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George the Poet
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- 2024-04-29
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“So let's not get too bogged down with what's not working and let's look forward to how we can prepare a better world for the next batch of people.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like gives you hope, people man, it's underrated. It is people are an underrated blessing, resource, gift that never stops giving, people, people, people, people. I don't want our exhaustion, our distraction, our propagandized media to downplay the fact that when we talk to each other and we reach an understanding and we change course based on our shared interests, our shared understanding and we do so from a place of education, beautiful things can happen. New people are born every year. And with those new people come new opportunities and people move on. People transition. People die every year. And when generations move on, ideas and ways of doing things that were not working get phased out. So there is that constant churn which provides opportunity for change.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would recommend it's behind me right now the new age of empire by Cayendi Andrews are also recommend white malice by Susan Williams. I recommend this one is a bit more academic. I recommend world making after empire by Adon, Getachu, G E T A C H E W Uncommonwealth by Kojo Koram. These are some of my go-to books in terms of giving people a fundamental lay of the land in terms of where we are at politically and what Role Britain has played in our current political formation around the world. One more book that I would recommend, which again is a little more nerdy, the Code of Capital by a professor called Katherina Pistor. Yeah, just, oh, oh, one more.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business. That's not our job. I be talking about the genocide, and people are like, oh, you need to save that for the politicians. What indication do you have that the politicians care? And given that we are ruled by despots who are completely divorced from our experience as black people, as working people, as non-genocide supporters, do we not have a responsibility to take matters into our own hands? And in order to do anything long term that will lead to an improvement in our situation, we at least need a fundamental grasp of the reality, of the facts on the ground.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We as parents need to feel like it is our business to ensure that our children do not grow up without any understanding of this. Because many of us do and we figure it out or we make our way in life and we downplay the need to understand our political context. I want to advocate against that. I want to see change in that respect. I want black people, you know, firstly because that's the group that I am from. I want black people to return to what we saw in the Black Panthers in terms of young working class people feeling like it's their business to investigate alternatives to their political reality. It's their business to read up on alternative political systems. Many of us don't feel like that's our.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Predisposition, not because of a glitch in their own perspective, but because of the harsh reality that if you're not making more money than was once required, you won't get married. You won't have a family. You can barely go on dates. That's brutal. But it doesn't start with social media conversations. These conversations are just a reflection of the deteriorating condition of the working class.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I do think the conversation is getting to a more and more materialistic place. And I explain in my book how I think that is part of the trend of this stage of capitalism, neoliberal capitalism, in which we're not supposed to have any sense of obligation towards each other beyond the material. Even still, like no material obligations, human interaction feels very transactional when you look at these online conversations. People measure the quality of their lives by what they are able to secure for themselves financially and materially. And that's probably not new. That's not new, you know. But it is getting harder and harder for normal people to find love. It's getting harder and harder for normal people not to slip into depression, not because of a biological.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't say it's changed it as a result of becoming a father. I would say personally, I have something that simplifies the world for me. I have the most beautiful gift I've ever received. I have a commitment to my wife and my child, which maybe anchors me a little bit more. It maybe makes me less willing to run off a cliff in the name of my principal or my ideology. It makes me a little more pragmatic, a little more patient. And that might at times be at odds with, you know, that radical impulse, but it is what it is. It's beautiful. My son is just, he is peace before I would run at any challenge and I would run towards the requirements of my work. I would run into it. But now I want to walk. Sure, that my steps are intentional and that they will stand the test of time for my son.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Set it to the highest bidder and funnel or direct our thoughts in a way that will reaffirm our worldview. So that's a question of capitalism. That's a question of the people in position to influence us and to control what we think about. Not having a sense of responsibility towards us, not having a legal requirement to move responsibly in the interests of the society as a whole. So social media is only as good as the economic system within it which it is functioning.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's just accelerated everything. You know, there's a positive charge and a negative charge to it. On the positive, I feel that I've been corrected and I've been Exposed to views that I need to hear. On a negative, yeah, people talk about echo chambers, etc. But now we're really talking about capitalism once again. We're talking about the business models of the tech companies behind these social media platforms. I was reading an article about meta's latest, I think it's their latest platform threads and how Facebook went the way of monetization and advertising. And right now, threads doesn't have that. So threads is able to cultivate a community feel that Facebook lost. But Zuckerberg kind of made it known that later down the line there will be a monetization model for threads, at which point it's going to change. And we already know what Facebook's model is. They take all of our info.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't. I said what I could, though. I didn't hide, which is my criticism of some of our so-called conscious rappers of today. I still went on the news. I still advocated for the people. But yeah, my analysis was underdeveloped. My politics was undercooked. I chose to change that. It's that simple. I'm a grown-up. It's different when you're in your 30s versus just fresh out of uni.