The Utopian Dream of Portland Is Lit by Flames of Racist Hatred: Educating the Next Generation Is Our Only Hope for Change

By Susan Anglada Bartley

When I moved to Portland 17 years ago, freshly graduated from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a degree in History and Literature of Marginalized Communities that I studied to earn with people so brilliant, people who worked so hard, researched so deeply that I should probably not say that I am associated with them--people like the great Dr. Tricia Rose, professor, warrior, TV commentator, and author of Black Noise and several other texts, people like Dr. Robin Kelley, highly regarded professor of History, author ofRace Rebels and Thelonius Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original and numerous other books and articles--toting Albert Gallatin Scholar and Founder's Scholar awards for my academic work, I was totally unaware of the depth of racism I would encounter in Oregon.

I left New York City with a dream of the West handed down to me by the beat poetry movement, namely Allen Ginsberg, who I deeply admired and had the chance to meet personally before he passed away in 1997, and from my Uncle Kearney, a member of the 60s counterculture who left his Detroit home to wander across the country and up and down the West Coast of the United States, staying at communes in Traverse City, Michigan, Hood River, Oregon, the Russian River, California, and finally in San Blas, Mexico, where he lived for 15 years. My journey West, then, did not initially arise from a desire to fight racism; it came from a desire to follow the footsteps of a dream that is in fact very racist--the escapist dream of the White American hippie. I was born a hippie. I was spoon fed the hippie dream when my uncles would wander into town from the road to visit, full of the shine of San Francisco (and full of marijuana), full of guitar, full of long hair, full of sex, full of Love. They basically told me three things -- Fuck the Man, Everyone is Your Brother or Sister, and Go West! These boys were raised in Detroit--they felt a brotherhood with Blues Music, felt close to Black Urban Poor folks, thought Black and Brown women were BEAUTIFUL, and felt no responsibility to serve anyone or change shit--other than guitar strings. It was through this lens of reality that Oregon always glimmered in the distance, like a mountain range to equality, peace, and brotherhood! New York was nothing like that. New York was halls, and elevators, and stairways. New York was smelly subways. New York was rich people who I served in restaurants or cocktail bars. Or New York was going back to Buffalo...and after what I felt I achieved at NYU, in honor of my Mother who never went to college, I couldn't give up on having a different life. To clarify--this dream wasn't consciously racist; but the unconscious privilege in the concept that one can just leave, escape the system and establish oneself in the magic of the West is the epitome of White blindness-- only a young White college grad would ever believe in the existence of such a Utopia (and let's not forget that it is all related to the constantly reproduced dream of settler colonialism).

Seventeen years later, I write in an area of Portland once called Felony Flats, where impoverished Whites were known to congregate and participate in the underground economy through collecting and selling metals and trading in mind-altering substances (and still do). While it once was a neighborhood populated by more White people, the neighborhood is now one of the most diverse in the city, with large Vietnamese, Chinese, Mexican, Somalian and Ethiopian communities coexisting with working class or unemployed Whites. The heartbeat of the neighborhood is either the parking lot of 7-11 at 82nd Avenue and Flavel, a methamphetamine and heroin and oxy sales station which is very close to a public park that holds much-debated homeless encampments, or the Vietnamese Buddhist Monastery at the end of my block, where monks meditate in silence for long periods of the day while people of all of these communities, including white-supremacist Nazis, walk by outside, or perhaps it is Franklin High School, a school with a lot of pride and a lot of poverty where I dedicated my life energy as a teacher and program leader for 13 years.

I write in an historical moment where a frightening murderous racist hatred has splashed blood on our streets. This hatred is not a new hatred; it is a hatred that has incubated since the inception of the State of Oregon, which, as an article for The Atlantic by Alana Samuels notes, was founded as a racist Utopia in 1859. It is a racist hatred that often wears a "progressive" disguise; it is a hatred that occupies every facet of public life, from public education to the mayor's office. And if we are going to hold onto our humanity, educators, parents, and citizens who care about the future of the State must use our collective power to rip racism from its roots and reforest. But to do so we must first see the way it operates, understand our role in it, and educate children in solidarity against it.

In 2013, I won an H. Councill Trenholm National Education Association Human and Civil Rights Award for my work to dramatically increase the number of students of color in Advanced Placement courses at Franklin High School. It seems appropriate, now, to point out that one can only win a Human and Civil Rights Award for opening doors that are already legally supposed to be open to everyone in a very racist environment. What doesvery racist mean? Doesn't racist sum it up? Very racist means that the culture inside schools in Oregon, minus a few islands, caters directly to White privilege and actively polices, rejects, intimidates, and totally fails students of color. Very racist means Black, Latino, Native, and Asian students being marginalized, in mass numbers, to remedial and lower-level courses while White students are ushered into higher level opportunities. Very racist means that the experience of children of color in Oregon schools are significantly different, based on their race, as are the results they get from their education. In the mid-2000s, I saw this going on at the high school I taught in, and worked with two tremendous Black Principals--Dr. Charles Hopson followed by soon-to-be Dr. Shay James, to end gatekeeping at one school. Through building solidarity between a group of teachers and counselors through the program I co-founded (called The Advanced Scholar Program) we opened the gates and provided needed supports and mentoring for students of color and students living in poverty. Through this work, we also became the school with the number one graduation rate for African American students in the State of Oregon. But soon after the fanfare of the awards (I also won the OnPoint Community Credit Union Award in 2014, which paid my mortgage for a year) wore off, I began to look beyond the myopic focus that was required to do the work I did at Franklin to examine what was going on at other schools.

The problem was, and is, everywhere. Students of color are relegated to lower level courses and locked out of AP programming, especially in Science and Mathematics, all over the State of Oregon. Noting this, I set out with a group of former students of color who are currently in college to author the Bill of Rights for Students of Color in AP & IB Courses. The document gives specific direction to the Portland School Board regarding exactly how to eradicate barriers for students of color. It contains budgetary suggestions, as well as immediate actions that can be taken by Principals to remove barriers like we successfully did at Franklin in the past. After creating the document, we built a coalition of local leaders including prominent leaders of the Black, Latino, and Native American Communities like Portland Black Parent Initiative Executive Director Charles McGee, I AM Academy Executive Director and Real Estate Investor Ellis "Ray Ray" Leary, Don't Shoot Portland Founder Teressa Raiford, Andrea Morgan of CAUSA Oregon, and now State Representative Tawna Sanchez. Each time a new leader signed on, we updated the school board, totaling more than eighty emails back and forth. Soon, the Bill gained national attention. Multi-platinum rapper Scarface signed on, as did Olympic Gold Medalist Steve Meslar. My college roommate, MacArthur Genius Michelle Dorrance, also reached out to sign on to the Bill of Rights, as did the League of Women Voters, and many other local and national leaders. With tremendous social pressure behind it, the Bill was passed unanimously by our school board. An article was published on the NEA Ed-Votes Website, encouraging other school districts to pass similar legislation. And then the school board and district totally failed to act on any of the initiatives in the Bill. Perhaps their failure to act can be blamed on lead contamination that was found, at exactly the same moment, in most of the Portland schools, making not also poisoning the children the clear priority for the district, trumping and overshadowing educational equity.

Very racist also means that throughout my experience of fighting for racial justice in Portland Public Schools, I have faced significant backlash from white administrators and even fellow teachers (though, interestingly, no African American administrator has ever admonished me or punished me in any way). After winning the awards, I was moved into an office and given no desk, while my male office mate had a desk. When I requested a desk, I was given a children's school desk, where, as an award-winning educator with clear, well-documented and published results, I was supposed to do my work adjacent to my male counterpart with an adult desk. While working on the Bill of Rights, which I completed entirely outside of the school day (documenting my hours so as to avoid the assumption that I was working for justice on company time), I was regularly berated by several administrators, and again placed into an office with no door to the main hallway so that students could not come in to see me. I was also told that in order to continue to operate my extremely successful program, I had to do it with less time, little real support, and constant threats of funding cuts. From 2003 to present, when I called out gatekeeping, I have been bullied by small groups of fellow teachers who do not agree with or understand civil rights law, or suggest that I am making trouble by suggesting we focus on examining the significant inequities in the system that relate to the way we do our work--and actually focus on serving children of color. When I say bullied, I mean ostracized and gossiped about; I mean that my work has been degraded multiple times. Though I have had eight Gates Scholars come through my classroom, some white teachers who are themselves incapable of conceiving of Black, Latino, and Native American academic excellence put down my work by claiming that I am making things easier for my students, or that my grading systems do not equate to their rigorous standards. Really, they are afraid to face their own complicity and responsibility in the system they have devised, with support from administrations, to uphold White supremacy in Portland Public Schools without ever even stopping to care. Of course, there are many educators who supported and collaborated in the work of eradicating racism, but these educators have never been asked to lead, and have never been in the majority -- we are always pushing against a racist status quo that governs public education in Portland, Oregon.

They'll say they cared. They'll say they devised systems, helped students write special essays about African American history. They'll say this and they'll say that--but some will know what I mean when I say no one ever really stopped to care. I mean it was never the sole focus for a significant number of years in many schools others than one or two. I mean that there was never a time when every single teacher was asked to take five years to really work on their relationships with students of color. There was never a time when every administrator was asked to look at who they privilege in the school, and how they make staff of color feel in the school environment. There was never a time when administrators were required, with appropriate accountability, including penalties for not doing the work, to examine the inequities in their advanced coursework, discipline data, grade data, and graduation rates for students of color. This district has never stopped to really listen to the amazing voices of the former students of the I AM Academy who will tell you one by one that the reason that they stayed in school, and often the reason they are alive is in part because of the wisdom of African-American educator Ray Leary--a man who himself has faced continued hatred, discrimination, and threats to his excellent program simply for doing great work with Black boys. This district never put its foot down around obscene parental funding at Lincoln High School, a school known to serve privileged White students on the West side of town, turning a blind eye regarding additional funding that parents put in to set their own kids up to win when they face less privileged schools in academic and athletic competitions.

And, it's not that the school teachers never stopped to care. Of everyone who is culpable for the racist system, teachers cared the most, but we are still complicit in the fabric of racism; we are still accountable. The truth is so hard to hear! To teach in Portland means to be complicit in a racist system. And there is racism in the roots of the system. In a 2016 article for KATU News, investigative report Joe Douglass writes, "African American K-12 students in Oregon are 2.3 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students...black children in Portland Public Schools are four times more likely to be suspended or expelled". But the racism doesn't end there--the racism thrives in the way history is often taught--as evidenced by the rape culture denial letter that went viral earlier in the year from a Social Studies teacher in Portland Public Schools. The presence of a prominent, if not LOVED, history teacher denying the existence of rape culture is an abomination of the field of history itself, for one cannot teach the history of Western Civilization and also deny the omnipresence of rape culture. To do so is a total denial of the reality of the history of the world. To do so is to deny the existence of women in history at all. To specifically deny the existence of Native and Black women is misogynoir, is absolute fiction, is simply the rhetoric of supremacy. Racism also shows up in Forensic Science courses, where some teachers still use terms like Mongoloid to describe people of Asian origin, Negroid to describe people of African origin, and Caucasoid to describe White Europeans. These terms, which were invented by racist Scientist Blumenbach in the 1780s were strictly forbidden, even by my history teacher, Mr. John Toy, in the early 90s, who was educated by Catholic Jesuits in New York City. It is an abomination that these terms are still in use in this state, but I've heard about their usage in a science class as recently as this year. Portland educators never stopped to truly investigate their curriculum for racist and sexist attitudes and make appropriate changes to rectify inappropriate attitudes found therein.

A diversity training program called Courageous Conversations, offered through the always-under-attack Office of Equity aimed to gently ask White educators to examine our biases--and many did, but some tried to refuse the training or chose not to absorb the benefits and made a joke of it as time went by. That eradicating racism is not the topic of discussion for every educator in the state every day of the year has troubled me since I arrived seventeen years ago; that systemic and overt racism is not the topic of discussion in every school now that we cannot deny the existence of a thriving, deadly white power movement in our city and state makes me wonder what the fuck I am doing here. One time, when faced with the reality that a student of Mexican heritage who was in fact a genius could not go to college because of his immigration status, I prayed on my knees, asking God to simply make me a woman of great faith. I prayed it sincerely. Sincerely, I prayed it. I prayed it with depth, with all of my heart. I can only say that if you ask God to make you a person of great faith, she is likely to give you some challenges.

The City of Portland, too, never stopped to care. Portland never stopped to care when Kendra James was murdered in her car by police while trying to unfasten her seatbelt. They never stopped to care for Quanice Hayes. They never stopped to care--it got so bad in schools that they sometimes just painted over swastikas and didn't report it to the parents. It got so bad that I once heard about a kid being sent back to class by an administrator when a teacher sent them out because they had swastikas drawn on their jean jacket---but the administrator didn't confiscate the jacket or send the kid home. He just told him to roll up his sleeves and go back to class. Isn't that just the way it is, Portland, Oregon?

I now realize that a large part of the problem that white Portland has with racism is that for many, they have been raised in such an isolated white supremacy that they really haven't had much contact with Black or Brown people, other than in this dynamic where they have total power. Black and Brown children are the only contact many white educators have, and Black and Brown children are under them. If they have contact with other Black or Brown people, it is often in a condition of subservience. There are, for example, many fancy restaurants, with almost all White waiters, and all Central American and Mexican workers inside the kitchen. The color caste system is so prominent and visible in Portland that many white Portlanders don't see any reason why that should change, nor do the teachers who come from this same society. Thus, the sharp and humiliating tongue of the White teacher is like a double lash on the backs of Black and Brown children who must bear the brunt of that pain twice as painfully as a White child who does not have to assume that some of the hatred is not just for their youth, but also for who they are as a person--at a soul level--their identity. For many students of color, the humiliation from racist encounters in Portland Public Schools causes feelings of dejection so powerful that students feel more comfortable outside of school and far away from certain classrooms, which ultimately impacts their ability to navigate the system, and reflects as low grades and lower graduation rates for students of color.

It's not that every teacher in Portland Public Schools is actively racist, except me. There is, in fact, a legacy of anti-racist work that started before my arrival, like the work of former teachers, who took students from Portland to Alabama to walk in the footsteps of Dr. King (a trip that continues through the dedication of several current educators). Currently, there are cells of anti-racist educators at many schools throughout the city; few of them will tell you that their work is fully supported. Many have faced significant challenges in order to stay focused on supporting students of color. All will speak of the greater financial support they would need to provide greater resources for students of color. Many anti-racist educators in Portland know the great faith required to continue to fight for achievement for students of color in a district that prioritizes equity in messaging, but not in reality.

What if every teacher in Portland felt part of the movement to transform Portland Public Schools? What if every teacher had the skills and humility to actually relate to and support students of color? What if every teacher was willing to look inside our attitudes, and inside our curriculum, to eradicate racism with the goal of creating social change in the city of Portland? What if?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the foundations of anti-racist education...and how they were laid in me. As I previously mentioned, my hippie Uncles were obsessed with Howlin' Wolf, and all of the Blues greats -- I had Blues songs for lullabies and still do. I get it that they were appropriating a dream -- but in that particular dream, there was a solidarity between White and Black working class dudes that I really have not seen since. For me, anti-racist education began in a bizarre if not obtuse, but totally child and heart-centered school, founded by complete hippies, called CAUSE School. This school was founded on the principle that through community-based education, community action, and education totally focused on unity between students of different races, anti-racist and non-violent social revolution could be activated. Throughout my early childhood, I was constantly surrounded by intelligent, counter-culture black adults who were speaking the language of Black Power. Whether they were struggling to get by or pursuing a doctorate, I felt a great sense of love and respect for the many Black adults in my life -- and I readily and eagerly gave that love and respect, and learned how to receive that love and respect, which was the greatest gift I ever received in terms of becoming an educator -- for I did not ever have to say, "I have a Black friend." I was part of a community that included many Black people who loved me and who I loved; in fact, my very definition of love came from the feelings I had from people in that community. Black love was my definition of love -- and though I am fully white and have lived a life of incredible privilege -- I also had the privilege of understanding some of the language of Black love. Part of that language is that you can't come out here as some dumbass White woman and define Black love. That would be some bullshit. You have to feel it. And I do.

If I really had to explain anti-racist education, I would say it through this anecdote: when I was a little older, attending another extremely radical hippie diverse Montessori school in the early 1980s, I noticed a Black boy who was very unclean. This school was also in the middle of the most impoverished Black neighborhood in the city of Buffalo, NY -- a community totally devastated by crack cocaine. Many other children said that his Mother was on crack. This made me so sad when I went home that I snuck into the cabinet and brought this boy a bar of soap. When we were in the hall alone, I walked up to him and quietly offered him the bar of soap.

SMACK!!!!

"I don't need no soap, White Bitch!" he said, slapping me hard across the face.

That was perhaps the best anti-racist education a White person can have. I was slapped out of savior at age eight. And it was a righteous slap. It was not a slap where you go tell the teacher. It was a you-better-fucking-not-go-tell-the-teacher-or-I'll-fucking-kill-you-next-time-slap. It was a slap into total submission and full realization that you do not pity Black people or in any way make assumptions about their level of resourcefulness or resources because you will have another thing coming. In my earliest years, I was surrounded by the children of Black nationalists who regularly spoke about African power. In my 7-9 year old Montessori class, we studied South Africa in great depth. The teachers focused on helping us to understand the meaning of racism, and working hard to connect us, through helping us to look at racism in our own society and in ourselves.

In my recollection, there was some very specific language they used that was effective for my young mind. When I say these words, I know that the intellectuals who read this will get their guns and start shooting me down with great acuity for how little deconstruction I am going to do here; however, in defense of these radical educators of the 1980s, they did something really amazing through focusing their entire methodology on anti-racist language. While they focused the curriculum on showing us the history of oppression and revolution throughout the world in depth, they also used slogans that a child could easily remember to help us to understand anti-racist philosophy in the way that worked for the mind of a 5 to 9 year old. The words they wove into us as we sat on the floor looking up at their mythic storytelling were, It's what's on the inside that counts.

It's what's on the inside that counts will not heal the deaths of all of the Black and indigenous people who have died, to date, from the largest genocide in the history of the planet. It's what's on the inside that counts will not bring back Trayvon, or Emmett, or any of the millions who died in the chokehold of White power, but for God's sake, Portland, we cannot go on like this.

Portland teachers need a new language and an entirely new focus on anti-racist education. Dr. Rosenberg's work on non-violent communication is a great place to start; and we must also be willing to take direction from our local educators and leaders of color who can convene and, if supported appropriately with pay, can help White Portlanders to understand what they don't see. Every teacher must be willing to investigate our own curriculum each year, each week, each day, to work toward bettering our relationships with students. We can do this by requiring that every teacher change from a teacher-centered model to a student-centered model that utilizes non-violent communication, as well as a variety of other techniques that I will discuss in a future article. Above all, we need more Black, Latinx, and Native American teachers in our schools. We know that the state tests filter out candidates of color because of various forms of bias. We also know that our schools are often currently not comfortable places for Black and Brown staff members. We must call for changes in how teachers are hired while also requiring administrators to work on school climate with a specific focus on racism, sexism, and White male supremacy, and how they manifest in staff culture.

We must turn the schools upside down, shake them, and put them back down with new walls, higher ceilings, open doors, and more light. In creating a new infrastructure that supports students of color, we can look to the legislation that is already provided for us by Dr. King, Reverend Shuttlesworth, Fanie Lou Hamer, and other heroes of the early NAACP and civil rights movement who fought to write their suggestions into law. Until this transformation takes place, the Portland School Board, current district leaders, high school principals, and even teachers must accept full responsibility for evident civil right violations and a culture of racism that operates in the public system. The Utopian dream of Portland is lit by flames of racist hatred. Focusing on eradicating civil rights violations in every school, supporting the Office of Equity in a large scale collaborative project to examine all questionable curriculum to remove racist attitudes, and gathering together as anti-racist educators to teach the next generation both anti-racist philosophy and inclusive student-centered curriculum is our only hope for change.

Susan Anglada Bartley is an activist, writer,​and teacher in Portland, Oregon. She earned her B.A. from NYU, and her M.Ed from Portland State University. She was awarded a National Education Association H. Councill Trenholm Human and Civil Rights Award in 2013 for her work to end racism in public education. She presented her work on Systemic Barriers to AP and IB Courses for Black, Native American, and Latino Students, and co-presented with Pedro Anglada Cordero, MSW on Invisible Fences: Removing Obstacles for Latino Students at the Teaching for Social Justice North West Conference and at the Evergreen Education Association Diversity and Social Justice Conference. She has published articles with Artvoice Buffalo, Literary Arts Portland, The National Education Association Magazine, NEA-Ed Votes, Latino Rebels, and The Hampton Institute: A Working Class Think Tank.

Race, Solidarity, and the American Working Class

By Edward Carson

The search for solidarity has escaped white, black, and brown working class people, in part, due to white people's historical reluctance to embrace shared experiences that cross racial boundaries. Because of recent political news, mass rallies by Black Lives Matter, and the growing concerns about the economic gap, I aim to resurrect past and present conversations about the "working class." As we know, it is not monolithic. In order to confront working class issues, society must mend the color line through class, which is complex, as the American race question is the real problem.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, expresses the unchanged dimensions of the American color line and class-consciousness among the working class:

"Solidarity is standing in unity with people even when you have not personally experienced their particular oppression. The reality is that as long as capitalism exists, material and ideological pressures push white workers to be racist and all workers to hold each other in general suspicion. But there are moments of struggle when the mutual interests of workers are laid bare, and when the suspicion is finally turned in the other direction - at the plutocrats who live well while the rest of us suffer." [1]

Black lives do matter, but many accept arguments that society operates under the guise of color blindness, a falsity that permits modern day atrocities to black and brown Americans. This argument stands in the way of interracial workers forging unity. Black Lives Matter further elicits a reaction to the present-day injustices that were not wholly resolved via 1960's de jure legislation. Thus, the movement has sought to bring all people together in solidarity against systematic racism and brutality.

Working class people should be unified across racial lines; however, the lack of solidarity and the division capitalism promotes regarding class and race continues to divide them, as noted by the rise of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Presidential winner. If the white, black, and brown working class were fully unified - they might grasp their intersectional identities and achieve an understanding of themselves as a wholly marginalized people, often comprised of multiple identities: LGBTQ, people of color, women, etc.

The past and present reflect white people's belief in their own understanding of racism, not the real experiences faced by people of color. Often, they have defined racism in a "neoliberal" sense of saving black people from their own community problems. Rudy Giuliani, following the killings of five police officers in Dallas, referenced how he has saved more lives than Black Lives Matter. He, as well as others, such as Republican National Convention speaker David Clarke, a Milwaukee Sheriff, who too spoke against Black Lives Matter, failed to note the waves of cyclical oppression in cities like Baltimore, a conclusion of America's past Jim Crow policies. White people fail to understand the ubiquitous degree of privilege they hold, a precursor to being an ally to black and brown people. The rejection of "white privilege" is an acceptance of interracial solidarity.

