Black Power icon goes vegan to save animals

By Cliff Kincaid

Former top communist, college professor, and "Black Power" advocate Angela Davis has picked a new cause on the road to liberation – animal rights.

In a major speech in black-ruled South Africa, at the 17th Steve Biko Memorial Lecture, she said animals were "sentient beings who endure pain and torture as they are transformed into food for profit, food that generates disease in humans whose poverty compels them to rely on McDonald's and KFC for nourishment."

Hence, people who like fast food are both victims and exploiters in the capitalist system.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which places the rights of animals above human needs, was ecstatic. "Best known as a longtime human-rights activist, Davis is also a committed vegan, and she made sure to highlight the connection among all forms of exploitation and oppression in her keynote address," the animal rights group said.

Davis's image will adorn the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opens on September 24 in Washington, D.C.

The history exhibit at the new black museum "starts moving at a breathless but measurable clip, hero by hero – Angela Davis, Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Anita Hill – and movement by movement, from Black Is Beautiful, to Black Panthers, to Black Lives Matter," reports The New York Times.

Anita Hill was the "hero" professor whose false charges of sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were rejected when the Senate confirmed the black conservative to the court.

Liberals don't like to hear it, but Barbara Jordan, a former member of Congress, favored greater limitations on immigration into the United States.

Davis, who served the interests of the old Soviet Union and received the Lenin Peace Prize, once beat a murder rap and now makes tens of thousands of dollars on the college lecture circuit. Her emergence as a poster girl for PETA suggests that her Marxism has developed to the point where she thinks humans are oppressors of animals, and that chickens and cows are special interests worthy of government protection.

The Davis speech was delivered at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and received a standing ovation. She praised the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who concealed his membership in the South African Communist Party, which now rules South Africa through a coalition government.

Turning her attention to the U.S, she hailed Black Muslim boxer Muhammad Ali for refusing induction into the U.S. Armed Forces and praised NFL back-up quarterback Colin Kaepernick for protesting the "militaristic" U.S. national anthem.

On the road to her own personal liberation, Davis was a candidate for vice president on the ticket of the Communist Party USA. Later, she came out as a lesbian. Now she's joined the cause of animal liberation.

Commenting on current events back in the U.S., she said that Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump was "trafficking with the white rage that is a product of the growing inequalities generated by global capitalism." She said white people are upset because they perceive that "people of color" have taken their jobs and positions in society.

Now a Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz, she has said nothing about the black genocide of abortion in the United States, or the death toll from global communism that now tops 100 million.

"Her communism was forged at her New York high school and strengthened at Brandeis University, where she was mentored by German philosopher Herbert Marcuse," noted Adekeye Adebajo, a figure in South Africa, in a sympathetic report on her speech.

Marcuse, a Brandeis professor, was an expert in Critical Theory, also known as Cultural Marxism, which was popularized in academia by the so-called Frankfurt School. This subversive approach to "education" is common at most state-funded universities in the U.S. that turn out students who specialize in women's and queer studies.

In South Africa, Davis's attacks on capitalism generated wild applause. She also attacked the government of Israel, noting that Black Lives Matter in the U.S. has joined in "solidarity" with Palestinians through involvement in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) economic warfare campaign against Israel.

Here, one of her favorite causes – at least until animal rights emerged on her agenda – was the abolition of prisons, on the grounds that criminals are victims of capitalism.

She talked about this in South Africa as well, saying that "trans-women of color" in the U.S. have added to the discussion of the abolition, not only of prisons, but of policing.

Her work through an organization called Critical Resistance has been financially supported by the Open Society Foundations of billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros.

Ironically, Soros, a major financial backer of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, insists that he established the Open Society Foundations "to help countries make the transition from communism" into an "open society."

But it appears that he uses people like Angela Davis (or they use him) to force the United States to transition to a dysfunctional and morally bankrupt Marxist state.

© Cliff Kincaid