Kmele Foster on Why He Opposes Cancel Culture and the Anti-Capitalist Side of Black Lives Matter
The Fifth Column podcaster is done with cancel culture, identity politics, and political orthodoxy.
HD DownloadEvery week brings more people being censured, fired, or pushed to resign for some alleged instance of racism or sexism. Last week Harper's published a controversial letter signed by more than 150 people, including Salman Rusdie, J.K. Rowling, and Noam Chomsky, that warned "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted."
One of the signatories of that letter was Kmele Foster, the co-founder of Freethink, a media company that showcases social and technological innovations; a co-host of the Fifth Column podcast; and an outspoken libertarian critic of Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, and political orthodoxy.
In this wide-ranging interview, Foster explains why he signed the Harper's letter, why he thinks that racism is not the primary factor for most African Americans' success or failure, and why libertarians need to be pushing individualism now more than ever.
Produced by Ian Keyser. Intro by John Osterhoudt.
Photo Credit: Kmele Foster, Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons; James Bennet, Kris Tripplaar/Sipa USA/Newscom; Curator, Drew Altizer/Sipa USA/Newscom; Bari Weiss, Alberto E. Tamargo/Sipa USA/Newscom; Foster and Stossel, Gage Skidmore
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The clever bit of these interviews is getting both a podcast AND a video of the same interview. But someone is not thinking far enough outside the box. A third component would be a video without soundtrack. Call it the ADA version. Add a sign language translator.
How about just a transcript?
Yes, us sightists would not only be able to read faster, skim, and search, but be able to rub our sightism in the faces of the blind. Isn't that what libertarians do? Two for one!
What's a blind person supposed to do with an ASL version?
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The Wokes are going to have to double down if they hope to achieve their goal; to cancel anyone and everyone in a position of power or influence, thus gaining that for themselves to rule the rest of us. I can just imagine the struggle sessions that would ensue, and the nice accommodations of the facilities they would be sending us to.
Camp Alt, run by none other than the "Rev," commanding us to "open wider."
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"and the anti-capitalist *side* of Black Lives Matter"
jfc is Ginsu a paid advertiser?
“We are anti-capitalist. We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system.”
But we still cant call them marxists.
Just because they share Marxist tenants like above, had the founders openly declare themselves trained marxists, and speak marxist principles... it doesn't mean they are Marxist.
We don't have to call them anything, they call themselves Marxists.
Wasn't Marx a dead white European male? Why is the left paying him any attention?
Because he's dead, the only good kind of white guy.
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The only sin of the West that the left excuses or doesn't condemn is Marxism. Millions of black and brown and yellow people have been killed by it. Millions more denied basic liberties. But there's silence about it.
As the Marxists used to say (I suppose they still do), this is no accident.
Marx also was exceptionally not fond of black folks.
But racism is OK if they find the person dreamy and shit.
Marx was an uggo! Now that young Stalin on the other hand...
All of the ideas and values produced by western civilization are just white supremacy. Except Marxism. That's different for some reason.
Funny how it was the white supremacist patriarchy of western culture that even produced the ideas of racism being a bad thing or of tolerance and embrace of diversity being a good one.
Yes, the left - particularly the black left - condemns the US for its failure to treat people equally. They are absolutely right about that complaint.
But what is the source for this demand? Where does this "promissory note" of equality (as King called it) come from? It comes from the same white evil racist men and their ideas they wish to toss to the dustbin of history.
Okay, we throw away them and their ideas. Where does your promissory note come from now? What is the source for these demands for equal justice come from? Marx? Fanon? Who?
They are unthinking fanatics. The illiberal right, for all of its dangers with this grotesque idiot Trump, is nowhere near as dangerous as this group.
Do you have a link to the quote? It would be helpful to those of us trying to make this case (that BLM is indeed anti-free market) to have those words clearly attributable and spread far and wide.
Thx
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
I think they have toned down some of the more radical stuff in their statement of beliefs and intentions. I'm pretty sure the quote from above (or something very close to it) was there a month or two ago.
