Cornel West on Kamala Harris: Symbolic change, same 'Democratic Plantation'

The United States is an empire in deep decline, and Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris won't be able to save it. That's the perspective of Cornel West, an American academic and activist who is running for president as an independent in November.

In a recent interview with TRT World, West delivered a searing critique of Harris, questioning her potential to bring meaningful policy changes as president while remaining tethered to Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

He argued that while Harris may galvanise black voters frustrated with the status quo, her political approach suggests little deviation from her predecessor US President Joe Biden’s path. Here are excerpts of his interview, which touch on the problem with American elections, the importance of speaking up for the working class and politicians' "disgusting" support for Israel.

TRT World: Do you think that Kamala Harris will be any different than Joe Biden for the American people?

Cornel West: Well, in regard to various issues, she certainly galvanises black folk who are so desperate and frustrated and too willing too often to capitulate to an unjust status quo.

But in terms of policy, I don't think it would be that big a difference. She's still very much a defender of the American empire. She's still very much an enabler of the genocide in Gaza. She's still very much tied to Silicon Valley and the big money there, as well as big money in Wall Street and the military historical policies around the world so there's a certain kind of superficial dynamism that's taking place.

When you actually scratch the surface, I don't think there's going to be any deep differences in regard to policies, both of the imperial policies abroad or the pro-corporate policies within the American empire.

TRT World: And regarding what you said about Black voters, do you think that she will motivate people to come to the polls like former US president Barack Obama did?

Cornel West: Whether she'll be able to get as many as Obama is an open question because it is an open moment when people see through Obama.

I mean, it was under Obama, along with a Black attorney general and Black homeland security member of Cabinet that you had Black Lives Matter. So you had an awakening of police murders and police brutality, generating a critique and condemnation of the Black president, the Black cabinet member and a Black attorney general.

And so I think that Kamala Harris is going to have a certain kind of a challenge there, because more and more people see through the Black face and high police strategy.

TRT World: It's kind of like a honeymoon period, right now?

Cornel West: Absolutely. No doubt about that.

TRT World: You previously said, "We are reaping what we sowed – the blowback of organised greed at the top, weaponized hatred in the middle and massive social misery below." What's the way out?

Cornel West: You see, when empires begin to decay and decline and deteriorate, when they begin to collapse and implode, it's hard to find a way out. I mean, there's a sense in which all you can do is try to tell the truth and seek justice.

Try to preserve your own personal integrity, but you're sullied around the world. But if you look at America solely from the vantage point of the US context, it looks like it's just headed towards self-destruction, headed toward fascism.

It's very important, I think, to look at America in an international context, and it's there where you see more of the breakthroughs and possibilities in the Global South, the solidarity with various oppressed peoples around the world.

But right now, America seems to be just too intoxicated with its own move toward self-destruction in the form of fascism. Talk about making America great again, or the militaristic adventures. Talk about where the genuine antifascist is and the Democratic Party being genuinely anti-fascist is a joke.

TRT World: Can you elaborate on that?

Cornel West: That it was their policies in many ways that helped produce Trumpism.

You see, it was the organised greed at the top under the neoliberal policies. Neo-liberalism was a class war against poor people. It was a class war against working people, and it generated the largest mass incarceration regime in the modern world. And the major architect was Joe Biden. And you can see how contradictory it is. The very black folk that loved Joe Biden, it was their kids that he incarcerated.

And as a more percentage, more Black people are incarcerated in the United States than any other place around the globe. So that was the underside of the American empire in the 1980s and '90s, which then pulled the rug from under so many working people of all colours who saw their wages stagnate for over 40 years.

And that's part of the economic frustrations of Donald Trump's social base, that they know that the professional-managerial class tied to big money and big military has led toward their economic stagnation.

So they rejected the Democratic Party, rejected its neoliberalism - but they chose neofascism. They didn't ask for a Bernie Sanders. They didn't opt for populism or a left-wing agenda at all.