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the honorable activism of young people around the world, these people were putting me, like not directly, but indirectly putting me in the hot seat. Like, these people have a fully formed revolutionary politics that they're able to articulate. They're talking about the carceral system in ways that I never have. They're talking about, they're presenting capitalist critique in ways that I should be doing. So these people kind of drew me out into feeling like, all right, I have a responsibility to get back to basics, ensure that I am doing the reading and that I am evolving intellectually before presenting myself as a voice. So that's something that I am grateful for and that's something that I would like to see become a norm across the incoming generation of artists.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“However, I felt that my analysis was stagnant. I didn't have anything new to say. I didn't know what to make of world events. I didn't know who to trust in terms of politicians or political thinkers. And I needed to read. I needed to read. And I think that is something that I would like to, that's something that I have pivoted towards promoting, not just reading books, but reading trends in the world, reading between the lands of our music, reading people and their intentions. To answer your question, I arrived at this point because I was definitely catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or for me, Simeon, music was always a vehicle to engage with our situation. Yeah, I love music regardless of the struggle. But I became an artist. Because I wanted to contribute to the struggle. So I ended up kind of halfway through my career pivoting back to education because I felt that my ability to contribute to the struggle was being suffocated. Time in the music industry, time in the corporate world, definitely brought me benefits that I'm grateful for and I'm thankful for the people that I collaborated with, the great people that I met during that time, the ability to sustain myself, the opportunity to expand my visibility and all the tricks of the trade that I learned along the way. Let's not throw the baby out of the bathwater. It's been a good run.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't view myself as a radical. I'd have to do a lot more work. I'd have to let go of a lot more things that I'm not ready to let go of to truly be a radical. But I've for the first time in my life given to learning radical analysis, to learning a radical perspective, which is why people are arguing with me on Twitter about rappers' right to not care about the world. I'm like, when we get to the root of it, why do these rappers not care? Should we accept this? Most people are not ready to have that conversation yet, as someone with all the followers that I have, with the platform that I have, with the name that I have, the least I could do is shine a light on the efforts that have been made by people before me to change the tide.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Black Panthers are widely regarded as the most successful organization. And again, they follow the trend that I just spoke about in terms of a violent backlash. They were violently repressed. And they were subject to covert sabotage, which on the outside looks like these black people are just unable to organize. But when you go through the documents, the government documents the FBI documents, CONTELPRO, et cetera. you realize that these people had the odds stacked against them. Their oppressors never planned to play fair. So what we need to do, especially those of us in the public eye, while we have it, because nothing's permanent, is give a voice to radical analysis.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you don't control media, you don't control capital, you have to find a way to reach the masses, sustain your project in a colonial context. You don't have a government that controls millions of people like Russia or like the USSR or communist China. And you are up against all sorts of covert operations, as I mentioned in my book from the CIA, Western intelligence agencies, and governments that play dirty Western governments, the most powerful governments in the world that play dirty and are extremely violent. It boiled down to was people on the ground turning up in the lives of people who need them. And ensuring that they don't just provide a service, but they provide an education”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a stumbling block for our ability to build consciousness. You mentioned that a couple things that I kind of want to address. You mentioned that it's hard to build solidarity across the black world for revolutionary politics. And I would say that, yeah, revolutionary politics will always be swimming upstream. It will always be an uphill struggle in terms of trying to get them the majority of people on one accord that is the opposite of the mainstream. That's hard. But you're also up against, in some respects, a stacked deck where, like I said, the people that control the capital, the people that control the media do not necessarily share the interests of those who radical politics prioritizes.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is what I do. That you can see four books behind me You know, instead of becoming an artist in the conventional sense, a recording artist, I decided to pivot to podcasting where I could get longer ideas out because I feel that the very structure of music or popular music in a context that is very hostile to revolutionary politics.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Group our countries together to redraft the borders, to pool our resources, to control our mineral wealth. These projects try to do things that are the opposite of what this current school of capitalism teaches, the opposite of what the IMF requires of them, the opposite of what the World Bank requires of them. These guys tried to control their resources and tried to institute forms of government, nation-state formations that empowered black people. All of those attempts were sabotaged. All of those attempts were violently uprooted. But we don't learn about it. So we think that it is through our own agency. We have landed at this relationship with capitalism where it's the only way and anyone who says anything different is for the birds. You know, that's not true.