OK, thanks.
What is there now is all that I ever saw. I wish I had seen it earlier with the Marxist BS; I would have saved (probably even printed) the page for posterity.
While I can allow movements to change and mature, it's good to have an objective record of their starting point. I'm sure that when put on the spot, there will be an attempt to weasel out with "oh, that's not what I said, and certainly not what I meant" or some other dreck.
"it’s good to have an objective record of their starting point"
Run the link through the Wayback Machine to see its evolution: https://web.archive.org/
No joy there, but as simple search (duh, I should have done that first) on the phase "Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system" goes back to the Movement for Black Lives (m4bl.org) ("formed in December of 2014, was created as a space for Black organizations across the country to debate and discuss the current political conditions"). It looks like M4BL is a coalition or collective of groups including BLM.
So yeah, they're all happy to call themselves Marxist.
What an inconvenient little fact to have at hand.
I suppose the capitalist side of BLM is the capitalists who are bankrolling it, or perhaps the capitalists who will hoover up all the corporate welfare when this "woke" DNC front gets the Democrats a permanent majority in all three branches of Federal government. The anti-capitalist side is all the black queer radical feminists who proclaim themselves to be "trained Marxists."
So, the capitalist side is white, the anti-capitalist side black. Like those nasty ass "Tato Skins" Keebler Pringles knockoffs from the '80s that were dark on one side to evoke an actual potato skin. Whereas actually they were just ground up potato meal with a bit of skin included, formed into ersatz "chips" and baked blacker on that side. Gross.
I suppose the capitalist side of BLM is the capitalists who are bankrolling it
The "capitalists bankrolling" it are essentially the left-wing, liberal professors giving intellectual cover to the Islamic revolutionaries in 1978 Tehran. The fact that the 'capitalists' will be the first ones dragged into prison and the firing squads is something they'll have to wrestle with.
It's far worse than that, or really than 1960s USA. Professors themselves are not capitalists; they cannot really bankroll anything. Their former students now running Google, NBC, and damn near every other megacorporation, plus Soros and so forth, are firmly behind the present "revolution." Their true victory is finally at hand; the others were merely false dawns. I don't fully understand it, and I certainly don't see a way out of it. With the current atmosphere, and Biden isn't losing by at least 20 points? There is little to be rescued at this point.
Ah, I was hasty to make my canned point. I see your analogy now!
those *were* gross.
"Tato Skins got baked potato appeal, 'cause they're made with potatoes...and skins that are real," their fraudulent jingle went, as they actually had the audacity to have the hand model flip them over to the darker-baked side at the word "skin." They had a nominal amount of ground-up dessicated "skin" mixed into their vile slurry, but this is how they dared present themselves to the buying public? Even an ancap can agree this goes beyond the limits of toleration in a civilized society.
How dare you?!?
Now that those delectable treats are no more, I have to eat the janky TGIFridays version of them.
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Hindi-Shayari I can just imagine this struggle sessions that would ensue
To be sure, the political orthodoxy means well, and who could be against racism?
Bigot.
For a guy who calls himself a libertarian, this Foster sure spends a lot of time in the Federalist-Heritage-Republican-Fox clingerverse.
At first glance, just another defensive right-winger parading around in unconvincing libertarian drag.
Meanwhile the rev spends his hours beating off to pictures of blindfolded Uighurs being marched to concentration camps. Clingers.
He beats off to images of US being marched to the camps, where he will gleefully tell us to "open wider."
It's his revenge fantasy for being corn holed at BYU.
You are just a racist who expects every ebony-skinned person to be a mindless, violent revolutionary and to stay on the damned Donkey plantation. Cancel culture is the new Fugitive Slave Law for wayward dusky brethren.
It's OK Artie, we won't tell. You can say nigger here.
I liked the interview with him, and he seemed like a pretty practical guy, so I'm checking out The Fifth Column podcast. I like him. Moynihan is mostly insufferable.
Moynihan is the comic relief. He has thousands of stories, but I wish he would keep most of them to himself. And he interrupts; he is rude.
