It’s also reflected in Top 40 hiphop. They had Tupac in the 90s talking about Lenin and hiphop was not as commodified for white consumption. I like Kendrick but I’m not so sure he’s as revolutionary as hiphop used to be.
For every comment correctly identifying the true cause being LEADERS ARE BEING MURDERED BY THE STATE, you got dummies talking about how it’s because Kendrick isn’t revolutionary enough
It’s that, but it’s also that relative to the 80’s and 90’s, America has gotten less racist (actually and symbolically). It’s a very low bar, but it’s always shocking looking at media from those times and seeing the shit people used to not even bat an eyelid at on TV. A time before widespread bodycam use (yes, I know, there’s still a lot of dodgy bodycam business), before every citizen had a camera in their pocket, before the news would spread like wildfire on the internet, or a video of some professor saying the N word, or whatever.
America is an incredibly racist place, and the system - laws, media, whatever - has undoubtedly done their best to dismantle black radicalism, but America has also got to a point where it is less justifiable than it was to have an armed militia in the name of civil rights. The police are bad now, but they used to be magnitudes worse.
It’s the same reason we don’t have radicalism in general anymore - the usual factors like repression and surveillance, but also because many of us have our needs just about sated, and have the illusion of free speech. Conditions necessitate militia style resistance - the conditions currently do not necessitate such a thing (to the wider population).
As soon as the imperial profit tap runs dry, living conditions will go down, people rise up - as soon as the state represses them as severely as they used to, the time of militias will be born again.
There’s just a barrier for entry here where white leftists are only familiar with the surface level history (the rap beefs, which albums Fantano told them to like, etc) without knowing the ties between hip hop and the Black radical tradition and how the CIA killed Tupac. Due to the subreddit’s demographics it’s gonna be hard for that part of the history to reach the top and people remain in the surface level, incapable of synthesizing a coherent theory.
For every comment correctly identifying the true cause being LEADERS ARE BEING MURDERED BY THE STATE, you got dummies talking about how it’s because Kendrick isn’t revolutionary enough
It’s that, but it’s also that relative to the 80’s and 90’s, America has gotten less racist (actually and symbolically). It’s a very low bar, but it’s always shocking looking at media from those times and seeing the shit people used to not even bat an eyelid at on TV. A time before widespread bodycam use (yes, I know, there’s still a lot of dodgy bodycam business), before every citizen had a camera in their pocket, before the news would spread like wildfire on the internet, or a video of some professor saying the N word, or whatever.
America is an incredibly racist place, and the system - laws, media, whatever - has undoubtedly done their best to dismantle black radicalism, but America has also got to a point where it is less justifiable than it was to have an armed militia in the name of civil rights. The police are bad now, but they used to be magnitudes worse.
It’s the same reason we don’t have radicalism in general anymore - the usual factors like repression and surveillance, but also because many of us have our needs just about sated, and have the illusion of free speech. Conditions necessitate militia style resistance - the conditions currently do not necessitate such a thing (to the wider population).
As soon as the imperial profit tap runs dry, living conditions will go down, people rise up - as soon as the state represses them as severely as they used to, the time of militias will be born again.
There’s just a barrier for entry here where white leftists are only familiar with the surface level history (the rap beefs, which albums Fantano told them to like, etc) without knowing the ties between hip hop and the Black radical tradition and how the CIA killed Tupac. Due to the subreddit’s demographics it’s gonna be hard for that part of the history to reach the top and people remain in the surface level, incapable of synthesizing a coherent theory.
They should’ve made the connection that Tupac had familial ties to the BPP, was part of the YCL, and was probably assassinated by the FBI.