Because the left in the United States, as you know, in light of what we try to do with our presidential campaign, right, that when you speak these kind of truths that I'm talking about and pursue this kind of justice for poor people and working people, Indigenous people and others, that it's hard to get traction.

So much of corporate media in the United States is state propaganda. So they won't talk about Gaza, they won't talk about mass incarceration, they won't talk about poverty.

You got 40 percent of the US population in poverty, in low-wage jobs. Some 62 percent of the country lives paycheck to paycheck, in the richest nation in the history of the world.

What is that? That's that organised greed at the top. That precisely is a weaponised hatred that tries to seduce folk to scapegoat the most vulnerable rather than confront the most powerful. So you turn on the immigrants, the precious immigrants there at the Mexican border, not the immigrants on the northern border with Canada.

But my main point is, there are many here in the belly of this beast who are going to fight and go down fighting in the name of the truth and justice and solidarity with those friends, the so-called wretched of the Earth.

TRT World: So with the corporate media being so tight and it seems like people are attracted to the simple messaging of Trump, how do you get through to people to understand that they're there going from the frying pan into the fire? And how do you keep going?

Cornel West: You can't give up. You can't sell out, you can't cave in. You gotta hold on and speak your truth. And of course, history is always incomplete and unfinished. It's always unpredictable. You don't know what the catalysts are.

What cause will set in with the new wave of awakening and the new kinds of reckonings? But we know that history has always been this way. I mean, anybody who's been in solidarity with poor people, in solidarity with the vulnerable - kings, queens, monarchs, patriarchs, white supremacists, all these elites who often are unaccountable, every generation.

Look at this sister here (pointing to a picture of an American abolitionist behind him). That's Harriet Tubman, right? Yeah, 19 times she went into the belly of the beast (to free enslaved people). And what was she trying to say to Black people?

Don't confuse movement on the plantation with being on the Underground Railroad right now. You got some Black folk who want to be head of the Democratic Party plantation, and they think that's where freedom is.

No, you're still on the plantation. The permanent power in the Democratic plantation are the economic elite, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to the weapon manufacturers and so forth.

Those are the ones who often called the shots and you saw that very clearly, even with Biden. He's somebody who's been at it for 50 years. And the donors get together. They pulled the plug on Biden.

He had no money flowing in at all. And then, of course, the media, the New York Times and the Washington Post who are just very much state propaganda for what we used to call neoliberals. They turn on him and next thing you know, he's gone. And then finally when he steps back they tell lies about him.

'He's selfless, like George Washington.'

We all know George Washington had 100 percent of the people asking him to stay before he went back to his barbaric slave plantation, but they wanted him to stay. With Biden, 98 percent wanted him to leave, and now they're comparing him to George Washington. 'This was selfless. This is heroic.'

No. He got pushed out and he's a genocide denier.

'He is the greatest president. We've had the most consequential president.' Even Bernie Sanders, even (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the so-called progressive in the Democratic Party plantation, was talking about how great he was.

How many Palestinian babies did he enable the murder of. What are you talking about? 'Well, he has some social democratic agenda.' You know what - the African government had social democratic programs for Afrikaners.

Does that make him progressive in any serious way? Not really. Not one is predicated on apartheid. Not one is predicated on this weaponised hatred and so forth. You can even go back to Hitler. I'm sure he had social democratic projects. There was no unemployment. He made trains run on time.

(But) what about your precious Jewish brothers and sisters, the precious communists and socialists and anarchists and the gays and lesbians who all taken to the cars and the gipsies, taken to the concentration camps? But see, in the United States, the framework is so narrow that 10, 20, 30 years from now, people will look back and say, God, it was Biden.

Now he hands the mantle over to Kamala Harris. And you think she's this great progressive, Please. Somebody's got to tell the truth.

TRT World: You mentioned Gaza. What did you think of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech in Congress and everybody clapping and giving him standing ovations and all of that?