Black Identity and Solidarity

Without privilege and facing racial oppression, American Negroes have long sought solidarity, but without it, focused on their own struggle and revolution. As Malcolm X wrote in Message to the Grassroots,

"The Negroes were out there in the streets. They were talking about how they were going to march on Washington… That they were going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt, not let the government proceed. They even said they were going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land….That was the black revolution."

This revolution was absent of racial solidarity, in part, due to white resistance and disinterest, growing Black Nationalism, and societal failure to grasp the extent of white racism within the working class.

Before the second civil rights period, 1954 - 1965, black Marxist, who pondered their approach to fighting capitalism and Jim Crow in the early 20 th century, witnessed the pervasiveness of racial injustice and the pronouncement of white supremacy as ubiquitous forces in post-bellum America. Thanks to the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), black folk sought to address their oppression in a country shaped by de facto racism and Jim Crow. Through such challenges, Negro solidarity continued, though Carol Anderson's book, Bourgeois Radicals, discusses the NAACP's attempt to distance itself from radical Du Bois, whose writings offered a Marxist analysis in the United States and an international call for colonial independence.

Du Bois witnessed the rise of Marcus Garvey and his paradigm, which sought to use capitalism in promoting Black Nationalism in the 1920s. Du Bois, who joined the Communist Party USA in 1961, adopted a Marxist perspective early in his training to challenge racism, while Garvey's use of capitalism was his means of addressing the race problem. And though there was solidarity in addressing the advancement of blacks, Garvey's capitalism offered a contentious anti-Marxist narrative to Du Bois's integrationist approach. After all, it was Du Bois who opposed Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise, even though he shared a desire with them in eradicating Negro oppression.

By the 1950s, the United States government saw a need for change regarding its race problem, due to the Soviet Union and voices from organized movements, such as the International Labor Defense. Black American communists, such as William Patterson, Claudia Jones and Esther Jackson, propagated the left's message questioning American democracy. The United States championed the 1954 court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which chipped away at Jim Crow, but did not fully resolve legal segregation; it was a clear response to the accusations made by the Soviet Union and American radicals regarding America's race problem. [2]

Marxism and Racial Unity

According to Marxism, the first focus is on class; hence, a desire to unify the oppressed proletariat. Karl Marx assumed class struggle would address the race question. However, both are contentious forces in the United States. This, unfortunately, has historically created troubled interest for white and colored workers in unifying, often because capitalism and white supremacy have maintained a symbiotic relationship. Blacks have long suspected that white working class people were exploited and fed lies about the Negro, in an attempt to prevent solidarity. As Du Bois wrote in The place of Negroes in the crisis of capitalism in the United States,

"This newest South, turning back to its slave past, believes its present and future prosperity can best be built on the poverty and ignorance of its disfranchised lowest masses-and these low-paid workers now include not only Negroes, but Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the unskilled, unorganized whites. Progress by means of this poverty is the creed of the present South… The Northern white worker long went his way oblivious to what was happening in the South. He awoke when the black Southern laborer fled North after World War I, and he welcomed him by riots… They excluded Negroes. It is taking a long time to prove to them that their attitude toward Negroes was dangerous. If Negro wages were low in the South, what business was that of New England white labor?"

Angela Davis, who ran for the vice presidency of the United States on the Communist Party ticket in the 1980s, and recently authored, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, reminds us of the universal struggle shared by black and brown folk, as she echoed Du Bois's observation that the "problem of the twentieth century is that of the color line." Davis contends "Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work".

Du Bois and Davis touched on the unique struggles of being black and American. They remind blacks that white bourgeois power and racism are instruments to suppress their blackness and social condition. This promulgated Negro distrust of whites, driving later concerns about the Communist Party USA (CP), as reflected in the writings of Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, who critiqued their struggles with the left, due to the reluctance of white communists and the CP to fully address race. Wright showcased his frustration in his essay I Tried to be a Communist.

Those fears should have been allayed by the historical solidarity and support the CP expressed in fighting the racial injustices toward the falsely accused Scottsboro Boys of rape. Not even the NAACP supported them, withdrawing from the case in 1932. Later, in 1955, it was the CP who sought justice for the slaying of Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi by white supremacists.

The Struggle for Unity in Labor

With such efforts at building solidarity by black, brown, and white communists, challenges persisted. A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, pointed to the complexity of America's racial binary relationship, as he noted, "Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within. Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted."

Randolph, like Du Bois, Washington, and Garvey, sought first to take care of the Negro race - then use that to advance the race within white America. The commonality of race consciousness and black identity usurped class. Negro awareness of white working class differences was a grave barrier to achieving unity over capitalism. Randolph's approach moved closer to solidarity with whites, as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) granted the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters a charter, but the color line was not mended in a fashion that promoted class-consciousness. Manning Marable's book, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945 - 1990, noted that "The purge of communists and radicals from organized labor from 1947 through 1950 was the principal reason for the decline in AFL-CIO's commitment to the struggle against racial segregation." [3]

Blacks observed white union members still struggling with racial solidarity in the trade union movement decades later. In the 2008 election, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spent weeks encouraging white workers to support Barack Obama, saying, "While there are many reasons to vote for Obama, there's only one really, really bad reason to vote against Barack Obama. And that's because he's not white."

Racism has long divided the working class, and today is no different. Many white working class people voted for Donald Trump. And much like 2008, race was a reason. While some will salute a strong economy, in truth, wages have flattened for the working class. Because of this, and because white workers have grown suspicious of the burgeoning black power call by Black Lives Matter, the search for solidarity continues to escape a racially divided country, as noted by the current political climate.

Edward Carson is an independent historian who teaches courses on race, religion, United States history, and African American Studies in the history department at the Brooks School, a residential school in North Andover, Massachusetts. He is the current chair of the Communist Party USA Boston. The title of his working manuscript is " W.E.B. Du Bois's Editorial Influence on Western Negro Migration ."

Notes

[1] Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2016), 215.

[2] Daniel Rubin, "James and Esther Jackson: Shapers of History," People's World, December 16, 2006, http://www.peoplesworld.org/james-and-esther-jackson-shapers-of-history/ .

[3] Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945 - 1990 (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 28.

Explaining the Dollar: How it Became the Global Currency and What it Means For You

By Megan Cornish

Most working people think of the buck as the way they pay their bills. But its use goes far beyond the USA's borders. The greenback is the major world currency for trade and finance. This international role bestows vast power on the U.S. government and the rich. But its status doesn't help ordinary people much.

Fundamentally, the exchange of commodities and investments under global capitalism requires generally accepted forms of money to buy and sell them with. And the notes issued by the largest and richest economies tend to be employed the most. Today, the dollar is the most widely used, followed by the euro, the British pound, the Japanese yen, and since 2015, the Chinese yuan.

These world currencies have many uses. Besides international trade in commodities, there is foreign exchange, which is the buying and selling of the legal tender of different countries. Governments must hold foreign currency reserves to back up their money in case of economic crises, especially massive speculation in their own notes that can cause their value to collapse. In weaker and smaller economies, many everyday transactions take place in dollars or other international bills rather than the official local money. Some countries, like Panama, don't have their own currency, and instead use the dollar.

How the greenback became king.

Dollars backed by the government began (except for a brief unsuccessful run during the Civil War) with the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. Government-backed notes allowed the USA to compete with Britain and its pound for economic dominance. In World War I, and later World War II, U.S. businesses profited mightily from supplying the combatants, and the country became the center of global finance. In 1944, representatives from over 40 countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and signed an agreement that the dollar would be the world currency, convertible to gold by central banks at fixed exchange rates.

That arrangement lasted until 1971, when massive deficit spending on the war in Vietnam inflated the greenback and caused other countries to demand its exchange for gold. President Nixon ended this international convertibility, effectively devaluing the dollar.

The other result was that all currencies floated in value relative to each other, and there was no longer one official world paper money. The chaotic capitalist market prevailed, and a whole new arena of finance flourished - currency speculation.

But since the U.S. economy still dominated world finance and trade, the buck retained much of its international financial role. For instance, at the end of 2016, almost 64 percent of known foreign exchange reserves were held in dollars. They still predominate - so far - because of the size and relative strength of the economy of the USA and the dominance of its financial markets.

Who does a strong buck benefit?

To listen to the financial press,workers and business have the same interests. When governments, institutions and rich individuals are buying U.S. securities, stocks and real estate, interest rates tend to stay low and Wall Street booms. But that mainly benefits the rich who live off investments.

A rising greenback is a danger to workers and the overall economy. In this time of economic stagnation, when wealth is flowing almost exclusively to those at the top, the demand to buy dollars as an investment has soared, and so has its value. Between mid-2014 and 2016, the dollar appreciated 20 percent in relation to other main currencies.

This in turn has made the U.S. trade deficit explode. That is because as the buck rises, imports become cheaper to buy (in dollars) and exports to other countries become more expensive. Not only do exports fall, but production for the home market does too, as it becomes cheaper for consumers to buy foreign products.

This results in job cuts. Domestic production shrinks and national businesses try to reduce their costs by increasing automation. The high value of the greenback becomes a drag on the whole economy.

Calls for protectionism tend to increase, often along with xenophobic and racist movements. Witness the Trump phenomenon, and fascist-based movements in Europe. But neither protectionism nor "free" trade is good for workers anywhere. Capitalism is all about pitting working people against each other.

Feeding the war machine

One of the major ways governments and institutions hold dollars is in the form of U.S. Treasury securities. The buyer is lending their money to the government. The buck's high value helps Uncle Sam to sell ever more bonds. Unfortunately, much of the proceeds are plowed into military spending. This process has been funding the war industry since WWII. It has pushed the explosion of military actions that are devastating the Middle East and destabilizing many countries. It has cemented U.S. imperialism and world dominance at the cost of mayhem and misery.

Military spending plays a significant role in the economy of the USA, making large parts of the country's production not for human use, but for destruction. However, it props up the economy only so long as the greenback is an attractive investment. The United States can't maintain this house of cards forever, and it behooves workers here to remember that their interests remain with all the world's workers, not with "our" ruling class.

This was originally published in Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 38, No. 3, June-July 2017 ( www.socialism.com)

Send feedback to author Megan Cornish at fsnews@mindspring.com.

Give us Liberty, or Give us Death: A Review of Phillip Nelson's "Remember the Liberty!"

By Greg Maybury

With the anniversary of the enormously consequential 1967 Six-Day War (SDW) between Israel and the Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan) upon us, Phil Nelson's book is a timely and welcome addition to the literature of that event and the key people involved, and indeed, the era. Although on its face about the deliberate attack by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) during that conflict on the U.S. naval 'sig-int' ship the USS Liberty, with the loss of 34 lives and over 170 casualties, it's much more than that.

Along with showcasing one of the most disgraceful episodes in U.S. military history -- to say little of the self-serving, hypocritical and callous manner in which the political and military establishment treats its service personnel -- "Remember the Liberty!" presents us an opportunity to place into broader, more urgent relief, the history of America's increasingly dangerous -- some might say existentially so -- relationship with Israel, in addition to probing the role of both nations in past events and those unfolding as we speak in and across the Greater Middle East.

His just released tome moreover, crucially invites us to reexamine the virtually unexplored, indeed, wilfully neglected role played in these events by arguably America's most psychologically unhinged and criminally 'sectionable' of Oval Officeholders, one whose political ascendancy and White House tenure may have been the most consequential of all. We're talking here the then president of the U.S., Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), he of the Gulf of Tonkin fame. As the author reveals, had things gone the way as LBJ had planned, it almost certainly would've triggered the most cataclysmic consequences of all for humanity. Suffice to say that to the extent there might have been anyone around to write about it after, by way of comparison, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis would've ended up a mere footnote in history.

On all counts then, Nelson's book provides us ample context and perspective within which to contemplate all of this and more. The truly astonishing story in this new book then is about one of the most explosive and hidden secrets in U.S. history - one that has never been previously told in such a transformative way. It is made all the more explosive because it involves Israel. Based on all available evidence, this is the most authentic, complete, up to date -- and it has to be said, disturbing -- account of the Liberty tragedy and its subsequent cover-up; the war in which it took place and that war's own hidden backstory; and the real perpetrators behind both of these, along with revelations about their motivations and intrigues. No matter what you read elsewhere, I can pretty much guarantee you're not getting the 'full monty' . And for those looking to write about the Liberty going forward, don't put pen to paper without it. Whether you're in the mainstream or alternative media camps, you'll just look like you've not done your homework!

"Remember the Liberty!" explores how a sitting U.S. president collaborated with Israeli leaders in the fomentation of what became known as the Six-Day War between them and their Arab neighbors. The so-called "spontaneous war" had been planned for months -- possibly even as early as two years before -- to be a war that would ensure a victory for Israel; the weakening of her enemies in neighboring Arab nations; and the acquisition of additional territories for Israel. These were all incentives to create 'buy-in' from Israeli leaders to this diabolical quid pro quo between them and LBJ, which might not otherwise have been forthcoming.

But the man known as "Landslide Lyndon" had his own ulterior motives in facilitating the Six-Day War: For the estimable LBJ, his highest priority was always about the ruthless accumulation of power, and in this case, it was about holding onto said power by ensuring his re-election the following year. Upset by his loss of popularity generally and with Jewish voters in particular, he wanted to give Israel as much covert - and ultimately, had the plan succeeded, overt - support as possible in the plan to engage their neighbors in that war, including the creation of a pretext to join them in attacking Egypt.

After the botched plan was implemented, the ship refused to sink even after being hit by a torpedo (more on this shortly), leading the attack to be abandoned and a massive cover-up set in motion, which included serious threats to the crewmembers to "keep their lips sealed." As ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern put it in the book's Foreword (see Consortium News "Not Remembering the Liberty") , those orders "put steroids to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by many of the survivors." That cover-up is still in place (barely), but now completely exposed. Indeed, we can now say with certainty it is the worst best-kept secret in the history of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Written in conjunction with three of the remaining survivors, Ernie Gallo, Ron Kukal and Phil Tourney, the book includes harrowing first-hand accounts from them. It's perhaps apposite to cite just one account of the numerous disturbing, poignant of those written for the book, this one by Tourney. With his shipmate Rick Aimetti helping him, they,

'….found some fire hoses and began hosing off the deck with a "suicide nozzle" on it that sprayed water in a very concentrated, high-pressure stream. It took both of us to handle this hose, because it was like a giant python and one man could not do it alone. It was the most gruesome, heartbreaking task we've ever done because every piece of flesh was the remains of one of our fellow sailors, many of whom were friends. As [we] went about this ungodly task, tears streamed down our faces and I prayed to God for forgiveness in how we were forced to treat the remains of these men so sacrilegiously. In the gun-tubs we found a shoe with a foot still in it, which we put aside for collection. Many of the bloodstains would not come off, even with that special hose, because of the previous day's heat - not just baking under the sun's heat, but from the rockets and napalm that had be dropped on the ship by the attacking [planes]. We found out the hard way how hot our government's most brutal weapon can burn: It can get as hot as 2,200°F, which explains why that blood could not be completely cleansed from the steel decks.'

"Remember the Liberty!" places much more focus on the brutality and ruthlessness with which the Johnson administration and the U.S. Navy brass treated the sailors themselves, not only then, but, significantly, continuing even now. It began immediately after the attack but - because of the threats of prison "or worse" if they ever uttered a word about it, even to their wives or parents - it festered for decades, while they and their families had to live with the trauma they experienced. This meant keeping their horrific memories to themselves for 15-20 years before they felt safe enough to even discuss it with anyone. Their stories recount how they've continued to be marginalized, dismissed - even ridiculed -- by the MSM and accused of anti-Semitism by Israel's defenders in knee-jerk fashion. In fact, the book contains an entire chapter dedicated to this point.

Another brutally shocking revelation -- one hitherto virtually ignored or neglected, even apparently by some of the survivors, and one likely to induce cognitive dissonance even in those folks who might imagine themselves immune to the discomforts of this most curious of psychological conditions -- is the following: After the IDF motor torpedo boats (MTB) had fired four torpedoes and all had missed the target (this may or may not have been deliberate upon the part of the MTB commanders; we can only surmise), the fifth torpedo which did hit the ship was fired, according to one sailor's account, by the Liberty's escort submarine the USSAmberjack, the result of a direct order from President Johnson. (My emphasis)

The grievously wounded sailor - Richard Larry Weaver - who only relatively recently revealed publicly this part of the story (and further claimed the Amberjack filmed the assault through its periscope), was nearly killed, only saved by one of his shipmates who came to his rescue and helped him to the medics, the then 21 year old literally holding his intestines inside his abdomen until his fellow sailor delivered what was left of him to the ship's only doctor. The most severely wounded of all of the remaining survivors, even for those who aren't especially God-fearing would have to concede some kind of miracle occurred that day to save Weaver. But well might we say, that day June 8, 1967, was remarkable for its many "miracles", and Nelson's narrative is littered with them.

A Few Dead Sailors (And the Some)

When he was finally released from hospital and returned Stateside, Weaver then discovered that his Navy records had been doctored to hide the fact he was even assigned to the Liberty. He was then forced to hire a private investigator to prove it just to get his disability service pension acknowledged. His investigator reportedly had "high-level Pentagon contacts" who revealed many of the secrets to him, and that's how Weaver found out about that "fifth torpedo" and who had fired it. I'm given to understand that this investigator has since denied he made this revelation, but to this day Weaver - a man who has undergone more than 35 major operations since that day -- is adamant his account is true. The YouTube video in the link above is a must watch, but folks should prep themselves for a singularly distressing account of his experience. Those who do watch it can then make up their own minds as to whether the man's account is credible.

But for those folks who've read Nelson's earlier books on LBJ (see here and here ), they'll know such a monumental act of treachery and treason was not beyond this president. By Nelson's reckoning (and numerous others it needs be said), [LBJ] "wanted that ship sunk!" Johnson - interestingly, a former, albeit less than distinguished , Navy man himself -- was not prepped to allow a "few dead sailors" to cause "embarrassment" to an important ally like Israel. We might readily assume the president had in mind avoiding same (and more) for himself. The very fact that Johnson - via Robert McNamara , his then Defense Secretary, a man who was as complicit as his boss in this unmitigated act of treason and the travesty of the cover-up and who later denied being able to recall anything significant about the Liberty attack -- stopped in their tracks not one but two separate attempts by Sixth Fleet Commanders to come to the ship's rescue is sufficient to underscore this.

There has been of course no shortage of books written about the attack on the Liberty. Some of those present the case put forth by the U.S. and Israeli governments' "official story" (e.g. Judge AJ Cristol , or self-styled Six-Day War "expert" Michael Oren ), concocted to perpetuate the cover-up narrative (not unlike the contrived narrative Israel has clung to about why it went to war in the first instance), hiding the incriminating facts and essentially writing it off as a freak "accident." You know, the "Fog of War" thing!

But that was never the reaction of the State Department officials of the time, or certain members the Navy brass who weren't under orders to conduct a phony investigation designed to cover it up. One of the latter, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff no less Admiral Thomas Moorer , observed that the president's handling of the Liberty attack was "…the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my entire military career." By the same token, one of the Admirals who did his best to keep a lid on the real facts of the attack was none other than Admiral John ("Mr. Seapower") McCain Jr., which if the name doesn't ring any bells for folks, was the father of the estimable Arizona Senator John McCain III , not coincidentally one of the most ardent of the Beltway's apologists for Israel.

Tellingly, the man who wrote the original fabricated Navy "Court of Inquiry" report on the incident - the report used by those same authors as the basis for their books - eventually retracted all of it: Former Navy Captain Ward Boston Jr., JAGC, in 2004 penned a scathing denunciation of the book by Judge Cristol, admitting that the original Navy report was designed to cover up the truths and replace them with bald-faced lies. And interestingly, one of Australia's former Prime Ministers Malcolm Fraser in 2014 declared unequivocally the attack on the Liberty by Israel was deliberate. As a senior cabinet minister at the time -- and later Defence Minister -- few could argue Fraser didn't know what he was talking about, even if he barely knew the half of it.

These earlier books which have attempted to lay out the real facts behind the attack all come to the conclusion that the brutal two hour attack was an intentional, well co-ordinated assault, designed not to just put the ship out of commission and prevent it from sending or receiving real-time 'intel' about unfolding events, but to ensure that it sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. These books (e.g. by James Ennes , Peter Hounam, and James Scott ) do not mention the key factor that actually caused the attack in the first place, and which then necessitated the massive cover-up. One book ( Hounam's Operation Cyanide ) did suggest something strange was going on at the White House, and posited that Johnson's political travails -- of which there were plenty -- might have something to do with the chain of events.

"Remember the Liberty!" though is the first book to factor LBJ's psychopathological issues - again of which like his "political travails", there were many -- into the calculus. Only by understanding his obsession with winning back the political support of Jewish people who'd abandoned him because of his shambolic Vietnam policies -- along with the monomaniacal nature of Number 36 -- can one understand what really happened. Like his previous "false flag" 'op' mentioned earlier - the phantom 'attack' at the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese gunboats on two U.S. Navy destroyers, conveniently occurring just three months before the 1964 elections, which helped him win his landslide election - he calculated this attack would secure his re-election the following year.

Yet the opposite happened: when the Liberty didn't sink -- and his devious "false flag" plan to use it as a pretext for blaming the attack on Egypt and join Israel in their victorious "Six-Day War" collapsed - it was his re-election chances that were deep-sixed. Nine months laterhe reluctantly pulled the pin on seeking reelection to the very office he'd lusted for his entire life. And as they say, the rest is history. Except that with these things, it never is of course! By this time, LBJ was a broken man. But by then so was pretty much everything else in the Home of the Brave.

Of the two principals involved, the conflicted -- in both cases ulterior -- goals of the Six-Day War are the root cause of the turbulence in the Middle East which the world has both witnessed and endured for the past five decades. Numerous ironies abound, such as the fact that over half of the U.S. foreign aid budget goes to Israel, a well-developed, prosperous economic power set amidst some of the most poverty-ridden nations in the world. And Israel has for fifty years been dining out on the myths associated with the Six-Day War.

Moreover, it was through the paradox of Johnson's most sordid, devious manipulations that the U.S.-Israel relationship became so entwined in the aftermath of the Liberty attack: Virtually overnight, U.S. policy was transformed from being "neutral" towards all countries in the area - as earlier administrations had tried to remain, to avoid being seen as partial to either side - to that of openly and aggressively backing Israel in all possible ways, including its acquisition of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, an ambition which LBJ's predecessor JFK had adamantly opposed.

My Country, Right or Wrong

Doubtless this book will cop plenty of flak for its controversial assertions, even from some prominent, purportedly progressive/liberal/left-wing quarters, with many therein resisting any embrace of the real truth about Johnson the man, the consequential nature and character of both his presidential tenure and his political career overall, and his overarching position in the historical firmament. Bizarrely, Number 36 still seems to be regarded as some kind of "liberal" icon (check everyone from Jimmy Carter to Bill Moyers), largely due one supposes to the so-called "Great Society", a busted flush by any measure when one considers the individual state today of most of the key areas where the program was supposed to improve the socio-economic lives of Americans. These 'improvements' included ambitious reforms in everything from immigration, health, civil rights, consumer protection, housing and urban development, education, along with addressing major issues of economic inequality and racial injustice, to name the key areas.

