Lest We Forget Stan Lee's Wakanda Separatism: Two Articles on "Black Panther"
David Shasha
The “Black Panther” Movie Brings the New Black Separatism to the Big Screen
I waited my entire life for this, the world is starting over.
Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger in “Black Panther”
He gave the sun to shine for all of mankind
He gave the sun to shine for all,
Everyone of mankind
He gave the sun to shine
For all those living in creation
Mister plenty showing nothing,
No love and kindness
For his fellow brethren,
He's got everything
And they've got nothing
And he knows they're in need
Of something now,
They want some food for their table,
Their backs need some clothing
I said you must be blind,
Can't you see mankind
When we read and discover ourselves
The injustice of this here government
The yellow sun don't hide away your face
Injustice in this human race
Some living big while others living small
And they don't hear when the children call
If they bawl,
If they cry now they need some food
For their children now
Aswad, “He Gave the Sun to Shine”
Left the city, my momma she said don't come
back home
These kids round' killin' each other, they lost they minds, they gone
They quittin' school, making babies and can barely read
Some gone off to their fall, lord have mercy on them
One, two, three, four, your cousins is round' here sellin' dope
While they're daddies, your uncle is walking round' strung out
Babies with babies, and their tears keep burning, while their dreams go down
the drain now
Are we really living or just walking dead
now?
Or dreaming of a hope riding the wings of angels
The way we live
The way we die
What a tragedy, I'm so terrified
Day dreamers please wake up, we can't sleep no more
Janelle Monae, “Sincerely, Jane.”
We all recall the 2015 publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bestselling, National Book Award-winning opus Between the World and Me:
http://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/between-the-world-and-me/
Coates took his success as a writer for The Atlantic and parlayed it into a cash bonanza by extolling the values of Black Separatism and Garveyite Nationalism:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/coates/davidshasha/7r-J6K9j27Q/e9jnzDmZUF8J
His thesis blithely mocked the Civil Rights Movement, as it fit comfortably into a Hipster Millennial alienation that soon came to dominate the Left Wing ideological world during the Obama years; a profound disillusionment that led to Liberal voter apathy and the shocking election of Donald Trump.
I have noted the way in which this Black Separatism functions in a similar way to that of Ashkenazi Zionism:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/coates/davidshasha/BvD7ZQLD3rY/bCTELxU8DwAJ
We must note that Coates’ dire warnings about Race ironically took place when an African-American occupied the White House.
In the wake of the ongoing Coates media frenzy, comedian Jordan Peele released his much-feted movie “Get Out”:
Peele’s horror movie parody not only fit into the current Poptrash cultural paradigm, but parroted many of the ideas that Coates had presented about White people in his book.
Peele thought that it would be funny to show White Liberals as cannibals eating Black people.
I was quick to point out that Right Wing Zionist radicals like Tablet magazine’s Liel Leibovitz were quite enthusiastic about the new Black Separatism in “Get Out”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/IF6-vLJ1dvg
“Get Out” followed the conventions of the contemporary Poptrash Horror movie, while at the same time incorporating the Coates message, with all its disdain for MLK and the Civil Rights struggle and the dream of American Integration.
It is important to point out that Sephardic Jewish history has been predicated on the values of Jewish Humanism which have been incubated in a multi-cultural environment led by Andalusian Convivencia.
The late Maria Rosa Menocal presented this integrative model so very brilliantly in her many books and articles:
But, as we have continually seen, Convivencia has been under attack as Jews find themselves utterly alienated from the larger world:
Ashkenazi Jews have suppressed Sephardim and have enforced their Jewish alienation in the world of Interfaith Dialogue:
The current forms of cultural alienation bring together Ashkenazi Jews and African-Americans who have no interest in integration, preferring instead to reify old hatreds and mono-culturalism.
Ta-Nehisi Coates remains at the epicenter of all this alienation, and it has now become clear that he has been deploying multiple media platforms to get his message out.
Although Coates achieved fame through his writing, we know that the Millennials do not read books.
