From Police Brutality to Race Relations

The Illiberal Subversion of Race Agitators

Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

By James Pew and Scott Miller, for the series The Great Illiberal Subversion: How Radical Activists Ru(i)n Western Democracies.

“Illiberal subversion, as it regards this series, refers to the “work” of radical activists and social agitators who force their will on society through a long on-going web of processes involving incremental efforts that chip away at the pillars of western democracies. Attacking and undermining public institutions as Gramsci had it - “a revolution from within” - through a drawn-out complex of affairs perhaps best viewed as death by a thousand cuts, the radical activists entrench in individual departments until they colonize an entire organization and effectively wield enough power to shape its directives. Once this happens to enough of the institutions (or pillars) of society (and it already has), the radical subverters effectively wield power over everyone, the power to shape social right and social wrong.” - The Ontology of the Great Illiberal Subversion

In our last piece - Charting the Great Illiberal Subversion in Canadian Education - we discussed briefly the origins and subsequent subversion of Canadian multiculturalism. In this piece we delve deeper into an associated thread of that topic by focusing on a key component; race relations and the activist processes that lead to it. It was through the government’s formation of race relations committees that multiculturalist ideology was turned to Social Justice and became race antagonism. What the impetus was for the creation of government appointed race relations bodies, is answered partially in the sequence of subversion laid out in the article mentioned above:

Sequence of Subversion - The Great Illiberal Subversion

i) Demographic change beginning around 1970; ii) The press in the late 1970s shifting focus to incidents of racial conflict; iii) "Calls" for action as a result of the racist picture of Canada presented by the media; iv) The government chooses appeasement and greenlights race relations committees.¹

The second point in the sequence above regarding media coverage of racial conflict is worth expanding on. In most cases specific events of racial conflict are not statistically significant. They are made to appear as something that has happened more often than it has, and to appear more likely to happen again if something isn’t done about it. Overwhelmingly, the work of radical social agitators who foment both social discontent and hysteria through melodramatic and manipulative exaggeration is what lurks behind the deception.

In our article Importing the Perception of Systemic Racism into Canada Scott Miller and I, discussed the exaggerations of the 1990s era pre-Black Lives Matter (BLM), radical social activist group the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC). In this example, instigated by the BADC, the infamous Yonge Street Uprising was eagerly portrayed by the media as a legitimate response by black community members in Toronto, to the unjust police killings of young black men. The media did not accurately contextualize the statistical insignificance of the small number of black men killed by police - in most cases while resisting arrest and/or brandishing weapons - during the decade prior to the Yonge Street riots. In fact, as is shown in the second position of our sequence of subversion, the press from the late 1970s and on, shifted focus and began emphasizing incidents of racial conflict. 

Primed and eager to report on racial tensions, little consideration was given to the possibility that a riot causing millions of dollars in damage on one of the most commercially developed streets in Canada, could be anything short of an emergent organic awakening of a people long oppressed. But those who thought the Yonge Street Uprising more closely resembled mindless vandalism inspired by a tiny group of radical social agitators were not only correct, but as they would be today, were ignored.

From the race riots of the 1960s to the Rodney King and Yonge Street riots of the 1990s to the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police riots of the 2020s, one factor remains constant: radical anti-police rhetoric and activism.

In fact, radical activism has a long history with the police stretching back to the early 1900s. To explore this further, for the remainder of this article, we will turn our focus to the strange and intricate relationship of three interrelated developments in Western public policy and education, by expanding on point one: the Marxist-Leninist approach to radical activism.

Three Interrelated Developments in Western Public Policy and Education:

i) Marxist-Leninist social theory (particularly, as it came to be used by race activists and their confrontations with police); ii) race activism in the US, UK and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s which featured impactful race riots and anti-police tactics and propaganda iii) the formation in government and school boards of race relations committees which justified their existence, often, on the phenomenon of racial unrest (specifically: on the race riots and police clashes which, it often goes unstated, were provoked by activists pursuing the Marxist-Leninist activist model). 

The Black Action Defense Committee, like many race agitators, were a radical black activist group of the Marxist-Leninist mold - always keen to make accusations of racism and police brutality. This type of agitating against the police has its historical lineage beginning in Tsarist Russia in the early 1900s - when Lenin's Marxist activism was illegal, so he was compelled to operate underground under constant persecution from state police.