And although Johnson can't be blamed for all of the failures of these reform measures, still well might we ask, what does America have to show for the much-touted Great Society today, 50 years on? Or well might we ask, how much more successful might they have been had LBJ not blown the budget in -- and equally as important, not allowed himself and his administration to so distracted by -- the Vietnam debacle, one for which he was totally responsible, and for which he can and should rightly be blamed?

For their part, the formidable Israel Lobby -- which ironically went on to become even more powerful and influential in Washington after the Liberty attack, and is as entrenched today as it ever was -- and the uber-partisan "Friends of Israel" will attack this book and its author with a vengeance likely to metaphorically match the attack on the Liberty itself, with the same 'terminate with extreme prejudice' mindset.

But any criticisms of it being biased against Israel will be misplaced. If anything, "Remember the Liberty!" finally places the principal blame for the attack right where it has always belonged: upon the man also known as "Lyin' Lyndon". By Nelson's reckoning, Israeli leaders at the time were only taking such actions because Johnson had insisted on them doing so as a pre-condition for his assistance in their plans for extending Israeli borders into Palestine, thus acquiring the extra territory theyd coveted ever since 1948. The Israelis simply would've had no real motive for attacking the ship, if only because by that time, the war was over and they'd already achieved their objectives.

None of this of course absolves Israel of culpability in this war crime -- not by a long shot from the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building -- nor does it let the country off the hook for taking full and unconditional responsibility for it now, this especially given its abject refusal to admit to this day it was indeed a deliberate, unprovoked and unjustified attack on its most important ally. Their propensity to attack those who might suggest otherwise only adds insult to 50-year-old injuries.

But for those folks with a more (ahem), nuanced view of the 36th POTUS there may or may not be any surprises herein. He was as some folks were wont to say, a man to see with the bark off! The fact that LBJ's diabolical plan failed, and the Liberty did not sink thanks to the heroic efforts of the survivors, undoubtedly saved the world from the nuclear conflagration which might have otherwise occurred, with Jerusalem - the "city of peace" - at ground zero. They say Americans don't do irony. This writer once again begs to differ.

"Remember the Liberty!" is then both a tale of abandonment, betrayal, and justice denied, and truth ruthlessly suppressed. It is also one of great courage and determination, and what we might term here Down Under, 'mateship forged under fire'. Moreover, it is one of authentic patriotism, not the dodgy variety that passes for such in and around the rarefied environs of the Beltway and which might be defined as such by feckless mainstream media pundits. For their efforts in saving the ship, they helped avert the unthinkable, an achievement for which we all must be forever truly grateful. But the price they have paid must have left many of those remaining wishing they had not survived the attack, with presumably quite a few also calling into question the whole "Truth, Justice and the American Way/My Country Right or Wrong" Thing!

I trust readers are all able to see their way clear of keeping this story alive by buying a copy of the book and alerting interested friends, family and acquaintances to this very important -- if shameful -- piece of hidden American history. This will be the 'last shot in the locker' as it were these veterans and their families have to obtain some critical mass public recognition, accompanied by some measure of justice and redress for what they've been put through, and continue to go through. To say nothing of the all-important, much sought after closure.

After all, we'd all want that for ourselves and our own families, wouldn't we? And if America can't do that after all this time, we'd have to say it truly has lost its way!

Greg Maybury is a Perth, Australia-based writer and blogger. Separate to this review, he has published an in-depth, lengthy analysis and commentary of the people and events covered by Nelson's book. This analysis is in two parts, and can be found on his blog .

Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism

By Ava Lipatti

As it stands today, the U.S./NATO imperialist bloc has its eyes set primarily on two countries: Russia and China. While NATO imperial terror, including economic sanctions and military action, in countries such as Ukraine, Syria, Iran, and North Korea constitute exploitative projects in their own right, they also function to encircle Russia and China. Given the importance of Russia as an object of imperial desire, clarity on the character of Russia is imperative in order to understand the current economic and political crisis of imperialism.

There are several important aspects to the question of Russia as it stands today.

The narrative of the Democratic Party is that "Russian hackers" rigged the "democratic" "elections" and that Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin and of Vladimir Putin in particular. There virtually no substantial evidence for this claim. But what is the significance of this narrative? What are its historical roots?

There is also the common claim by elements of the left that Russia is in fact an imperialist power in its own right, primarily for its actions in Crimea, Syria, and Chechnya. However, Russia's relatively weak economy is characterized primarily by the export of raw materials, rather than the export of finance capital as in imperialist countries. The claim that Russia is an imperialist country has been convincingly argued against both by Sam Williams and by Renfrey Clarke and Roger Annis . But does this claim come from nowhere? What is its intellectual heritage?

The purpose of this article is not to prove that Russia is not imperialist or that Trump is not a Kremlin puppet. Others have already grappled with these questions in a much more thorough way than I am equipped to do. The purpose of this article, rather, is to place these phenomena in the context of a long history of Orientalism directed at Slavic people in general, and Russia in particular.

Before proceeding, a brief definition from Edward Said's Orientalism (1978):

"Orientalism is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident.' Thus a very large mass of writers, among who are poet, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, 'mind,' destiny, and so on... the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient... despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a 'real' Orient." (5)

Whiteness, Nazism, and Bolshevism

On the border between "Europe" and "Asia", Russians have historically maintained at best a vacillating, conditional relationship with whiteness and "European civilization". The most historically openly terroristic, revanchist manifestation of European supremacist ideology was undoubtedly Nazism. What was the relationship between Nazism, Bolshevism, and the Slavic peoples?

In War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century (2015), Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo seeks to reclaim the revolutionary tradition and reevaluate the character of Nazism, which he argues has been whitewashed by revisionist historians. Losurdo emphasizes several key points in relation to Nazism and Bolshevism.

Perhaps most importantly, Losurdo argues that in rejecting the revolutionary tradition (from the Jacobins through the Bolsheviks), the revisionist historians have also concealed the colonial character of the Nazi project. Even a cursory reading of Nazi ideology and its goals and practices indicates an essentially colonial dynamic with respect to Jews, Romani, Slavs, and other oppressed peoples. However, U.S. and European historians prefer to whitewash this history, ripping the Holocaust from its historical context and presenting it as an anomaly in human history, rather than an integral manifestation of colonial conquest and imperial terror.

A central aspect of the Nazi project, outlined in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was the plan to colonize Eastern Europe, specifically through exterminating Eastern Europeans and settling throughout the Soviet Union. What historians have traditionally suppressed is that this plan did not come from nowhere: it was inspired in large part by the U.S. settler-colonization of "North America" and the genocide carried out against both the Indigenous people and the people of Africa. Nazi concentration camps were influenced by U.S. concentration camps (i.e. "Indian reservations"); Nazi eugenics was largely inspired by reactionary U.S."scientists" .

Anti-Semitism, anti-Ziganism, and anti-Slavic racism fused to produce the fascist Nazi ideology of turning Eastern Europe into an Aryan settler-colony. In this process of counter-revolution, Nazi ideology racialized its most ferocious enemy: Bolshevism. Bolshevism, a revolutionary working class movement, was the primary existential threat to Nazism, the counter-revolution of big capital. The Bolsheviks, who supported the rebellion of the toiling colonized masses, were the antithesis of imperialism in general and especially its Nazi iteration. Losurdo writes:

"[Revisionist historiography] forgets that, in addition to calling for the transformation of the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war, the Bolsheviks also appealed to the slaves of the colonies to break their chains and wage wars of national liberation against the imperial domination of the great powers. Such repression makes it impossible adequately to understand Nazism and Fascism, which also presented themselves as a movement in reaction - extreme reaction - against this second appeal." (103)

Nazi demagogues painted the Russian Revolution as a "Judeo-Bolshevik" conspiracy, bankrolled by the supposedly economy-controlling Jewish capitalists. As Bolshevism, a movement born out of Russia, took on an anti-colonial character, Russian workers were increasingly racialized for "betraying" Europe and placing their lot with the oppressed rather than with imperialism and colonialism. In a way this process was the opposite that took place among ethnic minorities in the United States, particularly Italians, Poles, and Irish. While the latter groups assimilated into whiteness fully from their conditional status through embracing cross-class white supremacy (and especially anti-Black racism), the Bolsheviks embraced the toiling masses and national liberation; thus, their "whiteness" was "revoked." Hitler himself stated directly in Mein Kampf that the Tsarist Empire was a product of "the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race," whereas the "inferior" Slavic elements took power in October 1917.

The racialization of Bolshevism was a direct manifestation of historical Orientalism. Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler told a group of Waffen SS fascists three weeks after the invasion of the Soviet Union:

"When you, my men, fight over there in the East, you are carrying on the same struggle, against the same subhumanity, the same inferior races, that at one time appeared under the name of Huns, another time- 1000 years ago at the time of King Henry and Otto I- under the name of Magyars, another time under the name of Tartars, and still another time under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they appear as Russians under the political banner of Bolshevism."

However, this was not the first time that the Soviet Union faced an invasion of reactionary terror. After October 1917, the Bolsheviks fought a "Civil" War against the pro-Tsar White Army, the latter enjoying military support from 14 countries. As Losurdo notes, the anti-Semitic pogroms and lynchings carried out by the anti-Bolshevik White Army against Russian Jews and other ethnicities was "a chapter of history that seems to be a direct prelude to Nazi genocide." Anti-Bolshevism, anti-Slavic racism, and colonialism thus became intermeshed in the anti-Semitic Nazi program of extermination. Losurdo explains:

"Denunciation of October [1917] as a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy now reached its most tragic conclusion. General Blum communicated the orders received: 'Eastern Jewry constitutes the intellectual reserve of Bolshevism and hence, in the Führer's opinion, must be destroyed.' As well as building the new colonial empire, the crusade in the East now aimed to detect and destroy the bacillus of dissolution wherever it was to be found. The 'poison of dissolution' that acted via Bolshevik cadres was to be neutralized once and for all, but without forgetting that 'the chief "carriers of the Bolshevik infection"' were the Jews. In Goebbels' words, 'Jewish terror' was the core of 'eastern Bolshevism', that mortal enemy of civilization. The Jews were doubly Oriental and doubly barbarous. They were an 'Asiatic people' alien to Europe and the West, as had been stressed by Houston Chamberlain and the anti-Semitic tradition that fed into Nazism; they therefore formed part of the 'native' populations. Furthermore, they were the inspirers of 'eastern Bolshevism' - were, in fact, the ethnic basis of the virus eroding civilization that was to be eliminated for good." (190)

This racist ideology of anti-Semitism provided the ideological narrative for the Nazi colonial project, which killed millions of Jews, Slavs, Romani, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, and other oppressed groups. According to Nazism, Russia, far from being a bastion of "Aryan civilization", was a "host body" of the "Judeo-Bolshevik virus" that "infected" Europe.

The relationship that Russians and other Slavic peoples have with whiteness today cannot be evaluated in isolation from the history of Nazism and the racialization of Slavs and Bolshevism that went hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism and the entire Nazi project, a project deeply rooted in settler-colonialism, directly inspired by the United States and Canada.

Hannah Arendt and "Totalitarianism"

Most bourgeois historians have suppressed the colonial character of Nazi Germany and its conquest of Eastern Europe. Instead, they have gone as far as to conflate the USSR under Stalin and the Third Reich under Hitler as equally oppressive dictatorships. They conceptualize World War II and surrounding geopolitics as the struggle between "democracy" (imperialist U.S., Britain, etc.) and "dictatorship" ("Stalinism", Nazism).

One of the most popular ideologues of this argument was the Heideggerian philosopher Hannah Arendt for the theory of "totalitarianism", which equates Nazism with Communism (or "Stalinism"). Other proponents of this theory included George Kennan, Arthur Koestler, and George Orwell. In effect, this framework asserts that despotism "infected" the "civilized world" (Europe) through the "uncivilized" and "barbaric" peoples of Africa and Asia.

In The Post-Colonialism of "Cold War" Discourses (1988), William Pietz asserts that Cold War discourse displaced colonial discourse in the aftermath of World War II. Note that George Kennan located "totalitarianism" in the "Oriental mind" of Russians:

"[Russian] fanaticism, unmodified by any of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to envisage any permanent sharing of power. From the Russian-Asiatic world out of which they had emerged they had carried with them a skepticism as to the possibilities of permanent or peaceful coexistence of rival forces. Here caution, circumspection, flexibility, and deception are the valuable qualities; and their value finds natural appreciation in the Russian or the oriental mind."

Hannah Arendt followed suit, asserting that "totalitarianism" was something "learned" from African tribes:

"When the Boers, in their fright and misery, decided to use these savages as though they were just another form of animal life they embarked upon a process which could only end with their own degeneration into a white race living beside and together with black races from whom in the end they would differ only in the color of their skin. They had transformed themselves into a tribe and had lost the European's feeling for a territory, a patria of his own. They behaved exactly like the black tribes who had roamed the Dark Continent for centuries.

"My point is not the awful, Conradian diction or even the stark conceptual separation between the European and the African. It is the effect upon the Boers and thence - so the retrograde diffusionist argument goes - upon Europe. We "degenerate" into a race-based, primitive and nomadic, rootless 'tribe' (or 'race organization') no better than them. Thanks to this contact with the primitive, not only do we come to think in terms of race (i.e. in a racist way), but this mode of thinking later morphs into a tribal nationalism that, in turn, becomes modern anti-Semitism and totalitarianism ('a whole outlook on life and the world'). This last phenomenon 'lies in the nature of tribalism rather than in political facts and circumstances.'"

Instead of locating the origins of fascism in the colonial violence of capitalism, it is located in the mind of the Oriental despot who, like a virus, has spread from the East into Aryan civilization. Pietz elaborates:

"It was Arendt's signal achievement to frame a set of historically grounded political concepts capable of locating the origin of 'totalitarianism' in general and modern European anti-Semitism in particular - and by implication, the responsibility for the Nazi holocaust - outside Europe, in the savage 'tribalism' of 'the Dark Continent.'"

The colonized are blamed for an outgrowth of colonialism itself; the socialist tradition is condemned as the catalyst for the very system most antagonistic towards it, fascism. Pietz states:

"American cold war discourse about totalitarianism served a double function: in regard to the Soviets, it justified a policy of global anti-communism by reinterpreting all struggles for national self-determination in terms of the geopolitical contest for zones of power against totalitarian Russia; in regard to Nazi Germany, it saved the traditional pre-war faith concerning 'the values of Western civilization' held by post-war foreign-policy 'wise men' by displacing the human essence of fascism into the non-Western world... The necessary conscience-soothing exorcism was achieved by affirming the equation of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, combined with an historical interpretation of the essential Orientalness of the Russian mentality. The basic argument is that 'totalitarianism' is nothing other than traditional Oriental despotism plus modern police technology. The appearance of the first truly totalitarian state in the heart of Europe was thus an accident, explainable by the fact that the technology permitting totalitarianism was invented by Western science and was thus first accessible in the West. Moreover, Germany's totalitarian moment is characterized by Kennan as a 'relapse' into barbarism; far from showing a flaw in Western culture, it proved the need for constant alertness in preserving our distinctly Western values."

A supposedly anti-racist theory reveals its racism in its implied upholding of "Western values", a distinctly fascistic, colonial ideal. As "European civilization" faces an existential threat of "barbarism", it tightens its ranks and purges itself of all but the purest elements. According to the Orientalist worldview, Russians have only been able to masquerade as white due to their frequent contact with Europe. However, once the veil is lifted, an essentially Oriental mind is revealed. Pietz again writes:

"History - specifically the pre-modern geopolitics of the Eurasian 'ecumene' which produced the 'Russian-Asiatic world' - explains the Oriental essence of the Russian mind. This mentality is distinguished by its ability, after centuries of direct contact with Europe, to appear civilized and to use this facade of civility for its own barbaric ends."

Not only was Cold War discourse anti-communist; it, in effect was also deeply racist, Orientalist, and provided cover for Nazi terror and its colonial origins. While Russians may have enjoyed conditional whiteness under Tsarism via participation in European imperialism, this privilege was quickly revoked upon the world-historic Bolshevik revolution for its anti-colonial character. The facade of whiteness evaporated, and all that was left was Oriental despotism, or so the racists argue.

On the one side there is Bolshevism, national liberation, and revolution; on the other, Nazism, colonialism, and imperial conquest. To reject the former is to provide tacit support for the later.

Russian "Exceptionalism" and Eurocentrism

A Eurocentric view of history asserts that, while Europe exists as a dynamic, linearly progressing bastion of "civilization", the "uncivilized" world (Africa, Latin America, Asia, and other places) is static and dormant. The "uncivilized" people have no history, existing as a feature of nature itself rather than as an active agent within it.

This teleological worldview attempts to measure all social formations by the standard of the development of industrial capitalism that took place in Europe. Of course, it sidelines the fact that western Europe developed the way it did precisely because of colonialism and genocide enacted on the rest of the world.

Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their earlier works, fell into this trap with the concept of an "Asiatic mode of production" separate from the slave, feudal, and capitalist modes of production as they developed in Europe. This idea is based on an understanding of Georg Hegel's concept of The Oriental Realm .

Marx outlines several basic features of this supposed mode of production in Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (1857-58):

"...as is the case in most Asiatic fundamental forms, it is quite compatible with the fact that the all-embracing unity which stands above all these small common bodies may appear as the higher or sole proprietor, the real communities only as hereditary possessors...

"Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property, in most cases created through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining and contains within itself all conditions of production and surplus production."

This unfortunately aligns with the common racist myth that the "Orient" has a tendency towards despotism and dictatorship, which has intellectual roots dating all the way back to Aristotle .

Not only was this concept for the most part dropped by Marx and Engels, but Samir Amin (a Marxist) has theorized a "tributary mode of production" that encapsulates both European feudalism and economic systems based on land ownership in east Asia. However, the "left" has latched onto this "exceptionalism" for the East, continuing to characterize Russia as a timeless, supernatural social formation of Oriental despotism.

The Soviet Union, formed on the basis of the Russian Revolution of 1917, was quickly denounced by left communists as non-socialist, especially under Stalin. However, these theorists were unable to argue that the USSR was a capitalist formation in the traditional sense, because it clearly functioned like no capitalist society to ever have existed. Thus, "left" detractors of the Soviet Union resorted to creating ad hoc economic categories much like the way "Asiatic mode of production" was used to characterized the "exceptional" nature of the "Orient".

Raya Dunayevskaya characterized Soviet Russia's economy as "state capitalism":

"Since under the specific Russian state capitalism legal title to the means of production as well as the competitive market for such means have been abolished, how is appropriation achieved?

"Inasmuch as private property in the means of production has been abolished in Russia, it is a deviation from the juridical concept to permit accumulation within any enterprise since the state aims to increase only 'national capital'. Nevertheless, with the establishment of 'ruble control', enterprises were permitted to accumulate internally...

"The Stalinist Constitution of 1936 recognized the intelligentsia as a special 'group', distinct from workers and peasants. With this juridical acknowledgement of the existence of a new ruling class went the guarantee of the protection of state property from 'thieves and misappropriatiors.'"

Compare this with Marx's statement above that "Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property"; compare "national capital" and "new ruling class" with "the higher or sole proprietor". The Asiatic mode of production makes a reappearance, in so many words. Again, the despots of the Orient have achieved the impossible: capitalism without capital, and a ruling class with no legal property rights. Stalinist totalitarianism thus became the latest iteration of Oriental despotism.

Hillel Ticktin called the Soviet Union's economy a "non-mode of production"; yet again, Asiatic production exists outside of history, time, and space. It is a static, non-society without a mode of production and subsequently a political and cultural life. Italian "socialist" Bruno Rizzi and later a faction of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) characterized the Soviet Union's economy not as socialist but rather as "bureaucratic collectivist":

"In the USSR the 'nationalisation' of property came in one swoop following the October revolution, but, since the concept of nationalisation has no scientific validity in Russia, in effect this was the generalisation in one swoop of state capitalism and its foster brother statism.

"What has happened to the economy? Has it become socialist? No, says Trotsky. Is it still capitalist? No, we say, precisely because of the law of the transformation of quantity into quality; it is Bureaucratic Collectivism."

Dunayevskaya, Ticktin, and Rizzi thus all latched onto the idea of an Asiatic mode of production. An Oriental despot (Stalin) has appropriated the (collective) means of production through totalitarian rule, absent legal property ownership. This application of the so-called Asiatic mode of production to the Soviet Union was put forth even more explicitly by Karl August Wittfogel in Oriental Despotism (1957), in which he "observed a transition from the old despotic governments to a new form of despotism represented by communist Russia, which could be considered as a new version of industrial-bureaucratic despotism."

The ghost of Oriental despotism and the Asiatic mode of production made an appearance yet again with the theory of Soviet "social-imperialism," which Albert Szymanski argued against . This charge that the Soviet Union was "socialist in words, imperialist in deeds" was first asserted by the Communist Party of China, and subsequently taken up by the Party of Labour of Albania and numerous U.S. Maoist groups in the New Communist Movement. Yet again, the Slavic despots have achieved the impossible: an imperialist version of socialism, and yet another (imperialist) ruling class with no legal property rights.

As left communists and U.S. Maoists alike have noted, legal property relations are secondary to productive relations, which underlie the economic life of a given society. Of course this is true; but to assert that the two can be wholly incongruent is an exercise in metaphysics. In this model, the Superstructure has a life wholly independent from the Base; form has transcended content.

In The 'State Capitalist' and "Bureaucratic Exploitative' Interpretations of the Soviet Social Formation: A Critique (1978), David Laibman produces an incisive critique of all of these trends:

"The power of capital, then is exercised through a heterogeneity of institutional structures no one of which, taken in isolation, manifests that function… Adequate comprehension of capitalism requires this complex structuring of concepts in which the capitalist function is determinant at the level of production relations but is simultaneously constituted by the proximate forms in which it is manifested. This approach must be contrasted with rationalist methodology of ideal types which focuses on 'essences' or 'deep structures' as uniquely 'real' and the proximate forms as mere illustrations 'at a lower level of abstraction' No more than the Hegelian Absolute Idea can the capital concept exist in disembodied form. Capital is not reducible to its form of existence; but neither is it separable from these forms…

"Capitalist production relations, and in particular the existence of a capitalist class or bourgeoisie, are not like a disembodied spirit that can inhabit one or another juridical form - i.e., state vs. private property - at will. As an important application of the dialectic of the production relations as a complex structure, one can neither merge the property form and the 'social process of appropriation' and mistake the form for the real relation itself; nor separate them, and speak of the underlying class relation as one of real 'appropriation' etc., without explaining the source and reproduction of the power appropriate."

In other words, Marxist dialectics allow us to understand the underlying relations of production in a given society through the really existing institutions and mechanisms that facilitate and reproduce them. Capitalism cannot persist without means by which to maintain and reproduce the accumulation of Capital. Capitalism is not some "inner essence" that invisibly persists in the DNA of a given society; it is a real process involving real actors and real mechanisms and institutions. Legal institutions are not identical with capitalist exploitation as such but they cannot be an isolated phenomenon wholly separate from the economic system of a given society.

Laibman aptly locates these critiques not in Marxism, but in Hegelianism, a philosophy of teleology, rationalism, and Eurocentrism. The Asiatic mode of production and the ruling class without legal property rights are wholly alien to Marxism. While those who call themselves Marxists have continuously put forth the arguments of Dunayevskaya and Rizzi as it applies to Russia, their arguments are both anti-Marxist and Orientalist in essence.

"Russian Imperialism"?

It is within this intellectual tradition that the new thesis emerges: since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has developed into a modern imperialist power, some claim even in the Leninist sense. While the form (Stalinist totalitarianism) is long gone, the content (Russian despotism) has lingered on. Tsarism, Stalinism, and Putinism are each manifestations of Oriental despotism, an inherent feature of the ahistorical Slav.

It would be quite difficult to argue that Russian Federation can be characterized as an imperialist power in the Leninist sense. Economic arguments aside, the "Russian imperialism" thesis cannot be separated from the theses above: state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, and the Asiatic mode of production. If the Russian Federation, boasting an economy based on the export of raw materials, constitutes an imperialist power, it would be the strangest one to ever exist.

Yet again, the Slavs have transcended reality: a ruling class without legal property ownership, capitalism without capital, socialism with imperialism; and now, imperialism without finance capital. Clearly, at least among the liberal left, arguments about "Russian imperialism" are based much more on racist fears and imperial chauvinism than a sober appraisal of Russia's economic situation.

The liberal media projects constant fear about Russian encroachment onto NATO territories, and has blasted Russia's air assistance to the Syrian government. They have also condemned Russian "interference" in Crimea and the Donbass, despite the high concentration of ethnic Russians in these territories and Crimea's landslide vote to join Russia . The spectre of "Oriental Despotism" has returned to Europe, the United States, and the rest of the "free world", hellbent on undermining Aryan civilization.

All of this is very ironic, given that NATO has been quietly deploying thousands of troops to the Russian border in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Estonia for months now; and given that a far-right, NATO-backed military junta rules over Ukraine, persecuting ethnic minorities such as Jews, Romani, and Russians. This continuous uptick in anti-Russian hysteria has most recently manifested in the charges by the Democratic Party and its supporters that in fact Donald Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin in its plot to expand its Empire's influences across the globe.

The Democratic Party and Imperial Decay

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Marx famously noted:

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

If Cold War conspiracies were a tragedy, the contemporary anti-Russian conspiracies of the Democratic Party are a farce. It is obvious, and thus has been widely noted, that the smear campaign against Russia reeks of McCarthyism and Cold War hysteria. This hysteria is in no way limited to the Democratic Party elite. Rachel Maddow spent over half of March talking about Russia. Newt Gingrich has even called for the establishment of a new House Un-American Activities Committee. The bourgeois T.V. news has gone as far as to "accidentally" refer to the Russian Federation as the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union has been gone for over 25 years, the spectre of "Asiatic despotism" continues to haunt the paranoid Western powers.

Yet again, Arendt-esque Cold War discourse comes into play, this time perhaps through an even more openly Orientalist form. U.S. society cannot come to terms with the fact that President Donald Trump is a direct product of centuries of settler-colonialism and white supremacy. So, it blames Russia for "infecting" "American culture" with Asiatic despotism, this time in the form of Putinism. The racist logic of this argument is no different than Arendt's and the original Cold War fear-mongering. Therein lies the basis for re-asserting "American values", which in itself constitutes an ideology of white supremacist terror.

The red scare is being replayed through a broken projector; while the original McCarthyist witch hunts were an ascendant imperialist power's expression of fear of socialism, today's Russophobia is the desperate sigh of U.S. imperialism in utter decay. Russia is threatening to U.S. imperial interests because the U.S. is failing. Recent U.S. imperial conquests, especially in Syria, have been largely unsuccessful, and all the oppressed of the world continue to fight as the economic and political crisis of imperialism only deepens.

Ava Lipatti is a Marxist, anti-imperialist, feminist activist and writer. Her blog can be found at lonelyhourreflections.wordpress.com .

Americanism Personified: Why Fascism Has Always Been an Inevitable Outcome of the American Project

By Colin Jenkins

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." This quote, which has often been misattributed to Sinclair Lewis , is wise in its recognizing the authoritarian potential of both nationalism and organized religion. In slight contrast, Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University said in a 1938 interview , "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'" Luccock's view was that of a Christian theologian during the height of Nazi Germany, likely meant to not only downplay the role of religion but perhaps more so warning against the false idolatry of nationalistic reverence.

Despite the tidbits of insight offered, both quotes underestimate Americanism as a highly-authoritative and dominating national project in and of itself. At the time of both quotes, America had already cemented strong elements conducive to fascism: an economy based in capitalist modes of production, a geography created through mass extermination of Native American populations, white supremacist ideals rooted in both dominant culture and pseudoscience , and aggressive expansionist and imperialist projects throughout the Western hemisphere. It should come as no surprise that Adolf Hitler studied, admired, and was inspired by the US genocide of Native Americans as well as its subsequent reservation program. "Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history," John Toland wrote in his book, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography . "He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity."

This notion of American fascism is certainly nothing new. As Steve Martinot explains in his invaluable essay on " Fascism in the US ," this discussion has been around for a long time:

"In an early, now canonical discussion of racism in the US, Pierre Van den Berghe (1967) pointed out that a prevalent racial despotism coexisted with constitutionality, a confluence he characterized as 'herrenvolk democracy' - 'democracy for white people.' In his book, Friendly Fascism, (1980) Bertram Gross argues that the US under Reagan began moving toward a form of governance closely analogous to 1930s European fascism; he compares the social consequences of corporate influence to Mussolini's 'corporate state.' George Jackson finds no better word than 'fascism' to describe the psychotic use of power and violence by which white prisoners relate to black, or by which the prison administration maintains its hierarchical system -- and which he sees mirrored in white-black relations outside the prison."

As a settler-colonial project steeped in white supremacist domination and capitalist ideals, America is and always has been an ideal fascist breeding ground. The current rise of Donald Trump, the "alt-right," neo-Nazism, and white nationalism is nothing new, it is merely Americanism becoming further personified through the vulnerabilities opened by the failures of capitalism and the weakening of liberal democracy - systems that were constructed on shoddy, hypocritical foundations to begin with.

Fascism as a Capitalist Phenomenon

"People that are more concerned with the trappings of this pseudo mass society and its spectacular leisure sports; parades where strangers meet, shout each other down and often trample each other on the way home will never see the ugly reality of fascism. Amerikkkan fascism is so effective in emotionally appealing to people's desires and fears that when we point out to them that Amerikkkan capitalism has had 200 years to disguise and refine its face, and 50 years to consolidate fascist control of the country, they would simply dismiss us."

- Shaka Sankofa Zulu

Fascism, as a conscious and working ideology, was intentionally constructed to serve as a polar opposite to the materialist conception of thinking that scientific socialism (Marxism) was based in. Benito Mussolini, a former socialist, specifically noted this in his Doctrine of Fascism, which he wrote with Giovanni Gentile. Fascism is a collectivist ideology, much like socialism; however, fascism calls on a societal tie that differs greatly from that of socialism. While socialist collectivism is rooted in an inclusive, communal responsibility to have basic material needs met for all, fascist collectivism is rooted in an exclusive, nationalistic responsibility to dominate and conquer peoples who are viewed as not belonging. While socialist collectivism is based in worker-control of the means of production, fascist collectivism is based in a natural adherence to corporatism, which takes form in concentrated control of the means of production (mimicking that of capitalism). While socialism seeks to undermine and ultimately destroy the capitalist system, fascism seeks to fortify the late stages of capitalist accumulation by merging corporate power with the State.

As socialists view the working-class struggle as the primary vehicle to creating self-determination, fascists flatly reject economic (material) motives as a potential driving force for societal change. The authoritarian nature of capitalism is an ideal precursor to fascism. Because of this, fascism seeks to take the reins of the system and use it to carry out its nationalistic project that is based in a form of heritage or national identity as determined by the fascists. The Doctrine of Fascism explains ,

"Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, [which posits] the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society."

The authoritarian nature of capitalism is rooted in its most elemental relationship - that between the owners and the workers - which naturally creates minority class dominance over the majority class. Fascism seeks to transform this class dominance into national dominance. Because of this, parasitic billionaire exploiters of the capitalist class (like Donald Trump) become welcome members of this nationalist project, and exploited workers who embrace fascism are more than willing to overlook the complicity of the creators of their own misery as long as these overseers are willing to repent through an embrace and renewal of ethnic nationalism.

The natural extension from capitalism to fascism is impossible to ignore. In structural terms, as concentrations of wealth and power are created through the mechanisms of capitalism, so too are widespread dispossession for the masses of people who exist under the system. Despite the construction of robust welfare and police states, which have been implemented to prevent this widespread dispossession from transforming into civil unrest, the weight of such unequal power dynamics is bound to crush the experiment we've come to know as "liberal capitalist democracy." This has never been more evident than in the neoliberal era, where both globalization and so-called "free-market" ideology have unleashed the system to do what it is designed to do.

An anarcho-capitalist (American "libertarian") analysis of fascism, presented by Sheldon Richman in the Library of Economics and Liberty, recognizes at least a part of the natural connection between capitalism and fascism, without overtly saying so:

"Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the 'national interest'-that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions."

While Richman would surely argue that such elements - autocratic control, currency manipulation, and the end of entrepreneurship - are not natural byproducts of capitalism, they perfectly describe the stage of monopoly capitalism (actual existing capitalism) that has inevitably developed as a result of the most basic mechanisms of the system: the labor-capital relationship and the private ownership of land as a means to exploit. In other words, what American "libertarians" like Richman describe as "corporatism" or "crony capitalism" is really just a mature and naturally developed stage of capitalism. The "cronies" are merely the beneficiaries of this inherent process. This point has been illustrated by many economists outside of the establishment , and perhaps most effectively and intensely by the Monthly Review school.

The insurmountable weight that capitalism has brought down on "democracy" has demanded the need for more authoritarian adjustments within government, as societal unrest becomes more likely. This mature stage of capitalism creates a ripe environment for fascism, both in its creation of a highly-centralized State apparatus that has already meshed with corporate power , as well as in its need to recruit masses of foot soldiers from within the systematically dispossessed population. The Fascist Doctrine describes the transfer of the "Liberal State" to the "Fascist State":

"The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State."

The transformation that Mussolini and Gentile describe is that of a capitalist state with pluralistic tendencies that are conducive to capitalist growth to one of a corporatist state with homogenous tendencies that are designed to protect and grow nationalist interests. While modern fascists in the United States tend to focus on "multiculturalism" and what they refer to as "cultural Marxism," they fail to realize that the same structure which shaped these social dynamics happens to be a prerequisite for the fascist transition. The Western capitalist system required a massive, intercontinental slave trade to get started, centuries of internationalist/globalist expansion to spur continuous growth, and an imperialist agenda that has displaced entire societies throughout the global South. In other words, the tactics that have been used to feed the capitalist system, most of which could be characterized as crimes against humanity , not only created the incredibly unequal distributions of wealth and power both nationally and internationally, but also created the societal makeups that fascist foot soldiers decry. In this sense, capitalism has not dug its own grave, like Marx once promised that it would; it actually has birthed the inevitability of fascism.

From "Liberal State" to "Fascist State"

Through capitalism's reliance on imperialism, the transition from Liberal State to Fascist State has already begun. In order to be formally transitioned into fascist control, it merely needs time, political direction, and a forceful wresting of power from the entrenched Liberal State. Once completed, the nature of imperialism shifts from one of economic motivations to one of nationalistic motivations. The doctrine discusses this process:

"For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and it's opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order. If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it."

While gaining control of the State is formally accomplished through the emergence of electoral movements, it still requires a groundswell of support from the lower classes. The class divisions created by capitalism, especially within post-industrialized societies like that of the US, present the most opportune dynamics for what is sometimes referred to as "right-wing populism." Not only is the emergence of an industrialized middle class a key component in this development, but even more crucial is the subsequent collapse of this middle class. This second stage has been occurring in the US since the 1980s, with the onset of neoliberalism and globalization. Politically speaking, it has manifested itself in Reagan's neoliberal blueprint, the neoliberalization of the Democratic Party, the complete economic abandonment of the American working class by both major parties, the rise of proto-fascist groups like the Tea Party, the triumph of lesser-evilism, and now in the rise of 21st-century neo-Nazism and white nationalism, both of which have helped buoy an actual billionaire capitalist to the White House.

Gaining political support from the working class seems like a difficult proposition for those running for office, since the political parties in power are the same parties which have abandoned most Americans for the past several decades. However, this is where fascism's reliance on emotion and identity, or what Mussolini refers to as "duty," "holiness," and "heroism," over material need becomes so powerful. The structural dispossession of masses of people by macro-systems like capitalism is difficult to pinpoint, especially when systemic understanding is absent. Left-wing populism relies on these understandings, as well as the expectation that material conditions will motivate the working class to act in its own best interests, which are diametrically opposed to the interests of capital, bourgeois politicians from within the liberal democratic system, and of course billionaire businessmen. Fascism makes things easier, focuses on a national/racial identity, and deems all who exist outside of that identity to be enemies of the State. The structural pressure created capitalism, especially against that of the former middle class, or against anyone feeling as though they're losing privilege, creates an environment conducive for recruitment. This process was never explained more succinctly than by George Jackson :

"The shock troops of fascism on the mass political level are drawn from members of the lower-middle class who feel the upward thrust of the lower classes more acutely. These classes feel that any dislocation of the present economy resulting from the upward thrust of the masses would affect their status first. They are joined by that sector of the working class which is backward enough to be affected by nationalistic trappings and loyalty syndrome that sociologists have termed the 'Authoritarian Personality.' One primary aim of the fascist arrangement is to extend and develop this new pig class, to degenerate and diffuse working-class consciousness with a psycho-social appeal to man's herd instincts. Development and exploitation of the authoritarian syndrome is at the center of 'totalitarian' capitalism (fascism). It feeds on a small but false sense of class consciousness and the need for community."

The authoritarian nature of fascism is found in its reliance on identity, a fluid concept that allows for some maneuverability within the minds of its adherents, while also shoring up the herd mentality that becomes rooted in its perceived national agenda. In other words, the individual within a fascist movement may perceive themselves, the movement, and even the ultimate goal of the movement in varying ways; however, when called upon to act, their actions will always fall in line with the national agenda as set by its directors. This is why fascism requires the presence of strong leaders. Much like the Orc armies in JRR Tolkien's famous Hobbit series, the foot soldiers of fascism are easily swayed into violent action for a greater good that is constructed by a strong, charismatic leader. And with this support, those leaders can accomplish electoral feats previously unheard of.

Punching Down: The Fascist Engine of White Supremacy and Xenophobia

Despite the structural failures of both capitalism and "liberal capitalist democracy," American fascism would find difficulties materializing without a strong element of identity. Whereas left-wing populism clearly relies on the material desperation of the working class under capitalism, fascism's reliance on the vague concepts of "holiness" and "heroism" needs a constructed and recognizable identity. In America, the structural and cultural phenomenon of white supremacy serves as this identity, and therefore acts as the engine needed to redirect the widespread angst developed through the systematic dispossession created by capitalism and "democracy" into a nationalistic movement.

It is important to understand that white supremacy is not something only reserved for jackbooted neo-Nazis giving "Heil Hitler!" salutes, but that it is a systemic phenomenon which is heavily seeped in American culture. It is both a conditioned mentality and a material reality. The conditioned mentality that Black lives are substandard has been shaped through centuries of popular culture, from the racist Minstrel shows of the early 19th century, which utilized the " coon caricature" to lampoon Black people as dim-witted, lazy, and buffoonish, to modern TV shows like COPS, which perpetuates the racist stereotype that Black people are more prone to debauchery and criminality. The material reality has been shaped by two and a half centuries of chattel slavery followed by various forms of legalized systems of servitude and second-class citizenship, including sharecropping , convict leasing , Jim Crow, and mass incarceration. This history has built complex layers of institutional racism carried out under the guise of legality, and a systematic ghettoization supported by both " white flight" and widespread discriminatory housing and employment practices, all of which have combined to shape a uniquely intense experience for Black Americans who must face both class and racial oppression.

The two factors (conditioned mentality and material reality) interplay with one another in a way that is increasingly disastrous for the ways in which American society views and treats its Black citizens. Because of the perpetuation of racial stereotypes, people on average are less empathetic toward their Black counterparts. Studies have shown that white children as young as seven years old believe that Black children feel less pain than them; that emergency medical personnel are less likely to give pain medication to Black and Latinx children who are in pain; and that "Caucasian observers reacted to pain suffered by African people significantly less than to pain of Caucasian people." The material reality shaped by institutional racism has created a landscape where Black people are disproportionately poor, unemployed, and in prison. Martinot talks about this seemingly never-ending cycle that is centered within a highly racialized criminal punishment system:

"The social effects of this process are catastrophic, yet familiar. Not only does felonization of a population insure massive unemployment (a general tendency not to hire people with a record), but routine felony charges amount to systematic disenfranchisement (14% of black people by 1998, according to Fellner and Mauer). Recent studies indicate that one out of every three black men under the age of 30 has been through the judicial system in the last 25 years. To continually remove a sizable number of people from a community in this way constitutes a massive disruption of its social coherence. This disruption buttresses its criminalization as a community in white society's eyes, and rationalizes the disinvestment of capital and a general financial obstruction of community asset accumulation. Racial oppression, impoverishment, imprisonment and police impunity are all of a piece.

Ultimately, the increase in prison population has become one of the arguments, in social discourse, for further drug laws and racial profiling. It is a self-generating cycle. What is significant about it is that it is not perceived by white society at large as an extant injustice. Instead, more prisons are called for and accepted, again with a sense form of cultural familiarity ("how else are we going to deal with crime?"). This acceptance euphemizes itself in political campaigns as being "hard on crime" as opposed to addressing the social conditions that generate crime. It inhabits a white consensus in solidarity with the police and prison industry that have allowed for their untrammeled growth -- a consensus whose content is white racialized identity."

When turned on its head, white supremacists can use this current reality to support their arguments that Black people are in these positions because of "poor decisions," "a lack of personal responsibility," "a lack of work ethic," "laziness," or even some type of biological shortcoming, as is argued by so-called "race realists" (the modern term for pseudoscientific racism). Individualizing systemic problems is both a convenient way to blame victims of societal oppression, by basically ignoring history, and the result of a general lack of historical and practical knowledge regarding how systems shape lived realities for people within those systems.

The latter point helps explain why ignorance is naturally drawn to reactionary politics, and why fascism has always been the likely outcome for America. As most Americans suffer from extreme deficits in sociological, historical, economic, and systemic understanding, any reaction against personal misgivings (which are experienced by the working class as a whole under capitalism) will surely default into raw emotion for many. This is fascism's advantage, as it feeds off aimless frustrations. Ignorance is easily swayed; and guiding these frustrations into an intense anger against women, immigrants, Muslims, Black people, Brown people, or LGBTQ people, is easily accomplished.

Ignorance is also a harbinger to cowardice. Due to a lack of general understanding of the world around them, such people grow to see the world as a dangerous place. So they must back themselves into a corner, stockpile guns, become suspicious of any and all who do not look like them, and brace themselves for the globalist, Illuminati-led, Bilderberg-planned, Soros-funded, politically-correct, cultural-Marxist New World Order. Their lack of understanding leads them down a delusional rabbit hole, and their vulnerabilities and insecurities breed a cowardice that drives them to "punch down" at those who appear even more vulnerable than they. This authoritarian stance taken against class peers, and its need to dominate and brutalize marginalized people, is just waiting to get swept up in the fascist tide. And for many Americans, it inevitably has.

The Struggle Against Inevitability

Since the inevitability of American fascism is deeply rooted in both capitalism and white supremacy, any resistance against this fascist tide must be focused on destroying these two systems. Therefore, the only suitable orientation to embrace is one of a left-wing populist, internationalist, working-class, anti-racist ideology. The black-clad, masked anarchists and anti-fascists who have been physically confronting Trump's shock troops in the streets are firmly rooted in this orientation. They are the front lines of this struggle, but their effectiveness will ultimately be dependent on a mass, organized movement that includes political and labor-oriented groups on the left, and most importantly liberation groups that are rooted in justice for people of color and immigrant populations.

The upcoming war against American fascism will occur on multiple fronts. First, ground troops of the left (antifa and others ) are desperately needed to confront the violent, bigoted, gun-obsessed right wing that has formed under the banner of Americanism. These ground troops must be armed and proficient with guns, physically conditioned, and trained in hand-to-hand combat skills. A guerilla orientation influenced by the teachings of Che Guevara and Abraham Guillen , among others, and rooted in the approach of the original Black Panther Party and Fred Hampton's rainbow coalition (the BPP, Young Lords, and Young Patriots) is vital. Included in this need are community defense projects that can protect working-class people from the immediate dangers posed by right-wing militia groups, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and police.

Second, a multi-pronged attack against the capitalist system is needed. This must include a return to militant labor organizing and the inclusion and politicization of low-wage service sector workers. This must also include a left unity project that creates a coalition of anti-capitalist political, labor, and social justice groups that can effectively bring in and give the reins to immigrant laborers, the unemployed and underemployed, and specifically those who are most marginalized due to their racial, gender, or religious identity. A rejection of both capitalist political parties (Democrats and Republicans) is necessary in this struggle, as is a rejection of the lesser-evil approach to electoral politics that has brought the entire system rightward over the past 40 years.

Third, a struggle against government repression is unavoidable. The American government has a brutal history of crushing anti-capitalist dissent: the Haymarket martyrs , the execution of Joe Hill, the targeting and forced exile ofBill Haywood, the Palmer raids, the framing of Sacco and Vanzetti , McCarthyism, Communist blacklists, COINTELPRO , the MOVE bombing , the imprisonment of folks like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Oscar Lopez Rivera, and the forced exile of Assata Shakur , are a few examples. Legitimizing the movement with a formidable, nationally-based political wing can help with this. A third party rooted firmly in anti-capitalism is needed to serve as a vehicle for spreading class consciousness among an American working class that has been strategically and historically shielded from this. While electoral victories would be nearly impossible and largely ineffective in the current structure, political pressure and education is a crucial tool that should be used to create legitimacy and transparency.

This struggle must be carried out with an understanding of the role that liberals and many progressives play in protecting the fascist movement. While conservatives and those on the "alt" and far right represent a clear enemy, liberals can sometimes pose as allies when it comes to mainstream political rhetoric. History shows this is not the case. It shows that no matter how progressive their platforms may appear, liberals will always side with the capitalist system and, most importantly, with their own stability and comfort within the system. This has never been more evident than in their recent support of a proven corporatist and war hawk in Hillary Clinton, their red-baiting propaganda since the election, their blanket condemnation of anti-fascists, their constant cries against counter-violence, and their false equivalencies against "extremists on both sides." The fact that the Democratic Party sabotaged Bernie Sanders, a politician whose platform is nothing more than that of a New Deal liberal, shows how far to the right they have moved since the inception of neoliberalism. Nancy Pelosi's honest proclamation that "we're capitalists and that's just the way it is" while answering an unscripted question from a student at a January "Town hall" appearance perfectly captured the smug elitism of the party, especially when considering Pelosi herself is married to a wealthy "businessman/investor" and has a net worth in the range of $43 to $200 million. Capitalism has been great for her and her family; however, not so great for 200 million Americans. And now we have a war on our hands.

