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Full Transcript: Jamarlin Martin Discusses The Backlash Against LeBron James On GHOGH Podcast

Full Transcript: Jamarlin Martin Discusses The Backlash Against LeBron James On GHOGH Podcast

John Ali BOMA Symposium Jamarlin Martin LeBron James
Jamarlin Martin talks about the recent backlash against Lebron James for not speaking up for Joshua Wong and the violent Hong Kong protestors. Image: Anita Sanikop

In episode 68 of the GHOGH podcast, Jamarlin Martin talks about the recent backlash against Lebron James for not speaking up for Joshua Wong and the violent Hong Kong protestors.

He also covers why Black politicians are so soft on the swamp and what Elijah Muhammad said about American politics.

You can listen to the entire conversation right now in the audio player below. If you prefer to listen on your phone, GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin is available wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple PodcastsSpotifyYouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 68: Jamarlin Martin

Jamarlin talks about the recent backlash against Lebron James for not speaking up for Joshua Wong and the violent Hong Kong protestors.

This is a full transcript of the conversation which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jamarlin Martin: You’re listening to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin. We have a go hard or go home approach as we talk to the leading tech leaders, politicians and influencers. Let’s GHOGH!

Unidentified woman: “LeBron, how does it feel to be a p**sy a** b*tch?”

Unidentified man: ”Hey, watch your mouth woman. Watch your mouth woman!”

Jamarlin Martin: That clip was from a pro-democracy Becky, who was abusing your brother LeBron James for not getting involved with the Hong Kong issue. And so let’s dive right into this Hong Kong pro-democracy issue. Long story short, Hong Kong is part of China. Britain handed Hong Kong back to China and China made accommodations where the people are used to a Western system. And so China has supported a two system, one system, but more freedom and autonomy and flexibility for the people of Hong Kong. But Hong Kong is part of China. That’s not ambiguous. And so there was a murder case where China took the position that we need to be able to prosecute someone if need be under a special circumstance. And so there was a bill that was put forth, but that bill was dropped. So there were protests. The leaders of Hong Kong dropped the bill. They’re not pushing that bill anymore, but the people still want to protest. Hong Kong in terms of the freedoms is the same Hong Kong that was two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. Okay, so they dropped the bill. But the protesters, they still want to burn stuff up and they still want to beat up the police. They still want to cause anarchy in the city. And so the first thing I think about is, Hey, if Black people were protesting and burning property up in Austin, Texas, in Calabasas, in Greenwich, Connecticut, in Montauk, New York, if you go to the white cities in America and you want to protest police or censorship, they’re not going to be backing you like they’re backing the Hong Kong protesters, the violent Hong Kong protesters, okay? They’re saying, Hey, go ahead and tear up Hong Kong. Go ahead and beat up the police. Go ahead and set everything on fire. Go ahead and bang against China because we don’t like China. But if you would apply that here, all bets are off, particularly if the protesters were Black.

02:41 — Jamarlin Martin: You want to think about, are these the type of people I want to align with? Am I banging for a people and for an agenda where it’s reciprocal, where I bang for them, they’re going to bang for me. And so from my perspective, white America, America in general, it doesn’t have enough credit with Black people here in America in terms of when you look at the history, when you look at the credit score and the history of America and its relationship with Black people here in America, it doesn’t have enough credit for us to be automatic pro-democracy. Go ahead and intervene in Venezuela. Go ahead and intervene in Hong Kong. Go ahead and intervene in Iraq. Go ahead into Syria. Go ahead and do all this stuff. You know there’s a big pot of money and resources. Go ahead and enforce democracy around the world and go ahead and get involved with all these wars. We give you enough credit where we’re not going to ask enough questions. Hell no! Okay.

