Why Cornel West runs in 2024: Alternative to ‘fascism’ and ‘neoliberalism’

Cornel West, prominent public intellectual and progressive activist, has embarked on a new mission: to break up the duopoly of America’s political system and offer voters a fresh choice by running for president. 

But doesn’t Dr. West – along with the other independent or third-party candidates – risk helping former President Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden in 2024? After all, third-party candidates proved crucial in key states in 2016, when Mr. Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. 

“To me, brother Donald Trump is a bona fide gangster and a neofascist. ... So I understand the fears,” Dr. West told reporters at a breakfast Thursday hosted by the Monitor. But “brother Biden has a military adventurism as part and parcel of his past and present.” 

Both men, Dr. West says, are “beneath mediocrity,” though he sees some “positive features” in President Biden over former President Trump. Ultimately, he says, “we got one who’s pushing us toward a second civil war at home, and the other is pushing us toward a World War III abroad.” 

And maybe, he suggests, 2024 isn’t a Biden-Trump rematch after all. 

“Let’s go ahead and have debates. ... See which way the country moves,” says Dr. West, a self-described socialist who over the years has been a professor of philosophy, religion, and African American studies at Harvard, Princeton, and other universities. He currently holds the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. 

Other prominent independent or third-party 2024 presidential contenders include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. In recent polls, Dr. West has averaged 2.4% of general-election voters, according to Real Clear Politics. 

“I don’t think that what I’m doing is in any way aiding the triumph of fascism,” he says. “I think I’m trying to give voice to some of the most crucial anti-fascist voices, figures, movements in the culture.

“And I can say this, too: that if the only alternative to fascism in America is a milquetoast neoliberalism at home and a military adventurism abroad, America will go fascist anyway.”

Dr. West’s platform – entitled “Policy Pillars for a Movement Rooted in Truth, Justice, & Love” – is expansive and ambitious, if vague. The first two items are “abolish poverty” and “abolish homelessness.” He would also disband NATO, end U.S. war funding for Ukraine and “invest in peacemaking,” cease military funding to Israel, and “end Israeli apartheid of Palestinian people.” 

The professor began his 2024 presidential campaign in June under the People’s Party, switched to the Green Party nine days later, and then in October opted to run as an independent. 

“The Green Party, God bless them, they were kind to me,” he says. “They had [ballot access in] 17 states automatically, and that was one of my motivations. ... But I found out that it was just too difficult to work with the Green Party. It’s hard to be a jazz man in a party band.” 

So far, Dr. West has raised about a half-million dollars and has 18,000 volunteers, according to a campaign co-manager traveling with him. A big task will be getting on the ballot in as many states as possible – and raising enough money to keep his operation going. Dr. West is in Washington for a fundraiser by “local activists,” he says, and other meetings.

Following are more excerpts from the Monitor Breakfast with Dr. West, lightly edited for clarity: 

What type of voters are you reaching out to in particular? 

I’m trying to convince those who were thinking about voting for Trump to vote for me. And I’m spending some good time in Trump country, because I’m convinced that a lot of people who voted for Trump are not die-hard Trump-ists; they’re just deeply disillusioned with the Democratic Party.

So much of our campaign is actually zeroing in on those who don’t vote, especially young people. Part of this campaign is about convincing young people that there are examples of persons who are concerned about public life having quality moral and spiritual greatness, rather than just upward mobility. And to see that in action in the flesh, so we can pass on the best of America to the younger generation.

A poll released Tuesday by GenForward found that 17% of Black voters would vote for Mr. Trump today – up from 8% in 2020. What’s happening? 

Well, it just reminds us that skin pigmentation is not a determination of wisdom, courage, and moral clarity and insight. Something else mediates that. Now what are the reasons why so many Black folk, especially the Black brothers, [have moved toward Mr. Trump]? 

It could be the hypermasculinity that they see in Trump. [It also] could be the fact that the Democratic Party is associated with the invention and the creation of the mass incarceration regime, which I consider a crime against humanity. 

If you were the president of a major university and were asked the question that Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York posed at a congressional hearing, how would you have responded? Would there be any sanctions against people on campus calling for the genocide of Jews?

There would be some kind of move toward a disciplinary process. You can’t be the judge and executioner at the same time. But I would go further. There was a time before universities became so corporatized and commodified – it’s just sad to see how these big donors and these big benefactors more and more are dictating what the content and character of education is.

That to me is just a form of intellectual vulgarity if not moral bankruptcy. But I would say also, as a president of a university, that our Jewish students are just as precious as our Palestinian students. Our Palestinian students are just as precious as our Black students, Black students just as precious as our white Catholic students, on and on and on.

Do you think the answers that the three university presidents gave last week should have cost them their jobs? Harvard President Claudine Gay said that the university response to calls for genocide of Jews would depend on “context.”

Their answers were weak. And they were weak in part because we no longer have university presidents who speak with the moral clarity and the kind of passion required. You could just see the tutoring from the lawyerly consultants they had.

But should they have lost their jobs, as happened to the president of the University of Pennsylvania?

Absolutely not. Since when can you have donors and benefactors get together and dictate who’s president of major institutions, let alone these ruling-class institutions like Harvard and Penn and so forth? My God, what kind of vulgarity are we talking about? What happened to robust discourse? This isn’t Wall Street. This isn’t Silicon Valley. This isn’t hedge fund land. These are universities.