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because that's what the people chose. One of the things that I hope to get across in this leg of my campaign and this leg of my work is that that was a top-down movement rather than a grassroots movement. The grassroots didn't decide that we only want rappers that don't care about the world. The grassroots didn't decide to sacrifice the collectivist sentiment of black music. No, the funding decided that the flow of capital, the balance of power decided that. And this was done stealthily. So we tend to internalize it and believe that these are our own values. When you look at what was done on the African continent and in the Caribbean, in the wake of independence, you see all of these projects that attempted to go further than capitalism, projects that attempted to be socialist, projects that tried to federate.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not one of them people that acts like hip hop started from a power to the people place. No, it didn't. Hip hop started in parties. However, it developed the ability to speak to the lived experience of an oppressed minority. And when it did that, there was a variation of rappers. There was a variation of subject matter. I talk about this in the book. There was feminist rap. There was Afro-conscious rap. There was anti-capitalist rap. The power structure caught on and flooded money into the music, which had the effect of taking the music in a different direction. Now, as I was arguing with people on Twitter, now we believe it to be self-evident that rappers shouldn't have any interest in the wider world. We believe it to be self-evident that rappers rap about material gain and self-interest.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great question. Great question. And it's quite complex because of one unifying factor, propaganda. We talk about black culture as if, and I have done this for years, talk about black culture as if it is a purely black product Commercialize black culture that reaches us through the mainstream non black owned media. What extent can we be sure that the values promoted in what reaches us as mainstream black culture? To what extent can we be sure that those values come from our actual lived experience? Given that the media is so tightly owned at such a small circle of interests and has been so for so long, do you feel that we would be able to identify aspects of so-called black culture that have been incepted into our music, into our visual representation and into our movies, into our references? I don't think so. I think a lot of the idea”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In which they can advocate for the things that their favorite rapper might not, but these individuals will argue with me on behalf of their favorites saying that black people, black artists shouldn't have to be burdened with the problems of the world. They should be free to live isolated lives in which they only address and only engage in what they want to. And these people think that they're doing it in defense of their favorite artists' blackness. But a point that I just made to someone on Twitter just recently was that artist of yours doesn't even advocate for black people. They don't advocate for anything. They have been situated in a class position that gives them privileges which detach them from the struggling of the masses.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fast forward to the present day, many people in this country don't feel that they have been shafted by their monarchy, by their ruling class. Many people identify as part of a group that takes his privileges from a racial ordering or takes his status from a racial ordering. Now, with black people, I'm having this debate about a lot of rappers right now. Someone was just getting onto me on Twitter saying, why do you expect rappers to speak about inequality and injustice around the world? And I'm saying, I kind of expect everyone in the public eye to do it. It's not even that I expect. I think it would, I think society would work better if we did. But individual fans of these rappers who I don't assume that they're all rich, I don't assume that no one has to work ever again. I don't assume that they all have a platform.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would just caution that it's not new, but I agree with you, there is a divergence, and this divergence is historical. Capitalism has always required a separation of the masses of not just black and brown people, but also white people, the masses need to be differentiated from the elites. We need to be blinkered to see the world in a way that is convenient for the rulers. So in the case of white people, the masses of people in this country are financially in a financially precarious situation. The masses of people in this country have been made to fight poverty by processes that happen hundreds of years ago when their ancestors were removed from land that used to belong to everyone, land that was then privatized. These are long-term processes.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll say originally by conversion. Originally, black people and brown people's inculcation into the capitalist system has been fundamentally coercive, you know, the choices that we made in terms of migration later on were within the context of that coercion. But sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is as if this was all just a random accident. Now, the way you counterbalance that cognitive dissonance is to say, but look at George the poet. Comment to Cambridge. Look at Jay Zlack Excellence, Rock Nation Branch. Look at all of these handpicked select few who have been able to make it in.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, meaningless, senseless accident when in actual fact, like I said, it is the continuity of the logic of empire, the logic of colonialism that is needed capitalism is required, a racialized class of workers from slavery times. It was completely free labor that we don't have to pay for in the era of the second wave of the British Empire. It was just new lands that these people need commerce. They need Christianity. They need capitalism in order to make sense of their lives. So conveniently, we've got these millions and millions of black and brown bodies that need our guidance, as white supremacists. So what we're going to do is we're going to put them to work. Now, that carries over into our current era. Yet when we talk about the conditions of impoverished black communities,”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Black banking was presented as the new solution. And then later on in the 60s and 70s, black capitalism was presented as the new remedy to the racial problem. See, this is built into all of this is a warped construct of what is going on in terms of racial inequality. It's always treated as some abstract.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say it's nothing new. You know, it's a long time strategy of presenting the black experience in one way in mainstream media versus allowing the continued immiseration, degradation of black life on a structural level. So these things have happened in parallel for over a century. You talk about the past decade, but if you go back to the early half of the 20th century, what you find is that black banking back in the 1920s, in the face of intense, obviously discrimination, in the face of what eventually became redlining, funneling black Americans into particular parts of America where the You know, just ghettos where the property was supposed to be depreciated, where public services were deteriorating or just not provided, where they had access to secondhand goods and products, etc. Sorry, not secondhand, second class.