Jamarlin Martin: The American foreign policy establishment and the American people, we should not be assigning a 700 Fico score with them. You can’t trust them to be doing the right things in terms of freedom, justice and equality around the world. Okay. And when they want to intervene and get involved with all this stuff around the world, you want to be thinking about, Hey, we have an agenda here and we are going to need resources, time, energy, priority with our situation. If the Democrats and the Republicans and the elites and white folks in general, if people are involved in entangled with all this stuff around the world, they have unlimited resources to get involved with, 300 different issues simultaneously. You’re never going to be a priority here in the United States. So from my perspective, Hong Kong is not our issue. It’s not that we’re pro-China, it’s not that we’re pro-Hong Kong, it’s none of our goddamn business, it’s none of our mother f***ing business to be involved with the Hong Kong issue. Okay. That is an issue for China to resolve. China is the owner of Hong Kong. The colonizer Britain handed it back to China. So you go bang with Britain in terms of what deal was made to give the land back to China. Why did Britain give the land back to China? We are getting ourselves into stuff we don’t even understand, and these people shouldn’t have enough credit for us to automatically, “Oh, okay. I’m with you on the Iraq war. I’m with you on Venezuela. Go ahead and do that in Venezuela. Go ahead and do that in Hong Kong.”

05:25 — Jamarlin Martin: You’ve gotta be a fool today to give America so much credit, to back their foreign policy interventions. America, for example, it supported land theft, shootings of Palestinians. America has been supporting apartheid as it relates to Palestine. You backing that now, whatever the top says, Mike Pompeo, the CIA, lobbyists, the military industrial complex, whatever they say, are you just going to just follow along like you don’t have your own mind?

Jamarlin Martin: Here you have LeBron James who has started schools, who has given back so much. In one case, raising $40 million for one of his charities. Someone who has been consistently using his platform to speak out on behalf of his people, not necessarily the United States. LeBron James has been speaking out on behalf of Black people. Now, his politics may not completely align with yours, but the fact is, he has been consistently speaking out on behalf of Black people. Where in most cases in a Michael Jordan or a Magic Johnson case, they’re not saying a motherf***ing thing that’s gonna cost them some money. And so some of you, you wanna conflate other political issues with sports. And you just assume LeBron James is not speaking out on the Hong Kong protests or against China because it’s a money thing. Whether it’s a money thing or not, LeBron James should not, it wouldn’t be smart for him to get tangled up in that mess over there. But it doesn’t have to be a money thing because we know in the history of America, we’ve had Muhammad Ali speaking out against the Vietnam war. We’ve had John Carlos in the Olympics raise the Black fist. We’ve had politics where the Black athlete does not go along with the U.S. consensus. The U.S. wants to go to war. The U.S. wants to do this. The U.S. wants to do that. That is not automatically the Black American point of view. It should not be automatic based on the history.

07:40 — Jamarlin Martin: In this case, LeBron should earn the right to be neutral. LeBron didn’t say he’s banging for China. Okay? He didn’t say he’s banging for Hong Kong. He said that people need to be thoughtful in terms of how their communications could be interpreted and could cause a bigger issue. Taking your emotions back and he’s just saying, Hey, little things you say with sensitive issues could really cause massive instability. You are in the middle of a trade war with China. First of all, there are some political things going on, so you don’t know how this could spill over and it could cause a bigger problem. So if you’re saying that, let’s go ahead and bang against China. Put down your iPhone. Go exchange your iPhone. Stop eating, feeding your big mouth Chinese tilapia. Most of the tilapia in United States is from China. Stop buying the Target, Walmart furniture that’s from China. Stop buying your toys from China. A lot of your clothes from China, your purses, your wallets from China. You are baptized in Chinese products. Instead of looking at LeBron and what he’s doing, what he’s doing with his motherf***ing business, that’s his business. He’s not trampling over anything in Black America.

Jamarlin Martin: This issue in Hong Kong has nothing to do with you. So if you want to bang against China, you want to be pro-democracy, you can vote right now with your wallet? Stop feeding your big mouth all that Chinese tilapia. Stop going to Walmart. Stop going to Target. Go trade in your iPhone for another country’s manufacturer phone. Okay? You are baptized in Chinese products and if you think you can get the lower costs and all that efficiency, if you can get all this stuff on the plus side, there’s going to have to be a trade-off. The Americans are so used to bullying other people. America doesn’t need to make any compromises with the American system. Your democracy is in chaos, okay? It’s a big mess. You are headed into a constitutional crisis with Donald Trump and a lot of the swamp activity that he’s involved in. This is not even a good time. If you are Patriot for America, this is not a good time for you to be looking over in Hong Kong talking about what people are doing wrong. You have too much stuff going on here in the United States, particularly if you’re Black to even have enough bandwidth to be talking about what’s going on in Hong Kong?