The Monarchy of Materialism: Understanding White Fragility

[PHOTO CREDIT: WARNER IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES]

By @badgaltranny

In my frustratingly liberal Ivy League classroom, I raised my hand.

My professor, a former editor in the New York Times, had opened class by saying that people are misguided in fearing Trump; most of his anti-immigration orders will be shot down by the courts.

I told her, calmly, that the fear is not misguided. Because of Trump, many immigration officers have become even more unabashed about their inhumane and often illegal practices.

She said I was challenging her knowledge so I relayed the real-life story of an unpunished criminal officer.

She framed it as a debate between her knowledge and mine. I told her, calmly, that she was arguing with facts.

It was this statement that she brought up in our one-on-one meeting a few days after she suggested I leave the classroom. She cited it as an example of why it was impossible to have a conversation with me. But facts are facts, and the story of the criminal officer was just one in a deluge of narratives reported even by her beloved New York Times.

If events like these happened only to me, this would be a boring story. But white people’s hostile emotional response to their knowledge being challenged—often marked by an accelerated heart rate, shortness of breath, and feelings of terror and rage—have become laughably predictable. 

One study calls it cultural anxiety. It’s characterized as “feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment.”

Apart from causing people to call 911 in fear of a hijab? It led 63 million people to vote for Donald Trump. Nationalist religious movements are popping up all across the world, not only in Europe but even in India and the Philippines, expanding wars and militarizing borders, murdering thousands inside their own nations, withdrawing reparations from their former colonies, and even closing borders to millions of climate refugees. If rising sea levels pose the greatest threat to our species, “cultural anxiety” is our greatest enemy.

Another name for this phenomenon is white fragility. When I packed my bags and finally left the East Coast to come home to the Midwest, I realized it’s just called white supremacy. Most people don’t like being called racist, and white liberals get especially triggered.

Someone who has some insight into this emotional phenomenon is Mark. He’s part of an anti-oppression education program on campus and agreed to speak under a pseudonym; he’s facilitated dozens of anti-racism workshops.

How does he help people move through their hostile emotions?

“By not making too much space for it in the workshops,” Mark says. “By acknowledging the emotions, and saying there are many reasons they may feel uncomfortable. Biases in their language, interactions, research, classes, conversations, you name it. I’m asking them to acknowledge that all of us have these implicit biases that have been culminating all our lives. In everything we consume.”

Yes, everything. Even for me.

I’m a transgender Indian-American woman, raised in an upper-class Hindu family in a beautiful American suburb. Since I wanted to find the truth at the root of white fragility, it brought me to an interesting dilemma: how do I escape my own biases?

I quickly realized it was both impossible and unnecessary. I’d say I’m pretty vocal in my low tolerance for bullshit even when it comes from myself. Instead of ignoring my life, how do I use it scientifically to understand cultural anxiety?

I followed three popular ways to find truth. The scientific method led me to the natural sciences. Studying history led me to social sciences. And, in what will probably draw tense laughter from the European-minded: meditation led me to the spiritual sciences.

And I’ll give you three guesses as to which of the three yielded the most reasonable answers. You might need all three.

I also encourage you to call me on any bullshit you find—I have so much to learn and I’d rather us help each other out. This article is long, so I’d section off about twenty minutes if you’re ready to listen.

“What is actually happening to a white person’s mind when they are called racist?”

The Oatmeal, a website for incredibly cute comics, explains it surprisingly well. In fact, if you haven’t already, read the comic quickly then come back when you see the last panel:

Good? Let’s dive in.

“Confusion,” Mark says, describing responses he’s seen from people who were asked to recognize they could be racist. “A lot of times they don’t know what to say. You can hear hints of defensiveness, but my words are granted a little more legitimacy as an educator in those spaces specifically.”

Responses I’ve gotten to notifying white people of their racism? Being called libelous, sensitive, abusive, violent, and manipulative. That I’m hurting them. One professor even threatened to sue me, comparing me to Donald Trump and reporting me as a threat to the university.

We’re seeing different realities. Even when I’m crying, they still view me with terror. There’s a chasm between intellectual understanding and self-reflection, and I’ve seen few people cross it.

In the mid-1900s, Polish social psychologist Henri Tajfel ran an experiment where participants would guess the lengths of a few lines. Unsurprisingly, errors in judgement were random. But when longer lines were labelled as ‘A’ and shorter ones, ‘B’, the errors got…less random.

They got uniform.

People thought the shorter ‘A’ sticks were longer than they actually were in reality, and that the taller ‘A’ sticks were shorter. Similarly, they thought the longer ‘B’ sticks were shorter than reality, and the shorter ‘B’ sticks as taller. The very act of categorization made participants see conformity to the category where there was none.

This example helps illustrate what happened. In one study, if uncategorized, Lines C and D were judged to be the same length. But once they were categorized, line C was inaccurately perceived as longer than line D. Source.

Henri Tajfel later became famous for his theories on social identity, saying that people tend to view themselves according to how society views them.

So: societies construct my view of others and myself.

I believe society’s ideas about me because inclusion provides me with assurance. Core beliefs (such as ‘A’ lines being taller than ‘B’ lines) are rarely questioned and always nurture my sense of reality. Members of “out-groups” are discarded.

But what if a social identity you are placed into…is not you?

I’m talking with a white-skinned professor of history at my university, whom I’ve named ‘Jane’. I’m trying to figure out what “white” even means. When I ask her what history has to say about this, she responds: “The meaning of white for whom?”

She points out how, in the nineteenth and twenty centuries, American newspapers—and even the Census—did not grant Whiteness to Jews, the Irish, or Eastern Europeans. And she notes how today, there is no Census category for Arab or Persian. Middle Eastern immigrants are legally white. What does white even mean then?

“I don't think there's a consensus,” Jane says. “So perhaps what has changed is who gets to be white, but what hasn't is the contested nature of that being.”

Even the natural sciences back her up. It is the scientific consensus that racial categories have no basis in biology. But this fact was not always the scientific consensus, and Jane’s words reminded me of something Mark had mentioned during our talk: the skull studies that made a lie scientific.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 'science' of categorization split humanity into five different subspecies, with the Caucasians being the most ‘handsome’. As you can see in the sketch of him below, he was incredibly biased. But you be the judge.

Craniometry, the study of skull measurements, formed the base of European scientific racism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. European scientists, most notably French scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, categorized the races as distinct species based on cranial circumferences. It is a fascinating case study not only in the psychology of Whiteness, but in the anti-human irrationality that continues to underlie Western sciences to this day.

Let’s put his skull studies in context.

Historically, the concept of race came after European elites began enslaving Africans.

Unable to rely on their own increasingly-poor, increasingly-angry citizens to run their plantations, their eyes fell upon Northern Africans. The Christian Church had already practiced hating North African Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition. This made the job of lazy European elites even easier.

Because North African Muslims rejected Christianity, Europeans convinced themselves that they weren’t human. Gone were the ideas that Africans were industrious, intelligent, and artistic peoples. To the European-minded, they became inhumane, heathens, irrational, backwards, threatening, childlike, animals. This allowed them to enslave the Muslims with little guilt.

But in the eighteenth century (think: French Revolution, American Revolution) plantation owners faced slave uprisings, revolutionary ideas of universal human rights, and the exciting possibility of creating a new nation independent from England’s taxes.

They sought to create a new nation but these lazy people needed trendy, secular, ‘enlightened’ ideas to justify enslaving Africans and murdering Native Americans. Thus: the very same process that Tajfel had noticed in his studies of social identification began—in reverse.

Imagine the sticks in Tajfel’s study. The tall ‘A’ and short ‘B’ ones. Now imagine if only the B’s have labels. The rest have no label. Place yourself in the shoes of one of those unlabeled lines. If Tajfel, who invented the ‘B’ category, told you that “you are a line because B is not a line,” it would be kind of terrifying on an existential level, right? Especially if you believe all lines matter.

The goal of the New England elites was to divide people to make profits for themselves. They feared unity. In one case, Bacon’s Rebellion—an armed rebellion by people of many classes and races against the Doeg tribe in Virginia and Governor William Berkeley—terrified them to their aristocratic core (they responded with the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705). But unable to find any actual cultural unity between the poorer European laborers and themselves, the proslavery rich simply created a ‘B’.

They targeted enslaved Africans. They called them “Black,” and scared the white-skinned poorer colonists about the “Black danger.” The elites then said to these frightened white-skinned immigrants, who were already anxious due to their unfamiliarity with the land, “Your enemy is my enemy, and we are friends. I’ll create a nation where you feel at home.”

It was a master stroke. Now, European elites could feign unity with poorer (and now, terrified) European colonizers despite having no unified culture with them. No ‘A’.

“White” came from this fear, a lowest common denominator between themselves and poorer white-skinned laborers, a manufactured friendship based on fear and greed. This ‘A’ would convince white-skinned settlers of their Manifest Destiny to murder thousands of Native Americans and expand white borders.

"American Progress" John Gast, 1872

The skull studies come from this eighteenth-century period. White-skinned people exaggerated differences in their own bodies to make them seem as opposite as possible from non-‘Caucasians’. Whiteness became a cultureless culture. All it could do was manufacture fear against any “other”.

But maybe “any” is the wrong word. Whiteness means, quite literally, anti-Blackness. Its existence depends upon Black people’s dehumanization. Paired with nationalism, Whiteness means indigenous genocide to this day. (I find it interesting when white-skinned people ask me what my ethnicity is, expect me to say ‘Indian,’ and stumble when I ask them what theirs is. They rarely say ‘British’ or ‘German’ and instead say ‘American’ or ‘White’ as if either of these labels have even a semblance of a unified culture.)

But Black people and Blackness are humane (surprise, surprise). They were the first race to be identified. Blackness can exist and has existed without Whiteness. But Whiteness without Blackness, without an “other”? It does not exist, has not existed, and can never exist.

Yet, in the post-Civil Rights era that we find ourselves in today, where we know we are all the same despite our skin color, where the USA even grants ‘freedom’ to all its uncriminalized citizens, shouldn’t racism be gone?

It should…if racism was about skin color.

But the issue was never about skin. It was always about making Wall Street money off the ‘other’. Whiteness creates an ‘other’, and othering hasn’t vanished and it never will. It simply hides. If you can’t find it, simply praise, unconditionally, the humanity of the “Other” and watch as the entire culture comes out of the shadows to revolt against you.

Whiteness is holding on for dear life to its last hope: to create a white nation where they, ironically, don’t feel like “others”. With tanks and fences, to take back “their” country from “others” whom they’ve leeched off since before July 4th, 1776.

For the Wall Street elites, this is perfect: cultural anxiety makes white-skinned people ignore Wall Street.

But a white nation will never be great or even succeed, if you’re looking for some truth.

When white-skinned people tell me to leave their country if I hate it so much, I feel a little bad for them because they don't know their nation is an illusion. Lies can exist only in the mind and a white culture has always been a rich man's lie. A plantation-era anxiety. As the great Fred Morten said, "Settlers always think they're defending themselves. That's why they build forts on other people's land. And then freak out over the fact that they are surrounded." Identities built upon an "other" eventually cannibalizes itself. Even if they end up murdering me in their anger, I'll pass happily, knowing they'll soon destroy themselves. 

But if Whiteness is a lie, why does critiquing it feel so…real?

Well, because it is.

Whiteness creates horrible living conditions for the “other”. Sapped the “other” of their food, water, shelter, and even their children and their bodies.

On a spiritual level? Plantation owners knew how to convince us that the “other” exists. Millions of us have spent our lives believing Whiteness has the divine power to actually rip our humanities from us if we don’t show them respect.

Exposing Whiteness for its lie traumatizes our sense of reality—how could I have believed in such a demonic white lie?

So was this it? Misery and guilt, the answer at end of the scholarly road?

Not quite.

Of my three initial processes, I still had one path left: meditation guided by my gurus. And suddenly cultural anxiety became almost laughably (if frustratingly) simple.

Touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing.

According to the European sciences, I have these senses which have their sense organs: skin, tongue, nose, eyes, ears.

But how can I sense my humanity? How can I sense my Self?

During the questionably-named Age of Reason, European scientists championed secularity. Things that are touchable, testable, smellable, seeable, and hearable—only those can be evidence for anything. Only those exist.

But it is other people’s tradition is to recognize immaterial thoughts as another sense, with its sense organ: the mind.

And what does the mind sense when it thinks, ‘I’?

There is a basic truth that I had doubted for so long: that the mind senses something. I’ve been calling it ‘humanity’. To observe this, all you need to do is meditate on your mind.

If you can see, close your eyes.

What do you see?

If you answered “nothing,” you are wrong. What you see is the undersides of your eyelids.

Sit with this reality. Try it for ten minutes. If you start feeling anxious, ask yourself: “Who is feeling anxious?” If negative thoughts storm in, simply watch them. Ground yourself in love for your Self.

Did you feel this bliss? If you did, I feel it too. In coming to terms with my transgender identity (a life-long process) I am pulling myself from myself using this precise method.

Other than ‘humanity,’ people have called it Consciousness, the soul, the Self, natural law, the wild, divinity, God, spirit, the universal, Allah, the Brahman, Time, the Buddha, Jehovah, Truth, Jesus, Oneness, the Holy Spirit, science, history, Shiva, I, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, the fourth dimension, the irrational…you get the picture. Truth inspires limitless love.

But Whiteness finishes where Christianity left off: it asserts that this divinity is exclusive.

In a stunning (and for me, foundational) 1980 spoken essay denouncing both capitalism and communism, Russell Means, an indigenous freedom fighter, said, “The European materialist tradition of desacredizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person.”

Russell Means was an Oglala Lakota activist from South Dakota and a prominent member of the American Indian Movement. He passed away in 2012.

I sometimes wonder what Darwin would say if I came up to him and said, “I am fully human.” How would he have convinced me of his materialism against my reason? The reasonableness of his rationality and the irrationality of my reason? Would he have asked for proof and then laughed if I presented myself?

This anxiety will never go away until the idea of an out-group vanishes. That is what we mean by spirituality, by Self-awareness. That I am not my ever-changing body, but the observer through it. It is the anxiety of Self-avoidance that protects the out-group in the first place. This fear gave birth to Whiteness. And it is with this existential anxiety that materialists colonize the world, create its governments and economies.

And when white people realize they are on this path to Self-destruction? There will be anxiety.

Yes. I think, by pledging themselves to the white culture, white-skinned people have come to dehumanize and avoid themselves.

It didn’t start off that way of course.

Prior to the revolutions of the 1700s, the Church answered the “Who am I?” question with divinity and secularity. Divinity is a separate entity: God. You are in God’s image. You are a child of God. You are human. You are human if you follow Jesus Christ the man—you are not if you don’t. The Church and Europe used “othering,” this false separation from the divine, this Hell, to terrorize people into terrorizing other people across the world. People who may have simply called “Jesus Christ” something else, something less material.

White-skinned people’s humanity itself was exploited, taken for granted, trivialized, ignored, and then: self-sabotaged.

“After all,” Russel Means says, “Europeans consider themselves godlike in their rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being; all else must be inferior.”

The European Enlightenment’s rationality, in Russell Means’ words, “picked up where Christianity ended.” The Church conflated Peter with Jesus and Jesus with Peter. It asserts that the Self, this divinity, is exclusive only to followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The European sciences assert that Truth does not even exist.

Christian versus heathen.

Instead, their sense of humanity came from the material world. Human versus animal. White versus Black. In-group versus out-group. A world where fewer and fewer people get to be fully human.

René Descartes, dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, believed that all living organisms are essentially biological robots - 'automaton' – and that humans alone have immaterial souls.

Why this madness?

For millennia, people in the South Asian peninsula have written thousands of texts and constructed full-blown universities (such as Takshashila) where they studied and continue to study the Self. The mind and the body as one.

(It is interesting to realize that extremely-similar scholarly endeavors happened all across the Americas too, before colonial conquistadores burned or appropriated every text, artefact, and spiritual vessel they could find. I talk about the South Asian peninsula simply because it is closer to my area of knowledge.)

Their fundamental realization? Consciousness is everywhere. Of everything.

A view of a Buddhist stupa in Takshahila, in modern-day Pakistan. Takshahila was founded around 1000 BCE and is considered some of the earliest (if not the earliest) universities in the world. The big caveat is – how do you define ‘university’? Students came to study over 64 disciplines, including grammar, philosophy, ayurveda, yoga, agriculture, surgery, politics, archery, warfare, astronomy, commerce, futurology, music, and dance. Yet, school fees were considered perverse. They had no degrees, examinations were considered superfluous, and the use of knowledge to earn a living was considered sacrilegious. Knowledge was considered sacred.

You would even categorize their fervor for Truth as religious…which would be inaccurate. Religion implies non-religion: secularity. But the secular does not exist. The more accurate term for our fervor would be a way of life. A culture. A mental outlook.

The European sciences are catching up to our ancestors’ eons-old realization.

The human species evolved from ape species, which came from rats, which came from lizards, which came from fish, which came from worms, which came from sponges, which came from small multi-cellular organisms, which came from single-cell organisms, which came from molecular reactions, which came from planets, which all came from the atoms of the Big Bang.

There is no ‘out-group’ in the entire universe, no line between human and non-human, soul and soulless, divine and secular. Exclusivity is the imagination of people who ignore their Selves.

My true identity, my humanity, does not depend upon any human opinion—even my own. I am. I always am.

That is what we mean by Self-awareness. By seeing true divinity when the monarchs of materialism beg us not to. By cutting down their lies. By slowing down (and thinking) when they insist that we speed up (and forgetting). Laughing at our ignorance. Loving our Selves by upending borders wherever people create it. Unity through material difference, not despite it.

In our present era, this means to include Blackness so unconditionally, to uplift indigenous peoples so thoroughly, to free ourselves from women’s silence so completely, that we upend everything that resists our Selves. To realize that seeing undocumented, criminalized, and imprisoned people as fully human is a radical proposition—and the fact that it is radical reveals just how ignorant we have become.

That we begin to heal ourselves and each other from the violence of our ignorance through repentance and reparations. Heal our humanity instead of our bodies which will decay regardless.

Self-doubt is the deceptively simple root of white fragility.

See, this is why this topic of cultural anxiety is so important even for people of color. Whiteness is not limited to the lighter-skinned.

Self-avoidance also gave birth to murderous forces: slavery, colonialization, to both the Hindu-regimented caste system and the famines in the Indian peninsula manufactured by the British. To the Trail of Tears, Manifest Destiny, to Whiteness, European rationalism, fascism, to the White, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu nationalists.

To borders and fences. Self-doubt gave birth to fears and hatreds eons old. To guilt instead of joyous repentance and reparations. To glorifying military states instead of glorifying welfare states.

Peace and borders are incompatible.

And when we realize we’ve been led to doubt ourselves our entire lives by elites? When we understand that we are living in a terrorist nation? Sure, we’ll be anxious. We feel lost. This anxiety is within us.

 It too shall pass. The climate, and the times, are a-changing

The Pedagogy of Hip Hop: Underground Soundtracks for Dissecting and Confronting the Power Structure

By Colin Jenkins

Disclaimer: The language expressed in this article is an uncensored reflection of the views of the artists as they so chose to speak and express themselves. Censoring their words would do injustice to the freedom of expression and political content this article intends to explore. Therefore, some of the language appearing below may be offensive to personal, cultural, or political sensibilities.

On the 16th track of Immortal Technique's Revolutionary, Volume 2, Mumia Abu-Jamal theorizes on the inherent contradictions between the lived reality of many Americans and the notion of homeland [in]security. In doing so, he explains how the musical phenomenon of hip hop captures these contradictions by displaying "gritty roots" that are bound up in systemic injustice and deep feelings of fear and hatred. These feelings, according to Mumia, engulf entire generations of children who have been betrayed by systems of capitalism and white supremacy, and their intricately constructed school-to-prison pipeline:

"To think about the origins of hip hop in this culture, and also about homeland security, is to see that there are at the very least two worlds in America. One of the well-to-do and another of the struggling. For if ever there was the absence of homeland security, it is seen in the gritty roots of hip hop. For the music arises from a generation that feels, with some justice, that they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison. They grew up hungry, hated, and unloved. And this is the psychic fuel that generates the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry. One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth to climb above the pit of poverty. In the broader society, the opposite is true. For here, more than any other place on earth, wealth is more widespread and so bountiful, that what passes for the middle class in America could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world. Their very opulent and relative wealth makes them insecure. And homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as saying military intelligence, or the U.S Department of Justice. They're just words that have very little relationship to reality. And do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon? Do you think duct tape and Kleenex and color codes will make you safe?"

In his short commentary, Mumia refers specifically to the Black community in the US - a community that has been ravaged from every angle through America's relatively short history: two and a half centuries of chattel slavery followed by various forms of legalized systems of servitude and second-class citizenship, including sharecropping , convict leasing , Jim Crow, and mass incarceration. A history consumed with betrayal after betrayal, complex layers of institutional racism carried out under the guise of legality, and a systematic ghettoization supported by both " white flight" and widespread discriminatory housing and employment practices. Mumia juxtaposes this unique experience to the "broader society," one that is riddled with insecurities stemming from "opulent and relative" wealth, to expose the irony of "homeland security," a term that he views as oxymoronic.

Mumia is correct in characterizing the reactionary temperament of both the American middle and upper classes - sects that both determine and maintain dominant culture. Broader society is molded by this temperament, which is buoyed by small pockets of socioeconomic comfort floating in a vast sea of instability that not only plagues the Black community in its never-ending struggle against both white supremacy and capitalism, but also poor and working-class white communities that have been similarly doomed by their forced reliance on wage labor. Despite what he describes as "bountiful wealth," American society has always been propped up on this hidden base of despair, felt by a majority of the population that exists below the façade. Since the 1980s, this façade has been slowly chiseled away as neoliberalism has successfully funneled wealth to the few at the top while creating a race to the bottom for everyone else, including those once deemed "middle class."

This race to the bottom has exposed the underbelly of instability through its attack on a fast-eroding, mostly-white middle class that now finds itself desperately seeking reasons for its newfound despair. While those of us at the bottom may welcome the company, in hopes that it will bring the critical mass needed to finally confront and bring down the capitalist system, it also signals trying times ahead. In being consistent with similar erosions of "relative and bountiful wealth" throughout history, the American demise brings with it a fairly high probability of a fascist tide. In fact, this tide has already begun to form, largely through millions of white tears dropping from the Tea Party, its Reaganite forerunners, the "alt-right," a surge of neo-Nazism and white nationalism, and Donald Trump's pied piper-like rhetoric that has pooled it all together.

While middle-class America comes crashing down along with the empire, the Black community remains steadfast in its centuries-long defensive posture. Despite facing an acute, structural oppression that is unparalleled in any other modern "industrialized" setting, and in spite of Mumia's sobering analysis, the Black community has in many ways survived and thrived like no other. This survival in the face of intense hatred has been expressed through many musical forms , from the early roots of rock n roll, Blues, and American Jazz to the hip-hop phenomenon that Mumia speaks of. This collective survival is perfectly captured in Tupac's poem,The Rose that Grew from Concrete, which tells the story of

…the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete
Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned how to walk without havin feet
Funny it seems but by keepin its dreams
It learned to breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
When no one else even cared.

In explaining the meaning of the poem, Pac summed up much of the African-American experience, as well as the reactionary temperament often directed at it from those in more privileged positions:

"You try to plant somethin in the concrete. If it grows, and the rose petal got all kind of scratches and marks, you not gonna say, "Damn, look at all the scratches and marks on the rose that grew from concrete." You gonna be like, "Damn! A rose grew from the concrete?!" Same thing with me… I grew out of all of this. Instead of sayin, "Damn, he did this, he did this," just be like, "Damn! He grew out of that? He came out of that?" That's what they should say… All the trouble to survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle they gave me. I'm just tryin to make somethin."

Pac's story also describes that of the entire American working class, as a collection of former slaves, indentured servants, peasants, and poor immigrants set up for failure by a capitalist system designed to exploit us all, collectively. The working-class struggle is tightly intertwined with the Black struggle. The Communist Party knew this long ago. The Industrial Workers of the World did as well. The original Black Panther Party also knew this, as did all those coming from the Black Radical Tradition in America: W.E.B. DuBois, the African Blood Brotherhood, Harry Haywood, the Revolutionary Action Movement, Frances M. Beal, Angela Davis, C.L.R. James, the Combahee River Collective, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Congress of African People, and so many others.

As this struggle commences and intensifies during what appear to be the end days of American Empire, underground hip hop provides us with a soundtrack that is laced with historical context, deep analysis, and valuable knowledge - all of which should be applied while moving forward. The "psychic fuel" that Mumia points to in his brief commentary, which "generates the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry" is far from misguided, and extends far beyond cathartic release. While in the mainstream, the Black Radical Tradition continues to be tragically mocked by identity politics , activist-celebrity tweeters pimping corporate brands , black liberation-themed credit cards , high-dollar-plate events, non-profit organizations, and the Democratic Party, its torch remains lit through the lyrics burning on underground hip-hop tracks. And this underground reflects the pulse of the streets, where tens of millions experience daily life in the underbelly of instability - not on Twitter, Facebook, or fundraising dinners at the Marriott.

Structural Oppression Under Capitalism

As resistance movements gain momentum in the days of Trump, an understanding of the disastrous effects of capitalism is necessary. Party politics are, as John Dewey once explained, the "shadow cast on society by big business (capitalism)." Politicians from both parties work within this shadow, delivering rhetoric to the masses before and after taking orders from their donors, sponsors, and corporate overlords. Regardless of who is in the highest office, whether it's an eloquent black President or a blustering billionaire, "the attenuation does not change the substance." As a popular Internet meme recently noted, the 'hood under Trump is the same as the 'hood under Obama, which was the same as the 'hood under Bush, which was the same as the 'hood under Clinton. Sadly, this sentiment could go on for as long as Presidents have occupied the white house. Politicians and presidents come and go, and nothing changes for most of us; because, quite frankly, it is not supposed to. Politics serve capitalism; and capitalism does not serve us.

"It's like an open-air prison and it remained packed"

Hip hop serves as historiography in this sense, documenting the conditions of neighborhoods throughout the US for the past four decades, examining the histories behind multi-generational poverty, and seeking ways to address the dire situations many find themselves in. Ironically, the rise of hip hop paralleled the rise of the neoliberal era, a period that has been marked by an intensification of the capitalist system. During this time, things for most have at best remained stagnant, and at worst become increasingly disastrous. The hook in Erykah Badu's The Cell (2008) captures this lived experience in sobering fashion:

We're not well
We're not well
We can't tell

Brenda done died with no name
Nickel bag coke to the brain
Will they ever find the vaccine?
Shitty-damn-damn-baby-bang
Rich man got the double barrel
Po' man got his back to the door
Code white stands for trouble
Shots from the po-po (blah blah)

Jean Grae's Block Party , the 4th track on her 2002 album Attack of the Attacking Things, provides an intimate glimpse into the state of Black communities during this time:

I don't wanna preach or come off bitter, this is a commentary auditory
Editorial, about the state of things, state of mind and state of being
What the fuck is goin on? How the fuck we gonna make it out?
It's hectic, from asbestos filled classrooms
To the stench of death that's still in New York
The air is thick with it, but it reaches further
Like the world murder rate

While illustrating the chronic conditions found in many communities, Grae immediately offers insight into possible solutions rooted in consciousness. Without actually saying it, her lyrics brilliantly dip into a structural analysis that calls for abandoning capitalist culture and realizing the tragic ironies in seeking individual materialistic goals. In doing so, there is an underlying theme to escape values that have been implanted into not only predominantly Black communities, but also working-class communities as a whole:

We need to globalize, further spread on this earth
To appreciate the full value of individual worth
To realize how ridiculous the thought of ownership is
And protectin your turf - that's bullshit man
That's how we got colonized
Missionaries create foreign schools and change the native way & thinkin
So in ten years, we can have a foreign Columbine
In some small village in the Amazon, c'mon man

Grae's second verse masterfully ties together a narrative based in seeking a collective consciousness while avoiding a house-slave mentality that aims to, as she puts it, "chill with rich white folks." Again, while directed toward members of the Black community, Grae's commentary is undeniably relative to the working-class struggle in its entirety, especially in terms of how the "rags-to-riches," so-called "American Dream" is framed strictly within individual pursuits of wealth and hyper-consumerism. Ultimately, as Grae suggests, this mentality must be shed through deeper calls for knowledge, community, and shared struggle:

It's every man for himself
That's why the black community is lackin in wealth, there's no unity
We soon to be chillin with rich white folk
And that means that we made it
Let our kids go hungry before our wardrobe is outdated

…If the system's corrupt, then change it
Fought for the right to vote, don't even use it
Forget electoral winnin
The way the world's goin, we in the ninth inning
Heh, and we still aren't up to bat
Niggas is happy just to have the rights to sit on the bench
Like floor seats is alright, and that's as far as we reach
Materialistic values, not morals, that's what we teach
I see it in the youth, hungry for fame and money
Not for knowledge and pursuit of the truth
Pick up a book or a newspaper
Take a free class in politics or human behavior

Talib Kweli and Rapsody's Every Ghetto , the 2nd track on Kweli's 2015 album Indie 500, echoes Grae's track in addressing the systematic ghettoization of the Black community under the intertwined tandem of capitalism and white supremacy. Crucially, the track challenges the often-mistaken attempt to characterize ghetto life as a monolithic existence, seemingly warning against the fetishization of the black struggle while reflecting Pac's poem of the concrete rose and highlighting the unique struggle and persistence of the Black working class. Kweli's bridge builds on Grae's Block Party narrative, celebrating the communal potential of struggling communities:

I'm good walkin' in every ghetto around the world
The hood often embrace ya when you profound with words
I say the shit they relate to, I keep it down to Earth
Other rappers sound like they hate you, them niggas sound absurd
So when they walk through the ghetto they get their chain snatched
They gotta talk to the ghetto to get their chain back
It's like an open-air prison and it remain packed
Nothin' but straight facts

Kweli's initial verse jumps directly into a layered analysis, with the first bar alone touching on chronic malnourishment, poor education, smothering crime, gentrification, and a culture of anti-consciousness:

Every ghetto, every city, like Ms. Hill
They way too used to the missed meals
Hard to concentrate, hard to sit still
Murder rate permanent place in the top 10
We live here, these hipsters drop in
You hear them barrels cockin'
They say consciousness mean a nigga ain't rugged
Until they get beat within an inch of it

Rapsody closes the track with a powerful verse, filled with structural and cultural critiques all tied to capitalism and white supremacy. Her verse is laced with innuendo in a masterful play on words as she illustrates the lived reality of generations of Black Americans who have been systematically targeted by America's settler-colonial project, pointing to everything from police terror and the destruction of the Black family unit to the false promises of individualized pursuits of wealth.

Indie 5, for the people by the people
Ya-ya, giddy up, who got the juice now?
Snatch it out your kiddies cups
The shit you gave us watered down
This one's for Basquiat
They be brushin' with death, uh
Is this The Art Of War for cops?
We double-dutchin' duckin' shots
Every home ain't got a Pops
Every man ain't sellin' rocks
A different will to win here
Different from switchin' cars
They pray that we switch our bars
To a fiend from a metaphor
Worldstar, Worldstar
Lotta love and this life hard
Keep us prayin' like "oh God"
Illegally thievery think us peelin' off easily
Frustrated we hate it
That's why we scream out "nigga we made it"
It's an odd future they ain't know we was all some creators
Somethin' from nothin' was told Kings walk and man you frontin'
For the people and by the people but them over money
I'm on my Viola Davis here, workin' for justice
How you get away with murder? Be a cop and just kill us
How we supposed to not catch feelings?
Innocent lives, boy we got kids in these buildings
I'm on my Viola Davis, it's what you call a defense
For all the drama they gave us I'm spittin' Shonda Rhimes wit
Too high for you like ganja, that's what Shonda rhyme with
I holla back in the Hamptons, you still black if you rich
Spread love ain't just the Brooklyn way, it's universal
360 and the nine lives, whoa, what a circle

"Keep it movin' on"

While systemic oppression has plagued many generations of working-class Americans, especially non-white (as noted by Grae, Kweli and Rapsody), the middle class has only begun to feel the pressure of the capitalist system. The American middle class is an anomaly in history. Its formation defied the internal mechanics of capitalism, a system that is designed to favor the privileged few who have access to enough capital to own the means of production. This anomaly was beneficial for America's capitalist class, in that it allowed for a slick rebranding of capitalism as a system of "freedom" and "liberty." For decades, the American middle class was held up as the ultimate advertisement for a system that we were told allowed for social mobility through "hard work." These fables became so strong that an entire century was spent trying to shape a benevolent form of capitalism through government intervention (Keynesianism) and a robust Welfare State. Because of its relative success, mainly due to US imperial endeavors abroad, the capitalist system was not only propped up, but it was even sold to the masses as "the only alternative." The era of neoliberalism ended all of that. As capitalism's internal mechanics were unleashed during this period, so too were its natural consequences - capital accumulation for the elites, and mass dispossession for the people.

While mainstream media outlets continue to push a tired narrative, hip hop has shed some light on the real effects of capitalism. Vinnie Paz's 2010 track Keep Movin' On provides insight into these effects, and especially how they relate to the American worker. The first verse informs us in two ways. First, Paz illustrates the workers' role in the capitalist system, which is merely to serve as a tool to be used and exploited until no longer needed. In this role, we are not considered as human beings with families, needs, and inherent rights; we are only valuable as long as we provide owners with an avenue of extracting surplus labor from us for their profit. Second, the verse specifically describes the plight of the American manufacturing worker and the demise of middle-class jobs over the past 40 years due to globalization, corporate offshoring, and free trade agreements - all elements of the proliferation of capitalism in the neoliberal era:

I lost my job at the factory and that's disastrous
They said it's due to regulation and higher taxes
They ain't give me no notice. They knocked me off my axis
I can't pay the electric bill. It's total blackness
I suggested some incentives for innovation
But that was met with resistance like it's a sin of Satan
I'm losing my patience over here. I'm sick of waiting
And I ain't never expect to be in this situation
And the manufacturing jobs are fading fast (Damn)
Can't do nothing else. I should've stayed in class
I have to wait till summertime to cut the blades of grass
I have this little bit of money. Have to make it last
I have children to feed. I have a loving wife
I had a hard time coming that was nothing nice
I keep asking myself what am I doing wrong
And they just look at me and tell me "Keep it movin' on"

"Kill my landlord"

Along with massive unemployment and underemployment, the working class is also constantly faced with insecure housing situations. Landlordism is a natural byproduct of a capitalist system which seeks to commodify basic human needs such as food, clothing, housing, and healthcare for profit. Under this system, the few who can afford to own multiple properties are allowed to exploit the many who can barely afford basic shelter for themselves and their families. Because of this, many of us go our entire lives without ever establishing a stable home environment.

As of 2017, this natural housing crisis has reached a point where it's being labeled an epidemic even by mainstream sources. As rent continues to soar , so do evictions. " As of 2015 , more than 20 million renters-more than half of all renters in the U.S.-were cost burdened, meaning they spent at least at least 30 percent of their income on rent. That's up from almost 15 million in 2001. And while rents have risen 66 percent since 2000, household incomes have only risen 35 percent." In 2015, an estimated 2.7 million Americans faced eviction. Median rent has increased by more than 70% since 1995, while wages have stagnated for almost 30 years, and jobs that pay a living wage have disappeared during this same period. Landlords will go to great lengths to throw families and children out in the streets, sometimes even for falling behind one month on rent. "A landlord can evict tenants through a formal court process," explains Matthew Desmond , "or they can choose cheaper and quicker ways" to boot the families, such as "paying them a couple of hundred dollars to vacate by the end of the week" or even by removing the front door of the home. In order to protect this for-profit housing system from total collapse, the federal government uses numerous programs to assist people, including public housing, rental assistance, and even massive tax subsidies for homeowners. Despite this, many families are cold-heartedly exploited and discarded by landlords who want nothing more than to profit off this forced, human desperation. After living such an existence, The Coup's 1993 track Kill My Landlord , which featured the less-known rap duo Elements of Change, is surely to serve as a long-standing anthem for many:

Overlord of the concrete jungle but I'm humble
As I witness my opponent crumble
Like the shack that I live in the house that I rent from him
Roach infested I'm sure that the rats are nesting
The heat doesn't work he still hasn't checked it
Disrespected me for the last time
I loaded up the nine stepping double time
Bullseye, Another point scored
Right between the eyes of my landlord

All who have relied on rental property to live can certainly relate to the undignified relationship between landlord and tenant. Like bosses, landlords exploit us as resources. And the capitalist system not only allows them the power to do this on mass scale, it actually supports their rights with force if necessary. Our collective desperation is their individual gain. And our forced dependency on them leaves us with no leverage against their power. The second verse of The Coup's classic track reflects on this slave-like existence brought on by capitalism and landlordism:

So me I'm chilling at the table with my family
Hypothetically trying hard to keep my mind off the economy
Yeah I know the reason I find it hard to pass the test
Call me a victim cause I'm another brother jobless
Every day it seems like I'm moving closer to the streets
PG&E repo'ed the lights and my fucking heat
The situation's getting hard for me to handle
Had to trade my Nike's to the store to buy some candles
Last to first and I'm a-hunted and a ho I know
The man is going to come and throw me in the cold
Tears in my eye as I'm thinking of place to stay
While I'm staring at the freebie cheese up in my plate
I heard a bang bang bang knocking at my door
I looked up it was my motherfucking landlord, let him in quick
Followed by the sheriff deputy trying to come in
Every po on my property, staring me down
Mugging hard up in my family's face
While they're sitting at the table trying to say grace
But before I make this one my last meal
Any moves, yeah I'm looking for the damn kill
I said it twice in case he didn't hear me though
Sucker made a move evidently when he hit the floor
So now I'm in cuffs for the crimes I've committed
Maybe I'll go to jail, heh, or maybe I'll get acquitted
But the fact still stands I killed my landlord dead
Now I've got three meals and a roof over my head

In the third verse, Boots Riley connects the inherent injustices of landlordism to not only capitalism, but also to European conquest and the process of primitive accumulation that allowed settler-colonists to create wealth from the Atlantic Slave Trade and Indigenous holocaust. There is an overt racial component to this process, as descendants of former slaves are still forced to depend on descendants of former slave-owners for basic needs. Recognizing the injustices and illegitimacy of this system, and seeking revolutionary change, is crucial. Boots delivers knowledge:

Cash is made in lump sums as street bums eat crumbs
So I defeat scum as I beat drums
Rum-tiddy-tum like the little drummer boy song
Here comes the landlord at the door, ding dong
Is it wrong that my momma sticks a fat-ass thong
Up his anal cavity cause he causes gravity to my family
Says we gotta pay a fee so we can stay and eat
In a house with light and heat
The bastard could get beat, stole the land from Chief Littlefeet
House is built on deceit, got no rent receipt
So I'm living in the street and I'm down now
Don't you know to not fuck with the Mau Mau?
Notice of eviction, four knuckle dental affliction
Friction, oh did I mention
You'll be finger licking as I handicap your diction
And you say you're not a criminal like Tricky Dick Nixon?
While we're fixing to impose rent control
We didn't vote on it, this land wasn't bought or sold
It was stole by your great granddaddy's ganking
Osagyefo said they call it primitive accumulation
Plantations, TV stations wealth is very stationary
I learned the game and I became a revolutionary
Scaring the corporate asses cause the masses are a loaded gun
Killing the world banking and international monetary fund
I'm done, we're done with what you've done
For twenty-five score we've got a battle cry
Kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my
Kill my, kill my, kill my, kill my landlord

While representing a main staple of capitalism, landlordism also mimics the dynamics of settler societies in that settlers gain a disproportionate amount of land ownership at the expense of the mass dispossession of native populations. In many ways, modern landlords in the US represent the traditional colonizer, often buying up property in "foreign" communities for the sole purpose of exploiting masses of renters through dispossession and forced reliance. As in the process of gentrification, landlords dispossess thousands of poor and working-class people in their never-ending pursuit for more and more property to commodify. E-Roc finishes the track strong, calling on a figurative Mau Mau rebellion to "kill" the modern version of colonizers.

I need six hundred dollars by the end of the week
My body is cold, dirty socks on my feet
Not a black sheep, but who's the creep
Trying to put me on the street while I'm trying to sleep?
I wanna kill my landlord, murder in the first degree
If there's something wrong he wants to blame me
Wants to be a threat so he carries a gun
Well I pack a 9 cause I can't trust 911
Son of a gun, I'm the one who cuts the grass
Wash the windows and he still wants me to kiss his ass
But I laugh cause America's not my home
My landlord took me away from where I belong
But it's a sad song so I face reality now
Pick up the phone and now here comes the Mau Mau
To the rescue, down with The Coup
Yo landlord, I've got a little message for you
I'm going cuckoo, fuck a machete or sword
E-Roc is on a mission to kill my landlord

How the Capitalist/Imperialist War Machine Works Against Us

On Track 7 of Immortal Technique's 2005 Bin Laden remix album, Mumia Abu-Jamal once again spits knowledge, this time providing brilliantly poetic commentary framing capitalism and imperialism as " a war versus us all ":

The war against us all
This war in Iraq isn't the end; it's the beginning of Wars to come
All around the world at the whim of the Neo-Cons in the White House
This is the Bush Doctrine come to life; War, war and more war!
War brought to you by the big corporate-masters who run the show
This isn't just a War on Iraqis or Afghanis or Arabs, or even Muslims
It is ultimately a War on us all.
That's because the billions and billions that are being spent on this War
The cost of tanks, rocketry, bullets and yes even salaries
For the 125, 000 plus troops, is money that will never be spent on;
Education, on healthcare, on the reconstruction of crumbling public housing
Or to train and place the millions of workers
Who have lost manufacturing jobs in the past three years alone
The War in Iraq is in reality; a war against the nations' workers and the poor
Who are getting less and less
While the big Defense industries and making a killing, literally.
What's next Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela?
We've already seen the corporate media
Play megaphone to the White House, to build and promote a War based on lies
War is utilized by the imperialists first and foremost, to crush internal enemies
We're seeing the truth of its insight
When we see the sad state of American education
The rush of seniors to buy affordable medications from the Canadians
Because American drugs are just too expensive
The threat of privatization of Social Security
And the wave of repression that comes with an increasing Militarized Police;
This is a War on all of us
And the struggle against War is really a struggle for a better life
For the millions of folks who are in need here in this country!
The fight against the War is really to fight for your own interest
Not the false interests of the Defense Industry
Or the corporate media or the White House
Down with the Wars for empire.

Immortal Technique's subsequent track, Bin Laden , is a masterful critique of US imperialism and the corollary effects of government control on American citizens. Written during the W. Bush administration and the Iraq War, the track touches on the fear-mongering that led to the Patriot Act, the hypocrisy of American politicians, and the CIA's dealings in the Middle East during the 1980s, which created and strengthened groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Tech begins by contrasting the lived realities of most American citizens with the artificial realities disseminated from the power structure and its calls for blind patriotic loyalty:

I pledge no allegiance, fuck the President's speeches!
I'm baptized by America and covered in leeches.
The dirty water that bleaches your soul, and your facial features.
Drowning you in propaganda that they spit through the speakers.
And if you speak about the evil that the government does.
The Patriot Act will track you to the type of your blood.
They try to frame you and say you was trying sell drugs.
And throw a federal indictment on niggas to show you love.
This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians.
Look at they mansions, then look at the conditions you live in.

He wraps up the first verse by summarizing US foreign policy during the 1980s, specifically referring to the substantial financial and military aid provided to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during their prolonged war against the Soviet Union. During this time, Osama Bin Laden was a US ally who was a beneficiary of much of this aid, as was Saddam.

All they talk about is terrorism on television.
They tell you to listen.
But they don't really tell you they mission.
They funded al-Qaeda.
And now they blame the Muslim religion.
Even though Bin Laden was a CIA tactician.
They gave him billions of dollars and they funded his purpose.
Fahrenheit 9/11? That's just scratching the surface!

…And of course Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons.
We sold him that shit after Ronald Reagan's election.
Mercenary contractors fighting in a new era
Corporate military banking off the war on terror.

The fact that the US government once supported and funded Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein is not the main point in Tech's lyrical thesis, but rather the context that leads us into deeper analysis on US foreign policy, the military industrial complex, and the rise of Islamophobia and the War on Terror. By showing how loyalties easily sway, Tech is showing us how the purpose of US interventions abroad are not really about "protecting freedom" or "defending us." Rather, US foreign policy is a chess game played by the capitalist ruling class for the purpose of engineering and maintaining the US Empire , which in essence is serving as the forerunner and protector of the global capitalist system. So-called terrorism and "Muslim extremism" are nothing more than a manufactured fears designed to scare a sizable portion of the American public into supporting these destructive efforts abroad. Samuel Huntington's 1996 book Clash of Civilizations is often looked to as the main driver in this farce of a cultural/religious global war. In supporting Tech's message, Noam Chomsky talks about the obvious contradictions of Huntington's thesis here , as Edward Said further discredits it here . A simple search of stock reports for major weapons manufacturers over the past decade shows how profitable the "war on terror" has been. Understanding geopolitics is often as easy as following the money.

Part of Tech's second verse includes a brilliant critique of state nationalism and patriotism, illustrating how and why government and capitalist interests are not the same as the peoples' interests, despite being advertised as such. While these wars spread and intensify, most of us continue to struggle.

