Under Lock & Key

Yesterday, U.$. Presidents Trump and Biden announced a cease fire deal between their military outpost called I$rael and the Palestinian resistance, primarily represented by Hamas. Palestinians are celebrating in the streets for this potential respite from the 15 month onslaught that has turned Gaza to rubble and murdered 47,000 Palestinians officially and closer to double that in reality. Despite these heavy losses, the cease fire is a victory for the Palestinian resistance that has not folded after 15 months of fighting a much more heavily funded occupier. The United $tates says that the fighting forces in Palestine have increased in numbers since 7 October 2023.

At this writing, the peace deal has not begun and has not officially been signed by I$rael. I$rael has continued to murder Palestinians in recent days, including one reporter who had just announced the planned peace deal to the world. And the imperialists continue to spread lies about Hamas holding up the deal. Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill says ey saw a deal signed by all of the Palestinian resistance representatives days before the deal was announced, when Biden was claiming they were waiting on Hamas.

The deal is a victory for the Palestinian resistance, in meeting their immediate demands, including a prisoner exchange that is supposed to release some who were sentenced to prison for life by the I$raelis. The deal will also involve I$rael’s withdrawal from and the rebuilding of Gaza. At this time no details are public.

I$raeli press has credited Trump with forcing the deal that has been drafted during the Biden presidency and is scheduled to begin the day before Trump’s inauguration. Trump had demanded a deal happen before he gets into office. The Trump administration has continued to call for the total elimination of Hamas, and the deal seems to also force a demilitarization of all Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. While the majority of Amerikans opposed the bombing campaign of the last 15 months, they do not support a liberated Palestine. Trump seems to be willing to at least pause the slaughter that Biden supported and to appease the minimal demands of many Amerikans, but he is no friend of the Palestinian people. Those who demanded “Ceasefire Now!” may have their demand met, but this is not the first time Palestinians have celebrated in the streets after a deal is struck with I$rael. There is an antagonistic contradiction between the I$raeli settlers and the Palestinians of the land that is far from resolved. And indications have already been made that I$rael does not intend to see the deal through past the first phase. Only time will tell how the imperialists will behave in Palestine in the coming weeks and months. But the struggle for the national liberation of Palestine lives!

UPDATE: As ULK 88 goes to press, prisoner exchanges have begun, with the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners and 3 settlers, followed by 200 Palestinians and 4 settlers. Many Palestinians had been held without charges, and some were already freed by the resistance on 7 October 2023, but recaptured. The second group included many with life sentences.. Meanwhile, I$rael has launched a major military operation in Jenin in the West Bank, killing at least 10 people so far. I$rael has also issued administrative detention orders to imprison 85 more Palsestinians and has been targeting the families of released prisoners for harassment and repression.

Countering the Bourgeois Media

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, where the Palestinian resistance factions (of which the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, was the largest) united in response to the continued occupation of their homeland by the Zionist entity, was launched on 7 October 2023. Since then, the brutal daily oppression by the occupation forces, and the continued desecration and assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque atop al-Haram al-Sharif in occupied Al-Quds continues.(1) In the last 15 months, there have been many occasions to have political discussions and pass out literature regarding Palestine in the hopes of bolstering the support for Palestine among the imprisoned lumpen here in the South Bay. I would never assume this to be an easy task, and it hasn’t been, but slowly but surely more people are breaking from the miasma of post-9/11 anti-Arab/Islamophobic sentiments (which itself is an accomplishment as this has been deeply ingrained in the Amerikan consciousness since the beginning of the so-called “War on Terror”).

Here in the majority liberal South Bay, the main sources that prisoners get their news from is the San Jose Mercury News newspaper and the local news channel, Fox 2 News. Like all bourgeois media, both have been reporting on the genocidal Zionist war on Palestine from the general viewpoint of the Democratic Party, that is, a pro-U.$., pro-i$rael view (with some small exceptions, most coming in the form of re-prints of articles by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and the occasional pro-Palestinian letter to the editor, though they have never printed any that I persynally have sent).(2) So on that note, it has been of paramount importance to combat the repetitive assertions of the usual incessant line, “the war began when Hamas terrorists (sic) launched a surprise attack on southern Israel (sic) …”, which is taken as unquestionable truth in line with the discourse of post-9/11 hysteria plaguing the psyches of those here on Occupied Turtle Island.

Being that the events of 11 September 2001 (9/11) are the main source of today’s generalized sentiments in a large portion of Amerika’s collective psyche, I believed it to be fitting to begin my organizing work by passing out and making available copies of Ward Churchill’s wonderfully insightful 2001 essay “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens (Some People Push Back),” which echoes a quote made by Malcolm X shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. I chose this essay because it, more than any other short and concise work on the subject, blows out of the water the commonly accepted reasons, propagated by the U.$. government, on the causes of 9/11. Churchill centers the reasons firmly on the shoulders of Amerikan imperialism and neocolonial exploitation and oppression of the Arab world.

I paired this essay with copies I made of AIPS comrade Lila’s equally insightful and engaging article “What is Hamas?” (see Under Lock & Key No. 85). USW comrade Da Pale One’s October 2023 article “A Brief History on Palestine” from ULK No. 84 was also very helpful for laying a basis for those willing to challenge their preconceived notions on Palestine, and those who had no previous opinion on the region and its indigenous inhabitants and wanted to learn more.

The conversations I had regarding the above writings led to much more interest into what the actual truth is behind the Palestinian people’s valiant struggle against the ideology of Zionism and its settler-colonial project, and why it seems that Amerikan media has over the decades either been completely silent or ambivalently acquiescing to the will of the Zionist entity, protecting its blatant aggression and genocidal mentality towards the Palestinian people and its denial of their legitimate claims to the hystoric land of Palestine.

Who Supports Palestine vs. I$rael?

Though it is probably obvious, those who are most against Palestine in this jail are most of the Euro-Amerikans, as well as the bible-thumping Christians. On the flip side, the people I have been working with and who I have persynally found to be most interested are: the Vietnamese prisoners and the Samoans/Pacific Islanders. There are large communities of both in San Jose and, just like the New Afrikan neighborhoods and the Chican@ varrios, they are also subject to brutal occupation and surveillance by SJPD pigs and at times also catch the ever-watching gaze of the FBI, which has a main field office in the largely gentrified town of Campbell, west of downtown.

I have had many interesting conversations with Vietnamese prisoners, not just on Palestine, but also on the the genocidal Amerikan war against the people of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. I get a general feeling from these discussions that, though they are fiercely proud of their peoples’ decisive victory against the world’s #1 bully, imperialist Amerika, they are also troubled by the largely unanswered and undiscussed questions of, “What went wrong? What happened to our peoples’ beautiful vision of a future communist nation?” I am glad to see them attempting to answer these questions, decades after many of their family members fled the atrocities of the Amerikan military and their South Vietnamese puppets.

On a final note, both the people of Vietnam and the people of Samoa have had firsthand experience with European colonialism and Amerikan hegemony. The fact that they are able to connect their peoples’ struggles to the relatable struggles of the people of Palestine is a success that I am willing to celebrate.

