Boycotting Bacon And The Hateful Eight

Surfing the web this week I stumbled across the latest in a continuous line of hypocritical reactions to truthful assertions made by individuals against the police. Fascists really do not like freedom of speech when it is directed against themselves.

On this occasion Quentin Tarantino, whilst attending a rally organised to highlight police brutality, said "I'm a human being with a conscience, and if you believe there's murder going on, you need to rise up and stand against it. I'm here to say I'm on the side of the murdered. When I see murders, I do not stand by... I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers."

This statement, when read alone and out of the context of the rally, could easily be a quote pulled from a handbook named Policing for Dummies. It might as well say "don't support bad people doing bad things." Unfortunately for the police it was not. It was part of Quentin Tarantino's speech at a rally called 'Rise Up October'. 

Unsurprisingly, given the sheer amount of instances of police brutality well documented by now in the media, and given that the protest was aimed at raising awareness of and opposing "police terror", particularly the disproportionate number of murders committed against black individuals by the police, they reacted poorly. 

In fact they acted like MRA's. In fact they even have #notallcops #bluelivesmatter campiangs like their dense counterparts, whom also completely miss the point being argued by their opponents. Just because not all cops are murderers it does not excuse the disproportionate number of incidents of hate crime committed by white officers on black citizens. How hard is that to understand? The Blue Scholars, definitely worth a listen, said it best with the lyrics "I hear them saying that this shit (meaning police brutality and murder) don't ever happen in Seattle, and if it does it's really just a couple bad apples, but if you're keeping count you will see the shit is not the apple, it's the tree, it's rotten underneath"

As with the MRA's outrage over the understandable, and thoroughly justified, #yesallwomen campaign to highlight violence against women committed by men whereby they chose a film to vainly attempt a boycott of,  Mad Max: Fury Road, so too have the Fuzz. A mixture of right-wing and racist morons have criticised Tarantino for highlighting the injustices committed against black citizens and subsequently calling for a boycott of his latest film, The Hateful Eight. 

Fox News' very own Klan member, Bill O'Reilly, said of the Tarantino speech that just last week a police officer was "shot dead by a long-time drug dealer that a judge refused to incinerate" a man who had "28 arrests on his sheet." An argument based upon the assumption that if people, or more accurately black people, were given the death penalty then tragedies against cops would not occur. Now I know like most well educated people that Bill O'Reilly, from what limited exposure to his rantings I get in the UK, is an idiot and a racist bigot. But it is still worth noting that his response to something as unobjectionable as campaigning against systemic abuse of power by some sections of the police is this vitriolic and distasteful. 

They say a picture paints a thousands words, and it so often does, but knowing what to look for in language reveals just as much. Some other commentators, such as Amanda Lozada, revealed their disgusting attitude towards the continued abuse of black people's freedoms in publications such as the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdock of course. This white woman (shock) reported the legitimate concerns and frustrations of the protesters as a "gripe", the dictionary definition of which is to complain about something in a persistant and irritating way, that the speech by Tarantino was characterised by "complaining", and the cop was a "hero". In an article otherwise devoid of emotive language these three little words paint a vivid picture of the journalists lack of concern for black lives. 

Sentiments such as the above two are echoed all throughout the mainstream media, as would be expected from companies that exist to push a conservative agenda and maintain the white hegemonic position on societal justice matters. Something actively encouraged and maintained through the language employed by what Antonio Gramsci (here is a brief explanation of the theories) would call traditional intellectuals within his description of how hegemony permeates societal interactions. Those working within the mainstream forms of media being one such group of traditional intellectuals. In brief terms they operate in accordance with the prevalent hegemonic position. They are the group in this context seeking to legitimise and maintain force as the sole preserve of the state to dispense at its will when citizens will not do as their betters please.

Support of the black citizens of America, and worldwide, who are suffering at the hands of the (predominantly) white hegemonic class, with movements such as Rise Up October, is support of the organic or specific, depending on your ideological viewpoint, intellectuals seeking to other throw the system that enables one persons life to be viewed, whether subconsciously or otherwise, as more valuable than another. At the very least they are trying to forcibly change the position of the oppressed which is no bad thing. It is a long road but one needing to be walked. One ending in the emancipation of all humanity. 

I'm going to break with my usual position (hopefully just this once) and encourage anyone reading this who was going to see the film and thought twice about due to the boycott being attempted to just see what you wanted to in the first place. I would like to think that my words have been enough to convince you that this boycott is ill thought, irrational, and above all else, a petty reaction to some stinging truths. Hopefully it might even convince a few of you finding my blog in this dark corner of the internet to hop on a bus once in a while and join a protest or two in support something important like the right to life.