Last year, Coates wrote a series of the Black Panther comic for the publishing behemoth Marvel which drove the point home:
http://marvel.com/comics/creators/12803/ta-nehisi_coates
Pictures are much better than words!
And in the nihilistic, anti-integrationist spirit of Coates and his acolytes, we now have the Hollywood movie version of “Black Panther” which reinforces the Separatist mentality.
Here is how New York Times movie critic Manohla Dargis characterizes the cartoon villainy inherent in the Afrocentric narrative:
The story initially involves a satisfying if obvious cartoonish villain, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, having a conspicuously very good time), an underworld arms dealer with a weaponized arm, an Afrikaans sneer and a rampaging cohort that includes Erik Killmonger (Mr. Jordan). As his name announces, Killmonger has, well, issues to go with his striking body ornamentation. The band’s evildoing ways attract the attention of the Black Panther and an international lawman in the person of a friendly C.I.A. agent (the customarily cuddly Martin Freeman), whose good-guy status is just one reminder that “Black Panther” adheres to at least some dubious Hollywood conventions.
And here is how she describes the movie’s fictional country Wakanda:
Buoyed by its groovy women and Afrofuturist flourishes, Wakanda itself is finally the movie’s strength, its rallying cry and state of mind. Early on, a white character carelessly describes it as “a third world country — textiles, shepherds, cool outfits.” Part of the joke, which the movie wittily engages, is that Wakanda certainly fits that profile except that its shepherds patrol the border with techno-wizardry, and its textiles and costumes dazzle because of the country’s secret vibranium sauce. More critically, having never been conquered, Wakanda has evaded the historical traumas endured by much of the rest of Africa, freeing it from the ravages of both colonialism and postcolonialism.
What we see here is a fantasy that fits perfectly into the cartoon world of Marvel, but also into the Garveyist mentality of the New Black Separatism.
We would do well to recall the paradoxical atavist-futurist primitivism of “Avatar” with its Rousseauvian accents, and how it also played with the conventions of the current cartoon cinema favored by Hollywood and its devoted followers in the Idiocracy:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/avatar/davidshasha/jPwM-ZnL_wE/VTmh9WuD0z4J
We are now seeing a similar thing with “Black Panther,” yet another “event” movie that lacks humanity and intellectual substance, but which buttresses the lamentable ignorance of contemporary culture.
Writing in The Grio, Natasha Alford gushes superlatives on what the movie represents:
Black Panther is remarkable because this film is a movement, a revolution in progress, and a joy to experience all wrapped into one. #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe (and us) is more than a movie.
Her fulsome praise continues:
At the heart of Black Panther’s monumental significance is the film’s cultural relevance, setting it apart from other superhero flicks. Details like the character’s natural hairstyles, the Wakanda dap-handshakes and even Kendrick Lamar’s handpicked hip-hop soundtrack bring everything full circle.
Then there is the mythical country of Wakanda itself, which functions as its own character in the movie. It represents the brilliance of African intelligence and technological innovation, in a world which wants to take its resources.
A special feeling comes upon you in seeing Black and brown people rule their own land. And you just might come out of the movie saying #WakandaForever.
It is actually quite appropriate to read these fevered impressions of the movie as we see a complete disconnect between our current Trumpworld reality and the cartoon world of video games and idolatrous hero worship that has gripped the Millennials.
New York Times writer Salamishah Tillet captures the hysteria perfectly:
Not since Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” in 1992 has there been so much hype and hope for a movie among African-American audiences. From special group outings planned by excited fans to crowdfunding campaigns to ensure children can see it, “Black Panther” is shaping up to be a phenomenon. In December, a viral video of two African-American men excited to see the movie’s poster with its all-star black cast — “This is what white people get to feel like ALL THE TIME?!!!!” one man wrote on Twittered — seemed to capture the anticipation, garnering more than 2.5 million views.
The following extended passage from the article speaks volumes:
In many ways, Black Panther is part of a current wave of black superheroes, like Netflix’s Luke Cage and CW’s Black Lightning. But “Black Panther” has the setting of Wakanda, a fictional African country that is wealthy (thanks to vibranium, a mineral with energy-manipulating qualities) and technologically advanced. Part of the movie’s emotional and visual appeal lies in the fact that Wakanda has never been colonized.