Prison Tablet Propaganda Continues, With a Victory

A barrier that those organizing for Palestine behind the walls, have had to deal with since Al-Aqsa Flood is the Christian Zionist prison ministries whom, as comrade Firewater noted in ULK No. 87, “have a monopoly on [the] tablets … [that] needs to be broken up!”(3) I want to thank both comrade Firewater and comrade Triumphant very much for their insights on this topic in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Before writing my original article on it, comrades in California began submitting multiple complaints related to the education app on Our tablets, “Edovo”, which allows ministries like the right-wing evangelists who produce the “Real Vida TV” podcast from their studio in Tyler, TX, to continue to upload content that radiates conservative Christian or Christian Zionist rhetoric and beliefs. Much of this messaging is equal parts antisemitic, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, queer and transphobic and anti-immigrant. Thankfully, in apparent response to this deluge of complaints, Edovo removed all of Real Vida’s content from their platform, which is as much of a win as We could have hoped. A more long-term goal would be to get MIM content on our tablets for a refreshing counterpoint to Our enemies’ propaganda.

This removal of Real Vida from Edovo does not account for the fact that on other tablets and apps in other states’ jails and prison systems, Real Vida continues to be available as Triumphant and Firewater have noted from the Texas prison system. In research I conducted after reading both comrades’ responses, I found out several things. Firstly, the tablet app called “Pando” is indeed, as Firewater suspected, created and maintained by “right-wing evangelist kooks” as I was able to ascertain from watching a podcast interview with the main creator of the app, Isaac Holt.(4) I further learned that the apparent go-to excuse for Pando refusing content from providers is because “they only want to upload high-quality Christian content”(4), which apparently means refusing content from Christian organizations and denominations with a more liberal/progressive worldview like Unitarian Universalists.

I also heard a radio show/podcast that our TX comrades are likely familiar with called “The Prison Show” (which airs every Friday night from 9-11 PM central on KPFT 90.1 FM out of Houston). They recently uploaded about 50 of their previous episodes to Edovo, from December 2023 to November 2024. In several episodes they discuss the ridiculous game of stringing along and avoidance that both TDCJ and Securus Technologies played with David Collingsworth (the current producer of the show) for over four years in the shows quest to get on the tablets so everyone across TDCJ and in other states could tune in. He also spoke about their meetings with Pando executives who asked them to sign a mandatory contract, that states that in order to be allowed to upload content, you must agree that all content will emphatically “preach the word of Jesus”.(5) This ridiculous prerequisite should tell you all you need to know about Pando, its CEO Jake Bodine and what they and the TDCJ are trying to promote: an endless cycle of brainwashed evangelic “field ministers”, of which I’m told TDCJ already has a great deal of.

Origins of Zionism and Christian Zionism

Central to the understanding of the land of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle is understanding the twin ideologies of Zionism and its mostly Amerikan cousin, Christian Zionism.

Both ideologies are antisemitic in nature and began that way from their respective origins. Zionism, like any other settler colonial project, is based in the genocidal erasure of the indigenous inhabitants of a land, in this case the Palestinian Arab people, and the self-indigenizing of the settlers. The strange thing about Zionism is that far from being helpful to the Jews, both ideologies are grounded in antisemitism. This can be hard to grasp for people, as one would think that something supposedly in favor of the Jews couldn’t possibly be antisemitic. The truth however, as with most things, lies in its hystory.

Zionism, began as a political ideology, grounded in the antisemitic belief that the Jews did not belong in Europe and therefore should be removed from Europe to some other locale. The land of Palestine was also not the first place that Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, proposed to remove all of the Jews to, as Herzl considered locations in Uganda in East Afrika and South America before landing on Palestine.(6)

This removal to Palestine was of course fully backed by Britain, culminating in the oft-cited Balfour Declaration of 1917 written by Lord Arthur Balfour, himself an antisemite, with strong backing from other British and Amerikan antisemites like Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman. Britain was the major imperialist power vying for control of the region at the time, with France a close second.(7) This is the same Arthur Balfour who was quoted as writing in an August 1919 memorandum, “The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs [the actual number at the time was at least several hundred thousand more] who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.”(8)

Having an ostensibly European outpost in the Arab world was also thought by the Amerikans and Western Europe to be a strong tool for holding the spread of both Islam and communism at bay.(9)

As the horrors of the Nazi genocide became apparent and as European Jewish refugees continued to flood out of German-occupied Europe aside other groups singled out by the Nazi regime, instead of accepting these refugees into U.$.-allied countries, they were vehemently refused and forwarded on to seek refuge in the New Yishuv (in Hebrew: settlement/community) created by the Zionists in the land of Palestine.(10)

The Old Yishuv of Jews had been living in Palestine long before the creation of Zionism and the First and Second Aliya (Zionist-sponsored immigration waves of Jews to Palestine beginning in 1882). It bears mentioning that the Old Yishuv was, until the end of 1945 and WWII, majorly against Zionism and the hopes of the Zionists of creating a Jewish state on top of and instead of Palestine. However, this mostly changed after the world was made fully aware of just what the Nazi regime planned and carried out in regards to their so-called “Final Solution” to the so-called “Jewish problem”.

Finally, after the initial 1948 Nakba (“the catastrophe”, or ethnic cleansing of Arabs) and into the present day, the Zionist entity has supported, partnered with, trained the military forces and death squads of, and aligned themselves with some of the most genocidal and virulently antisemitic regimes and individuals in recent decades. These range from Somoza and the Salvadoran and Guatemalan generals and Central American dictators (11) to recent interactions in late 2023 and 2024 between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other i$raeli leaders and Elon Musk, a purveyor of antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric and conspiracy theories, all in the name of Zionism apparently.(12)

The ideas behind Christian Zionism were around long before Herzl’s ideology in Christian Europe. Christian Zionism, like its cousin Zionism, is predicated on antisemitic tropes about the Jews which date back to the Christian belief that the Jews (in the biblical form of the Pharisees, an ancient Jewish sect) are responsible and to blame (and to be hated for eternity) for the death of Jesus. As I’ve discussed previously in ULK, Christian Zionism is led in Amerika primarily by sections of the Christian Right, mostly consisting of right-wing evangelists.(13) These evangelists descend from the Protestant sect of Christianity that seceded from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation and adhered to the doctrine of Martin Luther, a staunch antisemite who authored the antisemitic work, “On the Jews and their Lies”, in 1543.(14) Hitler and the Nazis were admirers of Martin Luther, as exemplified by a 1933 Nazi propaganda poster that read, “Hitler’s fight and [Martin] Luther’s teaching are the best defense for the German people.”(15) Today the Trump administration supports Netanyahu, includes Evangelical Christians and the richest man in the world Elon Musk who gave a Nazi salute at the inauguration.

Christian Zionists see the Jewish people as simply a pawn in their deranged so-called “End-Times prophecies”, believing that the only Jews who are “redeemable” in their eyes are those who accepted Jesus as the “messiah” and their “lord and savior”, thus converting to Christianity and leaving their own religious beliefs behind. They call these converts “Messianic Jews”. According to these “prophecies”, those who do not convert will burn in hell with the rest of the non-believers, as the true believers ascend in “glorious rapture” with their “messiah” Jesus Christ to the pearly gates of Lala Land. In short, those “washed in the blood of Jesus” are worthy and all others are the scum of the Earth.