We could certainly use Grandpa Daniel Patrick to speak some real truth to BLM power these days.
Moynihan has a sweet spot where he excels in; I think somewhere between the 4th and 6th drink.
"the Anti-Capitalist Side of Black Lives Matter"
They source their riot gear through the free market which makes them mostly capitalist commie protesters
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Pretty good video about woke and racist agreeing on everything.
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2020/07/20/this-is-everything-wokes-and-racists-actually-agree-on-everything-in-hilariously-eye-opening-video-watch/
F*ing hilarious .... and SO, SO true. The woke are 'gentle' racists.
Brilliant
From the replies, here are a couple of tidbits from a book called, "How to be an Anti-Racist." This must be the instruction manual Jo read before her tweet.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdYxWmJUwAAkXtX?format=jpg&name=360x360
Oh right. The two links thing.
Fuck this fucking site.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdYoOGpX0AAz7Vj?format=jpg&name=900x900
https://twitter.com/ProfEmilyOster/status/1285216652293013504
Kind of interesting. They won't open government schools and are probably preventing private schools from opening too. Is this the beginning of the (an) end for government schooling?
The Left will never allow it to happen. It's not the '00s; it's less open to reform and more beholden to unions than ever. The Left correctly perceives that it is finally strong enough to throw away mask after mask, as is happening now. In the current environment, and especially given the Democrats' open attitude toward it, would their candidate be within 20 points even a few years ago? Once they are in power little else will matter until the long game when the America they run declines and collapses. The "red pills" can flow like water (and perhaps are); it is simply too late for the takers to have the numbers (if they are unwilling to separate from the America that the Left will numerically dominate).
The Left will never allow it to happen.
They will be powerless to stop it. They'll try though and it'll be disgusting.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdYoOGpX0AAz7Vj?format=jpg&name=900x900
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"Kmele Foster on Why He Opposes Cancel Culture and the Anti-Capitalist Side of Black Lives Matter."
Will someone please arrest this counter-revolutionary and put him in the local gulag before he infects the masses with his sanity?
Funny joke considering unidentified government goons are currently rounding up people on the president's orders.
Tony will use any bullshit argument to defend violent felons on his side. The rest of us call it criminals getting arrested for federal felonies.
More often than not, racism is the excuse for failure rather than the cause of it. Does racism exist? Absolutely. Is it only directed towards POCs? Absolutely not. Racism does not make blacks in Chicago kill other blacks. Racism doesn't cause the number of children born to one parent homes of all races to skyrocket. Racism doesn't make poor whites take oxy or meth. Racism doesn't make people break our laws and enter our country illegally. Racism doesn't force people to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to pursue worthless degrees and then complain about the debt. Racism doesn't force people to buy $8 lattes and $70,000 BMWs and then complain about not having any retirement savings. Stupidity does all that. Don't make excuses for it.
You touch on a point that is often missed: Individual free will.
The town I live in is indeed almost lily white, but is sliding from the pleasant (small ell) libertarian community I moved to 15 years ago to a (big D) Democrat stronghold. POC would certainly have been welcomed 15 years ago for real as just more people looking for a nice place to live, and now would be welcomed to show that all important DIVERSITY that everyone prizes so much at the moment. But none come here, and I ask why? Money? Expensive but not outrageous. Racism? No, see above. Bad schools? Nope, decent enough. Don't want to go someplace other than the hellhole they claim they are forced to live in? Apparently we have a winner!
Get off your butts and c'mon over. But if you don't, stop bitching about it!
But, umm... Cancel Culture is Capitalism. It's free market to the very core. As long as laws were not in place to "cancel" Roseanne, then it's private entities electing to fire people because they make them less profitable to the masses...
I feel like all the super smart people commenting on this website refuse to or simply can't come to that conclusion.
But, ummm... Resisting cancel culture is also.
However, cancel culture did not come from a culture of enterprise, it came from the culture of the universities which oppose free enterprise and are largely insulated from market forces.
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