There are very few true revolutionaries. Allowing ourselves to pretend that Angela Davis is among them is a grave mistake.
“When we engage in electoral politics, it can’t be just because a particular individual is running for office, it is to enlarge the terrain of mass struggle, to guarantee a space for the trade union movement to win victories, for the women’s movement to win victories, for people of color to win victories, for working and poor people to win victories.”
Angela Davis is certainly correct in speaking these words. They are an important reminder of how we must view and relate to the electoral process. But unfortunately, she followed those remarks with highly questionable assertions which put at risk all that she says she seeks to achieve.
Davis has a habit of engaging in some very grave contradictions, which we have analyzed over the years here at Black Agenda Report. In 2012 Angela Davis felt compelled to give fulsome praise to Barack Obama, including claiming that his rise to the presidency showed a connection with the Black radical tradition. The false statement was quite alarming, as Davis ignored the obvious, that the Obama campaign was a creation of the neo-liberal and imperialist elites who needed a more attractive face in a moment of crisis. Our late comrade Glen Ford observed that, “The ‘delusional effect’ that swept Black America with the advent of the First Black President has warped and weakened the mental powers of some of our most revered icons – and it has been painful to behold.”
It is inexplicable that Davis would claim that Obama emerged victorious in 2008 “despite the power of money.” Obama raised $750 million in his presidential campaign that year. His war chest was so full that he was able to reverse his pledge to seek public campaign financing, unlike his opponent John McCain, who raised a mere $238 million from donors and $38 million in public financing. Surely Dr. Davis was capable of researching the same easily accessible information. Yet she insisted on making claims that are plainly untrue.
Davis’ recent comments diminish her and show that she has become just another acolyte of Democratic Party policy. “It’s not just about electing Kamala Harris. … it’s about opening space for those of us who are more radical than Kamala Harris to put anti-capitalist and anti-racist programs forward and increase the pressure for change, especially in the first place when it comes to the genocide being inflicted on the people of Palestine.“
Her comments border on outright delusion. Kamala Harris brags about the republicans who support her and “welcomes” an endorsement from Dick Cheney. She pledges to include a republican in her cabinet while saying nothing about including more progressive democrats. How would anti-capitalist and anti-racist programs be put forward under such an administration?
This columnist advised ignoring Davis altogether when she declared support for Hillary Clinton in 2016: “I’m not so narcissistic to say that I wouldn’t vote for her.” The defensive and embarrassed tone of the comment was obvious, as if Davis couldn’t bring herself to be clear about her choice to vote for the war criminal who destroyed Libya and insisted that Haiti redo an election in order to get her desired result.
Again, in 2024, Davis talks out of both sides of her mouth, stating that she is still a communist and declaring, “We have to challenge capitalism; it is the enemy of all progressive movements and struggles in the world.” Indeed we must, but that certainly can’t happen while simultaneously supporting Kamala Harris, who pledges no opposition to capitalism and who is therefore, by Davis’ definition, unworthy of support.
As Black Agenda Report has pointed out many times, Kamala Harris is the latest mediocrity to grace the political sphere, put forward by rich donors hoping for a new Obama effect. She is neither intelligent nor talented in any way. Her milquetoast liberalism has given way to right wing policy making, giving slight nods to reproductive rights or other issues that are bright red lines for millions of people.
But Davis also showed herself in 2020 when she was strangely thrilled by the choice of Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate. She supported Biden and Harris despite calling them both “problematic” while concluding, “It’s really a question of who we will be able to pressure.”
There is no evidence of Angela Davis doing anything to pressure Biden or Harris on any issue. The failure of political imagination afflicts the casual voter and the erstwhile radical icon too, who pop up in election years to declare their surrender to the forces they otherwise claim to oppose.
No one is above reproach, regardless of their history. Those who remember the days of the “Free Angela” movement may be stunned by her ongoing slide into political irrelevancy. Yet that is the position that Angela Davis has chosen for herself. Now she offers empty nostalgia, political confusion, and cautionary tales about heroes with feet of clay. It seems that ignoring Angela Davis is still a sensible decision.
This article is rather short-sighted, which is a very American trait, as it only accounts for the political actions of the renegade Davis during electoral cycles, also a very American trait, and fails to present a complete picture of the positive and negative contributions to the communist movement she's made throughout her political life.
It is wholly understandable that this isn't necessarily a paper dedicated to conducting an ideological polemic against her but I think the article benefits should it have included a declaration that she has been a right-opportunist social democrat at least since the '80s and her and her cohorts attempt at overthrowing the Marxist-Leninist old guard of CPUSA in a vain show of trying to liquidate the Leninist party of a New Type and rebuild it as a social democrat party in '91.
Within the Black Radical Tradition, there are some people who say that Angela Davis has never been radical since Day 1. Their argument is that she came from a petty bourgeois background, albeit a petty bourgeois background of an oppressed nationality, and never really committed class suicide. She joined the CPUSA that was well past its heyday when the BPP was already around. By itself, this could just mean that Davis thought the CPUSA stuck to a more orthodox ML line than the BPP. However, given what we know now about her split with the CPUSA during the late 80s/early 90s and Davis trying to opportunistically gesture towards being a Black Panther despite never being a member of the BPP, then the argument is that she most likely joined the CPUSA instead of the BPP was because the CPUSA wasn't that radical compared to the BPP. It's more about putting on an air of radicalism than being a radical herself. I think they also explained her involvement with George Jackson and her court case as being more about a petty bourgeois academic being swept up in radical events rather than a radical agent of those events themselves and how she would subsequently cash in on those events in her academic career.
There's occasional arguments between Black radicals thinking she sucked since Day 1 and Black radicals thinking she started sucking during the 80s. It's almost reminiscent of arguments people have over whether Trotsky always sucked or only started sucking after he got kicked out of the CPSU. I have even seen some people accuse her of being a fed. I suspect this is the reason why the author mostly stuck with the present where both party of radicals are in agreement.
For the record, I personally don't think the argument is really that important. Outside of correcting the misconception that Davis was a member of the BPP, I think it's more meaningful to point to the actual BPP/BLA veterans who are still around and who are still organizing. Davis wants nothing to do with them and they want nothing to do with Davis.