The largest specific grouping of those who hold these hateful and outrageous beliefs in the United $tates are known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a right-wing Christian nationalist movement of around 3 million Pentecostal and evangelical Christians whose ideology also commands adherents to capture the so-called “Seven Mountains” of societal influence – education, religion, family, business, the government and military, the arts and entertainment, and the media.(16) They are an organization that we, as revolutionaries, should keep an eye on, especially in lieu of the “Oompa-Loompa Man” and his MAGA fanatics taking control of the presidency and both houses of Congress this year.

Groups like the Proud Boys have been relatively inactive since the Capital riot on 6 January 2021, mostly due to fracturing after their leadership was locked up. In addition, other white supremacist/nationalist formations, like the “White Lives Matter” crowd, the virulently antisemitic Goyim Defense League, Identity Evropa, Patriot Prayer, Blood Tribe, Nick Fuentes and the “Groypers”, the so-called “Active Clubs” and many others (some of which have been reported as trying to worm their way into the Palestine solidarity movement with antisemitic signage, chants and pseudo anti-Zionist discourse, i.e. anti-Jewish rhetoric masquerading as being pro-Palestinian or anti-i$rael) may feel they have some wiggle room to recruit and organize after Genocide Joe leaves office and MAGA becomes the “law of the land”. These concerns stem from discussions I’ve had with some of my outside comrades that have been active in the Palestine solidarity movement recently in college campus “Liberated Zones” and in the streets.

Concluding Thoughts

As the Palestinian resistance continues on, steadfast in their struggle for liberation and return and in fierce opposition to the genocidal logic of Zionism and settler-colonialism; as the Lebanese resistance takes time to restructure their leadership apparatus in lieu of the aggressive Zionist assassination operation of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the majority of the political and military leadership of Hezbollah; as the brave members of the Yemeni Ansar Allah party continue their assault on the Zionist entity and their widely successful operation to throw innumerable monkey wrenches into the gears of the imperialist war machine and a global capitalism in unshakable support of the Palestinian people and their resistance; and as uncertain possibilities open up in Syria, all of Our eyes should continue to be firmly focused on Palestine and the Levant. The Christian Right’s “stand-in messiah”, Trump 2.0, is threatening there will be “hell to pay” if the Palestinian resistance doesn’t return the i$raeli citizens taken during Al-Aqsa Flood. Trump may also take revenge against the Islamic Republic of Iran for allegedly plotting to assassinate him before the election.

May we all continue to learn from the steadfast courage of the Palestinian people, and may they find swift victory against the Zionist entity in the coming year.

Glory to the Marytrs

Freedom to the Prisoners

Healing to the Wounded

Revolution until Victory

<sup>Notes:
1. Hamas Media Office, January 21 2024, “Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PDF.pdf
2. Nicholas Kristof, November 24 2024, “Warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest also implicates United States”, San Jose Mercury News
3. Firewater and Triumphant, October 2024, “Christian Zionism Tablet Propaganda Helps Keep Support for Palestine Small”, Under Lock & Key 87 (Fall 2024)
4. Inside Out Podcast, Season 1 Episode 7, “The International GPT Version”
5. The Prison Show, September 27 2024, KPFT 90.1 FM
6. Edward W. Said, 1992, “The Question of Palestine”, Vintage Books, pg. 23; and Ilan Pappé, 2022, “A History of Modern Palestine” (3rd Edition), Cambridge University Press, p.47-48
7. Noam Chomsky, 2014, “The Fateful Triangle - The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians”, Haymarket Books, p.96-97
8. Said, op. cit., p.16-17
9. Ibid, p.29
10. See generally, David S. Wyman, 1984, “The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945”, Pantheon Books
11. Chomsky, op. cit., p.29-31
12. Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, 2024, “Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism”, Melville House, p.219-220
13. Grim, July 2024, “On Christian Zionism and the Prison Tablet Propaganda Machine”, Under Lock & Key 86 (Summer 2024)
14. Burley and Lorber, op. cit., p.82
15. Facing History and Ourselves, June 2022, “Nazi propaganda depicting Martin Luther”, https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/nazi-propaganda-depicting-martin-luther
16. Burley and Lorber, op. cit., p.160 and p.163-164</sup>

Nigeria, Africa’s most populace nation and one of its most productive economies is currently facing an economic crisis. The masses of Nigerians cannot afford groceries or other essential products. The country’s government has failed to remedy the situation with minuscule economic reforms. These reforms were controversial and many working class people and groups protested and resisted them for sometime prior to their eventual implementation. Despite recent periods of economic growth, inflation in Nigeria has soared to 34% rendering one of the government’s reforms (raised minimum wage) obsolete.

In December 2024 local police in Ibadan say that at least sixty people have died in stampedes. These stampedes occurred at three different charity events where organizations were giving out food and cash donations. In Ibadan, a charity event for children was held and thousands of people showed up with their kids, a lot of them were days early in order to receive the much needed essential products. Tempers flared as people became desperate for these donations and the stampede ignited. In the end at least thirty-five children died in Ibadan that day. It is safe to say that capitalist imperialism was party to their deaths.

These stampedes merely demonstrate the struggles and desperation people of Nigeria are facing. The underlying causes of the economic situation in Nigeria is that the imperialist controlled General Bank placed inflation at 34%, and in order to minimize the effects of that high inflation rate the Nigerian government began to implement the reforms I have already mentioned. Western imperialist institutions and countries largely praised these reforms before and at the outset of their implementation. These institutions include the International Monetary Fund, as well as the United States government. Meawnwhile, U.$. officials are working hard to get inflation back to around 3% for Amerikans, in a country where most people are in the top 10% income-wise in the world. The proletariat and lumpen proletariat in Nigeria as well as the small peasantry are suffering greatly compared to Amerikans complaining about gas prices for their 15 mile per gallon trucks they drive to Costco and load up on bulk foods.

As part of the reforms the Nigerian government devalued their national currency (Naira) making themselves more dependent upon the whims of foreign international economic interests and activities. These activities rarely favor African or other Third World countries. The Nigerian government also cut their electricity subsidies, and probably the most important reform being the ending of their fuel subsidy which is one of the benefits that Nigerians receive. While gasoline was slightly cheaper in Nigeria in December 2024 ($0.67/Liter) than in the United $tates ($0.80/Liter), minimum wages in Nigeria were around $42 per month. That’s less than an Amerikan making minimum wage earns in an 8-hour day!

Previous governments have attempted to end the fuel subsidy but backed down repeatedly as a result of huge protests from the Nigerian people. The current and former governments set their sights on this particular subsidy because it was a very expensive one for the government, adding to government budget issues. The effects of cutting the subsidy for fuel saw the price of fuel, and subsequently transportation have soared. The latter makes it more expensive for corporations and businesses to perform their logistical duties, and they therefore raise their prices for consumers. Also because of power cuts people in Nigeria rely heavily on power generators and the cost of these have gone up as well.

The Nigerian people are angry at the failure of the Nigerian government to put comprehensive economic measures in place to soften the blow of the removal of the fuel subsidy, their inability to do so showcases their incompetence. The government has asked for the people’s patience, and have expressed that they are aware of the economic pain this is causing, but that is is necessary and temporary. As I have mentioned they have risen the minimum wage and made it almost double what it was previously. However, inflation has made such measures void. The government has also done small cash grants to the poorest socioeconomic sectors of Nigerians. The people have a general feeling that the political class in Nigeria do not really comprehend the effects these economic policies are having on their day to day lives.

The writer believes that the government comprehends perfectly well, however they are more concerned with maintaining exploitative relations with the United States and its corporations along with those of other imperialists.

Down With Imperialism!!!!

Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support Responds: This comrade’s resilience in the face of the in-justice system is admirable. Rights and well-being of prisoners are completely secondary to the main objective of national oppression. However, we should remember that many prisoners face a choice between attempting to integrate into the imperialist machine and rejecting the U.$. in favor of proletarian internationalism. “U.$. Citizen” is a false identity that on the one hand, seeks to unite the masses of oppressed nations with their oppressors, and on the other hand seeks to draw the lumpenproletariat into closer benefit from the spoils of imperialism via citizenship in the empire. Each of these reasons must be rejected in our work if we wish to fight for a society without oppression, forging a new internationalist identity that fights for national liberation independent from the empire.

Greetings Revolutionaries, activists, thugs, radical students, pimps, hustlers, players, strippers, sex workers, and all the thoroughbred Runaway Slaves in the First World; this is strictly addressed to the First World Lumpen. Marxism has taught us how to operate and harness the laws of the universe in the interests of those systematically locked out of the production process, those who finance-monopoly capitalism continue to dehumanize in its relentless, dogged, determined pursuit of endless profits.

Fascism is the word of the current movement. Trump’s election represents a certain heightening of contradictions. This is a sign of the imperialists recognizing their need for that strong persyn to move this space into its more authoritarian direction, into its more authoritarian disposition.

We have to be vigilantly on the prowl for the emergence of fascism. Social commentary should center primarily on building public opinion in this direction. Even in its embryonic stages, fascism doesn’t miss out on any opportunities to undermine the working-class revolution and smash working class organizations; First World and Third World.

It is time to crack open the history books and practically apply the dialectical-materialist analysis of history. There is nothing else at the moment that warrants any more attention. Period. 2020, though a moment, a flash point in social development, like I said previously in some past article was not in any way contradictory to the U.$. empire; nor was there any easing of tensions between law enforcement and those of us trapped in the ghettos that pockmark this landscape.

In 2022, actual U.$. military expenditure exceeded $1.52 trillion – more than twice the officially acknowledged level of $766 billion. Overall military spending are not included in the empire’s “defense budget” strategically. To estimate actual U.$. military spending, dialectical materialist methodological approaches must be utilized. I recommend publications like Monthly Review.

Nothing will be gained at the expense of the Third World because of our lack of genuine effort to combat our First Worldist dispositions. We in the ameriKKKan heartland must sit down and focus on studying fascism. We most definitely have the leisure time because of the labor aristocratic essence of the working class demographic in these parts. The class of people in the First World who are excluded from the productive process, by virtue of living in the First World, on average receive more material benefits from imperialism than the global proletariat. This is the First World lumpen. But the radical student movement is now with us, thanks to the gunshots let off on 7 October 2023 in Palestine and its people’s struggle to free their land from i$raeli and ameriKKKan aggression.

We have to have a completely scientific understanding of the concrete reality of our situation. George Jackson once spoke of this. I believe his classic work Blood In My Eye must be resurfaced and consulted for the best, most in-depth theoretical analysis of the current moment. Fascism and its historical significance was the point of his whole philosophy on politics, and its extension, war.

George posited how corporate-fascism’s nature advanced world-wide socialist consciousness after WW2. U.$. imperialism emerged after the Western powers had already divided up most of the most important markets in the world. The aftermath of WW2 left those same Western powers severely weakened, the U.$. became head honcho.

Social development continues to march ahead towards its logical conclusion – via stages of course. All the forces of reaction and counterrevolution have localized themselves and continue to radiate their oppressive energy in the now emerging ameriKKKan corporate-fascist state. Despite the presence of political parties, corporate politics is all that truly matters here. Corporate personhood command all state power.

We hear about the corporate political maneuvering of entities like Amazon, IBM, Facebook, Samsung, Apple, and many more. The modern chip industry speaks to the authority large private corporations have over state bodies. Just as steel a century ago was the essential commodity for economic development, the chip is the 21st century repeat. Chips are central to the technology pivotal to the present order. I say that to say that possibly by 2030, China’s chip industry could rival Silicon Valley’s influence; so this means something, the implications are beyond disruption of U.$. tech firms and trade flows, we are talking about a reset of the balance of military power.

Huawei has been at the center of all sorts of geopolitics in recent years. I think it’s time USW comrades study Huawei, and learn what makes this entity’s political maneuvering such a nightmare for Western imperialists, and sidestep amerikkka’s “Russian threat” distraction with the whole bogus fabricated Uhuru 3 persecution.

The African People’s Socialist Party are posing a very serious question that all revolutionaries active at the moment should sit down and reflect and ponder over: Did the FBI conspire with Russian intelligence to frame up Black activists in the United $tates?

The Uhuru 3 free speech trial has positioned me as an historical singularity, as that historical singularity who sees all angles, all sides, who sees the furthest ahead and who more than anyone at the moment understands the line of march the New Afrikan liberation movement should be taking, as fascism continues to kick its boots at our doors in the First World.

I will be waiting to hear your thoughts soon. In the meantime, all efforts on our boycott campaign should center on Securus. No opportunities to vilify Securus between December 6 and December 13 should be missed.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We have not received any further reports on the outcomes of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak Week of December 6-13, but welcome your reports. As to fascism and the new presidency, we’ve written more extensively on the previous Trump regime to say that it was not fascist, but merely business as usual.(1) Blood In My Eye is an excellent book that we distribute, but we think there is strategic significance to distinguish between fascism and bourgeois democracy, the two faces of imperialism.(2)

We agree with the author that the re-election of Trump indicates that the imperialists are looking to reshape things. In 2019, we wrote about how the absence of a real proletarian threat makes fascism unnecessary and unlikely. The threat that has emerged since then is the Palestine heightening it’s war of national liberation, which has forced all parties involved in the region to make their positions clear. In addition to this shakeup in the Middle East, there has been the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its affects across Europe. What seems likely is the imperialists are seeing cracks in the previous world order and signs of economic crisis that require a shift in strategy.

Trump remains erratic in eir speeches, and we have no great predictions for how this next term will go at this time. What is clear is that the need to build a strong movement against imperialism and fascism is now. There are opportunities on the horizon, and we hope you will join us in preparing for them.

<sup>Notes:
1. MIM(Prisons), April 2019, “Fascism, Imperialism, and Amerika in 2019”, Under Lock & Key 67.
2. Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons), November 2016, The Strategic Significance of Defining Fascism, Under Lock & Key 53.</sup>

Bilal Sunni-Ali (13 July 1948 – 30 December 2024) was a revolutionary and dedicated citizen of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). That dedication took various forms, from eir clandestine organizing to eir contributions to revolutionary culture via eir jazz, blues, and spoken word performances aimed at challenging the status quo and building up a revolutionary nationalist consciousness among the people.