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That racial ordering of the world is very much alive and is fundamental to how we as black people Engage with the economy.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Non radical, non revolutionary, non activist school of thought. And I guess all that can be debated. But I identify with the rage at the core of it. Because when you talk about the war on blackness, as my book is subtitled, Magnitude of injustice that we're facing. Quite a lot, it's quite a lot to engage with if you're engaging with it, especially for the first time. I feel like this was for me the first time I really took stock of the logic of slavery leading into the logic of colonialism and our current world order, how it is one continuous flow. Many of us don't know that. Many of us think these were isolated episodes that affected the world in isolated pockets. And now that it's all over Not part of our reality anymore. My experiences in the music industry, my own experience as a media personality. Have made it clear to me that.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very much so. Very much so. A lot of the edits that I had to do on this book were about checking my tone and giving myself an opportunity to say it as I felt it in the first instance and then trying to walk it back and present it in a way where the rage doesn't get in the way of the point, doesn't undermine the point and it doesn't alienate people unnecessarily. And I think I was listening to a talk by a gentleman called Frank B. Wilderson who wrote a very important piece called Afropessimism. And Afropessimism is a school of thought that takes the view that the level, the extent of anti-blackness in the world is so intense that it just reframes how we should think about addressing liberation. And Afropessimism receives a lot of criticism for various reasons. People think it's a cop out. It's a way of not being political.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About a specific experience later on in the book. I would lead with my ears. All right. I would listen first before I explain whatever I want to explain to them. And even still, I would feel that I have to do work. I have to give up something. I have to sacrifice something. I have to invest something. I have to risk or carry something before I have earned the right to speak on an experience that is not primarily my own.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't say it's too regular, but I think there are a few things to acknowledge. We are all at a disadvantage when it comes to talking about race in a responsible way because we are not supported by our education systems in doing so. Race is treated as something that isn't really worth talking about. It's rarely articulated in the law, let alone in the media in a constructive way. In the media nowadays, race is reduced to identity politics in the West, something that a superficial categorization that people cling to to make a superficial point. So I am black. Therefore, don't talk to me about blackness if you're not black, where in reality what I try to communicate to the gentleman that interrupted our conversation was that I have this belief with regards to any minority conversation or any conversation that is”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We shouldn't frame ourselves as victims. We should just, I don't know, beat the odds, whatever. He was throwing out a lot of cliches. And it really bothered me that he didn't feel that he needed to listen to what we were saying before sharing his opinion. It bothered me that he clearly had never been formally educated, as many of us are not, on black issues. And I just let him know that I didn't really appreciate it. And I felt like that's a great setup for, I mean, I used it as a great setup for how the book unfolds, what my personal journey is, and how we start to unpack a lot of our assumptions about the black experience.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comes over and gets involved in our conversation, we had been talking about blackness, about our very inexperiences of blackness. One of the ladies grew up in Africa. Another one grew up over here but didn't identify with the mainstream portrayal of the black experience. And obviously I have a certain profile to an extent they knew of me. And the one whose husband came over was actually a fan of mine. He had put her onto my work. But I think he was very clumsy in the way that he entered our conversation. We're talking about black staff and he comes in and he's like, oh, black people have it easier than they realize. We have opportunities that we don't realize.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did I have a particular reader in mind vaguely, vaguely, I wanted to speak to people who like me probably thought of themselves as liberals, probably millennials who have experienced music in the same timeline that I've experienced it. And definitely black people and black parents who don't necessarily like me don't necessarily feel firmly rooted in an education about the black experience. We all have our individual black experiences, but we're rarely rooted in an education, in a formal process of figuring out how we got to this point and looking at the various things people have tried to pursue emancipation. The chapter that you're talking about is one in which I'm at a party and I'm talking to these two black women and one of them has a husband at the party who”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Last part of your question is very important, a work that needs to be out in the world. So I started off writing memoirs, and this was in 2020, then the pandemic kicked off, George Floyd got killed, and protests erupted around the world. And there was various things happening in the British monarchy. I had already rejected an MBE the previous year. So, in terms of what work I needed to put out into the world, writing a memoir alone didn't seem sufficient for the public moment. It dawned on me that my life story provides an opportunity to talk about a lot of other things, you know, things that are in my history, things that I have witnessed, and the music that I have been participating in since I was a teenager in order to create the career that I've created so far”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's all good, man. It's on. I'm glad to be able to finally release this book. It's a little bit weird not having it hanging over me and being able to hand it over to the reader, but it's a relief.”
2024-04-29 · Intelligence Squared · George the Poet on Combatting the War on Blackness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT