To mark Black History Month, PBS’s four-part docuseries Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World, marking the 50th anniversary of the musical genre, was unapologetically leftist and political, produced and hosted by rapper Chuck D. of Public Enemy -- "Fight the Power" was their song.
The series has featured musicians from Snoop Dogg to Ice-T ("Cop Killer") to Eminem, with appearances by black professors, activists, and journalists, and….racial arsonist Al Sharpton. Donald Trump was linked to white supremacy, and even prominent Democrats were targeted for having pushed racist crime policy.
Episode 3, “Culture Wars,” tracked the rise of hip-hop in the 1990s and the political ramifications. In a surprise, the episode was charged with disappointment-flavored criticism of Democratic president Bill Clinton from the left, for using as an election-year foil rapper Sister Souljah, who infamously suggested "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" after the L.A. riots in 1992. It became known as Clinton’s “Sister Souljah” moment.
The bipartisan crime bill was a huge target. Contemporary clips from then-First Lady Hillary Clinton (who warned of “superpredators”) and even then Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, supporting stricter prison sentences while discussing the crime bill. Multiple narrators, including rappers and black journalists, faulted the “three-strikes” law. Ohio State University history professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries praised the late rapper Tupac’s “critique of capitalism.”
A few non-hagiographic notes were allowed, like the respectful inclusion of civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker, praised for having taken "a stand against misogyny in hip-hop."
The episode ended with a jump in time and foreshadowing of Episode 4, showing President Trump (once something of a hip-hop hero) holding up a Bible during the BLM riots in Washington. Co-producer Chuck D said: “If you see something that's an atrocity, it's gonna get a hip-hop response.”
Episode 4, “Still Fighting,” entered the world of President Barack Obama, with Sharpton, now an MSNBC host but identified as "Reverend Al Sharpton, Civil Rights Activist," taking the hard-left view that nothing had changed with the election of the first black president: “A lot of people had convinced themselves that because we elected a black man, there was black equality now. No. You elected a black captain of the ship, but we still live in different compartments on the ship.”
Then came bits on the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the election of Donald Trump. Lefty professor Jeffries said, immediately after a clip of a small Ku Klux Klan rally: “Hip-hop artists were no longer talking about yeah, ‘Donald Trump the man, 'cause he got billions.’ They're talking about ‘What is this white supremacist doing running on the White House?’”
Sharpton weighed in on Floyd: “People all over the world are watching hatred and hostility toward people because of the color of their skin. And it was all exacerbated by the fact Donald Trump was president.”
This from a man who has made a career out of exacerbating hatred. Sharpton’s long list of offenses against decency include calling Jews "diamond merchants" during the racial disturbance in Crown Heights in 1991. In Harlem in 1995, Sharpton cursed the white Jewish owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem as a "white interloper" in a protest that escalated when a protester entered the store, shot four employees and set the building on fire, killing seven employees.
It feels like a weird time to celebrate Black Lives Matter, some of whose controversial founders and members have also been accused of anti-Semitism and trading on the gullible goodwill of corporations for the purposes of grift.
This left-wing racial agitprop was made possible in part by viewers like you.