From eir youth, Bilal partook in pro-people activities from eir time as a musician in the Youth Division of the North East Bronx NAACP, to eir later activities as a founding member of the New York City Black Panther Party fighting housing issues, police brutality, and recruiting street L.O.s into the movement. Dedicated to the self-determination of New Afrika, Bilal Sunni-Ali went underground in 1968 with the Black Liberation Army. In 1982, ey would be charged and acquitted in RICO charges related to the freeing of Assata Shakur and a bank robbery by the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (RATF) for which Sekou Odinga (who died 12 January 2024) and Silvia Baraldini were convicted. Bilal was successfully defended by the late Chokwe Lumumba in the politically charged trial, where they charged the U.$. government with conspiracy on behalf of the RNA. The RATF is described in detail in the book False Nationalism, False Internationalism as the last attempt at the radical militancy of the 1960s by members of the RNA and the Euro-Amerikan May 19th Communist Organization. Prior to this, Bilal was locked up in Soledad prison from 1970-1972, where ey struggled to develop both the general and political education of prisoners. Bilal’s support for prisoners continued throughout eir life, as before eir recent death, ey was involved in the Jericho Movement and the Imam Jamil Action Network – organizations dedicated to the struggle of political prisoners.

Bilal was a devout Muslim who truly lived in accordance to eir faith – not only by embodying the Islamic practice of standing up for the oppressed, but by raising their consciousness at the same time; drawing the connections between imperialism and white supremacy to the oppressed youth.

Sifting through Bilal’s tenor saxophone performances online, one will come across em performing at many events centered around prisoners. The usual song of choice that ey perform is entitled “Look For Me In The Whirlwind” (a title inspired by Marcus Garvey). The lyrics are as follows:

It is said that Bilal also went by the name “Spirit” and I believe that to be an apt name for an individual who epitomizes the spirit of eir people in all that ey do.

Rest in Power Bilal Sunni-Ali!

Long Live the Republic of New Afrika!

The methods of oppression are ever evolving to suppress the masses. The people must realize that revolution and resistance is a science, not rooted in emotion. Being a prisoner of war, enslaved by the state of Illinois, I have learned that resistance to my oppression must be calculated and strategic.

To all comrades held by the beast, learn the law! Stop allowing the State to offer you meaningless distractions that prevent you from fighting against this system. We must learn to use the weapons we got. Understand, comrades, the pigs are trained and equipped to handle any form of physical resistance, but they lack any true method to handle a revolutionary mind.

Resist by challenging all conditions of your enslavement, use their laws against them. Utilize every tool available to you. All peer advocates/jailhouse lawyers must unite to teach all that they know. Don’t let false titles keep us from uniting. Don’t let organizational ties, race, ideological stance, or religion stop us from coming together to fight against this system.

We must be organized and disciplined in our approach. Educate yourselves, train your mind & bodies, read every day! Write every day! Fuck that TV or tablet, get in the law library! All corporate media is a lie! Unburden yourself from that illusion. A pig’s nature is to consume uncontrollably, don’t be a pig or a pig sympathizer by allowing their oppression of you to go unchecked! Master everything you commit yourself to studying, revolutionize your mind. If the system doesn’t fear your physicality, it fears your mind, or should I say, the potential of what your mind can become!

“The heart of a soldier with the brain to teach a whole nation…” 2pac/No More Pain

In Solidarity

My intentions here isn’t to give a dialectical and historical context of the relationship between today’s Lumpen Organizations (gangs) and past revolutionary movements, although there is an inextricable link between the two. The origins of today’s Lumpen Organizations (L.O.s) were strongly influenced by the original Black Panther Party (BPP) and other similar organizations. They were formed to uplift and protect their communities from outside threats, threats that were typically imposed by law enforcement and the U.S. government.

With the destruction of the BPP, combined with the influx of drugs and firearms within their already oppressed communities, members of these organizations were lured into “gang-bangin’” against each other and a fratricidal and suicidal criminal lifestyle that resulted in the abandonment of the ideals and principles that were brought forth and established by the organizations’ founders. Ideals and principles that were often influenced by those of the BPP and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Today there are a limited few who diligently impress upon their “homies” the importance of espousing the organizations founding ideals and principles. Overall, a majority have been derailed from the organizations initial revolutionary path, which has been detrimental to the youth who romanticize today’s “gang” culture and their communities. Moreover, the absence of these ideals and principles has engendered a culture of disunity, violent competition, and the romanticizing of the “gang-banging” mentality, which renders us incapable of redressing the conditions we find ourselves subjected to within these razor-wire plantations.

There is no silver bullet or magic wand that can be used to magically expedite the transformation that must be made. Transforming the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality is a protracted process that demands accountability and rigorous educating.

i am dedicated to assisting with this transformation any way that i can. One way is to shed some light on the draconian policies and procedures that governs those of us who have been labeled “gang members,” labels known as Security Risk Group (SRG) or Security Threat Group (STG), so we can begin to seek redress to said policies and procedures.

Gang Validation Process

Those of us who have been validated as SRG/STG often suffer significant unfair prejudices due to the officers who are responsible for the validating opinions often basing these opinions on sweeping generalizations and stereotypes about “gang members” generally, unreliable methodology, and/or the officer’s racial bias.

Here in North Carolina the Department of Adult Corrections (DAC) has “certified” twenty-one alleged prison gangs as Security Risk Groups. Prisoners are validated as members of SRG’s by Prison Intelligence Officers (PIO) who are usually white, whose discretion reigns supreme in determining who is validated as SRG members and who isn’t. These subjective decisions lead to disproportionate validations of New Afrikan prisoners and those from other oppressed nations. A stark example of the racially uneven application of SRG validations is evident in the percentage of “white” prisoners who have been validated compared to New Afrikan prisoners. White prisoners make up 1.9% of the prisoners validated in NC prisons.

Around the world gangs are studied by those with specialized training in areas such as ethnography, anthropology, and psychology. In these fields, researchers are often subjected to ethical standards that warn against manipulating data to advance their personal objectives and required to employ social science field research best practices in relation to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The officers responsible for validating prisoners are not held to any such ethical standards and lack the fundamental knowledge to determine if a prisoner is actually a SRG member or not.

The degree of specialized knowledge for these officers to be qualified as “gang-experts” is particularly lacking. An officer can be qualified as a “gang-expert” after having only a couple months on the job, as long as they have some formalized training. You would think these “gang officers” would be required to demonstrate a basic overstanding of the complicated dynamics at issue where gang membership and behavior are concerned beyond stereotypes and prototypes, being that these validations subject prisoners to indefinite sanctions and restrictions that not only affect the lives of the prisoners but also the lives of the prisoners’ families.

These “gang officers” employ a worksheet which lists seventeen criteria for determining gang involvement, each of which is assigned a point value. Prisoners may be labeled as “suspects/associates” or “members”. A qualifying score is not difficult to achieve: prisoners bearing tattoos “thought” to signify gang affiliation and who socialize with “confirmed” gang-members may be regarded as members themselves.

