Kwanzaa Time’s A-Coming (Fasten Your Seatbelts And Ready Your Airsick Bags.....)

Consider the strange case of Kwanzaa – the multiculturalists’ answer to Christmas.

Kwanzaa, meaning something like “fresh fruits of harvest” in Swahili, is not a long-standing holiday that’s based on traditions that have built up over the centuries; Kwanzaa was simply invented in 1966 by a black radical named Ronald Everett. Since then, many people have embraced the new “holiday.”

Check out any appointment calendar, and you’ll find it duly noted on December 26th that “Kwanzaa begins.” Stroll through your local card and party store and you’ll find Kwanzaa items on the shelves. You can even look it up in the World Book Encyclopedia, where you’ll find an article written by “a black cultural leader” that explains all about Kwanzaa.

Those who celebrate the holiday will often explain that it’s not just for African-Americans. They’re not telling the whole story; in fact, it’s doubtful that everyone who celebrates Kwanzaa really knows its origins.

Most stories about Ronald McKinley Everett refer to him as Dr. Maulana Karenga, and rarely examine his past. But in recent years, much of the Everett/Karenga story has been told in a few print exposes, and in op-ed columns.

Forget the notion that Kwanzaa is a holiday for all people. Dr. Karenga states that he created it at the height of the black liberation movement as part of a “re-Africanization Process - “a going back to black.”

Dr. Karenga, still just “Ron Everett” at the time, was heavily involved in the black power movement. He started an organization called US - “United Slaves” – as a violent rival to the Black Panthers. Everett and his organization became dupes of the FBI which wanted to use radical groups such as the United Slaves to split and discredit the Left.

He dropped the “Everett” name and adopted the Swahili one, which means “master teacher,” shaved his head, and began wearing traditional African clothing. US members, similarly attired, and often encouraged by the FBI, clashed with the Panthers over which group would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA.

There were incidents involving beatings and shootings, including one in 1969 in which two US members shot and killed two Black Panthers.

Dr. Karenga had other run-ins with the law, including charges that he abused women. In 1971, he was convicted of assaulting female members of US and he served time in prison.

A Los Angeles Times snippet describes the torture of the women as involving a hot soldering iron placed in the mouth of one, while the other’s toe was mashed in a vise.

For his part, Dr. Karenga insists that he is the victim in all this; he was quoted in the Dallas News: “All the negative charges are in fact disinformation and frame-ups by the FBI and local and national police.”

Members of the multicultural community either believe his denials, or they don’t care. But they have to face the fact that they are accepting the teachings of a man whose organization –and who personally – committed heinous crimes against members of his own race.

So what happened to Dr. Maulana Karenga after he served his time in prison? Some nine years after Kwanzaa was invented, he decided to moderate his views and become a Marxist. In 1979, he was hired to run the Black Studies Department at Cal State Long Beach, in all likelihood, the first ex-con to do so.

His biography, appearing on a web site called “Profiles in Black,” says that he is also chair of “the President’s [Clinton] Task Force on Multicultural Education and Campus Diversity” at Cal State Long Beach, and director of the “Kawaida Institute of Pan-African Studies.”

It also lists him as chairman of “Operation Us” (sound familiar?) which the site says means “black people” – so named to stress the communitarian focus of his philosophy, Kawaida, which is an on-going synthesis of the best of African thought and practice.

The extensive bio made it apparent that Dr. Karenga is enamored with all things African – though it never once mentions anything about United Slaves, or shootings, or the torture of women, or prison time.

The militant past of the creator is now ignored in favor of the co-called seven principles of Nguza Saba – principles such as unity, family and self-determination that could have come from Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues – although Bennett would not likely approve of the collectivist tone of the principles.

Dr. Karenga does his part to promote the holiday and blur his personal history. In December, he goes on an annual “Kwanzaa circuit” of speeches and appearances. And he writes. Among his writings are many articles and ten books, mostly concerning Black Studies, and his commentaries on ancient Egyptian texts.