“Wakanda is a kind of black utopia in our fight against colonialism and imperial control of black land and black people by white people,” said Deirdre Hollman, a founder of the annual Black Comic Book Festival at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. “To the black imagination, that means everything. In a comic book, it is a reality, and through a major motion picture, it’s even more tangibly and artistically a reality that we can explore for ourselves.
There’s so much power that’s drawn from the notion that there was a community, a nation that resisted colonization and infiltration and subjugation.”
For Frederick Joseph, a marketing consultant who created the #BlackPantherChallenge, a GoFundMe campaign to buy tickets so youngsters can see “Black Panther” in theaters, the complexity of Wakanda takes on new meaning in our current moment. Compared with President Trump’s disparagement of Haiti and African nations, he said, “You have Wakanda as a place of Afro-futurism, of what African nations can be or what they could have been and still be had colonialism not taken place.” (Mr. Joseph’s campaign, which raised more than $40,000 to take children from the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem to the film, has led to more than 70 similar efforts.)
The Black Panther’s regal alter ego, Prince T’Challa, is a draw as well, said Jonathan Gray, author of the forthcoming “Illustrating the Race: Representing Blackness in American Comics.” He explained: “Now there you have every black boy’s fantasy. He is richer than Bill Gates, smarter than Elon Musk, better looking than Denzel.” And with vibranium, “he is the hereditary ruler of the richest nation on Earth. The movie is about wish fulfillment. When you see Bruce Wayne, this dashing billionaire, where is the black version of that? You got T’Challa.”
In this sense, “Black Panther” is as much an alternative to our contemporary racial discourse as it is a throwback, not only a desire for what could have been but also a nostalgia for what we once had. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this movie appears precisely in a moment in which our politics seems inescapable,” Mr. Gray said, adding later that “Black Panther” should be understood in a political context in which both the legal gains of the civil rights movement and the interracial optimism of the Obama era have been undermined.
There is much here to unpack, not least of which is that the Coates Separatist movement actually began during the Obama presidency.
It is fascinating to see how the movie deals with Colonialism and Post-Colonialism – or better, does not deal with Colonialism and Post-Colonialism:
But “Black Panther” has the setting of Wakanda, a fictional African country that is wealthy (thanks to vibranium, a mineral with energy-manipulating qualities) and technologically advanced. Part of the movie’s emotional and visual appeal lies in the fact that Wakanda has never been colonized.
This means that, for the Millennial audience watching the movie, critical historical figures such as Lumumba, Rhodes, Lawrence, Cromer, Mobutu, and King Leopold – to name some of the most prominent that come to mind – do not exist in the superhero Marvel comics world of Wakanda.
Just pretend that none of it happened!
This also means that the seminal figure of Nelson Mandela, a disciple of MLK and the Civil Rights Movement, is also ignored as a model of de-segregation and integration.
I have written about Clint Eastwood’s great movie “Invictus” which recounts the way in which Mandela used Rugby to bring White and Black South Africans together:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/6UMCqIxQiEs
When we think of African culture in the contemporary period, Mandela stands above the rest. Indeed, no Marvel superhero could out-hero Madiba.
Fantasy must not be permitted to obscure the giants who worked to achieve social justice and human dignity. As we see in the lyrics of the great British Reggae band Aswad, we are all created by God and must work to ensure that every human being lives with dignity and security.
This is what Religious Humanism is all about.
It is thus critical to note the way that debased White Corporatist values now permeate African-American culture and identity in a way that is historically unprecedented.
Naturally, we see Hip-Hop play a major role in “Black Panther” and in the larger cultural process in which it is situated.
White interests continue to control the music industry as well as Hollywood, and the centrality of the Marvel Comics behemoth is very much part of this framework.
Socially-conscious African-American culture has been on the wane since NWA and 2 Live Crew brought us new forms of Rap music that emphasized degenerate Sex and Violence.