False positives are likely to arise under this criteria, because while they may indicate a correlation with gang membership, they do not establish causation. Because gang membership cannot be reliably inferred from the factors aforementioned, these “gang officers” should not be allowed to opine about gang membership based on these factors alone.

Completed validation worksheets are forwarded to the NCDAC’s Chief of Special Operations, Daryll Vann, who reviews the worksheet, confirms that “relevant” documentation is attached, and validates the identifications. Prisoners who wish to contest the validation are not afforded the opportunity to do so. Prisoners receive no notice of their validation, no procedural due process, nor a periodic review that would enable the prisoner to have the validation removed. Therefore, prisoners who have been validated, remain validated for the duration of their incarceration and irrevocably are subject to SRG policy deprivations.

There are only two ways to have the SRG validation removed. There is a SRG program that’s accessible to a limited number of prisoners. It is a 9-month program at Foothills Correctional, a prison located in the rural mountainous region of Western NC. The staff employed there are exclusively white, live in race segregated communities and are out of touch with the cultures of the prisoners they oversee.

When these “gang officers” walk through the doors of the prison, many of them, knowingly or unknowingly, hold negative biases towards those who have been validated and those who don’t look like them.

The media perpetuates inaccurate narratives of violence, criminality, and dishonesty among racial minorities that many of these “gang officers” unknowingly internalize. It shows in how they interact and deal with the prisoners.

The DAC describes this program as being a program that “targets those beliefs (cognitions) that support criminal behavior ….” and seeks to shift the thinking that supports these beliefs. Prisoners who complete this program must undergo a debriefing and renounce their affiliation, if any, before the validation is removed. This program is not available to prisoners who have been labeled problematic.

The other way to have the validation removed is to complete your prison sentence and be discharged from NCDAC custody. Of the 1,343 prisoners released from NCDAC’s custody last year, 564 were alleged SRG members.

Draconian Gang Policies & Procedures

The ostensible purpose of the DAC’s SRG policies and procedures is to avoid prison disturbances supposedly fomented by gangs. Nonetheless it is obvious these policies and procedures have the effect of incapacitating significant numbers of prisoners and has cultivated an environment opposite from what prison officials claim to be “safer”.

Those who have been validated find themselves subjected to draconian sanctions and restrictions, such as being prohibited from receiving visits from anyone beyond immediate family. This excludes aunts, uncles, cousins, and the mother of your child(ren). If you have no immediate family members to accompany your child(ren) to visitation you will not be allowed to visit with them. Our childrens’ interests are not, as a matter of right, factored into SRG validation determinations. The fact that parent-child visitation can help children overcome the challenges of parental separation and reduce recidivism rates is well-documented. However, prison officials find it plausible to implement such a policy that prevents parent-child visits.

As with the prisoners who have been validated, New Afrikan children are the ones greatly affected by this policy. NCDAC has implemented this policy without any cognizance that such a restriction may implicate the parent-child relationship, which is typically subject to extraordinary protection by the courts. But yet this policy goes unchecked.

During my incarceration i’ve been unable to visit with my daughter due to me having no immediate family willing to accompany her. This has prevented her and i from developing a meaningful relationship. This is something that a majority of us are experiencing.

Moreover, this policy has an outsized impact on New Afrikan families and other members of marginalized communities who bear the brunt of mass incarceration.

Limiting a prisoner’s visitors to immediate family only effectively cuts a prisoner off from family members who may have raised them. As we know in marginalized communities there are an overwhelming amount of fractured families, where grandparents and others play the mother-father role.

Then there are the prisoners who were raised in foster care, who have never had the opportunity to meet their immediate family. There is no exception for foster care parents.

Although these restrictions are sometimes justified, they are being used indiscriminately without individual analysis.

On 19 February 2019, a policy was implemented that prohibited validated prisoners from receiving monetary support from anyone who wasn’t an approved visitor.

Prison officials claimed that this was done to curtail “Black Market” activities and strong arming. It’s not difficult to see how such a policy would increase said activities and, moreover, would create an environment where those who do have means of receiving financial support become victims of strong arming and other acts of violence.

This policy was implemented 8 months prior to now-retired Director of Prisons Kenneth Lassiter requesting more funding for security and control weapons. During these 8 months, violence amongst prisoners drastically increased, i know because a majority of the close-custody facilities were placed on lockdown due to the increased violence.

Validated prisoners are prohibited from attending all educational/vocational programs, compelled to serve idle prison sentences. They are locked in their cells virtually all of the time and otherwise maintained in extremely harsh conditions. Unable to have their custody level reduced to medium or minimum security. And job opportunities are non-existent. Common sense would tell prison officials that there are many reasons to believe that these policies and restrictions will produce unfortunate results both inside and outside of prison.

The Ramifications of these Policies

Motivated by an inaccurate conception of gangs and how they operate, the NCDAC has adopted policies that have enhanced group cohesiveness and the identities of gang-affiliated prisoners. These policies have promoted new gang connections for prisoners who, due to the difficulties inherent in gang identification, inadequate procedures and racial stereotyping, are misidentified. The validated prisoner tells emself “they think i’m a gang member, i might as well be one”. Of course these policies raise obvious moral and ethical questions. However, i would like to focus on how these policies make no sense from a correctional perspective. Even if these “gang officers” are creating or enhancing gang identities, why does it matter? Validated prisoners maintained in these locked down blocks, after all, are effectively disabled from committing acts of misconduct when locked in their cells.

Validated prisoners are denied access to visitation, financial support, transfers to medium or minimum custody, as well as parole. They have nothing more to lose so they are not deterred by any threat of punishment, what else can be taken from them? They have no incentive to refrain from gang involvement?

Aside from prison concerns, the impact of these policies’ ramifications will be felt most profoundly on the streets and communities to which these prisoners will return. As i pointed out, 564 of the 1,343 prisoners released from NCDAC’s custody last year were alleged gang members. In general, 96% of all prisoners return to society. There are recidivism studies focusing on gang affiliated prison releases, that show that gang members may retain their gang identity upon their release. (see: Salvador Buentello et. al, “Prison Gang Development: A Theoretical Model”, The Prison Journal, Fall-Winter 1991, at 3.8.) Thus, these policies not only fail to enhance prison security, they also undermine public safety.

We Have A Responsibility

All across the United $tates, prisoners themselves are subjected to similar sanctions and restrictions under the guide of enhancing prison security. i’ve revealed how these policies target New Afrikan prisoners and others of the oppressed nations and how they affect not only the prison but their families and communities as well. We have the numbers, we have the capability and we have the know how to bring about change. But as Komrade George Jackson expressed:

“We all seem to be in the grip of some terrible quandary. Our enemies have so confused us that we seem to have been rendered incapable of the smallest responsibility. I see this irresponsibility, or mediocrity at best[, as] disloyalty, self-hatred, cowardice, competition between themselves, resentment of any who may have excelled in anything….”

Because of the inexorable nature of our overseers, nationwide demonstrations on the outside and within these walls is presently necessary if we are to correct the correctors.