They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam
But that's bullshit, I'll show you why it's totally wrong
'Cause if another country invaded the hood tonight
It'd be warfare through Harlem and Washington Heights
I wouldn't be fighting for Bush or White America's dream
I'd be fighting for my people's survival and self-esteem
I wouldn't fight for racist churches from the South, my nigga
I'd be fighting to keep the occupation out, my nigga

…. 'Cause innocent people get murdered in the struggle daily
And poor people never get shit and struggle daily

In a remixed version of this track that includes hip-hop vets Chuck D and KRS-One, Tech tweaks the lyrics to this verse in order to show how the "clash of religions" narrative, as highlighted by Chomsky and Said, is falsely perpetrated:

They say that terrorism revolves around the Qur'an
But that's stupid, I'll show you why it's totally wrong
Cause if this country was invaded and crumbled
I'd turn Harlem into a Columbian jungle
And I wouldn't be fighting for a Christian nation
I'd be fighting for survival from extermination
I wouldn't fight for Fox News, them racist niggas
I'd be fighting for the hood, for the faceless niggas

Tech also addresses the hypocrisy of America's fundamentalist Christian sect, which strongly supports the Republican Party, the clash of civilizations/religion narrative, the Israeli Apartheid state, and military interventions abroad. Christian fundamentalism in the US plays an important role as a conduit to white supremacy and class warfare, as seen in its common stance against the interests of both the Black community and the immigrant community, as well as the poor and working-class communities altogether. This conduit has shown itself in the Republican Party's four-decade-long Southern Strategy and the rise of Donald Trump's presidency, which has brought with it overt elements of white supremacy, or as Tech puts it, "devils that run America like 'Birth of a Nation,' a popular white-supremacist propaganda film from 1915:

Government front religious, but their heart is empty
Like a televangelist preaching out of his Bentley
Calling abortion murder in a medical building
But don't give a fuck about bombing Iraqi children
Talking like units in the fucking libretto
Look at their mansions and look at your suburban ghetto
The gulag, the new hood where they send us to live
Cause they don't give a fuck about none of our kids
That's why Blacks and Latinos get the worst education
While devils run America like "Birth of a Nation"
Affirmative action ain't reverse discrimination
That shit is a pathetic excuse for reparations

Fake News, Structural Misinformation, and How the Ruling Class Control Politics

The notion of "fake news" has become a prominent theme in American politics due to Donald Trump's constant use of the term to explain what he views as his unfair treatment and misinterpretation by some media outlets. Ironically, the term is also being used by liberal opponents of Trump to claim that Russia had influenced the Presidential election in Trump's favor. The Washington Post even went as far as publishing a report citing "anonymous groups" to list dozens of online news sources that allegedly served as "instruments of Russian propaganda" during the 2016 Presidential race. Despite some backpedaling on the initial article (to include an editor's note and the removal of some websites from the list), liberal-leaning media outlets like the Washington Post and MSNBC have persisted with this seemingly hysterical and bizarre Russophobic angle to attempt to discredit Trump's presidency. As if Trump's personal history, business dealings, fascist rhetoric, narcissism, constant lies, and hyper-capitalist policy platform are not bad enough.

There are some very interesting points to take from this liberal narrative. One is regarding the corporate media itself, which has both perpetuated the allegations of "fake news" and been accused of delivering it. Ironically, Trump is correct in referring to these news sources as fake. But they are not fake for the reasons he claims they are fake - which is only regarding how they portray things related to him. They are fake because they ceased being news agencies decades ago. They are now part of the entertainment industry. They are concerned with ratings and advertising profit, not with delivering information to the public. Information does not sell, sensationalism does. Fox News knows this just as much as MSNBC and CNN know this. To earn profit, you need ratings. To get ratings, you need people to tune into your channel. To get people to tune into your channel, you need drama, controversy, fear, sex, shock, sensationalism; in other words, entertainment.

Another point is regarding corporate news as a de facto fourth branch of government. Often referred to throughout history as the fourth estate, media and press journalism have long been relied on to provide a valuable fourth branch of checks and balances in the US. However, as time has gone on, rather than uncovering conflicts of interest, exposing backroom deals, and delivering investigative journalism, the media in the US has become both complicit and indifferent in and to government corruption. This was never more evident than in the months leading up to the Iraq War, which according to Australian journalist John Pilger , may have never happened if journalists had done their job of uncovering truths in the face of, and in spite of, power:

"…had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic State might not now exist."

Media collusion with the power structure has been a central theme to the work of Pilger, who has consistently tied the media's full institutional compliance to what is properly referred to as "the deep state" or "invisible government" through the proliferation of propaganda . This was also the main theme of Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, as well as the subsequent 1992 documentary by the same name. According to Chomsky and Herman, mass media in the US "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship , and without overt coercion." Which is to say that profit-driven news not only seeks to appease popular narratives, but also will toe the government line in return for continued access or exclusive scoops, all of which are determined by government officials.

Immortal Technique's 2003 track, The 4th Branch , fortifies the work of Pilger, Chomsky, and Herman by illustrating how the media and its propaganda serve the ruling-class narrative. Released in the aftermath of 9-11 and during the beginnings of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tech weaves multiple theses into a central theme of propaganda versus reality. The hook sums up the track:

It's like MK-ULTRA, controllin' your brain
Suggestive thinking, causing your perspective to change
They wanna rearrange the whole point of view of the ghetto
The fourth branch of the government, want us to settle
A bandanna full of glittering, generality
Fightin' for freedom and fightin' terror, but what's reality
Read about the history of the place that we live in
And stop letting corporate news tell lies to your children

The opening verse introduces us once again to Huntington's clash-of-civilizations narrative and the role of Evangelical Christians in pushing forth this narrative. Tech focuses on the moral bankruptcy of Christian fundamentalism in the US and how US foreign policy is continuously designed on a base of hypocrisy and misinformation, carried out by agents of the capitalist class:

The voice of racism preachin' the gospel is devilish
A fake church called the prophet Muhammad a terrorist
Forgetting God is not a religion, but a spiritual bond
And Jesus is the most quoted prophet in the Qu'ran
They bombed innocent people, tryin' to murder Saddam
When you gave him those chemical weapons to go to war with Iran
This is the information that they hold back from Peter Jennings
Cause Condoleezza Rice is just a new age Sally Hemings

The remainder of the first verse continues the critique on conservative ideology and Christian fundamentalism, tying them into the ultimate hypocrisies perpetrated in the founding of the United States. The miseducation that most of us are subjected to through years of formal education interplay with Tech's exposure of the public misinformation that disseminates from media sources, all of which combine to produce a hidden history of the US that is a perfectly pliable tool firmly in the hands of the ruling class:

I break it down with critical language and spiritual anguish
The Judas I hang with, the guilt of betraying Christ
You murdered and stole his religion, and painting him white
Translated in psychologically tainted philosophy
Conservative political right wing, ideology
Glued together sloppily, the blasphemy of a nation
Got my back to the wall, cause I'm facin' assassination
Guantanamo Bay, federal incarceration
How could this be, the land of the free, home of the brave
Indigenous holocaust and the home of the slaves
Corporate America, dancin' offbeat to the rhythm
You really think this country, never sponsored terrorism
Human rights violations, we continue the saga
El Savador and the contras in Nicaragua
And on top of that, you still wanna take me to prison
Just cause I won't trade humanity for patriotism

Returning to Vinnie Paz's track, Keep Movin' On, we see the experiences and views of an American soldier, handpicked from the working class to serve in illegal and immoral wars and occupations abroad. The verse touches on everything from the recruitment process and the brainwashing effects of patriotism to the gruesome effects of serving as tools of war for the capitalist ruling class :

I signed up cause they promised me some college money
I ain't the smartest motherfucker but I'm not a dummy
They told me I would be stationed in places hot and sunny
I had a lot of pride. Motherfuckers got it from me
These people over here innocent. They never harmed me
My sergeant tried to convince me that they would try to bomb me
I feel like an outsider stuck inside this army
Everybody brainwashed. American zombies
I ain't realized how much it set me back
Until I lost my leg and then they sent me back
I don't have anything now. I'm left with scraps
From a government who created AIDS, invented crack
People told me not to join. I tried to prove 'em wrong
Now I'm homeless and I'm cold without no food thas' warm
I keep asking myself, "What did I do that's wrong?"
And the government telling me, "Keep it movin' on"

Tech's closing comments on the 4th Branch summarizes the class-component that shapes the military industrial complex, a system designed to create, maintain, and protect private profit. Echoing Paz's verse on the experience of soldiers, Tech illustrates our role in this system while touching on the constant propaganda we are bombarded with, which pushes this narrative of "we," as if "we" have anything in common with the American ruling/capitalist class and their servants in mass media.

The fourth branch of the government AKA the media
Seems to now have a retirement plan for ex-military officials
As if their opinion was at all unbiased
A machine shouldn't speak for men
So shut the fuck up you mindless drone
And you know it's serious
When these same media outfits are spending millions of dollars on a PR campaign
To try to convince you they're fair and balanced
When they're some of the most ignorant, and racist people
Giving that type of mentality a safe haven
We act like we share in the spoils of war that they do
We die in wars, we don't get the contracts to make money off 'em afterwards
We don't get weapons contracts, nigga
We don't get cheap labor for our companies, nigga
We are cheap labor, nigga
Turn off the news and read, nigga
Read... read... read

Tech's final verse is powerfully connected to liberation movements of the past, echoing among other the great Irish socialist, James Connolly, and his call for international, working-class solidarity during the beginnings of World War I. In his A Continental Revolution (1914) , Connolly sums up the profit motive and class-basis of war:

"… [in war] the working class are to be sacrificed that a small clique of rulers and armament makers may sate their lust for power and their greed for wealth. Nations are to be obliterated, progress stopped, and international hatreds erected into deities to be worshipped.

… against the patriotism of capitalism - the patriotism which makes the interest of the capitalist class the supreme test of duty and right - I place the patriotism of the working class, the patriotism which judges every public act by its effect upon the fortunes of those who toil.

To me, therefore, the socialist of another country is a fellow-patriot, as the capitalist of my own country is a natural enemy."

"Fake news" is simply propaganda constructed through ruling-class channels to boost systems and cultures that support the power structure. In other words, it is the status quo. It is nothing new. It happens rather naturally, flowing from concentrations of money and power. Regarding the newfound liberal version of "fake news," the final point to consider relates to the idea of an outside influence on American politics. Long before the Russia hysteria surfaced, the American political system had been bought and sold numerous times over. To suggest that politicians from either major party ever represented the interests of American people is incredibly naïve. Campaign financing and corporate lobbying determine who wins political races and which legislation is introduced and passed in Congress. Long before Russia was accused of influencing elections, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms were proven to influence elections. Long before Trump supposedly got a boost from Putin, official US policy had been directly shaped by Israeli interests in the Middle East.

Access to oil has always determined foreign policy, access to capital for big business has always determined economic policy, and the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision has ensured that the Kochs', Soros', Gates', and Buffetts' of the world will always hold more political weight within the electoral system than 100 million voters combined, if they so choose. Whether it's Goldman Sachs, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Koch brothers, George Soros, or Putin, the American people have never had a say in what the political machine does or doesn't do. This fact renders the Trump-Russia hysteria as moot. Any real sense of US national interests has long been replaced by the global capitalist order, if they ever truly existed at all. In terms of political empowerment and self-determination for the working-class majority within the US, a foreign president is no different than any number of nameless American millionaire hedge-fund donors.

The Seamless Political Machine and the Failures of Identity Politics: From Reagan to Trump

Within electoral politics, lesser-evilism has become the dominant stance for at least half of the American population. For individual voters, the 2-party duopoly has been mostly abandoned as identifications with either party have reached near-historic lows . As of 2015, nearly half of registered voters identify as something other than Republican or Democrat. However, despite this overwhelming rejection of the 2-party system, many of these voters continue to choose what they view as the "lesser evil" in voting for candidates from one of the two major parties.

Since the Reagan administration and introduction of a seamless political machine based in neoliberalism (an intensification of capitalism), presidential administrations regardless of party have been almost indistinguishable. Despite this seamless identity that's emerged, many voters still insist on claiming differences between the two corporate parties, even if it means choosing what they view as the lesser-evil. The fact that some public radical intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis have proposed lesser-evilism lends this direction some undue credence. However, when we step back and analyze the big picture, away from the emotions that often emerge in the heat of electoral moments, it is easy to see that lesser-evilism, as an electoral tactic embraced by the Left, has pushed the entire political system to the right over the past 40 years. Clear evidence of this shift can be seen in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, which carried forth Reagan-esque economic policy, while also gutting welfare (Clinton), facilitating mass incarceration of the Black community (Clinton), escalating US bombing campaigns (Obama), pushing historical levels of deportation of immigrants (Obama), and maintaining the attack on civil liberties that began under W. Bush (Obama). Even more evidence is the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a candidate who is viewed as being an outlier of the Democratic Party, despite an ideological identity that is consistent with run-of-the-mill liberalism of old. Yet, when compared to a Democratic Party that has clearly shifted rightward, toward more hard-line capitalist-friendly policies that have characterized the neoliberal era started by Reagan, as well as highly-destructive imperialist missions abroad, Sanders looks like a radical.

Killer Mike's 2012 track, Reagan, brings us to the start of the neoliberal era. In a social context, specifically regarding the treatment of Black communities throughout the country, the Reagan era merely picked up on hundreds of years of oppression. By implementing an official "war on drugs," this era provided the basis for what Michelle Alexander termed The New Jim Crow , in her book with the same title. It also created a new wing of the military industrial complex through the construction of an extensive for-profit prison system and widespread militarization of domestic police forces. Mike's second verse introduces us to the Reagan environment, as experienced by the Black community:

The end of the Reagan Era, I'm like 'leven, twelve, or
Old enough to understand the shit'll change forever
They declared the war on drugs like a war on terror
But what it really did was let the police terrorize whoever
But mostly black boys, but they would call us "niggers"
And lay us on our belly, while they fingers on they triggers
They boots was on our head, they dogs was on our crotches
And they would beat us up if we had diamonds on our watches
And they would take our drugs and money, as they pick our pockets
I guess that that's the privilege of policing for some profit

The intensification of American policing in poor communities of color served a bigger purpose. As Mike explains in the same verse, it bolstered the cornerstone of US economics and capitalism: free labor. As per the 13th amendment of the US Constitution , "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." In other words, the forced free labor of convicts in the US prison system is still legal. And the "war on drugs" helped to create nearly 1.3 million free laborers for mainstream corporations , as the prison population in the US grew from roughly 300,000 in 1980 to over 1.5 million in 2015 . Killer Mike touches on this:

But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits

Mike closes the track by moving the focus from Reagan to the system, telling us that Presidents (and most politicians, for that matter) are nothing more than "employees of the country's real masters," serving capitalist interests rather than the masses of people:

Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor
Just an employee of the country's real masters
Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama
Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters
If you don't believe the theory, then argue with this logic
Why did Reagan and Obama both go after Gaddafi
We invaded sovereign soil, going after oil
Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby
Same as in Iraq, and Afghanistan
And Ahmadinejad say they coming for Iran
They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor
If I say any more they might be at my door
(Shh..) Who the fuck is that staring in my window
Doing that surveillance on Mr. Michael Render
I'm dropping off the grid before they pump the lead
I leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead

Reagan the man may be dead, but his spirit has survived in symbolic terms through the perpetuation of neoliberalism's capitalist/imperialist order. The actions of our last President, Obama, who may appear to be the polar opposite of Reagan in any superficial analysis, confirms this perpetuation. The 2015 remix, Obamanation 4 , hammers this truth home in magnificent fashion. Opening with excerpts of speeches from Malcolm X, the track sets up a premise of systemic analysis as Malcolm rails against the "international Western power structure (capitalism)," calling upon "anyone, I don't care what color you are, as long as you want to change the miserable conditions on this earth."

Echoing Killer Mike's track, M-1 (from Dead Prez) uses his verse in Obamanation 4 to expose the systemic nature of our political system, illustrating how not only the Democratic Party, but also the first Black President, equal nothing more than cogs in an imperialist machine. His analysis begins by disregarding the propaganda stemming from right-wing sources like Fox News and syndicated radio, all of which claimed Obama represented a diversion from politics-as-usual by having some mythological "radical-left-wing agenda." In reality, Obama's administration continued, and even escalated in some cases, America's imperialist endeavors abroad. M-1 flips this "right-wing propaganda" and puts it back on progressives, rhetorically asking "who you gonna blame" now that the man in charge is no longer a white Republican named Bush:

After you divorce yourself from the right wing propaganda campaign, it's all simple and plain.
America customed the game.
Your President got an African name, now who you gonna blame?
When they drop them bombs out of them planes.
Using depleted uranium, babies looking like two-headed aliens.
Follow the money trail, it leads to the criminal.
Ain't nothing subliminal to it, that's how they do it.

Continuing on this theme, M-1 pinpoints Obama as the new head of the US' global imperialist agenda, even touching on the irony of a Black man carrying out neo-colonialism with white-supremacist underpinnings. M-1's verse is not only insightful in its blanket condemnation of the 2-party machine, but also in its inherent warning about the dangers of a brand of identity politics that seeks to plug folks from historically marginalized groups into the power structure. Ultimately, to M-1, as to all radicals and revolutionaries, it's the system that drives our injustices, not the figureheads chosen to facilitate the system:

See the game they run.
Give a fuck if he's cunning, articulate, and handsome.
Afghanistan held for ransom.
By the hand of this black man, neo-colonial puppet.
White power with a black face, he said fuck it I'll do it.
…. Last stage of imperialism, I ain't kiddin.
In the immortal words of Marvin Gaye 'This ain't living.'

On the same track, Black the Ripper picks up on M-1's analysis, keeping the focus on Obama as nothing more than a figurehead of a system that must be opposed. This particular verse includes a harsh critique, deploying the house-slave mentality in describing Black figures in power, as well as their accomplices:

See it's not where you're from, it's where you're at.
He's sitting in the White House, so who cares if he's black?
And why's there still soldiers out there in Iraq?
Natural resources ain't yours, it's theirs, give it back!
You're just another puppet, but I'm not surprised
Look at Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
They didn't change shit, house nigga's fresh off the slave ship.

The Obamanation remix includes a verse from Lupe Fiasco's track, Words I Never Said. The verse fits the overall narrative perfectly, keeping focus on systemic operations. Lupe takes the analysis even further, touching on various social aspects stemming from capitalism and imperialism, most notably those which keep the American public in line, agreeable, and ignorant through a process of devalued education, fear-mongering, and mind-numbing celebrity gossip. All of this, Lupe suggests, leads to what Chomsky has referred to as "manufactured consent," which he strongly rejects:

I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit.
Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets.
How much money does it take to really make a full clip?
9/11, building 7, did they really pull it?
Uh, and a bunch of other coverups.
Your child's future was the first to go with budget cuts.
If you think that hurts, then wait, here comes the uppercut.
The school was garbage in the first place, that's on the up and up.
Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the upper crust.
You get it, then they move it, so you never keeping up enough.
If you turn on TV, all you see's a bunch of "what the fucks."
Dude is dating so and so, blabbering 'bout such and such.
And that ain't Jersey Shore, homey, that's the news.
And these the same people supposedly telling us the truth.
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist.
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say shit.
That's why I ain't vote for him, next one either.
I'm a part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful.
And I believe in the people.

Lowkey concludes the remix with a strong verse on American imperialism, an agenda that has become indistinguishable between various Presidents and both corporate parties. He points to specific missions carried out under the Obama administration, seemingly calling to attention those who continue to portray Obama as a separation from the Bush administration. The verse serves as a prophetic warning about Syria, and nails home M-1's earlier reduction of Obama as just another "neo-colonial puppet" doing the job that every American President is called upon to do, including bombing an African country (Libya) and disposing of a leader (Gaddafi) known for promoting pan-Africanism throughout the continent:

Was the bigger threat from Osama or from Obama?
Military bases from Chagos to Okinawa.
I say things that other rappers won't say.
Cause my mind never closed like Guantanamo Bay.
Hope you didn't build a statue or tattoo your arm.
Cause the drones are still flying over Pashtunistan.
Did he defend the war? No! He extended more.
He even had the time to attempt a coup in Ecuador.
Morales and Chavez, the state's are on a hunt for ya.
Military now stationed on bases in Columbia.
Take a trip to the past and tell em I was right.
Ask Ali Abunimah or Jeremiah Wright.
Drones over Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya.
Is Obama the bomber getting ready for Syria?
First black president, the masses were hungry.
But the same president just bombed an African country.

The false hopes placed in the first Black President highlight the failures and pitfalls of identity politics, a political approach that is grounded in assimilation. This approach to social justice attempts to mold a multicultural, multi-sex, non-gender-descript power elite by simply placing individuals who identify with these hyper-marginalized groups into the existing power structure. Thus, the ultimate goal is more Black bankers, more gay landlords, more transgender politicians, more women Senators, and so on. This approach has led to the creation of what the left-wing publication Black Agenda Report (BAR) has deemed the black misleadership class in the US. Obama was the ultimate product of this class, but not the totality of it. For as long as identity politics seek to assimilate into the power structure, this class will persist, as will the formation of other such classes: the gay misleadership class, the transgender misleadership class, the women's misleadership class (Hillary), etc..., because, ultimately, the power structure does not exist to serve the people, no matter how diverse it is. Nas touches on this in his 1999 track, I Want to Talk to You , which addresses the frustrations of living under a government that does not represent:

Step up to the White House, let me in
What's my reason for being, I'm ya next of kin
And we built this motherfucker
You wanna kill me because my hunger?
Mr. America, young black niggas want ya
I wanna talk to the man, understand?
Understand this motherfuckin G-pack in my hand
Look what happened to San Fran
Young girl hit by policeman
Twelve shots up in her dome, damn
….Dissin us, discrimination different races
Tax payers pay for more jail for Black Latin faces

Coming full circle, Nas closes the track by delivering a prophetic warning against identity politics, characterizing BAR's "black misleadership class" as nothing more than "fake black leaders [who] are puppets, always talking 'bout the city budget (rather than addressing problems that plague their communities)."

What y'all waitin for the world to blow up
Before you hear this rewind this 4 minutes before we timeless
Let y'all niggas bang my shit before Saddam hits
Let Nastradamus tell us what time it is
They try to buy us with doe
Fake black leaders are puppets, always talking 'bout the city budget
The news got it all confused lyin to the public
They eyes watchin stay wise move above it
Water floods predicted, hurricanes, twisters
Its all signs of the Armageddon, three sixes
People reverse the system, politics vs. religion
Holy war, Muslim vs. Christians
Niggas in high places, they don't got the balls for this
People in power sit back and watch them slaughter us
Mr. President I assume it was negligence
The streets upside down, I'm here to represent this

Confronting the Power Structure

Modern working-class resistance is still rooted in Marx's class war analysis, whereas the proletariat (those of us who are forced to depend on our labor to survive) finds itself fighting for its collective life against the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production) and the layered power structure created by this economic realtionship. It is also crucially intertwined in the fights against other forms of structural oppression, including white supremacy, patriarchy, and misogyny; because, quite frankly, all forms of oppression that splinter the working class must be effectively destroyed if the working class has any hopes of overcoming the capitalist system.

