Left Lens EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: 2x NBA Champ David West on Black Politics & Nature of U.S. society (2020.07.27.)
‘Like, China’s last 70, 75 years have literally been designed – and I think I heard you say this – it has been designed around the way to respond to America, and they’ve built their society in a way to defend itself against that constant imposition, right, of Western Imperialism.
And in the midst of all of that, they have still been able to eke out, you know, some of the greatest advancements in human history. Right, they’ve built their society and climbed to the top, and most economists would tell you that China is at the top of the pecking order now.
They’ve done it without war, they’ve done it without invasion, they’ve done it without bombing and blowing people up and, you know, covert operations and disrupting other societies. They literally built a legitimate threat in my opinion to the balance of the world, and as people in America and Americans a part of American society, we have been mislead.
I tell people, you know the first time I went to Africa – and I don’t know if you’ve been, but you know that when you go to Africa you immediately – if you land at night, you know, you’re like ‘man, it feels good.’
Once the lights come on in the morning you really see, and then you get the chance to drive outside and move around, you look at Africa and you say, ‘Yeah, they told us stories about Africans living in huts and things like that’ but, if you look at Africa the right way you’ll see that Africa looks like a home after it’s been ransacked by robbers, right?
Africa looks like it’s been looted. It looks like a store or a, you know, a home that somebody ran in and stole everything – the couch, the TV, and left you with nothing. That’s what Africa looks like, just in my opinion. And you get the sense that it’s been looted and taken advantage of.
But when I went to China, it was different because, the lie – the idea that we all have to kind of deal with, is that there could be a functioning society outside of the control of the Western Imperial power structure, right?
Like, that is something that you say, ‘Well damn, they don’t accept really any part of the way we do things but they’re doing – they’re living their own lives,’ and they’re living in a society that is producing, like I said, some of the greatest advancements in human history. And uhm, that is why this moment is so different.
And of course, you know domestically we’re not gonna talk about it. The only people talking about China are these warmongering hawks who are using antiquated and outdated – whatever, their manifestos, or whatever these guys are reading. But this stuff, these guys are reading colonial manifestoes, but I mean, come on man, it’s plain as day.
So the idea that these sort of old tricks will work, or will help the West in any way? This idea that isolationism, which I believe these Trumpers are moving toward, is gonna help us in any way? Uhm, you know, it’s 300 million plus people in the US only. And just for context, the Chinese basketball community is 300 plus million people. Just for context, so.
We’re dealing with a whole new dilemma if you will, and how we figure out how we best structure this society to give ourselves a chance in the future. And I’ve been trying to have that conversation with people that I know who have influence, who have power, and its – you know, people are like, ‘Yo, are you serious?’ I’m like ‘Listen man, you know China is gonna eliminate poverty this year.
You know, I think – last I read it’s like 1.6% poverty in China. With 1.4 billion people right, they’ve made an effort to address the way that human life is actually governed, right? And they’ve made a serious attempt to figure out the best way in which they can get and make their citizens as productive as they possibly can be.’ That’s why they can build hospitals in ten days like they did at the beginning of the COVID outbreak.
So, we are just dealing with something that – you know, we’ve kicked the can down the field, you know, we’ve tried to use these Red Scare tactics and we tried to use the propaganda to keep the nations at bay, but it’s not gonna work against a deliberately organized country like China. It’s just not going to work and we’ve gotta – we’ve got to accept that.
And again I can go on for days, but we’ve just gotta accept that we are in a different time in global history, right? It’s not just American history but it is this global push, that has been made against the imposition of America into other parts of the world.
And China is, you know, China is the top trade partner with every nation on earth, and they have logically just filled the holes that, you know, Western Imperialism has made and left in the world so, you blow a nation up, China rebuilds it.
That works in their favor, and that’s what they’ve done, and we used all kinds of propaganda, language against these folks that, again, if you’ve studied the 60′s, it’s the same language. Literally the same language.
In the late 1940′s, when China got its independence, you know people don’t even know that in our country, right? People don’t even understand that China was colonized for 108 years or whatever it was. And don’t realize that that’s what Hong Kong is about, right. It’s about colonization.
And you know when Daryl Morey – he was with the Houston Rockets or whatever – he talked about Hong Kong early in the year, I was like ‘Yo man, it’s – not gonna do this. And I got on the phone with a bunch of NBA guys and I was like ‘Yo, don’t let them pull you into this bullshit because it’s the Iraq War, Weapons of Mass Destruction-type propaganda again.’
‘That’s going to be in my opinion, I just don’t think it’s gonna work. Obviously China has changed its foreign policy, you know, I’ve witnessed in the last probably two years I would say, their foreign diplomats have become a lot more outspoken.
They are swiftly rebutting propaganda, they barely give it a few hours to get a foot, right, so it’s – they’re making this consistent effort to continue to shine a light on the truth, and push people toward you know logical understanding, and for our society again man, it’s just, we’ve gotta figure out a way to get out of this.’