The cartoon world of “Black Panther” is just about as far as one can get from the seminal works of Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, John Coltrane, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, and so many other African-Americans who sought integration and social justice rather than the debased nihilism of the New Black Separatism.
I recently discussed these themes in an article on the great Coltrane and his elevated place in American culture:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/coltrane/davidshasha/18ng4JNDH6A/dp_Ojln_CwAJ
Coltrane’s art unfolded in the ferment of the Civil Rights era led by the integrationists.
Tellingly, the current Separatism has shut out important voices like Janelle Monae, who has moved from music to acting as her records were not selling:
It has been pointed out to me that Monae appeared on the “Black Panther” red carpet:
Like the “Black Panther” movie, Monae’s music reflects a futuristic attitude, but the comparison ends there.
Monae epitomizes the integrationist desire as it ties together multi-culturalism with an open attitude towards sexual difference, gender equality, and support for the marginalized Other in our society. The complexity of her work transcends the cartoon fantasies of “Black Panther” and it is truly sad to see the Corporate behemoth swallowing her up and spitting her out as a clothes-horse rather than an activist.
Indeed, it was not a coincidence that Monae found a big fan in Prince, himself a passionate champion of the rich integration of complex cultural styles, an authentic iconoclast, and a proud rejecter of mono-culturalism:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/prince/davidshasha/i74OzGUHZOg/J97QoUHAAwAJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/prince/davidshasha/OcfzpzL2w0w/vSif0Z0nBQAJ
Against the dogmas of the New Black Separatism, both Prince and Monae sought to draw from multiple artistic contexts, refusing to trap their work in an atavistic Ghetto peopled with superheroes and colored by unrealistic fantasies. They valiantly blazed new paths in African-American culture and refused to accept White Corporate criteria for Black empowerment.
Prince’s work triumphed commercially in the 1980s when our culture sought to integrate the races under a unified banner.
We should remember that one of the most outstanding musical movements in that decade was 2-Tone; a bunch of young British groups which brought Black and White together:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tone_(music_genre)
Bands like The Specials, UB40, The Selecter, and The English Beat revolutionized music by drawing from the rich heritage of Jamaican Ska and Reggae, fusing it to the raw energy of Punk and New Wave.
But in the new millennium we have a resurgence of racial division that is exemplified by Coates and the cartoon fantasies of “Black Panther” with its Hip-Hop and Poptrash values.
What is so interesting about this is how it feeds into the new Trumpworld Alt-Right zeitgeist and the many Corporatist pressures that have reconfigured our cultural artists within an Idiocracy framework that promotes narcissism, illusions, illiteracy, and an overall anti-intellectualism that has become embodied in both the new social media networks and the technocratic fascism that consumes our economic system.
So, while authentic activists suffer under a racist system for lack of funds and institutional power, the movers and shakers of the Idiocracy represented by “Black Panther” are flush with cash as they continue to preach apathy, despair, and fatalism in their hermetic fantasy worlds.
The “Black Panther” mentality is not only mired in “New World” illusions, but seeks to maintain a socio-cultural system that profits from ignorance and inaction.
So, while “Black Panther” will likely earn plenty of money for the Corporate types and their useful idiots, its cultural lessons will only serve to reinforce the current Idiocracy and its degenerate morality.
David Shasha
From SHU 836, April 4, 2018
Birds of a Feather Flock Together: Ashkenazi
Jews, Marvel Comics, Zionist Racism, Ta-Nehisi Coates Garveyite Separatism, and
“Black Panther”!
In case there was anyone out there who thought that our dear friend Ta-Nehisi Coates was not still riding the Marvel gravy train since the release of the blockbuster corporate smash, there is this:
The Garveyite Black Separatist Coates appeared at a discussion event at The Apollo with two stars of the blockbuster movie, which showed us how certain White organizations – like Marvel and The Atlantic – are plenty okay by him.
Green can sometimes cover the White!
We are now living in a bizarre time when Poptrash celebrity culture can mesh with alienated racial separatism in the grand world of mega-movies and their infantile superhero bravado.
