WEBVTT - Switching Sides 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:04.240 On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:25.440 Friends Media. You are by now, y'all know that we 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.800 are a fan of folks changing their minds. Got some 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.000 new information? Did somebody you love challenge something you said? 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.280 Just feel differently about something for reasons that you can't 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:37.720 explain yet, that's all good and well. 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.599 I've changed my mind plenty of times, and. 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.040 I have two And if we're reading, listening to other people, 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:48.000 and thinking critically, then we're probably downloading a lot of 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.040 new data. And that means that sometimes, hey, you just 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:52.800 got to update the operating system. 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.760 And that could be a small update, or that could 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.600 be a complete overhaul of our political opinions in value systems. 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:02.080 That's cool when it seems like the person sees the 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.400 light and steps out of their ignorance. 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:07.600 But some folks hit a one to eighty on us 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:12.080 and woo, things get real sketchy. I'm Katie and I'm Eves. 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:22.440 Today's episode switching sides. From November nineteen thirty six to 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:26.280 April nineteen thirty eight, a writer named George Skyler published 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:30.319 two science fiction serials in the Pittsburgh Courier. They were 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:35.800 called The Black International and Black Empire. Black Empire continued 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:40.160 the story of the Black International. Yes, Skyler was black, 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.840 and yes, the serials tackle black issues. As you might 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:48.000 have guessed by the titles, the serials are fantastical stories 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.920 about a group of revolutionaries who overthrow white colonial rule 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.760 in Africa. Skyler initially published the serials under the pen 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:57.600 name Samuel I. Brooks. 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:00.320 Did people like the stories of the time? 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.960 Yeah, they did. The couriers Black readers read the stories 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.040 week after week in the paper and loved them. So 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.640 these serials were buried for a while after Skyler's death, 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:13.959 But in the nineteen nineties, Robert A. Hill and R. 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:17.480 Kent Rasmussen were editors at the Marcus Garvey Papers at 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:21.080 the University of California, Los Angeles. In their research, they 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:25.079 dug up Skyler's serials, and in nineteen ninety one, Northeastern 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:28.320 University Press published both of the serials as a book 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:32.880 called Black Empire. Now, the publisher, Penguin Random House is 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.800 calling it a quote pioneering work of afrofuturism and anti 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.239 racist fiction in its promotional copy. 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.919 Okay, afrofuturism, inter racist fiction go. 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:46.640 Off right and based on the plot that description sounds 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:50.040 pretty on point, right, but the narrative and Black Empire 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.880 and the story of its creation are more complex. Skyler 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:57.240 wrote this to a staffer at the Pittsburgh Courier. I 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.880 have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for the 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.200 Black International, which is hokum and hackwork of the purest vein. 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.279 I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.480 and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure. 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.080 The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race. 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:21.600 It's giving troll, but you know it wasn't just foolishness 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.200 for its own sake. And let me tell you about Skyler. 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.160 In the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, Skyler was a 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.640 prolific and respected journalist. He wrote articles for the Pittsburgh Courier, 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.320 the New York Evening Post, and the Philadelphia Ledger, just 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:38.840 to name a few. He wrote a lot about race 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.720 in black and white owned newspapers. White folks didn't always 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.120 agree with its takes, and neither did black folks. In 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.880 nineteen twenty six, for instance, he wrote an article for 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.040 the Nation called the Negro Art Hokum. In it, he 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.400 argued that black American art should not be treated as 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.080 different from American art. He would have hated this podcast. 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.000 You know, I think you're right. He said in that 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:05.960 article that white artists and black artists were both influenced 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:10.720 by Europeans anyway. Then he continued with his brutal takedown. 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.200 He called out black artists and thinkers who learned from 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.880 Europeans and their institutions like W. E. B. Du Boyce, sculptor, 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:22.480 Mita Vo Warwick Fuller, painter Henry Osawa Tanner. 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.400 So he was like dropping names, fire and shots directly, directly. 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:29.800 He was not afraid to put those names on the paper. Okay. 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:32.960 And this is during the Harlem Renaissance when black art 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:37.000 and aesthetics are being celebrated. But that didn't matter to Skuyler. 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:39.880 He said that it made sense that their work wasn't 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:44.359 really black, since quote, the Afro American is merely a 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.000 lamp black Anglo. 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:51.680 Saxon Ooh just caught him koos like, and he called. 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:53.839 Them that in the way that a petty but descriptive 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:57.640 writer would. Langston Hughes wrote a rebuttal in the magazine, 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.000 and there were people calling for sk to be fired. 