Cornel West: It was beyond disgusting. It was beyond disgusting. But I just thought about, you know, earlier moments in the history of genocide.

You think of people who are not just turning a blind eye, but who are aggressively affirming the very agents of genocide, or to put it in philosophical language, we're seeing the worst of the wretchedness of the human species.

And we just have to remind ourselves that there's always a cloud of witnesses who exemplify the wonderfulness of the human species.

But the wretchedness of it is all the greed, the hatred, the indifference, the acting as if people are not suffering, the rendering invisible, that people who are wrestling with levels of misery. We don't have a language for that. That's what makes it to me, beyond disgusting.

In both parties, the fascist Republicans on their plantation and the Democrats as well.

TRT World: Speaking about the duopoly we have in this country with Republicans and Democrats, how are you trying to break through that? I know you've been trying to get on ballots in all these states and it's been really difficult. Can you talk a little bit about those challenges and your efforts there?

Cornel West: Well, we have made a number of breakthroughs. We started with zero and we got Alaska.

And so we're up to about 11 officially. We already have another number, another six or so that should fall in place. And then we've got writing campaigns because certain states just make it nearly impossible. But you can write in California and New York and still have some kind of impact. But we actually are doing very well given the treacherous terrain that we're on.

TRT World: When it was just Biden and Trump, I had a feeling that there was going to be a lot of support for independent candidates. Now, with Kamala Harris, what do you think about that?

Cornel West: It's hard to say. It's hard to say right now at the moment of frenzy, you know, that's going to die down rather quickly.

There's going to be so many vicious attacks on Sister Kamala, both in terms of her policies, in terms of her personal life and so forth. I mean, I'm a Christian, so I think that everybody ought to be treated with respect. And I pray for everybody's family and their safety.

But the critical scrutiny must proceed. And once you scratch the surface, people are going to see a whole host of things that makes them a little less enthusiastic as opposed to just (witnessing a) symbolic moment, because it is important.

I mean, a blow against white supremacy, a blow against male supremacy, a blow against European supremacy vis a vis Asia (because Harris is half Black and half Indian). You know, those are important blows. I don't want to downplay that.

Those are very important blows, because all three of those forces, when you put them together - white supremacy, male supremacy and European supremacy vis a vis Asia - you've got a significant amount of evil in the modern world that you're talking about.

So that even in this bourgeois form, you can understand why some people would get very excited. But then the role is to say, okay, beyond excitement, let's look at what the truth actually is.

Let's look at the role that she plays in terms of imperial policies abroad. Let's look at her relation to corporate elites and economic elites. Let's look at the ways in which her record is tied to criminalising too many parents when their kids didn't show up at school enough, or when she opted for slave labour of the incarcerated, rather than letting them out because she wanted to appear tough on crimes like her career.

Hey, see, that falls far short of integrity. That falls far short of justice. That falls far short of any sensitivity to people who are suffering. And you had to be able to see that in such a way. To say, look, I don't care what the agenda is. I don't care what colour it is. I don't care what the Asian and the Jamaican origins are.

We're talking about the choices that she made, and she has to be accountable to those choices based on moral criteria and political criteria.

TRT World: You mentioned that you were a Christian. I saw that your running mate is a Muslim? Can you tell us more about her?

Cornel West: Dr. Melina Abdullah, yes. She's also a very distinguished professor, as you know, of Pan-African studies at California State University in Los Angeles, and one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, which is one of the most important parts of the Black freedom movement in the last 50 years.

And it's a blessing to run with her. She'd been quite courageous in so many ways. You have a Christian brother and a Muslim sister and we embraced everybody.

We always keep it humanistic and universalist, but it begins on the oppressed side of town. And then our ticket begins on the oppressed and chocolate side of death.

But we got a lot of Black cowards and gangsters and thugs too. Like every community.

TRT World: Why do you think it was necessary to run as a third-party candidate, as an independent candidate? What's problematic for you in the bipartisan US political system?