Indeed, “Panther” is on track to be the highest grossing movie of all time:
For the record, Marvel has been run by an Israeli Jew named Isaac Perlmutter since 1993:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Perlmutter#Marvel
It is interesting to learn that Marvel went bankrupt in 1996, which led to a struggle between Perlmutter and his partner, another Israeli named Avi Arad, on one side, and on the other side Carl Icahn and Ron Perelman.
In 2009 Disney bought Marvel and restructured the corporate leadership.
Another Ashkenazi Jew Jeph Loeb currently runs the Marvel movie and television divisions and reports to Perlmutter.
Here is the full story from the Wikipedia page:
Isaac Perlmutter was a member of the Board of directors of Marvel Comics beginning in April 1993 and was Chairman of the Board until March 1995.
Isaac Perlmutter also was the co-owner, with Avi Arad, of Toy Biz (later Marvel Toys), having purchased its predecessor company from Charan Industries in January 1990. Toy Biz, Inc. was reorganized in the Marvel deal with Perlmutter continue owning the original Toy Biz, Inc., which is renamed Zib, Inc. Zib held its foreign sales affiliate, Toy Biz International Ltd., a Hong Kong corporation and Perlmutter's share of the new Toy Biz, Inc.
When Marvel company group went bankrupt in 1996, protracted legal battles over control of the company followed between Perlmutter, Arad, Carl Icahn, and Ron Perelman. By 1997, Perlmutter and Arad had established control over the company, pushing out Icahn and Perelman. ToyBiz and Marvel were merged into Marvel Enterprises to bring it out of bankruptcy in June 1998 with ToyBiz becoming a division of the new company.
In November 2001, Perlmutter became Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Marvel. He became the Chief Executive Officer of Marvel Comics on January 1, 2005. He remained CEO of Marvel Entertainment, even after the acquisition of Marvel by The Walt Disney Company on December 31, 2009. Although Perlmutter received $800 million in cash and $590 million in Disney stock after the acquisition, he did not want a seat on Disney's board of directors.
In September 2015, Perlmutter stopped overseeing the development of Marvel Studios. Disney felt the studio head, Kevin Feige, should report directly to the Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, Alan Horn, so all cinematic properties of Disney, including Pixar and Lucasfilm, were under one management structure. The restructuring was allegedly due to Feige's "frustration" of working with Perlmutter as well as some alleged controversial comments and actions by Perlmutter, such as replacing the casting of Terrence Howard as James Rhodes with Don Cheadle because black people "look the same." A person with knowledge of his creative approach said, “Ike Perlmutter neither discriminates nor cares about diversity, he just cares about what he thinks will make money.” Jeph Loeb, who oversees Marvel Television and the television properties of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, still reports to Perlmutter.
I was particularly struck by Perlmutter’s racist remark about all black people “looking the same”!
I wonder how that plays with Mr. Coates and his Garveyite pals?
In 2016 Vanity Fair published the following profile of the “eccentric” and apparently odious billionaire Perlmutter:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/09/marvel-studios-ike-perlmutter-kevin-feige
And so it is that Marvel is a company rooted in Israeli-Zionist-Ashkenazi leadership, while we should recall that the original Black Panther comic book series was created by Stan Lee, yet another Ashkenazi Jew:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-comic-book-character
Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Lee
Once again, we see Jews entering the African-American ghetto and extracting their massive profits, leaving the “natives” with crumbs.
The radical Left Wing website Alternet just published a very sharp critique of “Panther” by Leslie Lee from the radical socio-economic point of view:
A report on the movie broadcast by Al Jazeera actually addresses the issue of culture and politics and the way that “Panther” seeks to co-opt a radical revolutionary agenda for purely commercial purposes:
The on-line written synopsis of Shihab Rattansi’s report ends on a very trenchant critical note:
The marketing of Black Panther is playing unashamedly with its coincidental namesake "The Black Panthers", the racial and economic justice group cofounded in the late 1960s by Huey Newton.
Martin Luther King's message of dramatic anticapitalist change has been sanitised for a mainstream white audience recently by a truck manufacturer. Black Panther may yet follow a similar model: White America easily adopting black cultural figures, but having more difficulty with the black political struggle they represent.
