This article was first published on OpEdNews.com

A bit of ancient wisdom has it that the road to hell is paved by good intentions. So is the road to fascism, the closest modern variety of hell on earth. Yet fascists are not alone in their mad drive, both here and abroad, to destroy the last vestiges of liberal democracy and replace it with a totalitarian tyranny of unbridled militarism, racism, and imperialism. Among those facilitating this nefarious outcome in the U.S.A. are three presidential candidates smugly professing to be anti-fascist and progressive, even socialist: Jill Stein, M.D, of the Green Party; Claudia de la Cruz, M.A., of the Party for Socialism and Liberation; and Cornel Ronald West, Ph.D, of the newly-hatched Justice for All Party. None has a snowball’s chance in hell of garnering, either individually or collectively, anywhere near 5% of the vote in any state, let alone winning; but each can and will dilute the vote for the only viable anti-MAGA candidate, Kamala Harris, perhaps even sufficiently to catapult Trump back to the White House for a second regime, this time an openly fascist one. Because of its resonance in the African American community, the quixotic presidential quest by Cornel West presents the greatest danger and threat.

As was the case in the 2020 presidential election, African American voters play a critical role in this one. Before thankfully withdrawing, Biden only had 64% of Black voters behind him, and was consequently headed for a decisive defeat. Harris, by sharp contrast, enjoys the support of over 80% of Black voters, a dramatic jump in popularity which makes having the first woman and first bilineal person of color as POTUS a distinct possibility. If not for West’s candidacy, that historic outcome would be a probability, if not certainty. No wonder Trump stated in early September that West is “one of my favorite candidates.” He takes 100% [from Harris/Walz].”

Despite its lofty claims of promoting truth, love, justice and other pro-socialist ideals, the quest by West is locked in the dialectically opposite direction. Promoted in reality, but not rhetoric, is the antithesis of socialism, a return of MAGA fascism with a vengeance to the White House. In this post-Biden election, every vote for West is, in effect, a vote for Trump, a classic illustration of good intentions paving the way to hell. It is inconceivable that this truth is not known, though evidently not appreciated, by Dr. West. What is certainly known, and even welcomed, is the tremendous support, financial and otherwise, his campaign has received from Republican operatives and MAGA cult members.

Financing the West quest

Within a month after announcing his bid for the presidency, this time as an Independent, West received a hefty campaign donation of $3,300 from Harlan Crow, the notorious right-wing billionaire fan and funder of archconservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. After initially defending “brother Harlan” and welcoming his donation, West returned it in late October. Not returned was another $3,300 donation in late July 2023 from a certain Jeffrey Moe, a small business owner, who also made considerable donations to several MAGA candidates (e.g. $2,200 to Stewart Jones, congressional candidate for SC-District 3, co-sponsor of state legislation which would make women who had an abortion eligible for the death penalty; and $6,600 to Thomas Massie, identified as Kentucky’s most conservative Congressman), as well as several Republican PACs (e.g. American Liberty Coalition, Americans United for Freedom, Forever Free PAC, ad nauseam). Moe gave the West campaign another $3,300 after Harris became the Democratic nominee. Steve Nielson, an employee of Martinez Oil Refining, regularly donated $1,000 to West’s presidential quest on the 29th of nearly every month in 2024. Martinez Oil is the defendant in several lawsuits charging it with illegal toxic releases. Ervin Seamster, senior pastor and visionary of the Light of the World Church of Christ, a large rigidly fundamentalist evangelical church in Dallas, is also among West’s donors of $3,300, the individual maximum amount legally permissible.

GOP petition canvassers for West

Despite these and other campaign donations from individuals associated with right-wing causes, the bulk of West’s support from the far right came in the form of in-kind contributions to seek and secure ballot status, particularly in battleground states. A small army of Republican lawyers and MAGA operatives, not West’s “love warriors,” provided the requisite signature-gathering personnel and legal expertise to secure ballot status for the West candidacy in several states. “If we can get him [West] on the ballot, he could take a percentage point away [from the Democrats]”, the rabid Islamophobe and former organizer for the Virginia Republican Party, Scott Presler, was quoted as saying while gathering signatures for West outside a Trump rally in North Carolina. MAGA Republicans put that anti-democratic intent into action nationwide.