We have united fronts such as the United Front For Peace in Prisons, the United Struggle Within (USW) and Prison Lives Matter (PLM). PLM is a united front for political prisoners, prisoners of war, politicized individuals behind the walls of these razor-wire plantations and their organizations, as well as any outside formations in union with the struggles of prisoners, that has made it possible for us to address and redress the inhumane living conditions we find ourselves subjected to. It’s on us to initiate the process, it’s on us to communicate and network with one another, to get on the same page, so we can unite a page in the history books.

A Call to Action

As we grapple with an expanding and increasingly repressive prison system here in North Carolina, any hope for change lays in perfecting ourselves – our physical care, intellectual acumen, and cultural proficiency – while simultaneously confronting our overseers. And as i aforesaid, “There is no silver bullet or magic wand that can be used to expedite the transformation that must be made.” We have a personal responsibility to contribute to the confronting that must be done.

Some of us don’t seem to know what side we’re on. We’re obsessed with near-sighted disputes based on race, gang affiliation and so on. We expend our energies despising and distrusting each other. All of this is helping the NCDAC. We permit them to keep us at each others throats. i am calling for unity. We outnumber them. Wake up!!! Put your prejudices, biases, and gang affiliation aside for the purpose of OUR fight with the NCDAC. i’m asking we start by submitting a grievance concerning NCDAC’s SRG policies and procedures (an example has been provided below).

Of course i’m not expecting any redress from submitting grievances. NCDAC’s Administrative Remedy Procedure process is ineffective and honestly a waste of time if you are seeking redress. However, i’ve not asked you to submit said grievance with hopes that NCDAC officials will correct their wrongs.

i’m currently in the middle of litigating a civil suit against NCDAC on behalf of all prisoners who have been validated as a SRG member. By submitting a grievance you will be supporting the claims i have made. Thusly i entrust you take the time and submit the following grievance (and send a copy to MIM(Prisons) if you can):

Free The Land

In the early hours of Wednesday, December 4th, a masked gunman shot the CEO of United $tates insurance company UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, to death in the bustling streets of New York City. By midday, CCTV footage of the act had gone viral across the internet and traditional news media, spawning endless narratives and theories. Simultaneously, the high-profile nature of the shooting prompted a national manhunt to search for the suspect. The shooter evaded capture for five days, but ey was eventually arrested after a tip was called in by a McDonald’s employee in rural Pennsylvania.

As communists operating in the United $tates, how are we to understand this event? What does the event itself and its resulting fallout tell us about the political landscape we work within? If we wish to live up to the title of being Marxists, the only answer to these questions is that we must conduct a, as Lenin put it, “concrete analysis of concrete conditions.” Let us begin with the facts of the case.

The Facts

The name of the alleged shooter is Luigi Mangione. As laid out in eir so-called ‘manifesto’, Luigi’s motivation for the shooting is a disdain for U.$. healthcare insurance companies in general and UnitedHealthcare in particular. The origin of this disdain likely lies in a combination of Luigi’s persynal interactions with health insurance companies through eir struggles with back pain as well as the more widespread antagonism between the U.$. population and health insurance companies.

Luigi comes from a well-connected family which has its roots in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. Eir grandfather ran several successful business ventures which guaranteed employment and prosperity for the next generations of the Mangione family as they have now taken the reins on the family businesses. Luigi emself attended a private high school before attending the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania where ey got eir degree in computer science in 2020. According to Luigi’s family and friends, ey ceased all communication with them in July 2024. Presumably, Luigi spent the time between then and December planning the shooting, which we will now focus on.

As mentioned, the shooting itself took place on the morning of 4 December 2024. Interestingly, Luigi employed a 3D-printed firearm to commit the shooting, which marks the first time such a weapon has been used in such a high-profile case. Immediately after, Luigi evaded the swarms of police by traveling via foot, cab, and e-bike before boarding a train towards Philadelphia. Not much else is known about Luigi’s whereabouts and travels during the 5 days between the shooting and eir arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The biggest takeaway here is how easily Luigi evaded both the NYPD and the FBI for an extended period of time. If Luigi had continued traveling, discarded the evidence ey carried on em, or put any effort into changing eir appearance, it’s likely that ey would have never been caught. But this is simply speculation on our parts. Let us now turn from the objective facts of the case to the realm of ideology.

Luigi’s Ideology

To understand why Luigi Mangione shot Brian Thompson, we must first understand eir ideology. The only clues we have towards this understanding are scattered social media posts as well as the aforementioned “manifesto” Luigi had on em when ey was arrested. While we’ll primarily focus on the “manifesto”, we will first highlight one of Luigi’s social media posts where ey reviews the writings of Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. In this review, Luigi highlights how Kaczynski was “rightfully imprisoned” because ey “maimed innocent people” but that these were the actions of an “extreme political revolutionary.” Luigi’s review finishes by quoting multiple paragraphs from a Reddit comment expounding how violence is the only method we have at our disposal to fight back against “our overlords.”

Now, turning to the “manifesto”, we wish to give our readers the fullest picture possible, so we have included below a full copy of the writing that was recovered when Luigi was arrested:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as [sic] our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”(1)

Let us take a closer look at this writing. Luigi begins with saying:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country.”

To those who proclaim Luigi is spreading “class consciousness” or that ey is a revolutionary, this single sentence should shatter all illusions. If an ally of yours said ey respects federal agents (of the FBI, CIA, etc.) for what they “do for our country,” would you be on eir side? Our answer to this question is a resounding Fuck No.

What else does Luigi write about? Ey brings up some rudimentary statistics about life expectancy in the United $tates and market capitalization before asserting that U.$. corporations have “gotten too powerful” and “they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it.” This strikes us as similar to the proposition that the Amerikkkan public is “brainwashed” (how? by whom? why?) into merely passively accepting the capitalist-imperialist world-system. This stands in opposition to our political line which is that Euro-Amerikans actively embrace imperialism (consciously or not) as the primary source of their wealth via super-profits extracted from the Third World proletariat.

Luigi ends eir writing by admitting that ey is not “the most qualified person to lay out the full argument” for the issues of the U.$. health insurance system but assures us that ey is, “evidently […] the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

How high and mighty! Luigi is “evidently” the first to break through the veil of ignorance which plagues the rest of us. Though we would contend that there are perhaps a few people who have come before Mr. Mangione who have faced the “corruption and greed” of the healthcare industry (which is only a particular form of capitalist industry in general) with “such brutal honesty.” Off the top of our heads, we can think of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, or Huey Newton, just to name a few. These are of course only the most popular figureheads of past communist movements. In reality, there are millions who have stood their ground against the imperialist-bourgeoisie and lost their lives for it. But no matter their sacrifice, for we have been blessed with the gift of the wealthy Euro-Amerikan from Maryland showing us the path forward!

So where does all this leave us? Is Luigi really a Marxist revolutionary who has been sent down from the Heavens to end the oppression of the masses? Of course not. Luigi’s writings and musings are nothing more than regurgitations of the same social fascist populism that is reminiscent of the messaging around Bernie Sander’s presidential campaigns combined with an impetus towards political violence. Discontent with the healthcare insurance industry is normal everyday politics for people living in the United $tates. All Luigi did was elevate this discontent from the level of complaining on the internet or attending protests to killing a CEO. An escalation of force, to be sure, but not one that is qualitatively different in its nature.

The Public’s Reaction

However critical we may be of Luigi Mangione, ey is only an individual. It would be an error to narrowly focus on the individual agents of hystory rather than the political trends and their material causes which compel individuals to act the way they do. So what trend underlies the actions of Luigi? And how has this been reflected in the public’s reaction to the killing?

Broadly, reactions to the shooting can be grouped into one of two camps: condemnations of Luigi’s actions or celebrations of them.

Those who condemn Luigi tend to do so from a position of superficial pacifism wherein you must be totally against violence in all situations – unless it benefits yourself or your nation. A vast majority of U.$. politicians fall into this group as well as a sizable portion of the U.$. citizenry. Typically hailing from the upper strata of U.$. society, these individuals are largely hypocritical and uninteresting for our purposes here. After all, even a child can identify the contradiction that’s present when one mourns the death of a single CEO while simultaneously advocating for imperialist armies to indiscriminately murder the oppressed.

On the other side, there are large swaths of people who view Luigi as a “folk hero” or a “savior” and exist somewhere on the spectrum between sympathizing with or admiring Luigi. Typically viewed as part of the Amerikan “left” (though we have observed both Democrats and Republicans expressing these views), this group wishes for healthcare reform in order to ease up on the contradictions intrinsic to the capitalist system. More specifically, these individuals fall into the same category of social fascist labor aristocrats as Luigi. Their class status as labor aristocrats is being threatened by the “greedy” capitalists of the health insurance corporations who want to take away their hard-earned wealth (i.e. superprofits from the Third World) and Luigi’s actions are simply one response to this threat. So long as their aim is narrowly limited on what can be done to improve the lives of Amerikans rather than taking a revolutionary approach to understand what can be done to improve the lives of all humyns, they remain enemies of the international proletariat.

This graph helps illustrate the demographics of either group as well as the proportions of the U.$. population that fall into either side. We also must wonder if the 20% support for Luigi Mangione among Amerikans would translate to support for retribution for the killing of Robert Brooks by New York prison guards and the slow genocide of New Afrikan men in U.$. prisons? We probably all know the answer to this question.

Though there is a real ideological divide between the two aforementioned groups, it would be wrong to overstate the width of this divide. Both groups are merely two factions of the white supremacist Amerikkkan establishment which exploits the Third World in order to secure their own prosperity.

Our Thoughts

Where do we lie in this divide? You certainly won’t find us shedding tears over a dead CEO, disavowing violence, or proclaiming pacifism, but you also will not see us celebrating Luigi Mangione as some sort of hero of the oppressed. Instead, we view Luigi as merely the latest manifestation of labor aristocracy angst towards the imperialist leaders of the United $tates. If either of Luigi’s actions or political line were rooted in revolutionary politics, we’d be a bit more sympathetic to em. But as it stands, Luigi’s lone wolf killing is both tactically inept and ideologically confused.

More broadly, we understand the struggle of people in the United $tates for more comprehensive healthcare. But rather than trying to secure healthcare for Amerikans only, why don’t we set our sights on securing healthcare for all people? Why should we advocate for petty reforms like getting earlier colonoscopies for middle-aged Amerikans when millions die each year in the Third World from easily-preventable diseases because of imperialist wealth extraction? or when U.$. weapons are used to murder doctors and bomb hospitals in Gaza? This is a topic comrades have written on before in relation to the Affordable Care Act(3), and it clearly remains relevant today. Even if we limit our scope to be within U.$. borders, the lack of healthcare that’s available for prisoners is a much more pressing issue than the reforms which the social fascists are seeking. It’s well documented how healthcare, and lack thereof, is used as a tool to punish and torture prisoners(4) rather than being recognized as a constitutional right.

Circling back to the central topic of this article, the question still stands: will this shooting actually change anything about the healthcare industry? Almost certainly not. But it has provided an opportunity for the fascism of the labor aristocracy to rear its head in a particularly brazen fashion through the actions of Luigi Mangione. As the U.$. labor aristocracy is faced with political chaos both at-home and abroad, they will resist the ever-looming threat of proletarianization. Will they recover and maintain their position in the imperialist world system? Will the U.$. population come face-to-face with proletarianization as global inter-imperialist conflicts intensify? We cannot say which is the case. The only thing we are sure of is that the actions of Luigi Mangione have provided a unique insight into the political terrain we operate in within U.$. borders. As communists, we must harness this insight and use it to guide our political action so that we may empower the international proletariat in their struggle against capitalist-imperialism. The only path forward is revolution.

^{(1) Ken Klippenstein, 10 December 2024, Exclusive: Luigi’s Manifesto}

^{(2)YouGov Poll, December 2024}

^{(3)ULK 38, April 2014, Affordable Care Act Underscores Need for Global Health Coverage}

^{(4)ULK 12, September 2009, Basic Healthcare Threat to Security}

Some of the problems I have run into organizing are being targeted by administration for conducting a study group. Some times there’s too many people interested for the space available, then when you’ve got 15-20 people huddled up and no violence is occurring, it scared the C.O.’s They are not used to that type of unity and they don’t encourage anything that has to do with building a collective consciousness. I try to do study groups in smaller circles and more discreetly because some dudes are eyes and ears for the oppressor. Repression is not a good thing at all and I must say that before I continue. However, when they do crack down, that’s when I pay close attention because certain responses help me inventory the caliber of men I’m studying with. The ones who know and understand the full magnitude of what the consequences can be for orchestrating a study group but are still willing to carry on are my type of comrades. In other words, the targeting helps me see who’s who.

As far as the question of being surrounded by enemies, we can list the various forces inside prisons similar to classes/nations outside because there are different types of people and not everybody is on the same page. For example, if in the prison I am housed at I did a united front for Palestine solidarity, certain people would not even consider it because that’s not the level of struggle they are interested in. But if I did one for, let’s say, advocating for more quality programming inside the institution, you will see a different crowd. Even in this crowd, you will have some who fully identify with capitalist principles (even fascism) and their oppressor.

Different initiatives will attract different people. I feel like it’s important to dichotomize because not everybody is qualified for revolutionary work. You’ve got some people who are so broken and battered they will utilize this as an opportunity to gain favor with the oppressor. United fronts can be formed that resolve around us understanding our personal experiences within the criminal injustice system and putting it in a larger context of abolishing the prison system and all other oppressive, capitalist-imperial systems. By us connecting this link to the outside world, we will see how these systems overlap and the need for a united front for all the oppressed. The fight continues.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Last issue we asked for feedback on what it was like to build support for Palestine in prisons. As this comrade indicates, it can be a hard sell. Focusing on quality programming can be a better place to start, but it is not inherently going to build the movement. More programming can lead to more state control over what prisoners are doing with their time, more brainwashing. So such a campaign would need to have a component where you were also building programs, or just space for discussion, that serves the movement for it to be a progressive campaign. That is, a campaign that serves the international proletariat rather than something that just helps a small group of people get jobs when they’re released or whatever. Campaigning for Palestine is much more inherently internationalist in its content, and it does not present these challenges – it presents the challenge of being harder to mobilize people around instead as comrades in Texas and Florida have also reported.