In echoing Malcolm X's famous "the ballot or the bullet" speech from 1964, working-class resistance must include "action on all fronts by whatever means necessary." Since the police represent the front lines of a criminal justice system inherently designed to enforce class oppression, as well as structural white supremacy, working-class resistance must include a firm stance against not only police brutality and mass incarceration, but also against the very foundation of modern policing, which is rooted in "slave-catching" and strike-breaking. This means standing in blanket opposition to policing as an institution designed to "serve and protect" capitalist property and enforce laws created by a capitalist ruling class with capitalist interests in mind. Reflecting on the Black community's especially intense history of oppression at the hands of police, hip hop has delivered a proper analysis and call to action. From NWA's seminal track Fuck tha Police (1988) to David Banner and Tito Lo's Black Fist (2016), the armed extension of the capitalist state is consistently exposed, as it has left countless Black lives lying in its tracks with no signs of slowing. Banner and Lo's track captures the sheer anger and frustration stemming from this reality:

[Banner]

These crackers got drones. They are flying their saucers
Keep your white jesus, don't pray to your crosses
They are burning our churches, K.R.I.T. pass me the UZI
I know how to work it; I know how to Squirt it
No Martin, No Luther, No King, No Marching No choirs don't sing
The same christian lovers that raped our GrandMothers and hung our GrandFathers from trees
They are enemies!
Blood on the leaves, blood on the streets, blood on our feet
I'm sick of walking, I'm sick of dogs getting sicced on us, I'm sick of barking
I'm sick of spitting written sentences listeners don't get
Don't get, don't get, don't get!
Because they got Chains on their brains and that is not a diss

[Lo]

… I'm staying religious, cause we stay in the trenches
And gotta play where they lynch us, done came to my senses
I bet them crackas never came through my fences
Ya burn up ya cross, and I'll burn up ya corpse
Then I turn and bang and do the same to the witness
Hang 'em and dangle 'em in the street looking up at his feet
So you never forget this we did this for Martin and Malcolm, even Mandela
Jimmie Lee Jackson and then Medgar Evers
For Clyde Kennard, hard labor slaving in the yard
For Huey, for Hampton, for Bobby we GODLY
For Jordan Davis we gon' play this, for Sandra Bland we gon' stand
I'm still out here stomping, for Janaya Thompson, from the Coast to Compton

The video for Black Fist shows a series of events that encapsulate what working-class justice would look like outside the parameters of capitalism and white supremacy. This includes a people's arrest, people's trial, and subsequent execution of a police officer who was acquitted of murdering a Black teenager. The fact that this hypothetical scenario could be remotely controversial illustrates how strong we've been conditioned to equate our current system with any real sense of justice, of which there is very little if any. The environment of injustice that is bred under so-called legalities is masterfully summed up in Lauryn Hill's Mystery of Iniquity (2002):

Ya'll can't handle the truth in a courtroom of lies
Perjures the jurors
Witness despised
Crooked lawyers
False Indictments publicized
Its entertainment the arraignments
The subpoenas
High profile gladiators in bloodthirsty arenas
Enter the Dragon
Black-robe crooked-balance
Souls bought and sold and paroled for thirty talents
Court reporter catch the surface on the paper
File it in the system not acknowledged by the Maker
Swearing by the bible blatantly blasphemous
Publicly perpetrating that "In God We Trust"
Cross-examined by a master manipulator
The faster intimidator
Receiving the judge's favor
Deceiving sabers doing injury to they neighbors
For status, gratis, apparatus and legal waivers
See the bailiff
Representing security
Holding the word of God soliciting perjury
The prosecution
Political prostitution
The more money you pay.. the further away solution

…Blind leading the blind
Guilty never defined
Filthy as swine
A generation purin it's own mind
Legal extortion
Blown out of proportion
In vein deceit
The truth is obsolete
Only two positions:
Victimizer or Victim
Both end up in destruction trusting this crooked system

Running hand in hand with capitalism's version of "justice" is the underlying dominance of white supremacy. In the formation of the United States as a nation, as well as the customs, cultures, and systems we've become accustomed to during this process, white supremacy has played a formidable role. It has created an all-powerful wedge among the working class, rendering its potential limited. Its divisive message is often hidden in powerfully emotional rhetoric regarding "American values" and patriotism, all of which secretly (or not so secretly in the era of Trump) call for protecting the Eurocentrism that has systematically devalued black skin in dominant American culture. In an old-school track from 1991, Ice Cube uses brilliant analogy and powerful lyrics while condemning America's history of white supremacy and challenging the toxicity of patriotic rhetoric, concluding with the need to " kill Sam":

I wanna kill him, cause he tried to play me like the trick
But you see, I'm the wrong nigga to fuck with
I got the A to the motherfuckin K, and it's ready to rip
Slapped in my banana clip
And I'm lookin.. (lookin..)
Is he in watts, oakland, philly or brooklyn?
It seems like he got the whole country behind him
So it's sort of hard to find him
But when I do, gotta put my gat in his mouth
Pump seventeen rounds make his brains hang out
Cause the shit he did was uncalled for
Tried to fuck a brother up the ass like a small whore
And that shit ain't fly
So now I'm settin up, the ultimate drive-by
And when you hear this shit
It make the world say "damn! I wanna kill sam"

…Here's why I wanna kill the punk
Cause he tried to take a motherfuckin chunk of the funk
He came to my house, I let 'em bail in
Cause he said he was down with the l.m
He gave up a little dap
Then turned around, and pulled out a gat
I knew it was a caper
I said, "please don't kill my mother, " so he raped her
Tied me up, took me outside
And I was thrown in a big truck
And it was packed like sardines
Full of niggas, who fell for the same scheme
Took us to a place and made us work
All day and we couldn't have shit to say
Broke up the families forever
And to this day black folks can't stick together
And it's odd..
Broke us down, made us pray - to his god
And when I think about it
It make me say "damn! I wanna kill sam"

…Now in ninety-one, he wanna tax me
I remember, the son of a bitch used to axe me
And hang me by a rope til my neck snapped
Now the sneaky motherfucker wanna ban rap
And put me under dirt or concrete
But god, can see through a white sheet
Cause you the devil in drag
You can burn your cross well I'll burn your flag
Try to give me the h-I-v
So I can stop makin babies like me
And you're givin dope to my people chump
Just wait til we get over that hump
Cause yo' ass is grass cause I'mma blast
Can't bury rap, like you buried jazz
Cause we stopped bein whores, stop doin floors
So bitch you can fight your own wars
So if you see a man in red white and blue
Gettin chased by the lench mob crew
It's a man who deserves to buckle
I wanna kill sam cause he ain't my motherfuckin uncle!

Ultimately, resistance in the 21st century must focus on the inherent inequities created by the capitalist system and the corrollary social hierarchies that support these inequities. There simply is no choice but to destroy and replace this system. Gang Starr's 1998 track Robbin' Hood Theory hammers this home, urging us to "squeeze the juice out of all the suckers with power, and pour some back out so as to water the flowers." Just as reparations are needed to begin to address the history of Black enslavement in America, so too is mass working-class expropriation of the capitalist class. In realizing the illegitimacies of the wealth accumulated under this system , we must formulate bold moves toward recuperating it for all of society. Guru preaches, leaving us with our battle cry:

Now that we're getting somewhere, you know we got to give back
For the youth is the future no doubt that's right and exact
Squeeze the juice out, of all the suckers with power
And pour some back out, so as to water the flowers
This world is ours, that's why the demons are leery
It's our inheritance; this is my Robin Hood Theory... Robin Hood Theory

… They innocent, they know not what they face
While politicians save face genius minds lay to waste
If I wasn't kickin rhymes I'd be kickin down doors
Creatin social change and defendin the poor
The God's always been militant, and ready for war
We're gonna snatch up the ringleaders send em home in they drawers
But first where's the safe at? Let's make em show us
And tell em hurry up, give up the loot that they owe us
We bringin it back, around the way to our peeps
Cause times are way too deep, we know the Code of the Streets
Meet your defeat; this is my Robin Hood Theory... my Robin Hood Theory

…Necessary by all means, sort of like Malcolm
Before it's too late; I create, the best outcome
So I take this opportunity, yes to ruin the
Devilish forces fucking up my black community
And we ain't doing no more interviews
Til we get paid out the frame, like motherfucking Donahue
We're taking over radio, and wack media
Cause systematically they getting greedier and greedier
Conquering turfs with my ill organization
Takin out the man while we scan the information
You wanna rhyme you best await son
You can't even come near, if you ain't got our share
You front on us this year, consider yourself blown out of here
Yeah... by my Robin Hood Theory

Anarchism, Paganism, and Resistance: An Interview with Rhyd Wildermuth

By Brenan Daniels

Below is a recent interview I had with Rhyd Wildermuth, the editor of the website Gods & Radicals, where we discuss the origins of the organization, paganism, and religion in anarchism.

What led to the creation and found of Gods and Radicals? How did the entire group get together?

Gods & Radicals was started by myself and my friend Alley Valkyrie two years ago. We're both anarchists, the self-educated 'street-variety' as it were, living much of our lives working with homeless and other mostly-invisible victims of capitalism. And we also talked to other mostly-invisible things, like trees and dead people and land spirits and gods. So we were the self-educated street-variety of Pagans, too.

For us, our anti-capitalism and our Paganism seem to flow into each other seamlessly. Our desire to protect the natural world and our desire to protect the vulnerable were both rooted in the same soil. And we knew lots of other Pagans who were also anarchists, and lots of other anarchists who were also Pagans, but noticed that few were ever talking about what seemed pretty self-evident to all us. Because of the overwhelming response we got after a presentation together at a Pagan conference in California, we realized there was massive desire to talk more about this. So we started the site, named it after the presentation we gave, and put out a call for writers, and we got flooded pretty quickly with offers to help. It was pretty amazing.

Tell us about the journal A Beautiful Resistance. What led to its founding and what is the goal of the journal?

Gods & Radicals is both a website and a non-profit publisher, and A Beautiful Resistance is one of our publications. The idea behind the name is pretty simple: we tend to forget what we're resisting for in the midst of all thing things we're resisting against. Resistance can be ugly, exhausting, full of sorrow and misery and pain. It can also be beautiful, and should be, because we're not just struggling against capitalism, against patriarchy, against racism, and against authority. Instead, we're resisting for something, for ideas and for people and for ways of being that are beautiful.

Also, we wanted to challenge an unchallenged idea in both anarchist and Pagan publishing: we wanted to pay all our writers, to re-establish writing and art as labor that must be compensated. With A Beautiful Resistance and our other publications, we split all the revenue after costs 50% with all the contributors, with the other half going back into the organization to start new publishing projects. We've been pretty successful so far on this.

How did you personally come to paganism and what exactly is paganism as it doesn't seem to be well understood in the general culture?

I can't and won't define Paganism for everyone, but I'll happily tell you how I define it for myself.

Paganism is the moment I lose my words at the sight of wildflowers breaking through sidewalk cracks in the poor areas of a city; the resurgence of the wild into the disciplined misery of the oppressed. It's the body that doesn't fit into the machine, the dream of buried rivers and streams under pavement. It's the tears I shed and the rage I feel when I see a river poisoned by an oil spill or see a mountain blown to bits to get at the coal underneath.

For me, it's all about relation to not just the human-world but the other-than-human world. The mountain that gets blown apart so industrialized capitalism can grind on, the river that gets poisoned so people can have cars-I'm in relationship with them. Just like when a trans friend is harassed or a Muslim neighbor is terrorized, I cannot stand by and accept that violence, because we are related, we relate to each other, and our existence is all bound up together.

I've always been like this, I think, but I didn't always identify the way I relate with the world as "Pagan." Animism and witchcraft also describe it just as well. The words matter less to me than the worlds of meaning they attempt to describe.

Many anarchists reject any religion, especially organized religion. How do you square your anarchist political beliefs with your paganism?

I've always wanted to answer this question. More often than not, the question I am asked is how I square my pagan beliefs with generally atheistic anarchist political theory.

First off, I-and Gods & Radicals-strongly rejects clericalism. Anyone who sets themselves up as a mediator between humans and the world is trying to control people. In fact, most of our political systems derive from earlier religious-authority forms, evolving from priestly-control of society to king- or politician-control with the advent of monotheism. What both secular Liberal Democracy and theocratic empires have in common is authority: that others (priests, kings, politicians, bosses) can and do have the authority to define the world for you. We reject that in all its forms.

Traditionally, atheist anarchism and Marxism make the mistake of defining non-European, non-white, and indigenous spiritualities as 'superstitious' or even primitive. Post-colonialists like Dipesh Chakrabarty have helped unravel that as European exceptionalism, the continued notion that mostly-white leftists are somehow more superior in their atheist views because they've progressed past religion. They're enlightened, the rest of the world is not, and all that.

So I see the insistence that leftists must always be atheists to be little more than that same European exceptionalism that led to colonial suppression of indigenous beliefs in the Americas and Africa. Re-embracing our own spiritual existences-and our ability to create new ways of being outside Capital and the state-is a key to our own liberation and also ongoing anti-colonialist efforts around the world. Otherwise, we're no different from the French in Haiti who tried to suppress indigenous African beliefs so the Blacks would make better slaves, or the Spanish and English who tried to wipe out First Nation's beliefs to 'civilize' them.

To use an anarchist term, we're expropriating our meaning back, or in Marxist terms, we're seizing the means of the "production" of meaning.

In what way does Gods and Radicals create and change the narrative surrounding paganism, as a religious belief, and anarchism as a political belief? What are the unique/new ideas or ways of thinking that G&R brings to the table?

Our primary influence has thus far been within Paganism, and it's also where we get the majority of our critics. There are racist elements in American Paganism particularly that don't like us. Also, our anti-clerical stance has made us a few enemies with the plastic-shaman, media-hungry elements that see us as a threat to their greed. And we've helped expose a few charlatans and leaders sympathetic to fascism and the alt-right. So, lots of enemies, but even more friends: we get emails weekly from people who thought they were maybe the only Pagan anarchists around. I like those emails a lot.

I think the way we change the anarchist narrative is precisely in what I mentioned earlier: we are undermining the European exceptionalism that crept into anarchism, and reminding people we can all create our own meaning.

One thinks of the way anti-Enclosure resistance movements in England and Wales adopted Pagan language and mysticism in their resistance: the Luddites, for instance, claimed to be led by a ghostly 'captain' who lived under a hill in a forest. That's a land spirit. Likewise, the Whiteboys in Ireland gave eviction notices to landlords in the name of an ancient land-goddess, and the Rebeccas claimed to have gotten their costumes from an ancient crone in the mountains. The narrative of those resistance movements is remarkably similar to the spiritual stories of indigenous and slave resistance in the Americas. Likewise, the ritual to Erzuli Dantor at Bois Cayman which sparked the Haitian Revolution, or the women's resistance to factory owners in Cambodia through possession by land spirits call the Neak Ta-resistance to oppression has very often been spiritual as well as physical.

By telling those stories, and by telling our own, we open up more space for these kinds of resistances, and also challenge the insistence that European-secular atheism is the natural, final evolution of humanity.

Such a view also helps us navigate away from the appropriative nature of Western spirituality. The capitalist creation of whiteness stripped people of their relationship to land and culture. "Hurt people hurt people," as they say, and that whiteness manifests now in a voracious theft of the culture and spiritual expressions of others. Dismantling that whiteness and healing the damage that was done (and that it does) will require creating new relationships to land and culture in which everyone engages in their own meaning-making.

Also, we're trying to provide a bulwark against the alt/new/fascist right. They gain power significantly by playing to that lost sense of meaning; they've been able to make so much headway on this precisely because many leftists demean spiritual expression. We're trying to fix that.

How can people support G&R and are there orgs/groups that G&R is allied with?

A few ways. First, we are always excited to meet new writers and artists. We pay for writing on our site now, and welcome as many diverse voices as want to write with us. Secondly, we are a non-profit and accept donations to help us pay our writers. Buying our books helps a lot as well-that's how we pay our print writers. And sharing our stuff, of course, is always really helpful, especially now that most social media sites throttle views in order to get their users to buy advertizing.

Other groups that we work with but aren't affiliated with directly, groups that might be of great interest to others, are Heathens United Against Racism and Appalachian Pagan Ministry, both of which are doing a lot of work to fight fascist organizing within Heathenry. And we have great relationships with quite a few Pagan communities elsewhere in the world fighting these same struggles, particularly against fascists.

What's Wrong With the "Right to Work": A Marxist Critique

By James Richard Marra

At this writing, 28 US states have instituted "Right to Work" laws (RTWLs). These laws prevent labor unions from excluding non-union workers from receiving improved wages and benefits gained through union negotiations with employers, as well as worker-empowering services such as grievance assistance. These laws also bar unions from requiring non-union employees to pay a fee to unions to offset the costs of union work and services. This legislation extends established Federal law that protects a worker's right not to join a union, and the Taft-Hartley Act, which requires that unions exclusively represent all employees regardless of union membership status.

Neo-liberals dislike unions and wish to diminish their ability to organize and advantageously negotiate contracts with employers. They disparage union demands that all employees who the receive benefits of union work pay their fair share. Neo-liberals cast these complaints in legal language rights, which resonates among Americans. In 2014, GALLUP found that 71% of those polled approve of RTWLs because they agree with proponents that no American "should be required to join any private organization, like a labor union, against his will." RTWL advocates such as The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation remind workers that the Foundation defends the workers' right to personally bargain with employers, and celebrates the right of every American to employment without the government compelling them to join a union.

For Neo-liberals, workers' labor power is their exclusive private property and the law should insure its unrestricted sale to employers. In contrast, Marxists argue that appeals to a right to sell labor power rest upon an established a capitalist conception of private property, which is a structural basis of the capitalist wage system. Marx argues that capitalist law invests workers with an exclusive ownership and control over their labor power. However, upon exchanging that labor power (as a commodity) for money (wages), it becomes the private property of the employer. It is upon these dimensions of ownership rights that Marx's bases his class explanation of the exploitive and alienating capitalist economic system.

These rights obtain meaning and scope within a capitalist legal superstructure, described by Gerald Allen Cohen as "a set of non-economic institutions, notably the legal system and the state." (p. 216) This legal order defines rights within the capitalist economic structure (the forces and social relations of production), and institutionalizes private property rights and production relations in legal terms. The legal superstructure enshrines rights in way that insure the best "fit" between capitalist social relations and the prevailing forces of production to maximize the effectiveness of the prevailing productive forces.

It is indispensible to capital that workers freely sell their labor power. The superstructure sanctions this right because capitalists wish to legally expedite a "free circulation of labor," which facilitates the centralization of sufficient labor power to maximally exploit the prevailing productive forces. Concerning the growing scale of agriculture and, with it, the end of "settlement laws" in Medieval Europe, Cohen explains:

The productive forces demanded "large scale production on modern lines" with larger aggregation of labor, and therefore new material relations of production. These in turn required "free circulation of labor," the right to move, which was then denied. Since the law forbade movement, it was broken, ignored, and finally scrapped, new social production relations forming on its ruins. (p. 167)

The legal superstructure determines the power relations of private property. It enables the good working order of the prevailing economic structure through legal means by establishing rights over the ownership and sale of labor power. RTWLs institutionalize a power asymmetry between employers and unions; financially encumbering unions and diminishing their ability to organize effectively and negotiate for improved wages and benefits from a position of financial strength.

A central problem for Marxists who wish to explain RTWLs with reference to class dynamics is to recognize and avoid the biased preconceptions of capitalist rights talk. As Cohen suggests, "The problem…is to (i) formulate a non-legal interpretation of the legal terms in Marx's characterization of production relations, in such a way that (ii) we can coherently represent property relations as distinct from, and explained by, production relations ." (p. 219) [Author's italics]

To do this, Cohen develops a "rights free" semantic that renders rights as "powers." Powers are just the ability of persons to do A, regardless of whether A is normatively a legal or moral act. A revealing way to explore how laws reflect capitalist power relations is to consider Cohen's three "dimensions of subordinate status." Cohen defines the working class as comprising people who (p. 69):

1) Produce for others [superiors] who do not produce for them

2) Within the production process,…are commonly subjected to the authority of the [superiors]

3) In so far as their livelihoods depend on their relations to their superiors,…tend to be poorer than [their superiors]

To transform these dimensions in to talk of power, we simply replace the word "right" with a matching "power." Then, in order to divorce rights talk from powers, we also require that the:

Possession of powers does not entail possession of the rights they match [nor vice versa]…Only the possession of a legitimate power entails the possession of the right it matches, and only the possession of an effective right entails the possession of its matching power. (p. 219)

Considered in this way, the workers' right to sell their labor becomes the power to produce for their superiors, acquiesce to the authority of employers and managers, and generally be poorer than their superiors. Cohen makes clear the relevance of this perspective to class struggle:

No superior has rights over his [the worker's] labor power. His subordination ensues because, lacking means of production, he can ensure his survival only by contracting with a capitalist whose bargaining position enables him to impose terms which effect the worker's subordination. Through unionization proletarians improve their bargaining position and their consequent lot in all three dimensions of subordination. When the reduction of subordination is substantial, we may also speak of a reduction of proletarian status. (p. 70)

For unions to break free of the dimensions of capitalist subordination, organizing and worker solidarity are crucial. Cohen argues that workers can establish "a self-aware" group consciousness whose political dispositions reflect the Marxist critique (p. 77), one that views union membership outside of the Neo-liberal narrative of rights that dominates the American culture . This consciousness would realize that the right to private property remains a Neo-liberal legal construct whose function is to institutionalize beneficial social relations for the capitalist.

The Economic Policy Institute reported on the benefits non-RTW states offer to workers and their unions.

No matter how you slice the data, wages in RTW states are lower, on average, than wages in non-RTW states. As shown in great detail in Gould and Shierholz (2011), these results do not just apply to union members, but to all employees in a state. Where unions are strong, compensation increases even for workers not covered by any union contract, as nonunion employers face competitive pressure to match union standards. Likewise, when unions are weakened by RTW laws, all of a state's workers feel the impact

If socialism intends to replace the economic structure of capitalism, these data suggest that opposing RTWLs leads to significant economic and political gains for workers. Socialist activists and union organizers struggling against the enactment of RTWLs can bolster their advocacy by illuminating that Neo-liberal semantic of rights that conceals the subordinating power relations of capitalism.

J. Richard Marra lives in Connecticut. He received his Doctoral degree from Cornell University in 1977, majoring in Musical Composition and the History of Music Theory. While on the Faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, he completed graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, majoring in the Philosophy of Science. He is a member of the Socialist Party USA, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Philosophy of Science Association. He is also a contributing writer for the Secular Buddhist Association. He is a member of the Socialist Party - USA, and has served as the Convener of the Editorial Board and Managing Editor of The Socialist. He is a 2014 recipient of the SPUSA's Eugene V. Debs Award.