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.680 He wasn't anyway. He published the book Black No More 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.360 in nineteen thirty one. It's a satirical novel about a 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.680 black American scientist who invents a way to turn black 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.159 people into white people. So he's writing a lot about race, 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.760 but his interest in politics and race relations shows up 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.240 off the page too. He's involved with civil rights organizations 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:26.640 like the NUBACP, even though some of his opinions are controversial. 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.880 For instance, he's critical of forced integration. You know, he 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.800 had some stances that weren't typical for the time, but 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.159 still black folks would generally consider him on their side 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.159 soon though they couldn't say the same with confidence more 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:52.720 after the break. So far, George Schuyler was still good 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.920 with black folks. He has some controversial views that they 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:58.800 cide eyed him for, but he was fine. That is 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:03.039 until the nineteen thirty when he became more conservative. He 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:06.919 started writing anti communist articles and becoming involved in anti 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:10.479 communist organizations. He said that MLK shouldn't have gotten the 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:14.360 Nobel Peace Prize. He said black separatists should be feared 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:18.719 more than white segregationists, and he thought the US should 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.560 be hands off in South Africa during apartheid. A nineteen 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:26.080 sixty six article called him one of America's two busiest 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.599 Negro apologists for racial segregation and colonialism. 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.119 That's a good drag, you know, they say. Not only 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:36.680 are you an apologist for racial segregation and colonial you busy, 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:37.920 you busy doing it. 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.560 Takes up all of his time, a lot of time to. 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.400 Be doing this foolishness. I like that. I'm gonna put 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:46.200 that in my notebook. 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.080 Yeah. And you know, for his stances, Scholar had racked 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.760 up some enemies, including the government. He was anti communists, 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.359 which is a plus for the FEDS. Of course, the 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.120 Kammis and leftist ideologies were big bad in the government's view, 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.359 and in the nineteen forties Skyler wrote at least fifty 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.159 columns about what he called the Communist conspiracy in the 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:11.239 Pittsburgh Courier. But the FBI still viewed Skyler as a threat. 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.320 A nineteen forty three FBI report said the following, he 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:17.320 is always waging a fight for the Japanese and turned 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.280 out in California. He will write an article on this 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.280 subject every few weeks, blaming the US for putting these 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.520 Japanese Americans in camp. He spends a lot of paper 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.800 in ink worrying about them. It is difficult to understand 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.720 why he, a Negro, should be so much concerned about 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:35.960 the Japs instead of taking the part of his own 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:38.000 people and other loyal Americans. 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:39.960 I have the same questions that FBI. 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:43.480 Tell me about it, Katie, just like. 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:45.920 Why are you going up for them but then talking 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:47.320 bad about the sol rests movement? 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.160 Right? I think the way that he presented that argument 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:52.440 was just like, Okay, if they're doing this to the Japanese, 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.360 then they would do this to everyone like they would 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:55.320 treat everyone like this. 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:57.520 They treating people like that in South Africa. That you 0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.560 said we should mind our business. 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.160 Yeah, I mean it doesn't. I think a lot of 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.000 things that don't flow through logic for him. But yeah, 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.800 it wasn't like he always denied the terror that black 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.640 folks were dealing with. So he acknowledged the fact that 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.560 black people have been through a lot, that they've been 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.760 resourceful and resilient, and that they've had to put up 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.480 with white folks bs over all these years. But the 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:25.760 thing is he thought that liberals were horribly misguided in 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:27.880 the way that they dealt with the race issue. In 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:32.480 nineteen sixty six, he published an autobiography that's appropriately titled 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:37.720 Black and Conservative. He says in the autobiography, I had opposed 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.760 all of the Marches on Washington and other mob demonstrations, 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:45.520 recognizing them as part of the Red techniques of agitation, infiltration, 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.760 and subversion. This was indicated by the fact that invariably 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:56.080 they were proposed, incited, managed handled by professional collectivist agitators 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.720 whose only interest in the workers was to exploit them. 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.160 He also goes on to say that the civil disobedience 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.400 and teardowns of white people will just make black folks 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:10.120 more enemies, and it won't solve any problems, and he 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.200 had a problem with how the media uplifted the opinions 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.800 of civil rights leaders and not their critics. In his 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.800 later years, the Black Delegation pretty much disowned him, but 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.320 he stayed on the conservative wave until he died in 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:28.480 nineteen seventy seven. Deep sigh, Right, it seemed like he 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.559 did a lot of waffling, like back and forth, switching 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:33.760 between things that didn't make sense, like you brought up 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.760 just now. Because he often called people who were in 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:40.160 the civil rights movements who were protesting people who he 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.680 considered black militants. He would often call them agitators. But 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:46.880 if like, just if you're looking at everything he's saying 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:49.719 and he's like, he's very prolific. He's written a lot 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.559 of stuff as a journalist, Like he is agitating too. 