Champions the Million Man March
Walzer, Michael
Alot of good people came to Washington last October 16. Surveys published afterward suggest that the "million men," whatever their actual number, were a substantial representation of the...
...It is determined instead by the organizations that sponsor, and even more obviously by the organizations that control, the march: that provide the marshals, write and distribute the literature, hold the press conferences, choose the speakers...
...at press conferences afterward, Farrakhan himself claimed that role...
...They took the oath, they atoned, on behalf of the others, who weren't there...
...The messenger, he rightly insisted, is the message—especially so when prophet and prophecy come alike from God...
...My sense of both the television people and the print and radio journalists, before and since the march, is that they were and are looking for alternative figures—if only in the hope of fireworks...
...Left intellectuals owe the people a more critical solidarity: they must say what the disagreements are and why they are deep...
...But how could participants like Cornel West miss the overt politics of the march...
...For all his lunatic numerologies, Farrakhan knows what he is doing...
...Farrakhan's singular role, Cornel West says in his New York Times piece, was only a media artifact...
...Again, how can people who are or have been on the left support this sort of thing...
...2) The march established nationalism and some kind of moral rearmament as a substitute for civil rights politics...
...The literature was his own, no one else's...
...His obsessions resonate with his audience— which at least begins to explain why so many other black "leaders" have hesitated so long to take him on...
...Where would we be today...
...And Farrakhan spoke for two and a half hours, five times as long as anyone else: the demagogue triumphant...
...They marched, they say, in solidarity with the other marchers...
...They were excited by the camaraderie of the rallies, the crowds, the uniforms, the flags, the fierce oratory...
...Suppose there had been a solid wall of opposition to Farrakhan by left and liberal blacks...
...But there were only the dissident voices, nothing like a wall of opposition, and we are left in open space, a political desert, alone with the Pied Piper...
...Nor did the sponsoring individuals, with nothing to contribute but their names, exercise any control...
...A few black political figures—liberals and leftists like Julian Bond, John Lewis, Major Owens—bravely opposed the march...
...There was a lot of talk before the march about its "many leaders...
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...But no such plurality was visible on October 16 or in the weeks afterward...
...But it isn't an example of solidarity with the people when left intellectuals join a procession behind the Pied Piper—even less, when they skip along at the piper's side, telling the rest of us that, though they have "deep disagreements" with the piper, there is no one else who can draw such a crowd (and he really is a wonderful musician...
...If they forget the criticism so as to make the solidarity easier, they move onto dangerous ground...
...The movements born in the 1960s have looked exhausted in recent years, without ideas, unable to respond to the crisis of the inner cities and the desperation of their inhabitants...
...they didn't come together and find in their unity the political power and moral strength to tell black AmeriWINTER • 1996 • 99 Arguments cans and Americans in general why the march was wrong—and to make them listen...
...But the political character of a march is not determined by the moral character of the marchers...
...How can they justify it now...
...What happened in Washington in October was astonishing: a far right rally led by a man with obvious authoritarian and autocratic ambitions—and the black left hopelessly divided between criticism and eager participation...
...Maybe so, but we have to consider the opposite hypothesis: that Farrakhan's anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia have been crucial to his success so far...
...Though they solemnly swore to give up violence and drugs, it is unlikely that many of these men were violent or addicted or ever had been...
...Maybe...
...Major Owens told his friends that if they went to Washington they should carry their own banners, distribute their own leaflets: not many people seem to have done that (so far as I can tell, no one else was telling them to do that...
...At press conferences before the march, Benjamin Chavis insisted on Farrakhan's leading role...
...But they spoke one by one...
...Adolph Reed writes in the Village Voice that he is glad of Farrakhan's anti-Semitism because only this prevents him from playing the large political role to which he obviously aspires...
...The politics of the march was wholly determined by Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam...
...For all the vague hopes expressed on the day, these are its two most important results: (1) It crowned Farrakhan as the most effective leader of black America and it revealed the virtual abdication of everyone else...
...But maybe this act of opposition would have galvanized them, forced their activists to think freshly about their politics, their alliances, even their rhetoric— forced on them the same internal reform that we saw, also in October, in the labor movement...
...One of the surprises of this march was that sponsoring and supporting organizations— like the Congressional Black Caucus—made no bid at all for a share in controlling it...
...But there was no one inside the march who was prepared to challenge Farrakhan directly or to speak for all the people who came despite and not because of his call...
...The march was a political disaster for the left...
...Nor did the warm-up speakers, who seem to have agreed to speak without asking any questions about the setting in which they would be heard...
...These were the already uplifted—earnest, dignified, worried (with good reason) but glad to be in Washington in such large numbers, and a little uncertain about what was meant to follow from their unity...
...We have been there before: that is the ground across which many socialists and syndicalists drifted in the 1920s . . . on their way to fascism...
...They are focused, they say, on the peaceful, sober, and mostly convivial mass...
...And the opposition voices outside were mostly dissident voices: we know their tone because it is ours also, and it has never attracted very much media attention...
...The marshals were his cadres, uniformed in his approved style, rigid with ideological rectitude, chanting, on cue, "We love Louis Farrakhan...
...I don't think so...
...With regard to what happened at the march, Farrakhan made no concessions to anyone...
...Surveys published afterward suggest that the "million men," whatever their actual number, were a substantial representation of the African-American working class and middle class (except that both these groups are 98 • DISSENT Arguments Christopher Smith/IMPACT VISUALS known to include women...
...He is disciplined and ruthless, while the others, with brave exceptions like the ones I've noted, look naive and self-indulgent...
...but they need to focus instead on the organizational structure and the actual events...
Vol. 43 • January 1996 • No. 1
