← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 16701 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2005-02-11
2005-02-11 07:00 | User Profile
I ran into this 2002 [URL=http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-10-29-oped-goldblatt_x.htm]USA Today [/URL] story while net surfing.
Please post links to this Five Percent group/ideology, if you have them.
Walter
[QUOTE]Posted 10/28/2002 7:05 PM
Hip-hop's grim undertones
By Mark Goldblatt for USA TODAY
The mainstream media are slowly catching up with the buzz on hip-hop Web sites about a possible connection between John Allen Muhammad, indicted in the Washington-area sniper case, and a virulently racist black group called the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, to which several of today's most popular rap acts have acknowledged longstanding ties.
The Associated Press has reported that notes left at two shooting scenes contain language and symbols associated with the Five Percenters, who splintered off from the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1964 and consider themselves a culture, not a faith. Muhammad was once a NOI member, but the FBI declined to comment on any connection between the sniper's notes and the Five Percenters, whose leaders also did not comment. If the connection is proved true, however, the repercussions will be felt throughout an element of the hip-hop community that already is rife with suspicion and animosity toward white society.
The group's philosophy rejects most accepted authority and history. It teaches that 85% of people are ignorant followers and another 10% try to lead those ignorant masses to enrich themselves. The enlightened Five Percent who remain have true knowledge and must wage war against the 10% for control. The details of what the Five Percenters believe and how they act on those beliefs are disputed. Some in law enforcement deem the group a racist gang. South Carolina's prison system has rated all Five Percenter prisoners security threats.
Black male Five Percenters are "Gods" and will refer to themselves as God. One letter from the sniper contained the demand that police call the author "God" and a stock Five Percenter phrase, "word is bond," along with five stars, also used by the group. A tarot card left at another shooting stated, "I am God."
'Open season'
As the Anti-Defamation League and a few scholars have noted, Five Percenter theory stands behind the apocalyptic visions of race war expressed in the rap music of some of the more influential hip-hop performers. In Goin Bananas, Da Lench Mob raps: "We're having thoughts of overthrowing the government. .. it's open season on crackers, you know; the morgue will be full of Caucasian John Does. .. oh my god, Allah, have mercy; I'm killing them devils because they're not worthy to walk the earth with the original black man I won't rest until they're all dead."
Sunz of Man, an offshoot group of the wildly popular Wu-Tang Clan, repeats similar ideas in the song Can I See You : "Camouflaged for the mission; use your third eye to see the Israelite; detect those who tell lies carry .45s in these last days and times I was born to survive a soldier, and I strive, with a duty to civilize these 85s an original black man with a plan to run these devils off our land; now listen real close while I explain the operation."
A rap by the group Brand Nubian is even less subtle: "It's all about brothers rising up, wising up, sizing up a situation, but getting fit within the Nation I sing sounds of math on behalf of the Gods and the Earths now face your maker and take your last breath; the time is half past death."
Wide influence
These acts' appeal is largely limited to hard-core hip-hop fans, but even artists who've crossed over to mainstream audiences and whose videos turn up regularly on MTV, such as rappers Busta Rhymes, Rakim and Nas, have flirted with Five Percenter concepts. What's unnerving is that these acts are not only among the most critically acclaimed hip-hop stars, but they are acclaimed precisely because they're considered the most politically sophisticated rappers.
The question, of course, isn't whether hip-hop performers have a constitutional right to express crazy, or even racially incendiary, ideas. Clearly, they do. The question is to what degree their fans are taking them seriously as they try literally to drum an us-against-them mind-set into young black people.
Pubic Enemy's Chuck D., the first overtly political rapper, once called hip-hop "the black CNN." It will be a terrible development if it turns out that John Allen Muhammad was tuning in for the news.
