"We (the african-americans) are the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness." - w.e.duboisMormonism In a way, reading Elijah Mohammed, like reading the SCUM-manifesto, gives the feeling of reading something written by someone who's been hurt beyond your own understanding.
Family One thing I think really stands out about Dworkin, is her affirmation of women's choices, not only as emotionally valid, but rational and assertive will's to power. One common point of conflict in feminist discourse, is the destinction between choice-based-feminism and structural-oppression-feminism. Dworkin is very much the latter, yet she doesn't fall in the trap of essentially saying women are stupid and compliant in their own oppression, the SCUM/daddies girl dichotomy. A LOT of people who want to claim the threat to their social group encounter this problem. The social darwinism becomes too strong, right, and eventually you've just made a really solid argument why your group is stupid and lost. I think this is why n*zism evetually ends up eating on itself, dissecting the master race into degenerates, socialists, traitors, because there's no other way of really comprehending why this immense social structure is neccessary to uphold what should be the "natural" master race. There's this problem with nationalism in It's how SCUM wants to assert the dominance of women, and then end up calling half of all women "daddies girls," or how even less radical feminist groups end up invalidating basically every choice women make as stupid, friviolous and counter-productive to a stive for power. The feminist woman seems so stupid, so bound up in her own oppression, that she's more a creature of passivity and regression than anything else. But Dworkin doesn't do this. I think it might also be what makes Nation of Islam so assertive too, because here, the hierarchy of power allows black people to be oppressed at the bottom, but also the highest point of divinity, with the oppressor as some sort of middle-class. In Elijah Mohammed's version of reality, black people are at the same time not weak beyong salvation in their possiossion of oppression, because their oppressors are fallen angels and scientist that invented evolution and spaceships, but white people are at the same time not too cool (always the risk with a Lucifer type), because in the end the oppressed race overcometh, taking the role of literal gods. Elijah Mohammed deals with the anxiety of oppression through the power of the divine in a way that hasn't been done this epically since the books of Moses. Why are men attracted to Islam? The risk of being the under-dog, is that if you're in the position of ... for long enough, you just seem like the worse dog. This is how liberation movements end up turning away from democracy. So my point is, as always, abondon rationality, embrace insanity, allow the rat you found in kitchen to make life decisions for you, close your eyes and follow the vibes, i you run out of inspiration, take a nap and harvest those thought just in the twilight of dreams and awakeness, girlblog etc.