Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Zionist Repents
(21/10/2024)
A number of years ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book We Were Eight Years in Power, which was a eulogy to the Obama era and people like himself who had done well out of that period in the US. It was a terrible book, rightly slated by many and led to black academic and activist Cornel West describing him as the neoliberal wing of the black freedom struggle.[1] The book was so bad, I barely got half way through it and put it down never to pick it up again. I never thought I would read another of his books, though I have read some articles of his. Then came his new book The Message and the criticism from the Right on his comments on Palestine. So, I surrendered and read it. This time in its entirety. It is an easy well written read.
As with all his books, this is very much about him. His preferred pronouns are definitely I and My (yes, I know My is not a pronoun, but none of this pronoun nonsense obeys the rules of grammar in any case). It deals with three trips he made and how he felt about them and the issues that arose. Given the CBS interview I fully expected to find some hard critique of the US, Israel and Apartheid, though that is not his style. Instead, he relates stories about his experiences in Palestine, talking to Palestinians and also to Israeli settlers. That is it. The Israelis obviously do not come out well in the book. How could they? Coates likens his experiences in Palestine to Jim Crow in the US and Apartheid in South Africa. They are the comments and observations on what he saw, and pretty much middle of the road. He is no Norman Finkelstein with his searing condemnations of Israeli massacres and Apartheid. It says more about the US media that Coates, interesting, but in no way extreme comments, have provoked such fury.
This part of the book, is partly a Mea Culpa for previous articles he had written in which he praises Israel, chief among them, apparently, is his essay published in The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations. In the essay, he liberally and uncritically quotes terrorists and murderers such as David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin.[2] He has much to apologise for in that essay. The essay starts off with a biblical epigraph from the book of Deuteronomy and also an anonymous quote from 1861 “By our unpaid labor and suffering, we have earned the right to the soil, many times over and over, and now we are determined to have it.” Except the land in question, that which Lincoln promised to give to freed slaves was land that had or would be stolen from native American Indians, who do not figure in his case for reparations, just like Palestinians didn’t exist for him. It is a thoroughly vile, though well researched piece, that I have criticised previously in an essay entitled Reparaons Without Talking About Capitalism[3] and won’t go into again here.
He now says that he is ashamed of some of the things he said in that essay which he mentions in his book. He does not mention an earlier essay which leaves no doubt as to where his loyalty and politics lies. The Negro Sings of Zionism.[4] In it he compares Zionism to Black Nationalism, Theodore Herzl the founder of the Zionist movement to Huey Newton and even Malcolm X! This essay was written only months before Obama, his hero, came to power and was in the throes of his election campaign. Obama was and, like Kamala Harris, still is an ardent supporter of Israeli atrocity. Coates was not going to challenge Obama on this point, ever. And even now in the midst of the genocide in Gaza he has publicly called for people to vote for Kamala Harris, saying that sometimes the choices are bad.[5] And further, he says a Kamala presidency which supports “apartheid and genocide” would be nightmare scenario “of being the first Black woman president and having 2,000-pound bombs with your name on them dropping on Gaza.”[6] Except it is not. It is business as usual.
The only nightmare is for the Palestinians, not for him or the rest of the liberals who will vote for Harris. Under Obama, the US bombed at least six countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, where the Houthis are actually challenging both the US and Israel and of course Libya where the toppling of Gaddafi led to the reintroduction of open-air slave markets where black Africans were once again for sale. Not a minor point you would think for a black identitarian. In 2016 alone, Obama in his final year of his presidency dropped a staggering 26,171 bombs i.e. three bombs every hour, every day of the year.[7] Meanwhile Coates was waxing lyrical about how he and others like him had spent eight years in power. He should own it! That was on Coates as well. He doesn’t get to wash his hands now.
Sometimes the choices are bad, he claims. But would he tolerate a white person voting for a racist politician on the grounds that they had good positions on other issues, such as abortion? I think not. His arrogance leads him to think he and Harris deserve a pass on this now. He doesn’t, nobody does. Neither does the hypothetical white voter who wants to vote for some racist who has good positions on other issues.
The level of ignorance that Coates claims for himself is hard to fathom and even harder to believe. He claims to not be sure when exactly in his visit to Palestine he first heard the term Nakba. He also states that “For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.” Revealing itself? Under which rock had Coates been hiding? Had he not heard of Operation Cast Lead? It was launched in the same year he sang his hymn to Zionism. It resulted in around 1,500 Palestinian deaths, mainly civilians and the displacement of 100,000 people. Did he never hear of the Goldstone Report on that operation? And the scandal when Goldstone was forced to recant? It was one of many such assaults on Gaza. All of this and other incursions have been well documented.
Writers write. Everyone knows that, it is their art, their trade. But more than write, they read. All writers read, even the bads ones have to read something occasionally. Coates’ ignorance is not credible. When he researched his essays praising Zionism, did he not come across a single solitary article to give him some pause for thought? Any piece by Finkelstein, Ilán Pappé, Chomsky, anyone at all? His feigned ignorance is not plausible.
In his song to Zionism, Coates looked at the conflict through his identitarian eyes, and chose a side that he thought was closest to his own identity. His “repentance” is a similar process. He now sees the Palestinians through those eyes. We have no idea how far he will go with this and when he will backtrack. Like many writers he can read the room and probably feels now is a good moment to be on the Palestinian side. But his repentance only goes so far. If Harris wins the election, he will at some point write Another Eight Years in Power. Or if she loses The Land of Milk and Honey We Were Deprived of.
He states early on his book that “we could never practice writing solely for the craft itself, but must necessarily believe our practice to be in service of that larger emancipatory mandate.” Like Gandhi said of British civilisation, it would be a good idea. But what is that mandate? Abortion rights in the US, but genocide in Palestine?
He has little understanding or willingness to deal with issues of capitalism, imperialism, or his own role in it all. The book will through its anecdotes prove interesting to many and he has an easy-to-read style. You could read this book in one sitting. Just don’t expect any deep analysis or understanding, there isn’t any. I have said nothing of the other two parts to the book, which almost deserve a critique of their own, though it would be more favourable than I have been thus far on his coverage of Palestine. Borrow it, don’t buy it. Money is hard to come by, Coates is not short of a bob or two and there are better things to spend your money on.
[1] The Guardian (17/12/2017) Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle. Cornel West. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-cornel-west
[2] The Atlantic (06/2014) THE CASE FOR REPARATIONS. Ta-Nehisi Coates. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
[3] Ó Loingsigh, G. (18/08/2020) Reparaons Without Talking About Capitalism. https://www.academia.edu/124919533/Reparations_Without_Talking_About_Capitalism
[4] The Atlantic (13/05/2008) The Negro Sings of Zionism. Ta-Nehisi Coates. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/05/the-negro-sings-of-zionism/5201/
[5] Des Moines Register (15/10/2024) Ta-Nehisi Coates says he'll likely vote for Kamala Harris. 'Sometimes, the choices are bad'. F. Amanda Tugade. https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/des-moines/2024/10/15/ta-nehisi-coates-says-he-has-a-responsibility-to-people-in-new-book-the-message-kamala-harris/75673159007/
[6] Forward (10/10/2024) Ta-Nehisi Coates says Harris funding Gaza war as first Black female president would be ‘nightmare’. https://forward.com/fast-forward/663139/ta-nehisi-coates-harris-gaza/
[7] The Guardian (09/01/2024) America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama's reign. Medea Benjamin.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy