Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein has selected a running mate who has called the United States a “corrupt, degenerate, white supremacist monstrosity” and says American democracy is a “lie.”
Stein announced her vice-presidential pick, human rights activist Ajamu Baraka, on Monday. But just two days later, Baraka was writing at CounterPunch that democracy in this country is a lie. In response to charges being dropped against police in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, Baraka wrote Wednesday, “The official invalidation of the value of Freddie Gray’s life, once again revealed to the world the lie of American democracy.”
And in a September 2015 at CounterPunch, Baraka proclaimed himself part of a movement “that is committed to fighting this corrupt, degenerate, white supremacist monstrosity called the United States” and referred to Israel as “murderous.”
While Stein has worked hard to co-opt the Bernie Sanders movement—even publicly offering Sanders the opportunity to lead the top of the Green ticket—her new running mate has sung a different tune about the Vermont senator. In the same CounterPunch post from September 2015, Baraka wrote of Sanders, “It should be obvious that his campaign is an ideological prop – albeit from a center/left position – of the logic and interests of the capitalist-imperialist settler state.”
According to polls, at least, the Green party is not quite the fringe party it once was. Stein’s support in recent national polls eclipses Ralph Nader’s peak support in 2000, and far surpasses Stein’s own finish in the 2012 election.
Conor Beck is an intern at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
