The phrase “white genocide” was a tending topic on Twitter Monday morning after news broke Sunday that Dr. George Ciccorioello-Maher, a professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, tweeted out a wish for “white genocide” on Christmas Day.
The shocking thing about Ciccorioello-Maher’s tweet “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” is that based on his ideology and his choice of influences, Professor Ciccorioello-Maher appears to mean it. It’s a shocking lesson about what is being taught at America’s universities today and who is teaching.
In another Christmas Day Tweet, Ciccorioello-Maher called the massacre of whites a “good thing.”
To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian Revolution, that was a good thing indeed.
— George Ciccariello (@cicCiccorioello-Maheraher) December 25, 2016
By the end of the Christmas Day, Drexel University released a statement about the professor, saying:
Drexel became aware today of Associate Professor George Ciccariello-Maher’s inflammatory tweet, which was posted on his personal Twitter account on Dec. 24, 2016. While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, Professor Ciccariello-Maher’s comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University.
The University is taking this situation very seriously. We contacted Ciccariello-Maher today to arrange a meeting to discuss this matter in detail.
Some have attempted to dismiss Ciccorioello-Maher ’s statement as a mere rhetorical flourish and nothing to be taken seriously. For example, Atlantic magazine’s Senior Editor Adam Serwer implied that Ciccorioello-Maher must have meant it ironically, saying on Twitter:
However, to dismiss Dr. Ciccorioello-Maher’s statement as anything other than a literal call for violence shows a deep ignorance about the revolutionary ideology of both the professor and one of his obvious key influences, Franz Fanon.
Professor Ciccorioello-Maher—who has a Ph.D. in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley— describes himself as a “radical political theorist” on his own website:
George Ciccariello-Maher is a writer, radical political theorist, and currently Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has taught radical theory and politics at Drexel, U.C. Berkeley, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas.
Based on his website, a central part of Ciccariello-Maher’s ideas revolve around the concept of “decolonization” and the major proponent of the concept of decolonization was Franz Fanon.
A list of articles on Ciccariello-Maher’ website includes such far-left academic topics as Jumpstarting the Decolonial Engine: Symbolic Violence from Fanon to Chávez, and Decolonial Realism: Ethics, Politics, and Dialectics in Fanon and Dussel.
The abstract for an article by Ciccorioello-Maher titled Decolonizing Fanaticism describes it as “a reconsideration of the role of fanaticism in Frantz Fanon’s political thought” and goes on to say:
Despite Fanon’s own warning about the dangers of fanaticism, I find that the equivalent concept of enthusiasm is nevertheless central to forcing his decolonial dialectic into motion.
Who is Ciccariello-Maher’s idol Franz Fanon and why is he central to understanding why the professor isn’t being ironic when he talks about “white genocide.?”
As Breitbart News has reported before, Franz Fanon was a Marxist revolutionary philosopher, and he’s been a central influence to both the black liberation movement of the 1960s—Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver said that ”every brother on a rooftop can quote Fanon.’’—and the current incarnation of the Black Liberation movement: Black Lives Matter.
A New York Times book review of a biography of Fanon is titled The Doctor Prescribed Violence—fitting since one of Fanon’s most famous quotes is:
Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.
The New York Times review gives a good capsule biographical sketch of Fanon and his impact:
When the third world was the great hope of the international left — three very long decades ago, in other words — no book had a more seductive mystique than ”The Wretched of the Earth.” Its author, Frantz Fanon, was a psychiatrist, originally from Martinique, who had become a spokesman for the Algerian revolution against French colonialism. He was black, dashing and, even better, a martyr — succumbing to leukemia at the age of 36, a year before Algeria’s independence in 1962. Fanon was hardly alone in championing the violent overthrow of colonialism. But his flair for incendiary rhetoric was unmatched.
Franz Fanon wrote about the topic of violence in vivid terms, talking about “searing bullters and bloodstained knives:”
In decolonization, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the wellknown words: “The last shall be first and the first last.” Decolonization is the putting into practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it, all decolonization is successful.
The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists.
Taking after his idol Fanon, Ciccorioello-Maher himself says, he is an “actual communist.”
Sorry, I’m not “alt-left,” just an actual communist.
— George Ciccariello (@cicCiccorioello-Maheraher) December 11, 2016
Parents about to send their children off to college should be aware of who will be waiting to teach them and exactly what ideas they plan to educate them about.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.