But these two examples are very much outliers thus far, as African-American intellectuals seem to have banded together to reject any criticism of the movie, very conveniently helping to protect its White corporate sponsors and their substantial financial interests:
https://www.theroot.com/an-open-letter-to-white-people-who-are-upset-because-bl-1823050044
These African-Americans might not be aware that the movie has been produced in a tight web of White control, specifically led by Jews, at least one of whom has some very interesting ideas about Black people!
There have been a number of Jewish-themed “Black Panther” articles, most prominently the following bizarre pieces from Tablet magazine:
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/256186/black-panther-is-a-great-zionist-movie
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/255324/where-are-the-jews-of-wakanda
The first is from Jerusalem Post Knesset correspondent Lahav Harkov and proclaims that “Black Panther” is a “Great Zionist Movie.”
The deeply-troubling article is worth reproducing in full:
Black Panther is the most Zionist movie I’ve seen in a long time. As I left the theater (following two after-credits scenes, of course) in Tel Aviv, it occurred to me: Wakanda is black Altneuland–or maybe even Israel.
For those unfamiliar with the film, Black Panther centers around T’Challa, superhero Black Panther and prince of Wakanda, an African nation with a secret, massive supply of the powerful metal vibranium, which has led them to be the most technologically advanced country in the world. However, they hide their vibranium and technology from all outsiders, who think they’re a poor, third-world country. After T’Challa becomes king, an outsider called Killmonger challenges his place on the throne, as well as the country’s isolationist philosophy.
The movie is an expression of Afrofuturism, a cultural movement that can be found in visual art, literature, music, and more, and that melds science fiction, advanced technology and African diaspora culture. While the aesthetic has been around for decades–think George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic, or Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction writing of the 1970s and 1980s–and the term was coined in the early 1990s, it’s having a major moment, and Black Panther is a big part of it.
Afrofuturism is an aesthetic with diverse political messages, but many works, including Black Panther, have a hopeful view of a shared future for a group of people who underwent displacement and persecution over generations. It is a way for black people to see themselves with a bright future in which they take their destiny into their own hands.
And so does Zionism. In its most basic idea, Zionism is and was a hope for a safe haven and a home for the Jewish people, who were exiled from their homeland 2,000 years ago, and have been displaced, ethnically cleansed, and otherwise persecuted and discriminated against ever since. Zionism seeks to return to the Jewish people’s historic homeland; Afrofuturist works differ, with some taking place in space, or a recent song “The Deep” by the rap group clipping. imagining a black Atlantis, but Wakanda is a black paradise in Africa.
And when it comes to Afrofuturism’s futuristic, scifi aesthetic, well, you don’t see much of that in 21st century Zionism, but if you go back over 100 years, Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, was doing exactly that. Herzl is known for creating a framework from which the State of Israel eventually bloomed, working in the world of diplomacy and journalism to advocate for the idea, planning the First Zionist Congress, and writing the book The Jewish State. He helped many Jewish people dream of a better future, and inspired them to take action and make it happen.
People tend to be less familiar with his utopian novel Altneuland, which translates to Old-New Land in English. The city Tel Aviv is named after the title’s Hebrew translation, with “tel” meaning an ancient mound, and “Aviv,” the word for spring, symbolizing the new. For anyone familiar with the real Israel, Altneuland is a deeply weird book. The frame story is about a Jewish man in Vienna who decides he’s sick of the European intellectual scene, and goes off to live on a desert island with a rich Prussian aristocrat. On the way, in 1902, they stop in Jaffa, which is a poor backwater. After 20 years on their desert island, the duo leaves, and stops in Palestine again on the way back to Europe, where they find a Jewish state in a land transformed. The residents of Herzl’s Jewish utopian state speak German, Yiddish and Hebrew, and are big opera fans, with a cooperative economy, and a lot of talk about equality, though the only real female character in the book is the love interest.
