Replies

>> Back off, dangus. <<

OK, I certainly didn’t mean wideawake was a Rasta. I was harsh on him his language because I knew it didn’t match his beliefs.

>> What is “pan-Africanism” or “Afrocentrism” but rightwing Pat Buchanan blood-and-soil nationalism for Blacks? <<

Communism. When you are starving and others are wealthy, seizing others’ wealth has a decidedly strong appeal. But the poverty and pining for unity has typically been exploited by Soviet-backed and US-intelligentsia-backed communists. And the pan-African movement was certainly Stalinist-backed. The best-selling book in America today is explanation how Hitler was simply a communist in a nation which was much more ethnically homogenous than the Soviet Union or the USA.

As to wideawake’s refutations to my criticisms: “Foretold” does explicitly and intrinsicly mean that something which did happen was predicted before it happened. If I tell you that an ancient Chinese mystic foretold the collapse of Chin Empire due to famine, it is understood that I am asserting the Chin Empire collapsed due to famine.

Also, “prophetic mode” implies that the mode was prophetic, not just adopting the style of a prophet.

And while I’ll regularly concede that wideawake did mention several negatives of Rastafarians, he makes it seem like an ancillary problem that developed long after Garvey’s influence. Those street gangs were the organizing principle of Rasta; hence its sacramentalization of a commodity which could only be supplied by such street gangs.

In the bigger picture, you rebutted by description of Rasta with a piece that doesn’t so much describe Rasta as explain its social context for its development. THAT’S what seems so much like a Marxist professor. And I was harsh on that because I presumed wideawake couldn’t possibly believe in the relativism, determinism and social deconstuctionism that he seems to be echoing.

>> You don’t need religion to have an excuse to get high. <<

Actually, they *do.* Marijuana is illegal. And it would be much more controlled in Jamaica, if not for the influence of Rastafarians. But because of Rasta, pot is readily available in Jamaica.

>> As I stated above, Rastafarianism is completely disorganized. <<

Well, its central tenets have been disproved; its creed was absurd nonsense; and its adherents are all pot-heads. But that hardly negates the former central beliefs. And be careful! If you wipe it clean of all essence besides pot-smoking, you are left with pot-smoking as its sole essence.