 25d ago

The point he was making as the video ends is the same one UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has been making: that people have a "right to exist" but states do not, at least not according to current international law (not that the "Rules Based Order" ever cared much for that). As she said, if France and Italy wanted to merge tomorrow, no one would be able to argue that they couldn't do so because one or the other had the "right" to exist. In the same way, states come and go. Israel came in 1948. So did the Nakba. Israel has referred multiple times to their (and USA's) genocide as the Second Nakba. They want the state that goes to be Palestine. We all know the state that needs to go is Israel -- a colonial outpost of a global hegemon reinforcing an apartheid regime through a genocidal war of expansion.

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u/ExoticPumpkin237 24d ago

Of course, and you just have to imagine applying the same "rules" Israel and the US play by to literally any other country see how quickly the whole game collapses in on itself... 

Imagine if sanctions on Russia or China was met with overwhelming cries of the USA hating them because of their race, and basically the entire world order turning their back.. Does China have a right to exist? Doesn't China have a right to defend itself?? Sounds like the US just hates the fine people of China and wants to see them fail 😤

It would be funny if it wasn't so patently absurd 

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u/ExoticPumpkin237 24d ago

If the existence of your state is necessarily predicated on the non-existence of other people's then you're going to have some problems, in fact it calls into question the legitimacy of that state to exist in the first place foundationally. 

The US is predicated on the same logic, hundreds of indigenous nations clearcut and trampled because we needed more strip malls and parking lots, so of course what's going on in Gaza is just a continuation of the repulsive norm.