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.200 That's literally what he's doing. He's asking for a contrarian opinion. 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.520 He's presenting contrarian opinions in ways that are a pretty 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:03.120 harsh and brutal, sometimes in the way that he phrases them. 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.600 But in addition to that, he knows that his opinions 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:08.600 are contrary to the ones that a lot of other 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.600 people have at the same time, and to make it 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:15.560 seem like agitation is something that's to be condemned or 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:19.760 looked down upon, are disparaged. It feels pretty antithetical to 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:22.600 everything that he's doing because he is agitating as well. 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.120 Yeah, I wonder learning about his comments about what he 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:31.200 wrote about in when he serialized the book, saying like, 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:35.840 oh I just did this and it was like a joke. Basically, 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.960 I wondered, like did he ever switch? Because I feel 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.160 like there's a lot of like black people who will 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:44.200 like write black stuff because they know it'll sell, but 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.199 they really don't feel like in community with other black people. 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:49.640 M I feel like that's what he was on because 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.360 he's like, oh, I put like this racial chauvinism and 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.000 it was, you know, a big Koko move he says. 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:58.640 So I'm like, did you ever switch? Because I read 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.080 Black note More that was my first thing I read 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:04.320 from him, and I was like, Oh, this guy he 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:06.760 has a lot to say about white people. He has 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.880 a lot to say about like black liberals in the 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.640 leadership class. Like there's a character in the book that 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.839 was like Madam C. J. Walker and was like, oh, 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.640 like y'all not upset, y'all got nappy hair? No more 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:20.800 like how am I going to get rich? Or the 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.480 NAACP leader who's like, oh, y'all not getting lynch? No 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:25.880 more like how am I going to get a check? 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:30.280 So he had, you know, those impulses, which I got 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:35.160 those two, but it was really like about how society 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.079 treats black people and how like being racist like literally 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:39.920 doesn't make sense. That's what I got from the book. 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:41.319 But I think he could have just been doing it 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:42.120 for a check all along. 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.040 There is a general sense in his ideology that's like 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.480 even without racism, like we would always there would be 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:51.640 some sort of oppression, Like there are other things that 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.920 everybody deals with, and he's critical of the way that 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.040 you know, a lot of protesters at the time, a 0:11:57.040 --> 0:11:59.720 lot of people who were involved in the civil rights movement, 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.480 the way that they uplifted or I guess in his 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:06.480 view maybe belabored the point of racism and the divisions 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.120 that it created. But yes, it does seem like the 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.560 switch happened for him pretty early on, or he always 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:17.640 had these ideas because he at first seemed to be 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:22.440 dipping and dabbling in Marxism and in communist ideals. He 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.080 was reading socialist things, and from what I can tell, 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.480 sources have made it seem like, oh, he was reading 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:31.280 these things and that he was into these things at 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:33.600 the time. But I think there was an element of 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.080 he was reading them and he was into them as 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.520 a measure of just information gathering and trying to get 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:41.719 a lay on what his actual political ideologies were, and 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.319 that he may not have been that aligned with them 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:46.720 ever in the first place, is just something a direction 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.200 in which he was thinking about going other people who 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:52.240 shared some of his ideals, who did care about blackness, 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.120 so that's the thing, Like overall he cared about black 0:12:55.160 --> 0:13:00.200 people's continuation, about the progress of the race seemingly, but 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:02.960 had beef with the way that everybody else did it. 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:04.760 And it just seemed like he tended more and more 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:09.360 right over time, So dipping and dabbling, maybe this, maybe that, 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.720 maybe left, maybe right, maybe somewhere in the middle. And 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.720 then over time he just got pretty conservative and started 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:19.079 to say things that didn't really make sense, but also 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:21.920 forefronted a lot of the I want government to be 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:28.000 hands off approach. Okay, a pioneer, I mean, a model 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:30.920 for so many people today. But after the break, we'll 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:34.600 talk about a person who Skyler might have considered a 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:48.720 black militant. Just two years after Skyler published Black and Conservative, 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:53.400 Eldridge Cleaver's autobiography, Sold on Ice came out. But Cleaver 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:57.720 wasn't anything like Skyler in the nineteen sixties, Skyler was 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:03.080 critical of militant black activist and he denounced separatism. Cleaver, 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:06.000 on the other hand, was a prominent member of the 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.840 Black Panther Party in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Cleaver 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:14.280 served time in California prisons for cannabis charges and assault 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.200 with the intent to murder. He read a lot while 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:19.880 he was locked up. He read folks like Malcolm X, 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:24.000 Thomas Paine, Richard Wright, and Karl Marx. He also wrote 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:26.440 about his own personal politics while he was in prison. 