In framing his version of vanguard activism (which argues that revolutionary movements must be spearheaded by an elite group of workers and intellectuals, the "conscious element" of the party that directs the uncomprehending masses), Lenin associates calling out police violence with revolutionary ideals. In his 1902 work "What is to be done?" Lenin states that to attain true working class consciousness, workers must be trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse no matter what class is affected; further, the champion of the people should be one “who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears … who Is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation…”²

In a Manual of Organization that was produced for the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) in 1935 - which established that setting up a revolutionary proletarian dictatorship entails a struggle against the police - the anti-police rhetoric is overt, “The masses will learn in these struggles who their enemies are. They will see the police with their clubs and revolvers and gas bombs…”³ The manual discusses the prospect of holding demonstrations against the police and emphasizes how important unity and organization is for such demonstrations: "The District Committee decides that a demonstration should be held against police terror and gives directives to the Sections to mobilize the whole membership to get the greatest possible number of workers to the demonstration.”

Of related importance, the 1935 manual of the Communist Party of America lays out the communist policy toward black Americans at the time - the party (working on the directives of Soviet government agency COMINTERN), adopted policies intending to enlist black Americans to its revolutionary causes. This had only limited success: in time, large swaths of the black community would embrace a hybrid Marxist approach to social change, but it wouldn't be the doctrine of the American communist party specifically. Page 12 of the manual states: "The other important ally of the American proletariat is the mass of 13,000,000 Negro people in their struggle against national oppression. The Communist Party, as the revolutionary Party of the proletariat, as the only Party which is courageously and resolutely carrying on a struggle against the double exploitation and national oppression of the Negro people, becoming particularly intense with the developing crisis, can win over the great masses of Negro people as allies of the proletariat against the American bourgeoisie." 

It is worth noting that race activists, during the social unrest of the 1960s through the 2020s, have knowingly repurposed Marxist-Leninist doctrines for their political ends. The deployment of these tactics was apparent in the 1960s era race riots in the U.S., such as the Harlem riot of 1964 which began when an off-duty police officer shot and killed a black youth (reports, as is common, are contradictory as to whether the youth had a knife, and the shooting was justified). Over the next six days some 4,000 New Yorkers (presumably, mainly black) engaged in rioting and attacks on police.

Then FBI director, J Edgar Hoover, and his assistant, Thomas E. Dewey, agreed that radical social agitators had “moved in” on a situation that had “taken them by surprise” and so therefore were mostly responsible for “encouraging,” rather than “inspiring” the riots. Hoover and Dewey were making a distinction between Communist conspirators in America and or other radical groups. They also understood that the riots weren't always started by communists and Marxists, per se, but they were inflamed by such actors whenever the opportunity presented itself. ⁴

A survey of black soldiers in Vietnam conducted in 1970 showed that some 30.6% of these soldiers planned to join a militant group such as the black panthers when they returned home.⁵ The race riots had exploded in 1967 with the social unrest occurring in 150 black communities across the country with agitation ranging from minor actions to looting and arson.⁶ Hoover, in 1967, placed blame for the riots on individual occasions when a black person was taken into custody by police - but also on "Black Power" agitation by operatives such as Stokely Carmichael (a black nationalist and a Marxist-Leninist and sometimes leader of the black panthers).⁷

In an address to a congressional committee in 1968, J. Edgar Hoover made some important remarks about communist (or Marxist-Leninist) tactics in regard to alleged police brutality. From Kenneth O’Reilly’s “The FBI and the Politics of the Riots,” 1964-1968 - “On the issue of police brutality in the ghetto, the director linked Moscow-directed revolutionaries with ‘vicious, hate-filled ... black extremists.’ The communist policy to charge and protest 'police brutality' ... in ‘racial situations’ was part of an ‘immensely successful’ and ‘continuing smear campaign’ he said. ‘The net effect ... is to provoke and encourage mob action and violence by developing contempt for constituted authority’."⁸

Much of the above provides the necessary background context with which to consider the black panther's anti-police activism of the late 1960s. From Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che, Max Elbaum describes something of the (Marxist-Leninist) black panther police tactic as follows: "The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California in October 1966. One of their first activities was following Oakland police officers to observe and record instances of racist harassment and brutality. Panther members carried arms while doing this work, which was legal in California at the time. When in May 1967 the state legislature moved to pass a bill making armed citizen patrols illegal, Seale led a lobbying trip to Sacramento during which Panthers were photographed on the State Capitol steps carrying shotguns. This photo catapulted the new group into the nationwide spotlight."⁹ 

Enter the British Anti-racists

In order to appreciate the importance of the UK context for race relations and education, we have to recognize that anti-racism ideology originated in the UK before spreading elsewhere. This is according to George Dei, the anti-racist most responsible for spreading the ideology in Canadian education.