Mark Goldblatt, the author of Africa Speaks, a satire of hip-hop culture, lives in New York. [/QUOTE]
2005-02-11 07:39 | User Profile
Walter:
Not sure why you dredged up an article this old but much- most - of this is flapdoodle. "Five percenters" is a nog cultural meme, not a cult. Blacks have been playacting at depth with [I]sounds good, means nothing[/I] phrases like "word is bond" for decades now; example of another would be "knowledge is king" - another buzzphrase used by people who then try to convince you that Cornbread Abdullah Jones invented the refrigamator in 1858. South Carolina likely has very little patience with gangbangers in general, all of whom come complete with nicknames, impenetrable slang and 'sets' named after whatever's out there that's popular. Most ghetto blacks under 40 "reject most accepted authority and history". Anybody who thinks rap bands circa 2002 invented the trend of blacks adopting [I]an us-against-them mind-set[/I] has been living in a cave. Etc, etc.
It's far likelier than the growing and open hostility to Jews among young nogs triggers [I]all sorts [/I] of defense mechanisms in a writer named Goldblatt (that plus the fact that he needed [U]some[/U] kind of ominous linkage to sell this stitched-together, alarmist conspiracy-slop to USA TODAY in the first place.)
Goldblatt himself is quite typical of his Tribe, however. At the same time he tries to thread mushmouth rappers, the DC snipers and blacks in general into a vast dusky conspiracy, in his other guise - Rising Young Neocon - he is quick to pooh-pooh [I]far [/I] more convincing anecdotal evidence, of [I]far [/I] more ominous conspiracies, as so much tinfoil wrapped around a Napoleon hat. Vide:
[QUOTE][url]http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7195[/url]
[B]Tin Foil Hat Democrats[/B] By Mark Goldblatt Published 10/4/2004 12:06:11 AM
No sooner had the egg stopped dripping down Dan Rather's face than Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe came forward to suggest that White House political adviser Karl Rove might actually be behind the bogus documents at the heart of the CBS Memogate Fiasco. But why would a Republican loyalist like Rove float documents which called into question President Bush's National Guard service? Elementary, according to McAuliffe: Rove knew the documents would quickly be exposed as a hoax, which in turn would cast suspicion on the John Kerry campaign, make Bush family-nemesis Rather into a laughingstock and, oh, by the way, deflect attention from Bush's alleged dereliction of duty in the early 1970s.
McAuliffe's reasoning was soon seconded by MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, senior Kerry adviser Howard Wolfson, and even New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -- who didn't quite sign onto the theory but wrote that she kinda-sorta wouldn't put it past Rove. After Dowd's column appeared, several academic colleagues of mine concluded that Rove was indeed the probable culprit. Last Saturday, I overheard two subway riders echoing the notion.
Such bank shot logic is beyond silly, albeit slightly disconcerting. When you start believing that your enemy will shoot himself in the foot in order to plant the gun on your friend, then you've descended to the cognitive level of, well, the Arab Street -- where conventional wisdom still holds, for example, that the CIA and Israel's Mossad collaborated on the September 11th attacks on the United States in order to provide the Bush Administration with a pretext to launch a crusade against the Islamic world.
Conspiracy theorizing has become the knee-jerk of the new millennium among liberal partisans -- call them Tin Foil Hat Democrats. In their world, Jeb Bush is busy rigging another Florida vote for his brother, Halliburton is busy calling the shots in the war on terror, John Ashcroft is busy repealing the Bill of Rights, and Neoconservatives are busy working their Trilateral Commission voodoo to make the world safe for corporate capitalist exploitation.
Now if I were a Tin Foil Hat Democrat sifting through the mess at CBS, the conspiracy I'd theorize would have nothing to do with Karl Rove. I'd start by asking myself who stands to gain the most from the defeat of John Kerry in the 2004 election -- that is, apart from Republicans …and Iraqis and Afghans and every person of good will in the Middle East and Asia.
To my mind, there's one clear answer: Hillary Rodham Clinton. I mean, a Kerry victory shuts her out of a run for the presidency until at least 2012, and possibly 2020 if John Edwards decides to run after two terms as Kerry's vice president; by then, Hillary would be 73. Then there's the matter of Joe Lockhart, whose name keeps cropping up as the middleman between the Kerry camp and CBS. That's Joe Lockhart -- Bubba's former press secretary and Clintonista for life. Finally, I notice the junior senator from New York goes by three names: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Like John Wilkes Booth. Like Lee Harvey Oswald. Like James Earl Ray.