And, remember that little article in the World Book Encyclopedia that legitimized Dr. Karenga as a “black cultural leader?” You guessed it – he wrote the article himself.

Toward the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton issued a formal proclamation in support of Kwanzaa.

Ann Coulter described the announcement as beginning with “ ... some claptrap about preserving ‘what we value of our past,’ and Kwanzaa being a ‘wonderful example’ with its ‘focus on the values that have sustained African-Americans through the centuries.’”

Either the President of the United States had not done his homework, or he really believed in what Coulter called “a lunatic blend of schmaltzy 60’s rhetoric, black racism, and Marxism.”

More likely than that, President Clinton simply believed in multiculturalism, which, to many politicians, simply means embracing other cultures in return for votes.

Ron McKinley Everett (aka. Maulana Karenga) / US Links

The founder of Kwanzaa, Ron Everett, was the leader of a violent racist gang called US. His gang was a rival to and more violent than the Black Panthers. In fact, in retalation for Everett being heckled by Black Panther gangmembers at a student meeting on the UCLA campus, members of Everett's gang shot several and killed two members of the Black Panthers in the Student Union building afterward. Everett was a violent person. Five years after inventing Kwanzaa he was sent to prison for torturing two teenaged black girls (members of the commune he ruled) by stripping them naked, tying them with electrical cord, tightening their toes in a vice, burning them with a soldering iron, and forcing them to eat caustic chemicals. The Black Panthers and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide? - NEW YORKER MAGAZINE - February 13, 1971 (Includes great detail of the murders committed by Karenga's thugs)

PBS Interview with black radical Ron Everett (aka Maulana Karenga) - the guy that invented Kwanzaa 5 years before being sent to prison for torturing two young women

Ron Karenga - Dialog from the Black Radical Congress - December 1999

US, the organization the Ron Everett founded in 1965, the organization that murdered 5 members of the rival Black Panther Party is back Their website is here.

Graphic used on Official Kwanzaa Website for the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa)
Graphic used on Official US Website (US is Karenga's Gang that Murdered Members and Leaders of Rival Gangs) as their logo

In fact, the Official Kwanzaa Website admits the linkage of Kwanzaa to the violent US gang by posting the US Logo right on their Kwanzaa: Roots and Branches page along with the damning admission:

First, Kwanzaa was created to reaffirm and restore our rootedness in African culture. It is, therefore, an expression of recovery and reconstruction of African culture which was being conducted in the general context of the Black Liberation Movement of the '60's and in the specific context of The Organization Us, the founding organization of Kwanzaa and the authoritative keeper of its tradition.

The two members of the US gang who murdered the two Panthers after they dissed Karenga at a Black Studies meeting on the UCLA campus were Larry and George Stiner. Both were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. They escaped in 1974. Larry turned himself in to the FBI in 1994, but George Stiner is still at large. He is on California's 10 Most Wanted list which can be found here. There is also an International Crime Alert on this fugitive who is considered armed and extremely dangerous here.

Kwanzaa Religious Connections:

Anti-Christian? Anti-Christmas?

Karenga himself says that Kwanzaa is an "oppositional alternative" to Christianity - which he calls "spookism" and "eurocentric". He claims the Bible is myth and rejects Jesus Christ.

"...Kwanzaa is not an imitation, but an alternative, in fact, and oppositional alternative to the spookism, mysticism and non-earth based practices which plague us as a people . . . "
pg 14, Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice. 1977

Karenga defines "spookism" as "belief in spooks who threaten us if we don't worship them and demand we turn over our destiny and daily lives..." p 27. Kawaida Theory

. Of Christianity and Judaism and their beliefs, Karenga says this about such "myths":

"...it is a simplistic and often erroneous answer to existential ignorance fear, powerlessness and alienation. An example is the Hebrew myth of the six-day creation and the tower of Babel, or Christian myths of resurrection, heaven and hell;"
Kawaida Theory, p 23.