10:20 — Jamarlin Martin: I’ll share something I said on Twitter that I think relates to this. There is so much promiscuous stink in America, you shouldn’t be able to even smell anything coming from Beijing. You should be saying, my nose is stuffed. Can’t smell anything. It’s too far away. I wouldn’t trust any Negro who will so easily side with the MSM verses LeBron. You are a wishy-washy people. Here’s LeBron, what is he? He’s been there. He’s been speaking out. Okay. He’s been consistent. He has a Black agent, he has Black people around him. He’s looking to do business with Black people. He’s hiring Black executives. This guy’s pro-Black. Okay, and you’re saying that you’re going to throw him away and you’re going to bang with white folks. You’re going to bang with MAGA, you’re going to bang with Nancy Pelosi and Schumer and say that LeBron has to be anti-China. Who said anti-China is the right Black position? Do you even know what’s going on over there? From China’s perspective, the CIA and the United States, Western intelligence agencies have been cultivating Joshua Wong since he was 14 years old. From their perspective, they’ve been cultivating a political superstar to cause trouble and he’s foreign-funded. Okay? He’s not funded from people in Hong Kong.

Jamarlin Martin: Joshua Wong is getting big money from a lot of Western supporters. It wouldn’t be crazy to think that the CIA has operatives in Hong Kong involved in the protests as Beijing alleges. And it wouldn’t be crazy when you study the intelligence agencies in the United States that they cultivate leaders. They are going to cultivate their leader in Venezuela. Okay. They’re going to cultivate leaders like Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme court was an FBI agent. Okay. Who was a spy for the U.S. intelligence establishment. It wouldn’t be crazy to think that the prophet of the Hong Kong protests, Joshua Wong, is a CIA asset. Long story short, LeBron has no business speaking up and getting tangled up in that issue. We need radical prioritization. It’s not just one person. It’s the athletes. We need to be in unity and not getting tangled up with stuff that doesn’t involve us. America’s fight is not necessarily our fight. Our fight is right here in the United States.

Jamarlin Martin: One of the things that bothered me was, Steve Kerr, the coach of the warriors. He said that, Hey, China has never come over and started talking about mass shootings here, about all the mess and chaos here where you have human rights violations here. You have white supremacy here. China’s never come over and saying, your system’s f***ed up. Look at all the white supremacy. China’s not coming here and saying, look how you treat the Black people. Okay? China’s not meddling in the United States system. They’re saying, Hey, that’s your system. It’s f***ed up. You have imprisoned so much of the Black population in the United States with these unjust white supremacists laws. They don’t get involved with the U.S. politics. They may disagree with aspects of the United States’ treatment of groups or people or what it does overseas, but you won’t see China getting involved with criticizing the American system. You don’t really see that. Okay? They’re not going to say, look how f***ed up America is with these mass shootings at Walmart and stuff like that. Okay. So Steve Kerr highlighted this. He’s like, man, I never see Chinese people coming over here and trying to tell America how messed up the system is. Okay? So when Steve Kerr says that, the mainstream media, they don’t accuse him of just being about money. He has the intellect and the point of view. He just disagrees. Now, the people don’t like it, but he’s given credit for having intellect and he just disagrees philosophically. Now, when LeBron stays away from the Hong Kong issue, when he was interviewed, the boot-licking Negroes and the establishment, the MSM, they say that LeBron is doing this about money.

14:58 — Jamarlin Martin: So there is no consideration that a Black man can philosophically disagree with the American foreign policy consensus, meaning that that’s none of my mother f***ing business to be thinking about Hong Kong and trying to referee that situation. What’s your home team may not be my home team because when my people are out there on the streets or when they go into a bank or when they go to an investor or when they go before a judge, we’re not all on the same team right here in the United States. So I would be a fool from a foreign policy perspective to assume we’re all on the same team. Okay. So from my perspective, LeBron is a hero for not following the American establishment consensus and getting tangled up into all that. He has another set of priorities. Okay. And so if the good athletes who have had consistency in speaking up on behalf of the people, we need to be out there defending them. He’s not taking a side. He’s saying that I’m not getting involved to referee that situation out there. It’s a very sensitive issue as it relates to the Chinese people.