Eh? Eh? See what I'm driving at?
Time to break out the foil, kiddies.
[I]Mark Goldblatt is the author of Africa Speaks, a satire of black urban culture. His e-mail is [email]MGold57@aol.com[/email].[/I][/QUOTE]
Yassuh, dem ole GOP corn-spiracy theories sho' am [I]crazy[/I]! But makes sho y'all read my book 'bout the Fi' Percenters! Lawdy miz Claudy, kin yo 'magine how "a satire of black urban culture" wrote by a [B]white [/B] debbil would be received? Mo-fugga sho ain't gwine be sellin' no awticles to no USA TODAY. Shee-it, if'n he [B]did[/B], dey'd be some angry-ass letters to de editor.... fum a whole [I]mess [/I] o' Goldblatts!
2005-02-11 07:41 | User Profile
[url="http://www.ibiblio.org/nge"]www.ibiblio.org/nge[/url]
This is the five-percenter's website
2005-02-11 08:03 | User Profile
I TRIED to do some research on these jigglie-wigglies, BUT seeing as how they favor the post-every-photograph-I've-ever-taken-in-my-Allah-be-praised-life-straight-onto-my-homepage School of Web Design, my system friggin' crashes when I try to load one of their web pages (it should be noted that among Whites, this system of web organization is favored only by the very stupid, very insane or, occasionally, the very young). So, if y'all wants to have yourself a little fun with that Old Time Self-Sufficiency Religion (you'd think these people would have come up with a few new cliches since the days of Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammed, but alas, not - maybe nobody offered them any bananas in exchange for doing so?), be my guest.
One useful thing I DID find out, for you literary masochists out there, is that they no longer favor the term "five percenter," but rather their preferred term these days in "the Nation of Gods and Earths." You'll find more via Google if you search using that term. A lot more, it seems, but I'm already disgusted with these numbskulls. I'm handing off the baton....
2005-02-11 08:50 | User Profile
Ragman: interesting stuff. The inner workings of the African mind remain a mystery to me.
So, you think that this five percent stuff is not widespread, at least among hip-hop stars?
No doubt Mr. Goldblatt was trying to sell a story.
Great find on his Neokhan denial story.
2005-02-11 09:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The inner workings of the African mind remain a mystery to me. So, you think that this five percent stuff is not widespread, at least among hip-hop stars?[/QUOTE]
Their five-percenters correlate, roughly, to our 'awakened white men'; their 'Whitey', our ZOG.
The diff is that there is no penalty - indeed, there is societal [I]reinforcement [/I] - for their 'racism'. (Blacks who espouse the five-percent nonsense are [I]never [/I] referred to as Uncle Toms. But it's always open season on Tom Sowell. ) No end to the penalties we face for similar openly-declared clannishness.
But a deep, dark conspiracy born out of recently-released rap albums? [I]Nigga, pleez. [/I] Blowing out a tire in Darktown 20 years ago, during the 'crack epidemic', was every bit as perilous as it would be today, during the 'rap epidemic'. It's just that the Mark Goldblatts of this world have traditionally [I]encouraged [/I] coloreds to Name Their Enemy, and have traditionally encouraged criminal prosecution for us naming [I]ours[/I]. The rest is slang and window dressing.
2005-02-11 09:46 | User Profile
[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Percenters]The Nation of Gods and Earths[/URL]
2005-02-11 11:20 | User Profile
"A man's word is his bond" is originally a European proverb, isn't it?
2005-02-11 12:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]"A man's word is his bond" is originally a European proverb, isn't it?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but who knows what it means to them, you know?
It's like a lot of their expressions. I read an article in Amren (I think) that mentioned the nog expression "dey be puttin' me through the changes." Nobody seems to know what that means. It probably means nothing other than "my mind is vacant and this expression is Pavlovian nog response when faced with a stressful situation."
Negras.
Whaddaya gonna do?
2005-02-11 12:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mmartins][URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Percenters]The Nation of Gods and Earths[/URL][/QUOTE]
Great link.
Thanks.