Herzl saw his Israel–like Wakanda–as having highly advanced technology, a vision that certainly came true, especially in the city named after his book, now an international hi-tech hub. Also on the more prescient side of the book is a political debate involving an extremist rabbi who wants to strip non-Jewish citizens of their right to vote–he loses in the end, and Arabs have equal rights in the “New Society,” which is what Herzl’s imagined Israel is named.
When I mentioned to a friend who also lives in Tel Aviv that I think Wakanda is kind of like Israel, he pointed out that Israel has a lot of problems, and that’s true. Israel is a real country. It’s not Altneuland–my friend and I certainly didn’t speak German or Yiddish when we had this discussion. But Wakanda is not a total utopia, either. For example, while it has an all-female army called the Dora Milaje who protect T’Challa and his kingdom, and his sister Shuri is a tech wizard who steals every scene she’s in, women are pretty much politically disenfranchised. Wakanda is made up of five tribes, all of which are led by men. Wakanda is a monarchy, not a democracy, and the only way to challenge a new king’s ascent is through hand-to-hand combat.
And then there’s the central debate of the film. Should Wakanda continue to cut itself off from the world and keep its technology to itself? Should it, as Killmonger advocates, arm black people around the world so they can rise up and take revenge for slavery and colonialism? The conclusion T’Challa draws is that Wakanda should open itself up and use its vast resources to help people in need–but not for purposes of revenge.
Israel has touched on these issues. There have been occasional moments of revenge, often justified, like Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann’s abduction from Argentina and subsequent trial and hanging, but revenge has never been the prevailing policy idea. And while Israel has never been isolationist per se, early Zionist thinkers looked down on Jews who live outside of Israel. Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin called Israelis who left the country “the downfall of wimps.” The concept of “canceling the Diaspora,” meaning that all Jews would eventually live in Israel one day, was a central one in Zionism for a long time. These days, the prevailing idea espoused by both Diaspora Minister Naftali Bennett and Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky is more of a give and take, with mutual respect and helping one another where we can, while welcoming those who wish to make Israel their home.
Which brings us to T’Challa’s idea at the end of “Black Panther,” one that Israelis are especially proud of. Israeli technology and known-how has helped people around the world, whether it’s saving Syrians in Israeli hospitals, setting up camp to save people in disaster zones like Haiti and Nepal, or sharing water and agricultural innovations, just like the Black Panther’s plan for Wakanda’s future.
Indeed, Harkov allows us to see just how close the Black Separatist fantasy is to the Ashkenazi Jewish Separatist fantasy of Jewish Colonialism envisioned by Theodor Herzl in his book Altneuland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_New_Land
Both iterations of ethno-cultural separatism are rooted in alienation and monocultural parochial racism. Zionism has been eminently successful in suppressing cultural pluralism, and in the process has rejected Arab and African identity. Its ethos is controlled by a disturbed paranoia, eschatological messianism, and a decided proclivity to violence and repression.
In this sense, it is fascinating to see how Harkov cites the arch-racists Naftali Bennett and Natan Sharansky in promoting the link to the benighted Garveyite vision of “Panther”:
And while Israel has never been isolationist per se, early Zionist thinkers looked down on Jews who live outside of Israel. Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin called Israelis who left the country “the downfall of wimps.” The concept of “canceling the Diaspora,” meaning that all Jews would eventually live in Israel one day, was a central one in Zionism for a long time. These days, the prevailing idea espoused by both Diaspora Minister Naftali Bennett and Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky is more of a give and take, with mutual respect and helping one another where we can, while welcoming those who wish to make Israel their home.
The second Tablet article was written by someone calling himself “MaNishtana,” apparently a “Jew of Color”:
Here is how he closes the article:
As a fanboy myself, from the days before being a “blerd” was cool, I’m just as ecstatic as everyone else is to finally see Wakanda in all its onscreen glory. Yet, simultaneously, I find myself feeling conversely to how I often do in American Jewish spaces. In this African-American cultural moment, where am I? Where’s the rest of me? What space do Jews have in Afro-futurism? Or, more specifically: Where are Wakanda’s Jews?
Bear with me, it’s not as far-fetched as it seems.