Jamarlin Martin: So now, in Hong Kong, the people you’re cappin for, they’re calling LeBron names. I’ve heard a mention of, they’re calling him a n****r. They’re burning his Jersey, because he chooses not to say too much on that issue. This is not the type of people I would be cappin for. These type of people are in the streets cappin for the United States establishment, they got the flags, they got the CIA behind them. Okay. They got the foreign money behind them. This is not a people that’s going to be cappin for you or are they going to be cappin for reparations for you? Are they going to be capping against the police for you? What are they gonna do? You know, we’re used to supporting people who would not be supporting us.

17:03 — Jamarlin Martin: Okay. I’m going to move on to political corruption. With Hunter Biden, he was getting $50,000 monthly checks being a part of a gas company in Ukraine. Okay. MAGA, they have pointed out the obvious is that, Hey, you know, what makes Hunter Biden so special where he’s going to be getting a job, $50,000 a month with the Ukrainian gas money? We know there’s a lot of swamp activity in Ukraine. It’s a suspect activity. And so Democrats, there’s a lot of Democrats who say, Hey, that’s nothing compared to Jared Kushner. That’s nothing compared to Trump. The big picture I want to leave you with is that if you’re going to get complacent, small swamp, there’s so much small swamp, collectively it fertilizes the conditions for the rise of a Donald Trump. Okay. For the rise of a Jared Kushner. Okay. When you have so much swamp activity on the democratic party side and it’s systemic, on aggregate it’s big, big swamp activity on the democratic party side. The whole system is corrupt, but particularly on the democratic party side, there’s a lot of swamp activity. And so if Democrats are going to say that there’s no corruption problem, from my perspective, they’re pro MAGA, they’re pro Jared Kushner, they’re pro Ivanka Trump, they’re pro swamp. So this stuff didn’t just happen overnight. There was a buildup where you get people like Manafort, you have Trump, you have these people rising to the surface. Giuliani. A lot of this corruption activity is coming out to the surface. Smart people are going to say, how did you get here? What fertilized the conditions where the system becomes so corrupt and the people will even back a person like Donald Trump? It’s telling that the democratic party allow Trump to own the swamp message.

Jamarlin Martin: If you’re talking about a quality, you’re talking about economic justice, you’re going to have to deal with corruption because if people are out there, particularly white folks and the elites, if they’re out there rigging the system, if they’re designing the monopoly board and corrupting the monopoly board and cheating in the monopoly game, you’re not gonna have any equality. Okay? So what has happened is that there’s so much swamp activity. There’s so much Hunter Biden in the democratic party, people would be talking about their friends, okay? People would be talking about people they may need money from to fund their foundation. In Schumer’s case, his daughter works at Facebook. I know other congresspeople, I’m not going to out them because some of them are Black, but Google has hired the children of congresspeople. These people are playing a very high stakes game, corrupting your elected officials. And it’s not just about donations and getting money. There’s incestuous relationships where the value is transferred to the spouse or a cousin or a son or I’m going to get paid, where I know that if I look the other way on Facebook or Google, when I get out of office, I’m going to get some big checks from these relationships that I cultivated.

20:55 — Jamarlin Martin: So my payout is going to be after I get out of office. Okay? So there’s a lot of swamp activity going on and what’s happening is it attracts people who are willing to play the long game where I can go into political office for a short time or eight years or whatever. Either I can get wealthy while I’m in office or when I leave office, I’m going to have connections, I’m going to have relationships, conflicted relationships, where I can become wealthy through politics. So it’s just a step to becoming wealthy and so that would attract the wrong people. And so when you look at the political system and you look how imbalanced it appears to be, how corrupt it is, you have to start talking about the design of the monopoly board in the corruption, the systemic corruption.