"...it often denies and diminishes human worth, capacity, potential and achievement. In Christian and Jewish mythology, humans are born in sin, cursed with mythical ancestors who've sinned and brought the wrath of an angry God on every generation's head. ... If a mythical being has done, does and will do everything, what's our relevance and role in the world?"
Kawaida Theory. p 24.

Spookism, on the other hand, is intense emotional commitment to non-human-centered principles and practices which place humans at the mercy of invisible and omnipotent forces and thus, deny the right and capacity of humans to shape reality and their future according to their own needs and desires."
Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice,pp 44-45.

Underlying Kwanzaa Socialism/Marxism/Leftism

Kawaida, another invention of Ron Everett (aka. Maulana Karenga) is the underlying philosphy to Kwanzaa. Karenga describes Kawaida as "a synthesis of nationalism, pan-Africanism, and socialist thought."

The Official Kwanzaa Website - run by Ron Everett (aka. Maulana Karenga) says this about Kawaida and its relationship to Kwanzaa:

THERE IS NO WAY TO UNDERSTAND and appreciate the meaning and message of Kwanzaa without understanding and appreciating its profound and pervasive concern with values. In fact. Kwanzaa's reason for existence, its length of seven days, its core focus and its foundation are all rooted in its concern with values. Kwanzaa inherits this value concern and focus from Kawaida, the African philosophical framework in which it was created. Kawaida philosophy is a communitarian African philosophy which is an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world.

Here are a few quotes from Karenga demonstrating Kawaida's underlying socialism/marxism:

Kawaida and its Critics by M. Ron Karenga - Journal of Black Studies, December 1977. Section: Kawaida: Toward A Nationalist-Socialist Synthesis:

Regardless of its critics, Kawaida is, above all, a revolutionary project in process, an audacious and terribly ambitious attempt to synthesize and realize the best of nationalist and socialist thought."
"Kawaida recognizes no pope or Vatican for socialism, accepts no group, state or party's claim to a monopoly on Marxism's or socialism's contribution to human knowledge and practice..."
"Kawaida is critical socialism as opposed to a dogmatic socialism..."
"In an attempt to synthesize the best of nationalist and socialist throught, Kawaida poses and attempts to answer the question of the relationship between national liberation and socialist liberation. Kawaida argues that national liberation and socialist liberation are and are not the same thing at the same time."

Kwanzaa Links

Kwanzaa Time's A-Coming - NewsMax

Yes Viriginia, There Is A Kwanzaa - The American Thinker

The Kwanzaa Hoax - William J. Bennetta

A Less Than Complimentary View of Dr. Maulana Karenga Kwanzaa: Holiday from the FBI - Ann Coulter

The Rotten Roots of Kwanzaa - (Warning: Mature Cartoon)

Racial Revelry - TooGood Reports

Did You Have A Happy Kwanzaa? - WorldNetDaily

Celebrate Reality - Not Fantasy - Tampa Tribune

Kwanzaa Quandary - Tucson Weekly

We Wish You A Phony Festival - Report (Canadian Magazine)

So This Is Kwanzaa - Newsmax.com

Ann Coulter on Kwanzaa - TownHall.Com

Mona Charen on Kwanzaa - Jewish World Review

Tony Snow on Kwanzaa - Jewish World Review

The TRUE Spirit of Kwanzaa - The New American magazine

Kwanzaa: the 'Path of Blackness' - Dartmouth Review

The Story of Kwanzaa - The Dartmouth Review

The Truth About Kwanzaa - A Christian Viewpoint

A Momentary Loss of Reason - Binghamton Review

Kwanzaa & The White House - NY Post Editorial, 1997 (Freerepublic.com thread)

Michael Savage on Kwanzaa - NewsMax

Happy Kwanzaa - FrontPage Magazine - Link may not work, if it doesn't click here for the Free Republic thread.

I'm Dreaming of a White Kwanzaa - LewRockwell.com - Link may not work, if it doesn't click here for the Free Republic thread.

Letter to Editor - Ypsilanti Courier

What is Kwanzaa? - File Passed Around On Internet About Kwanzaa

Happy Kwanzaa by Patrick S. Poole

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