Cornel West: In the American empire, the two dominant parties are both dominated by big money. Big money in the form of Wall Street, big money in the form of Silicon Valley, big tech money, big money in the form of military manufacturers.

And for each party, big money in the form of AIPAC, which is a lobby that at this very moment is facilitating the genocide and the apartheid and the ethnic cleansing and the occupation and so forth (in Gaza). Or the National Rifle Association, and a whole wave of lobbies. But AIPAC is one of the most powerful. And in each election, especially when it comes to a presidential election, you're talking about over $10 billion spent.

It is hard to be a politician without being thoroughly seduced, but therefore much of American politics is legalised bribery and normalised corruption. And the world needs to know.

And when America talks about being a democracy it is really talking about the ways in which big money, oligarchs, and plutocrats control both parties, Democrats and Republicans, and make it difficult for poor people and working people's voices to be heard.

Nearly 40 percent of American citizens don't vote at all because they've given up on politics. So much of what my campaign is about is speaking to that 38 percent who give it up, they're disproportionately poor and working class. And yet at the same time, it becomes a question of blaming third-party candidates and third parties.

So here we are in the weakest position, but we get more of the responsibility put on us when it comes to close elections and being blamed because a small percentage may vote third party.

Now we're going to surprise a lot of people this year. You know, the Justice for All party and my own campaign running for president, because people are just so overwhelmed by the desperation that after this frenzy, this moment of frenzy is over with Sister Kamala Harris.

I think our truths and our concern about justice for the poor and working people will continue to resonate in our challenge. I've been a runner for 14 months now, and I've seen the changes that have taken place.

The lies that conceal the crimes must all be unveiled and revealed. And that's very much what my campaign is about, that my campaign is nothing but a moment in the movement.

So the world needs to know that I am deeply committed to being in solidarity with the struggles in Africa, dealing with the challenge of AFRICOM, dealing with Sudan and its genocidal realities in Congo.

In this genocidal reality, in South Africa, being in solidarity with the attempt to bring critique to bear on the neoliberal policies of ANC that used to bear the great mantle of Nelson Mandela but has been incorporated and diluted.

The same would be true in India. Solidarity with the working people in the Dalits and the Muslims there as they deal with Hindu nationalism and its cryptofascist form. The same would be true in Brazil when you had a neo-fascist in place and (President) Lula da Silva is able to come in.

But we want to make sure that poor and working people in Brazil have the same kind of attention and spotlight as poor and working people anywhere.

So, much of my campaign is a message to the Global South and a message to the rest of the world that all of America is in no way capitulating to either the fascism of the Republican Party or the militarism of the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party under Trump would lead the country toward civil war. Number two, Biden and now Harris are leading the world toward World War Three.

But the provocations of Russia, provocations of China and the spreading of the war in the Middle East with the provocations of the Israeli military be it in Iran, be it in Lebanon.

I'm critical of Putin's activity when he suppresses dissident voices and various structures of domination.

But I do believe Russia as a wounded empire deserves security when it comes to its borders. And therefore, I'm against the war in Ukraine. I want to stop that war. I'm in solidarity with the Ukrainians who are suffering. But it was the expansion of NATO that provoked so much of that war when Russia was promised that NATO would not move one inch.

And of course, 15, 20 years later, they're right on the borders of Russia with missiles. And I tell my fellow Americans, if we had Russian missiles in Mexico and Canada, what would be the response of the elites in Washington?

They would blow them to smithereens in a matter of days. That's how empires behave. So the Russian empire deserves a certain kind of security, even as I bring moral critique to bear on Putin and his various activities.

The same would be true in Iran. I'm in solidarity with my Muslim brothers, but I'm in solidarity with the Women, Life, Freedom movement too. And you have elites in Iran in the name of the precious religion of Islam to use oppression and domination. Well, as a Christian, I see Christians reproduce domination and oppression in the name of Christianity.