Jamarlin Martin: So I want to go back to Elijah Muhammad, the teacher of Malcolm X, the man who gave Malcolm X his wings. He wrote, the Muslim program to Congress. Okay. He says: “It is difficult for me to advise my followers on taking part in the corrupt politics of our enemies who are in complete control of the political affairs. There are many Black men and women who make splendid politicians. They could accomplish considerable good if they, like the white politician and his people, were given proper and equal recognition and justice for themselves and their people. If our politicians are to serve us, they must have no fear of the white man when they lead our cases in the white courts before white judges, the strongest politician of our kind or the person who comes nearest, as far as I know, to giving us political justice in the white courts if he had our complete backing is Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, though he is not a Muslim. A Muslim politician is what you need, but Congressman Powell is not afraid and would not be easily bribed for he is not hungry.” Okay? What Elijah Muhammad is saying about U.S. politics, and he’s so on point, okay? That for the Black politician, what he said back then is super relevant now. Okay? Is one, the Black politician can’t be scary. The Black politician can’t be scared of white folks. Can’t be scared to say systemic white supremacy, can’t be scared to talk and bang for reparations, okay? If the Black politician is scary, there’s no use to you, they can give you a, it’s a Black face. It’s a Black woman — the kids are going to be motivated. They see a Black face. The Black politician is of no use in this day and hour to the Black masses.

23:54 — Jamarlin Martin: If they’re going to be scary confronting white folks, if they’re going to be scary in terms of banging for Black people, we should not support them. And Elijah Muhammad is saying just that they cannot be scared of the white man. Okay? Number two, they can’t be corrupt. So if they’re not talking about lobbying corruption, if they’re not talking about the corrupt elites in the system, that’s rigging things, that’s cheating. If they’re not taking on the money changers in the political house of America, if they’re not willing to call that out in their face, look them in the eye, they’re of no use to us, then it starts to turn where they are a weapon against us because it’s deceptive to make it seem like there’s progress by having a Black face, having a Black man, having a Black woman.

Jamarlin Martin: But when you put that wrapper on the system, and these people are not going to truly bang against the system, this is a net negative for Black people. But the people are waking up and seeing what’s going on. We need to be very suspicious of Negro politicians. We have no track record. I’m not talking about Trump every, it’s popular to talk about Trump and his corruption. We see that, okay, we see the swamp there, but what about the prior decades? What black politicians have really confronted systemic corruption? Okay. What we do know is that Google, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Joel Kaplan, that they have been very sophisticated in getting close to Barack Obama. Being very close to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, building relationships and being very close, that’s going to come back and haunt, I believe, the Obama prophets where, Hey, if you’re going to be on the side of the people, you’re going to complain, you’re going to campaign like you’re a representative of the people.

25:55 — Jamarlin Martin: You shouldn’t be giggling with these elites who have 100, 150 lobbyists in wallets. They’re looking for political perversion. They’re looking to corrupt you in some way. You see them as, “I’m giggling with the elites and look at these business people”, but all that, I think the people are in the process of revisiting that. But there should be a strong separation between our politicians and the elite corporate establishment. Now the elites, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, they’re trying to run away from Facebook. The record is going to come out. We need a new template. We need the politician that is going to say it’s not healthy for the people for me to get cozy with these elites. It’s not healthy for the people to allow these relationship conflicts to overpower their vote.

26:55 — Jamarlin Martin: In the case of Cory Booker, former CEO and chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, he invested in a private business of Cory Booker’s. So, just like with intelligence agencies, Silicon Valley. They thought that Cory Booker was gonna be their man. They were going to cultivate him for president, but the window closed. Okay, so they bet big, including investing in Cory Booker’s private businesses. Of course Cory Booker, he’s in the Senate. We need to become very sophisticated about how this monopoly board and how this game is played and how the money and the corporate elite relationships compromise your political power and compromise Black political equity. The money and the relationships drown out the power, the natural power and equity that you should have in the political system — the system that you’re paying tax into. So, that’s that.

Jamarlin Martin: Thanks everybody for listening to GHOGH. You can check me out @Jamarlinmartin on Twitter and also come check us out at Moguldom.com. That’s in M O G U L D O M.com. Be sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest information on crypto, tech, economic empowerment and politics. Let’s GHOGH!