Humourless Marxist Reviews: Black Panther

I’ve been a white US Marxist-Leninist for many years now, and I thought I had seen some reactionary shit get passed off as progressive. But “Black Panther” really takes the cake, or the Black Muslim bean pie, depending which bourgeois dessert you prefer.

Oh yeah, you heard me, I called the Nation of Islam “bourgeois”. Deal with it.

“Black Panther” is one of those superhero movies, like Batman, where the bourgeoisie rescues the proletariat, but worse in about a hundred ways.

First of all, most of the cast are token black actors designed to distract from the whiteness of Marvel Studios at large. This is justified through the flimsy pretext of inserting the African country of Wakanda into a subplot, ignoring the fact that not a single one of these actors is from Wakanda or even of known Wakandan ancestry.

What’s more, most of these actors are not even Africans, but AMERICANS who just happen to be black. This is a flagrant example of the cultural appropriation of diverse African cultures, from Swahili to Nelson Mandela, by black American “radicals” with their pseudo-scientific “pan-African” ideology that has chosen Wakanda as its latest target.

Do the many so-called “communists” defending this film not see that the bourgeois press is pushing this film specifically because it divides the American working class the exact same way that Trumpism does, with racial “nationalism” based on unscientific myths??? What would Harry Haywood or Paul Robeson say? Probably exactly what I’m saying right now: that black Americans are Americans and they should unite with the rest of the American working class against pan-Africanism and every form of fascism.

There are some who would balk at my use of the word “fascism” to describe the “pan-African” ideology behind the appropriation of Wakandan history and culture in the film. But it’s true. There’s an economic crisis and “pan-African” is racialist and that’s fascism. You can’t argue with that, or else you’re a fake Marxist.

Also, the heroes of the film are all defending a monarchy, which is about as “revolutionary” as defending Saudi Arabia. Actually the Wakandan and Saudi royal families have close ties, and their business interests align with Israel. This is your “decolonised” cinema, Tumblr?

No, I, like Erik Killmonger, demand real anti-imperialism and real national liberation for the downtrodden Wakandan proletariat, and not cultural tokenism in bourgeois white cinema built on monarchism, compradorism, and other forms of reaction which deny the class contradictions of Wakandan society! This love letter to the Wakandan royal family’s only redeeming quality is in telling the heroic story of Erik Killmonger, the anti-imperialist hero Wakanda needs!

Speaking of Erik Killmonger, this figure is also deeply problematic, and I can’t stand all the “Marxists” trying to rescue this film by posing him as a hero. Beyond his opposition to the comprador monarchy and his ostensible anti-imperialism (as displayed in the dialogue in the museum scene), Killmonger is like one of those South Africans who condemned Apartheid and the Bantustan system built on comprador monarchs, but who makes excuses for the “post-Apartheid” system. Really makes you wonder if the Soviet revisionists should have even supported the CPSA and the ANF if they weren’t even going to build socialism.

Killmonger knows that the imperialist bourgeoisie stole from him, but nowhere does he mention that Africa is a patriarchy, and was reactionary before white people showed up.

That’s also kind of racist, if you think about it.

Also, vibranium is not even a real metal. I have the periodic table memorised, and it’s just not.

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