Cleaver: We don’t feel that there’s any black man or any white man in any prison in this country who could be compared in terms of criminality with Lyndon Johnson. No mass murderer in any penitentiary in America or in any other country comes close anywhere close to the thousands and thousands of deaths for which Johnson is responsible.
Playboy: Do you think that analogy is valid? after all, Johnson has been waging a war, however misguidedly, in the belief that his cause is just.
Cleaver: Many mass murderers feel exactly the same way about their crimes. But let me give you another example: Compare the thieves in our prisons with the big businessmen of this country, who are in control of a system that is depriving millions of people of a decent life. These people – the men who run the Government and the corporations – are much more dangerous than the guy who walks into a store with a pistol and robs somebody of a few dollars. The men in control are robbing the entire world of billions and billions of dollars.
Playboy: All the men in control?
Cleaver: That’s what I said; and they’re robbing people of life itself. When you talk about criminals, you have to recognize the vastly different degrees of criminality.
* Excerpt from Playboy interview with Eldridge Cleaver, December 1968
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
