Cat brooks is worried. A little while ago, she was dancing at the (temporary) fall of Chief Armstrong. But the powerful reaction on his behalf, especially from the NAACP, has left her baffled and defensive. Brooks finds herself at war with the greatest Black organization in U.S. history—an organization that for more than a century has led the Black community’s struggle for freedom. What an embarrassing situation for her!
Here’s what Brooks tweeted: “If they can break the back of the radical Black left in Oakland - they will fracture the back of the radical Black movement in the country - we are ground zero - pay attention.”
Brooks, pining for glory days she never had, imagines herself the Generalissimo of Oakland’s Black community or, as she puts it, at “ground zero” of the “radical Black” revolution. What fantasies must rush through her brain! Brooks in the vanguard, leading the troops who will smash and burn the White Patriarchy once and for all! Brooks, her brow crowned with laurel, brandishing a fiery sword, as the masses cheer her! Brooks, moving the chess pieces—mayor, council members, legislators—like so many pawns. Brooks!
Examine her statement again.
“If they can break the back of the radical Black left in Oakland - they will fracture the back of the radical Black movement in the country - we are ground zero - pay attention.”
Who is “they”? This is what paranoid demagogues always do: paint sinister, lurid images of some mysterious “other,” upon whom all hatred and resentment can be focused. Whoever “they” are, their motives are evil: to “break the back of the radical Black left in Oakland.” Using this rhetoric of violence, Brooks implies that the “radical Black left” might in turn have to resort to violence. Not once, but twice does Brooks resort to this language of bones being broken. Of course, in doing so Brooks simply resurrects the language of the Black Panthers, a group that did its best to foment a violent revolution in America but that was soundly rejected, not only by almost all Americans but by most People of Color. Yet Brooks still harbors this fever dream of an insurrection or uprising of “radical Blacks,” led by—yes, Cat Brooks.
She’s like those Japanese soldiers after World War 2, holed up in bunkers and foxholes on remote Pacific islands, refusing to surrender, incapable of understanding that their cause had already been thoroughly defeated and that History had passed them by. Yet sadly, there are others like Brooks, die-hard dead-enders so consumed with their own rage, so embittered by past failures, that they will hearken to a demagogue like Brooks, and keep her propped up just enough to spew and propagandize for a while longer.
The interesting thing is what will Sheng Thao do now with Chief Armstrong. That case is relevant, because it’s the first test case the new mayor has to show us whether she’s sincere in wanting to represent all the people, or whether she’ll remain beholden to Cat Brooks and her cohorts on the City Council, especially Carroll Fife. This is a signal point for Mayor Thao. If she fires Chief Armstrong, she will have indicated that public safety is not her priority (as she claims it is), but subservience to a violent, radical cult.
Tomorrow: Who is William H. Orrick?
Steve Heimoff