Wakanda, after all, has never been enslaved or colonized, so it makes sense why the standard fare of Christianity and Islam don’t exist there, since both their presences in Africa are largely by-products of conquest. But where are my Jews at?
Wakanda is apocryphally located somewhere in Northeastern Africa, so it’s already close to a well-known population of Jews, the Ethiopian Beta Israel. In the same general area are the Yibir in Somalia, who have a tradition of being Jews before they were converted to Islam. To west there were the Jews of the Bilad al-Sudan—with records attesting to their presence in the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires—and the community of Zuwa Alyaman of Koukiya by the Niger River—according to local legend, Zuwa was a member of one of the Jewish communities transported from Yemen by Abyssinians into northeast Africa. Finally, to the south lies Zimbabwe, home to the Lemba of Cohen Model Haplogroup fame.
So, theoretically bounded by Jews on all sides, nobody managed to pass through or stop in Wakanda? The villainous Klaw family made it to Wakanda three times over the course of two generations. And they were actively hostile. A group of nomadic people with weird food preferences couldn’t have wandered in under the radar unnoticed and just hung out? Hell, Flavius Scollo, a soldier for Emperor Caligula, built the Black Tower of M’Kumbe as an outpost and just hung out there for nearly two thousand years until Black Panther and the Fantastic Four discovered him in the then modern-day of 1982 (Fantastic Four #241, April 1982). And he’d been spending all those centuries capturing Wakandans from the surrounding area to be his subjects.
Two thousand year-old Roman legionnaires encased head-to-toe in golden armor from an alien ship that imbues them with longevity and telekinetic manipulation of their surroundings? Sounds legit.
African Jews in an African kingdom? Whoa, there buddy.
(Although, it should be tangentially noted that Kevin “Kaspar” Cole, temporary bearer of the Black Panther moniker in New York, and current White Tiger—despite Marvel’s strong Jewish representation from the secular Marc Spector (Moon Knight) to the possibly Reform Ben Grimm (The Thing) to Orthodox yeshiva student Naftali, friend of Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel)—is the sole mainstream comicbook character who is a Jew of Color. Cole’s mother is white and Jewish, and his father is an African-American Christian. We still haven’t moved past the cliché of Jews of Color necessarily being products of intermarriage, adoption, or conversion, but hey, it’s a start.)
However, in all seriousness, just as much as it’s important for Jews of Color to have a voice at the American Jewish table, it’s equally as crucial that we are present and counted in the fictional future of “blackness,” even if it’s just a comic book story about Jews in some secret kingdom hidden away from sight with superior magic and technology, virtually inaccessible to the rest of civilization.
Wait…Jews. Hidden kingdom. Superior magic and technology. Inaccessible to civilization…sounds like…Sambatyon?
Holy crap, guys, what if the Wakandans are the Jews of Wakanda?
We can clearly see here how “Jews of Color” are actually Ashkenazi and not at all connected to the rich Arab Jewish cultural traditions of Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. They are very much an active part of the White Jewish Hegemony controlled by institutions like The Tikvah Fund and its subsidiary media arms like Tablet magazine.
The ironies do not seem matter here!
The “Black Panther” movie is just another opportunity to do one of those “Secret Jewish History Of” articles that we so often see in racist Jewish publications like The Forward:
https://forward.com/tag/secret-jewish-history/
It is always about the Jews, no matter what the subject!
The JTA published an important piece by Gabe Friedman that summarizes the paternalistic Jewish attitude towards the “Black Panther” phenomenon:
The movie is a “milestone” in Black-Jewish relations!
In the end “Black Panther” is just another product of the Poptrash comic book world that is duplicitously being promoted as some “revolutionary” tract, when in fact it is just another clever marketing ploy that has been expertly designed to maximize profit and stifle creative thought and social activism in favor of the mythical, the violent, and the nihilistic.
While the African-American community continues to struggle with police violence, unacceptable incarceration rates, and financial difficulties out of proportion with the White community, “Black Panther” is just the sort of “Bread and Circuses” diversion that has reigned triumphant in the benighted Age of Trump.
David Shasha
From SHU 840, May 2, 2018