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:29.240 By the time he got out of prison in nineteen 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.920 sixty six, he had a bunch of essays that were 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.880 published in Ramparts magazine. These essays would eventually be put 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.560 into book form in Soul on Ice. In that autobiography, 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:44.400 Clever makes some disgusting admissions about raping women. He said 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:48.160 in hindsight that he didn't approve of his actions, but 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.000 either way it went. The Black Panther Party brought him 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:53.760 into the fold. When he got out of prison in 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.760 nineteen sixty eight, Cleaver was caught up in a shootout 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.520 between Black Panther Party members and the Oakland police, so 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:05.720 he fled the US and lived in exile in Mexico, Cuba, Algeria, 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.280 and France. Cleaver's relationship with leaders of the party soon 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.840 became strained, and in nineteen seventy one he left the 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:14.240 Black Panthers. 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.160 Like, not only left them, like turned on them. 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.240 Right, Yeah, He denounced them and he went back to 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.560 the US. In nineteen seventy five, his attempt at murder 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:26.400 charges were dropped and he had to do community service. 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.640 But things got really weird. He became a born again 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:34.880 Christian after dumping his old allegiance to Marxism, and he 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.560 was disgraced. He was no longer a respected revolutionary. Black 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:42.240 folks in the revolution didn't want much to do with him, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.960 but Cleaver was deep in his new conservative bag. Anyway. 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:52.520 He continued on his crusade against black radicalism and Satanic communism, 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.600 and he did his best to lead people to Jesus 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:57.480 in a way from black nationalism. 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.400 I feel like he would do really well in twenty 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:03.920 twenty four as like a Blacks for Trump guy. 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.400 I agree with you. I mean, think about it. Look 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.480 at his story of transformation. He went from a militant 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:14.120 black rebel to a docile Bible thumper. But you know, 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:16.960 the white Christians tossed him to the side after a 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.480 while too. He became a Mormon. He got involved in 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:26.200 other kind of Christian leaning islam leaning religious situations, just 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.440 kind of of his own creation. He became addicted to 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:34.320 crack and he became an anti communist Republican. In nineteen 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.280 eighty two, he gave a speech at Yale's Afro American 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.480 Student Center. He said that the US is the freest 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.200 and most democratic country in the world. He also said, 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.840 quote Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:52.160 federal government house clothe and feed black people. I am 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.280 glad about that because it will force blacks to unify 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:59.240 and lobby for their needs. Cleaver tried to run for 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.720 a Senate seat in California as a Republican, but that 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:06.520 bid failed. He died in nineteen ninety eight, and by 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.880 then all of the groups Cleaver had associated with had 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:15.040 pretty much distanced themselves from him, the Evangelicals, the Conservatives, 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:19.399 and the Panthers gone. It's interesting, as a person who 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.880 was involved in the Black Panthers knowing how integral self 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:27.040 sufficiency and arming ourselves and working together in a cooperative 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.520 way was integral to the Black Panther Party's mission, that 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:35.240 he would say that anybody else needed to do anything 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.160 to get black people to unify and lobby for their needs, 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:40.879 like obviously you know they don't because you did it. 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.639 I think that makes it clear how delusional he actually was. 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:48.199 He was saying things that were literally the opposite of 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.760 the truth, and he knew that truth had a capital 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.359 T because he had actually been involved in that truth. 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:59.520 So the delusion is strong in the turn for him. 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.359 Yeah, I wonder if you like got paid in any way, 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.320 because I know that's a more common thing. Like the 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:11.399 lady who was the woman behind roe V Wade said that, like, 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:16.000 you know, pro life Christians paid her to say that 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:18.639 she regretted getting an abortion and being the face of it, 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.719 and she just needed money, you know. So it's like 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:28.000 you come at a prison, you know, the panther's not 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.920 really rocking with you no more. Isn't just a financial thing? 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:34.040 I think it very well could be. 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:37.720 Is it a drug thing? You know that senator Fetterman 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.359 I think his name is, who had a stroke and 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:45.560 became conservative after being super liberal. Yeah, I should have laughed, 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:47.679 But it's funny to me because this man had had 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:49.800 a stroke, meaning there was no action going to your brain. 