Cartoon from the British Institute of Race Relations

The Institute of Race Relations in Britain was once described by the Daily Mail as an institute which had devolved into a “Marxist dominated pressure group.” See the Daily Mail article linked below which was penned by Baroness Cox in 1985.¹⁰ Cox was at the time incensed by a publication which the Institute had published and had aimed at children as young as ten called “How Racism Came to Britain.” The material, which teaches children that police are racist and arbitrarily cruel (see the cartoon extracted from the publication pictured above) was described thusly by Cox: “propaganda material has been circulated in schools, community centers, libraries...anywhere it can be seen by racial minorities. It acts as a barrier between them and the police.”

Similarly, John Marks comments in connection with the sort of radical activism carried out by the institute: “It is no accident but a natural consequence of their revolutionary Marxist beliefs and affiliations that the 'anti-racists' are also prominent in recent campaigns to undermine the police. This has been a constant Marxist- Leninist tactic in pre-revolutionary situations. Also, as we have seen, the 'anti-racists' do not shrink from that other settled feature or Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, the rewriting or history.”¹¹

All of this isn't to say that police malpractice does not exist - it exists anywhere there is a police force on earth - it's to say that certain actors do not oppose police malpractice simply out of the principle of reforming the police practices, but because it is simultaneously part of a long-established tradition in revolutionary politics. 

________

Thanks for reading. Here is the next essay in the series - The Genesis of Race Relations - (substack.com)

For a complete index (with summaries) of The Great Illiberal Subversion series of essay’s, check out The Ontology of the Great Illiberal Subversion.

Bibliography:

Berard, Tim. 2008. "The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism." Sociology Compass 2/2: 734-764

Breton, Raymond. 1986. "Multiculturalism and Canadian Nation-Building." In The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Language in Canada, edited by Alan Cairns and Cynthia Williams, 26-63. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.

Elbaum, Max. 2002. Revolution in the Air: Radicals from Lenin, Mao and Che. London, New York: Verso.

Marks, John. 1986. "Anti-Racism — Revolution not Education." In Anti-Racism: an Assault on Education and Value, edited by Frank Palmer, 32-43. London: The Sherwood Press.

O'Reilly, Kenneth. 1988. "The FBI and the Politics of the Riots, 1964-1968." The Journal of American History 75/1: 91-114.

Windschuttle, Keith. 1997. "The Poverty of Media Theory." ECQUID NOVI, 18:1: 3-16.

1. This blueprint, currently under development at the lighthouse think tank, represents an attempt to conceptualize and to theorize how the process of illiberal subversion played out in Canada (that is, how radical identity-politics, through the intervention of opinion shaping mass media and through an imposition on institutional policy everywhere, became the dominant culture in a land once socially regulated by the principles of liberal individualism and individual rights). For the major demographic shift in Canadian immigration occurring in the early 1970s, see Breton (1986, 58). The shift in media reporting from a standard of integrity and objectivity to one of fomenting social transformation is discussed by historian Keith Windschuttle (1997 and 1998) — as Windschuttle argues, this reversal on journalistic principles comes with the 1970s rise of “culture studies” as the major component of media theory across Western universities (search  “culture studies” on wiki for an introduction, yes, this approach to journalism really was produced by three Marxist intellectuals).  The characterization that the media focused on stories of (white) youth violence against minorities in the 1970s comes from the dissertation of Malgorzata (2013, 3) which studies race and resistance in 1970s Toronto. The same source states that, while the media is quick to blame the youth in question for such incidents, minority activists use the media fanfare generated on such occasions as an opportunity to influence public opinion and institutional policy: “visible minority groups, however, argued that overt racism was symptomatic of a larger problem: institutional racism.” This process by which black panther leader and Marxist Stokely Carmichael’s theory of institutional / systemic racism came to be a major aspect of the social sciences everywhere is described by sociologist Tim Berard as follows: “although Carmichael and Hamilton do not define institutional racism solely in terms of its effects, the social–psychological dimension in their account may have been so politically divisive or so empirically inadequate that subsequent authors would define institutional racism more and more in terms of its effects, largely neglecting or fudging questions of causal mechanisms and institutional processes” (Berard 2008, 737).  

2. Elbaum 2002, 149

3. https://archive.org/details/TheCommunistPartyAManualOnOrganization/page/n7/mode/2up

4. The FBI and the Politics of the Riots, 1964-1968 by Kenneth O'Reilly

5. Elbaum 2002 p. 18

6. O'Reilly p. 101-102

7. O'Reilly p, 103

8. O'Reilly p. 109

9. Elbaum p. 65

10.  https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2015/01/Daily-Mail-on-IRR_edit.jpg

11. Marks 1985, 39.