In Wisconsin, it was the Blair Group Consulting which paid Republican operatives to gather signatures for West. The head of BGC, David Blair, was the 2016 national director of Youth for Trump. At least two of his circulators of West nominating petitions, Abigail Draiss and Reyna Tomasak, graduated from Liberty University’s Campus Leadership Program, an incubator for far right zealots. Another BGC canvasser for West, Simon Molina Herrara, worked for the Ron DeSantis presidential campaign, as well as promoted events in North Carolina for U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn, arguably the most reactionary member of the 117th Congress. The Vice-President of Field Operations at BGC, Arik Amudsen, an Oklahoma delegate to the 2024 RNC, coordinated signature gathering for West in Arizona; he was joined by Dausin Olberding, 2020 field director of Iowa Trump Victory. In Arizona and North Carolina, Wells Marketing, another Republican firm, registered more than 170 and 200 individuals, respectively, to serve as paid circulators for West. Accordingly, it is estimated that only 3,000 of the 30,000 signatures submitted to North Carolina election officials came from West’s “love warriors.”

Also active in petition gathering for West in North Carolina and Arizona as well as Alabama was People Over Profit, a nonprofit registered in Virginia this year by Republican operatives Cabell Hobbs and Timothy Beall. As CFO of Rightside Compliance, Beall facilitated the receipt of $1.8 million from various Republican sources, such as Ron DeSantis’ SuperPac, Never Back Down. Hobbs served as treasurer for several Republican campaigns, most recently Ted Cruz for Senate. In August, he admitted to the FEC that the Cruz campaign had taken in 43 illegal donations. Also giving the West quest a big boost in North Carolina this summer was the Republican outfit Blitz Canvassing, which secured some 13,000 signatures for West. Blitz is also heavily funded by Never Back Down. Its president, Andrew Bell, managed the unsuccessful race of Republican Dino Rossi for Washington’s 8th Congressional District, but did succeed in helping get Kim Wyman re-elected as once the only state Republican officeholder on the West Coast. In Maine, National Ballot Access helped get West on the ballot despite its Secretary of State acknowledging that “some signatures on West’s petition were indeed collected fraudulently.” Petition circulators for West in suburban Washington enticed voters by claiming the petition were to help get Trump on the ballot. No stranger to repeated use of deceptive tactics, Mark Jacoby’s firm, Let Voters Decide, pushed to get another West, rapper Kanye West, on the ballot to dilute Biden’s 2020 vote. Jacoby, who is closely affiliated with Wells Marketing, was once convicted of voter fraud.

GOP lawyers for West

Gathering sufficient valid nominating signatures was the first hurdle cleared for West by Republican operatives. Winning legal challenges to submitted petitions was the second. A small legion of lawyers, all Republicans and members of the National Republican Lawyers Association (with one possible exception), took on that task with mixed results. Foremost among West’s attorney armada was Matthew Haverstick, managing partner of the Philadelphia-based Kleinbard law firm, which provided at least $22,000 of legal services for the RNC in mid-2022 and $11,000 to promote MAGA Congressman Scott Perry. Haverstick individually donated $8,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee and $2,500 to the right-wing Keystone Alliance PAC in January 2004. Haverstick re-entered West’s legal defense in early October, arguing in federal court that his client had been illegally denied ballot access in Pennsylvania; this very belated effort failed on October 10. The certified ballot list in this absolutely crucial battleground state was officially finalized on September 16.

Representing West in Arizona was attorney Paul Hamrick, a graduate of Faulkner University, a fundamentalist Christian University in Alabama which is “committed to the centrality of Jesus and His cross” and only permits men in church leadership. Also representing West in Arizona was Brett W. Johnson and Amanda A. Reeve of the law firm Snell & Wilmer. Reeve is a former Republican state legislator and was the deputy chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2003–04. Snell & Wilmer received considerable compensation for its legal services from the RNC ($40,000 and $90,000 in 2024 and 2022, respectively) and the NRSC ($39,000 and $180,000 in 2024 and 2022, respectively). Representing West in Michigan was John Bursch, former state solicitor general under GOP attorney general Bill Schuete. He is also the Vice-President for Appellate Advocacy for Alliance Defending Freedom, a far right organization founded by fundamentalist Christian leaders such as James Dobson and R. James Kennedy. ADF argued against same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court. In Georgia, West’s legal wranglings to get on the ballot were managed by Bryan Tyson, head of Elections Law Group, which received at least $10,000 from the RNC in 2014. Another Republican lawyer used by West, this time in North Carolina, was Phil Strach, who successfully challenged the North Carolina Board of Elections decision to disallow West on the state ballot. The ruling was made by U.S. District Judge Terrance Boyle, who once was a legislative assistant to racist U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Supporting West in the North Carolina case were amicus curiae briefs filed by the RNC and the state’s Republican Party.