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.440 You survived, and now you're a conservative. 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:57.040 I mean, wilder things have happened. I mean that's pretty wild. 0:18:57.480 --> 0:18:58.959 You could go up from there. But you know how 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:01.720 they talk about the people who learned completely new languages 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.040 after they go into a cod or a stroke or something. 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.480 Like that your brain was a compromised and now you 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:07.080 think like this. 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:09.960 Yeah, so I think it's a mixture of all the things. 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:14.200 His ex wife, Kathleen Cleaver, said that after he came 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:18.159 back to the US and he wasn't the same. So 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.920 I also wonder what happened while he was in exile. 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:23.000 I mean, I'm sure there he talked a little bit 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.119 about being in Algeria and his book sold on fire. 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.399 But I'm sure there are stories that we don't know, 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:34.640 and maybe there are ways that causes led to consequences 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.680 that maybe he doesn't even understand how one thing led 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:42.720 to the other either or didn't. But it's clear that 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:44.080 something went wrong. 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:45.880 Yeah. 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:51.679 But also you know, he had been his reasoning was 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.760 illogical and problematic from the very beginning, and just all 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.040 of the sexual vibe lens that he committed, the ways 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:06.760 that he spoke about women, he went all right already 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:13.200 and unfortunately, I mean this is I mean, his story 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.000 is pretty dark to me, you know, And I think 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:21.320 that all of those things compiled, they all compounded when 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:26.639 you add the Christianity element of it, the evangelical element 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.480 of it, and also going this far in these lames. 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.320 So what if he was paid only to be completely 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:36.000 rejected and left alone by all of these people that 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:39.719 were supposed to be the ones who were I don't know, 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:42.560 giving him access to whatever he was aiming for. I 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:49.639 can't say what that thing was. But yeah, for both 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:58.240 Skylar and for Cleaver, they both had these turns from 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:02.440 being really upstate people in the community. Like a lot 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.879 of people admired the way that they thought. They both 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:10.480 shared things through writing. Two people who were cast to 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:12.840 the side. You know, they weren't at the end of 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.680 their lives. It didn't seem like they had as much stature, 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.240 Their reputations weren't as good as they were in the 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:23.080 beginning of their lives. But it seemed like with Skyler 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:29.359 there were fewer like external conditions of like environmental risk 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.119 factors that were imposed upon Skyler. There were fewer of 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:34.080 those for Skylar, it seemed like than there were for 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.080 Eldridge Cleaver. But for both of them, yeah, it seems 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:45.800 like things definitely went downhill. But there are so many 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:49.960 of their written words left over about their lives that 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:53.639 makes it easier to get a glimpse into how they thought. 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.000 But as we've talked about before on this show, when 0:21:56.040 --> 0:22:00.840 people write their own things, they're often unreliable narrators. We 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.000 can't fully trust and believe that everything that they're saying 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.680 is truth. But at least in the case, they both 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:13.320 wrote autobiographies memoirs, so we know things that actually happened 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.320 as they reported them, and we also get to see 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:21.920 a little bit of their internalized thoughts about why they 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:25.360 chose to be conservative. I mean, Skyler wrote a whole 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:27.840 book on being black and Conservative, so he clearly that 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:30.199 was in nineteen sixty six, so he had plenty of 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:32.880 time to think about its views of being black and conservative. 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:36.640 You know, at that point he had already started shifting 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.840 very heavily in that direction for many decades at that point. 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:46.160 But it's still I think helpful for us as things 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:49.800 are still divided, very much so divided today, to look 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:52.640 at examples of people and like how they were radicalized, 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:55.800 and just think of all of the examples today of 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.960 people and how they get their misinformation and disinformation off 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:03.320 of the Internet, and how propaganda of the day influences 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.480 us to think in certain ways, and how sometimes we 0:23:06.520 --> 0:23:08.439 don't have the people around us, or we don't have 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.400 the capability or capacity to be able to process those 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:13.760 things in ways which we can kind of come back 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:16.199 down to the ground in reality. I think there are 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:21.240 good examples of that because they're intelligent men, but these 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:24.800 things like the communist propaganda that were happening during the 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:33.560 Red Scare clearly affected them. And not only is it 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:37.600 that we still have their writing to see their views, 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:40.080 it's like they were sharing that with so many people. 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:44.840 They wanted people to know about their conservatism. 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:51.440 Yeah, and that's when you have a platform, like Clever 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:53.879 did and like Scholar did. They both had big platforms, 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:57.119 particularly when Cleaver was in the Black Panther Party in 0:23:57.160 --> 0:23:59.720