Cornel West goes viral announcing third-party run to oust Biden, stop Trump

Progressive activist and philosopher Cornel West on Monday announced his formal bid for the 2024 presidential election with the left-wing People’s Party.

In his announcement video posted to Twitter, which has received 11.5 million views as of late Monday night, West, 70, said he’s entering the presidential campaign “for the quest for truth” and that he’s running as a third-party candidate because “neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech.”

“I come from a tradition where I care about you,” West said in the video. “I care about the quality of your life. I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, health care for all, the escalating destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy.”

“Democracy creates disruption,” he continued. “It creates an eruption, it creates an interruption wide from below the energies of everyday people as manifest, and I know there are precious people in your life, who you care for. That’s why it’s important for you to be involved.”

Perhaps best known for his academic activism, West has taught at Yale, Harvard and Princeton, and is currently a professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He previously garnered attention for his deep criticisms of former President Barack Obama, and publicly left Harvard Divinity School in 2021 over a tenure dispute, accusing the school of “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths.”

West also served as surrogate and close confidant of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders during both of his presidential campaigns. The People’s Party was founded by Nick Brana, former campaign staffer for Sanders during his 2016 election who tried to recruit the senator in 2020. Sanders, however, declined and sought the Democratic nomination both times, reported The New York Times.

In an interview with Chris Hedges, journalist and Presbyterian minister, West spoke about why he is taking a stand against what he calls a “parasitical” dual-party system, attacking both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who are leading their respective parties in the 2024 race.

“Trump is mendacious,” West told Hedges, according to an article published on Hedges’ Substack website. “Everybody knows that he’s a criminal. Everybody knows that he’s a gangster. Yet at the same time, the best that the Democratic Party can put forward is mendacity and hypocrisy.”

“The Democratic Party has an arrogance against working and poor people of all colors,” he continued. “We’re a laughingstock. Is Trump versus Biden the best the country can do?”

West also spoke to Hedges about how he plans to address Trump’s base, promising to take his campaign to rural communities in the South to speak with white, working-class voters who support Trump.

“We must go to Trump’s social base,” he said. “We must tell those white brothers and sisters, ‘We know you’re still suffering. We know you’ve been the losers of corporate globalization. We’re going to speak to your needs in such a way that you don’t have to follow a neofascist pied piper.'”

“We’re trying to achieve the impossible,” West continued in his interview with Hedges. “By trying to achieve the impossible, we’re going to do something that people think is not possible. The first thing is to break the back of the two-party system, to break the back of corporate duopoly. If we don’t, everything is at stake—democracy, dignity, the planet.”

To secure a spot on the 2024 ballot, West will need to collect enough signatures in a petition to each state as well as the District of Columbia.

Newsweek has reached out to West’s campaign via email for comment.