Similarly, Michigan’s Judge James Redford overruled a decision by the state’s Bureau of Elections to bar West from ballot status. Redford is the former chief legal counsel for the administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder. In his unsuccessful 2014 bid as a Republican for the state Supreme Court, Redford was heavily supported financially by the notorious DeVos family.

The battleground states

As of mid-October, polls indicate that Harris has 49.4% and Trump has 46.4% of the projected presidential vote nationally. However, the race is closer within the seven battleground states. Fortunately, the West/Abdullah ticket is not on the ballot in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, so that campaign will not directly dilute the Harris/Walz vote there. As the battle for Pennsylvania emerged as the Gettysburg of the 2024 presidential election, West adamantly refused to be barred from the fight. Determined to be the key spoiler in the Keystone State, he appealed his ban from the battle in two state courts, including the PA Supreme Court, to federal court, and thankfully lost again. The absence of West on the PA ballot is especially important since the Harris–Trump gap is only 2%; 3% of the PA voters remain undecided; West was polling at 2%; and Harris had only 70% (compared to Trump’s 11%) of the projected Black vote, leaving a considerable percentage of Black voters in PA up for grabs.

By contrast, West was polling below 1% in Georgia before being barred from ballot status, whereas Harris is projected to receive about 77% of the Black vote, leaving some 12% of Black voters undecided in Georgia. The picture in Arizona is more diverse. Half of Arizona’s Black voters, 5% of the state’s population, identify as Republican or Independent; Republicans got 37% of the Black vote in Maricopa County; and the sizable Latino electorate favor Harris by 49% and Trump by 43%.

The real struggle will be in the battleground states which do have West/Abdullah on the ballot. Three, in particular, are vulnerable to the West dilution factor: Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan. About 77% of Wisconsin’s Black population, 7% of the state’s total, support Harris. That is the good news for anti-fascists. The bad news is that only 58.8% of Wisconsin’s Black electorate is registered to vote, and, in 2020, only 38% cast a vote. The situation is similar in North Carolina, where 58.3% of Black voters are registered, and a mere 41.2% voted in the 2020 presidential election. Consequently, a higher Black voter turnout and a negligible West vote is crucial in North Carolina and Wisconsin to defeat MAGA fascism in these two battleground states.

The biggest challenge is in Michigan, where polls indicate that 4% of the Black electorate, the highest percentage in the nation, favor West. Black voters there, 13% of the electorate, favor Harris by 70% and Trump by 9%. Arab-American voters, 4% of the electorate, are nearly split at 40% for both Harris and Trump. Unlike with Wisconsin and North Carolina, Black voter registration and turnout (78.5% and 69.9%, respectively) are comparatively high. The issue here is one of policy. West’s principled opposition to genocide by Israel is behind much of his support in Michigan. A clear break from Biden on this critical issue alone, even at this late date, may just make the difference between Democrats winning or losing Michigan’s 15 electoral votes.

Legacies of West and Bonhoeffer at odds

Without the assistance of MAGA forces, the West/Abdullah campaign would have failed to achieve ballot status in no more than a handful of states, and none in the battleground ones. The question remains as to why this brilliant scholar with a stellar legacy of liberation, in theory and praxis, would allow himself, at this point in his highly productive life and this very critical moment in history, to be an unwitting warrior for MAGA fascism. There appears to be no compelling answer. But there is a clear warning of consequences for those afflicted by an insatiable desire for attention and notoriety. It comes from the steadfastly anti-fascist Christian theologian named for the Chair which Dr. West now occupies at Union Theological Seminary. In his 1939 book Life Together, Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer admonishes us to avoid perishing in an “abyss of vanity and self-infatuation.” On the direct orders of Hitler, the Nazis hanged brother Dietrich a month before Germany was liberated from fascist tyranny. He would be horrified to learn that the occupant of a prestigious academic position named in his honor may just help invite fascist rule to America. The horror would be nearly universal.

Images: Cornel West by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0); Screenshot of Scott Presler at a Trump rally in NC collecting signatures to get Cornel West on the ballot by Isaac Arnsdorf (Twitter/X) / Scott Presler by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0); Judge James Redford by Hypriestess (Twitter/X) / Scene on the Stairs by Brett Davis (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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