TRT World: It's some kind of a playbook, isn't it? It's being used by everybody.

Cornel West: That's exactly right. And you see it with Hindus, and you see it in liberalism as well as secularism. We saw it with various forms of communism, with Stalin and so forth. It's a human thing. But the crucial thing is to have an interplay between your moral critique on the one hand and your critique of structures of domination on the other.

So that if Iran is providing resources to the Palestinians and I'm in deep solidarity with the Palestinians, I can simultaneously have a solid unity with the Palestinians and still have solidarity with the Women, Life, Freedom movement, because there is a certain constancy in one's ethical and for me, spiritual witness concerned about poor people anywhere.

TRT World: How do you explain that you're so popular among younger generations?

Cornel West: I don't know. It could be that young people just have limited imagination, limited because I'm an older brother. I am no spring chicken.

But no, I think it's a blessing if there's a significant number of young people who have an interest in what I try to say and do and how I try to say it, the spirit that I presented, the tone and the temperament that goes along with the words and the sentences, that to me is a beautiful thing. But it's a blessing for me.

It's a blessing for me because, you know, at 71 years old, you don't think that people 15, 16 and 17 years old would still have an answer to what is that old brother talking about? He's the O.G.

TRT World: How have you been feeling over the past few months, regarding the reaction of the mainstream US political class when it comes to Gaza. How do you feel about it and what would you do differently if you were to be elected?

Cornel West: Well, one is that I just feel outrage made. I feel outraged. It let me know just how deeply racist corporate media is, because what they're really saying is 'we don't give a damn about the precious Palestinian public.' That creates a rage inside of me, a righteous indignation inside of me. I see Congress say 'we don't give a damn about Palestinians.'

Everybody knows if that was flipped over, and if Palestinians were engaging in a genocide against Jews and Jewish babies, it would be a qualitatively different response. And world. The Jewish version of Hamas would be viewed as one of the greatest heroes of our day. They would be compared to George Washington. They'd be compared to Thomas Jefferson.

They were urban guerillas fighting against the British Empire. And I've got my own critiques of George Washington. I got my own critiques of any armed resistance group. But I understand armed resistance goes hand in hand with resistance. I don't believe in killing innocent people, no matter who they are, no matter what colour they are.

But the qualitative difference that you see, the racism just crosses the line when it comes to journalism. You see it in the government, you see it in the universities.

And as long as you know what you know, some of us believe deep, deep down in our heart, minds and soul, those precious Palestinians and Palestinian babies have exactly the same value as my own babies, as European babies, as Jewish babies and Ethiopian babies and Ugandan babies.

That's not moralism. No, not at all. That is the basis of truth-telling in a society. And so when you see the press move away from coverage of genocide taking place, when you see the politician don't want to say a mumbling word, and when the politicians do say a mumbling word is primarily in the context of political strategy.

'We've got the Abandon Biden movement in Michigan. In Wisconsin, we have to say something. We have to do something to appease them.'

You're not concerned about the grandmothers and babies, brothers and sisters. It's just a matter of your electoral political Machiavellian calculation. Shame on you. You're just as bad as the gangsters. You just as bad as those who enabled a genocide of those who are carrying out the genocide.

Israel couldn't do it without US support. That's what makes Biden a war criminal. That's what makes Harris a war criminal. That's what makes (US Secretary of State Antony) Blinken a war criminal. That's what makes (US Secretary of Defense Lloyd) Austin a war criminal.

That's what makes Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the United Nations, my Black sister, a war criminal. You are directly enabling the crime of genocide, and it could be just too hard for them to accept, but is a reality. And that's exactly what the history books are going to say. Years from now.

TRT World: Is there anything you'd like to add?

Cornel West: Don't be discouraged and be of great courage rooted in compassion for the oppressed people all around the world. Live your life every day with a style and a smile based on the best of your own history, aware of your own failures, but never selling your soul for a mess of porridge. Thank you so much. It's been an honour, honestly.