MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
In the last issue, we mentioned the removal of Spanish-language
content from federal websites. Since then, we’ve seen the Pentagon
removing information about Navajo code-talkers, Jackie Robinson,
Tuskegee Airmen and Japanese who fought for the U.$. in World War II
from their websites.
The U.$. military helps to impose fascism on the oppressed people of
the Third World when they get out of line. But now that fascism is
coming home, the oppressed nations here are the first to feel the
brunt.
There’s a long history of the U.$. military using benefits and even
citizenship to bribe people to fight for them. There’s also a long
history of the United $tates not always coming through with their
promises. This erasure of oppressed people from their history is just
one more slap in the face of those who thought they’d get in with the
Amerikans by fighting in their wars. And we see it as a petty sign of
how Amerika is taking a different approach to oppressed people in this
country.
The Regime
While Trump wasn’t so different as a U.$. president first time
around, we can look to his current cabinet to confirm the consolidation
of fascists for this second term.
Does anyone think a Euro-immigrant from apartheid South Africa who
throws Nazi salutes, and is the richest persyn in the world, is a friend
of oppressed nations? How about Pete Hegseth, the guy with the Christian
nationalist tattoos now in charge of the military that already had a
white nationalist militia problem? Who ironically closed his self-leaked
plans to bomb Yemen with:
“We are currently clean on OPSEC. Godspeed to our Warriors.”
President Trump recently told Salvadorian President Bukele to “build
five more places” to hold “homegrown” criminals from the United $tates,
referring to the giant Salvadorian “terrorist” concentration camp Trump
has begun sending people to. Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for
policy and homeland security adviser to Trump, when asked if Mahmoud
Khalil will be deported, replied:
“Yes he will, as will anyone who preaches hate for America.”
Vice President J.D. Vance is a benefactor of another of the richest
people in the world, Peter Thiel, who also funds Curtis Yarvin, who
Vance says he takes much influence from. Yarvin believes New Afrikans
have lower IQs and that their enslavement was thus justified because
they were destined to be slaves. Yarvin is paraphrased as writing:
“He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is
to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary
confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected
to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a
rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”“(1)
This will sound very familiar to regular readers of ULK.
This is the future of prison tablets. A slow genocide that avoids the
current messiness of videos of dead babies inspiring young
anti-imperialists to destroy weapons manufacturing plants of companies
like Elbit Systems.
These are just some highlights of the current regime that have been
exposed in much more depth by others over the past year. These people do
not want us and they’re serious about it.
Peak Integration?
By the 1960s, the injustices of Jim Crow had garnered sympathy and
support from many sectors for the self-determination of the internal
semi-colonies (in particular the Black/New Afrikan nation). Since the
victory of the Civil Rights Act, that support has declined, replaced
with an imperialist project of assimilation. At this point, most of us
have only lived in an integrated United $tates, which has greatly
reduced the interest in national liberation on occupied Turtle Island.
Of course the disproportionate poverty, homelessness, murder and torture
of oppressed nations continues, but many in the internal semi-colonies
joined the Amerikan consumer class post-integration as well. As a
result, we have more Uncle Toms and Tio Tomas than ever before
(especially the Tios and Tias who continue to join the U.$. military at
increasing rates).
Black Lives Matter (peaking in 2020) and the al-Aqsa Flood in 2023
brought an uptick in support for national liberation. With the
resumption of the U.$.-i$rael war on Palestine and Lebanon, breaking peace
deals in both cases, opposition to what the imperialists are doing
in the Middle East continues to rise within the United $tates. We also
think the internal actions of the current Trump regime are already
beginning to heighten contradictions and broaden the base for possible
alliances as the fascist enemy consolidates its forces against us.
Deportations
have targeted those from Latin America and the Muslim world so far.
As the prospect of war with China advances we will also see the rise of
racism against Chinese people (or those perceived to be Chinese) in this
country, as we have seen in the past, as recently as the COVID-19
pandemic.
You Can’t Think Racism Away
While liberals think we can (and have) made progress against national
oppression by fighting “wrong ideas” in peoples’ heads, racism is in
reality a product of national oppression. It cannot be ended without the
national liberation of the oppressed.
The reason people believe in integration is that they believe that
the wealth and prosperity of the United $tates can exist without
oppressing and exploiting other nations. It cannot. And the Trump regime
has a more realistic understanding of this than most Amerikans.
As support for national liberation and alternatives to the current
system grow, we must make this point very clear. We must draw a clear
line between the proletarian line and the social fascist and
crypto-Trotskyist lines that have historically linked the struggle
against oppression with the struggle for more wealth for Amerikans. The
struggle for more wealth always wins out. This is why the
labor aristocracy is the main force for fascism, even if the
imperialists are doing most of the work so far.
Intensificando la amenaza de pandillas peligrosas con
“súperpredadores.” Usando informantes confidenciales, tatuajes, y
apariencia para catalogar personas como “pandilleros.” Usando esa
conexión de pandilla para encarcelar y torturar a la gente. Estos
métodos draconianos son familiares a lectores de ULK, y para esos que
han pasado tiempo en cárceles estadounidenses en general. El régimen de
Trump ha echo esta noticia para el país entero.
En las semanas recientes, cientos de venezolanos han sido deportados
de los Estados Unidos a una megacarcel en El Salvador. El régimen de
Trump ha justificado esto con La Ley de Enemigos de 1798, que permite la
deportación de no ciudadanos durante tiempo de guerra, y fue usado
durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial para deportar los alemanes y italianos
y juntar los japoneses en campos de internamiento, apoderándose de sus
activos para los euro-amerikanos. Trump reclamo que estas personas
fueron parte de una pandilla conduciendo “guerra irregular” en los
Estados Unidos, pero no hay evidencia que Tren de Aragua es una
organización amplia y funcional aquí. En febrero, el Departamento de
Estado estadounidense designaron Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha
(MS-13), y una lista de carteles mexicanas como “organizaciones
terroristas extranjeras.”
Una corte federal ha ordenado una pausa a estas deportaciones, pero
el Departamento de Justicia esta desafiando la orden. Una batalla legal
continua, mientras el poder ejecutivo continua a desafiar las
cortes.
Venezuela ha sido un objetivo consistente del imperialismo
estadounidense desde que obtuvo poder Hugo Chávez en 1999.(1) De
resultado casi 600,000 venezolanos han sido aceptados en los Estados
Unidos con Estatus Protegido Temporario (TPS). Trump intento a cancelar
el TPS para los venezolanos, pero una corte federal ha determinado eso
como un acto ilegal. Sin el TPS, muchos de Venezuela, Haití, Ucrania,
Sudán, Afganistán y otros lugares no podrían continuar a trabajar en los
Estados Unidos legalmente y podrían ser deportados legalmente.
Kilmar Armando Ábrego García esta recibiendo atención especial de que
la administración de Trump admitió que su deportación fue un error, y
que no lo pueden regresar de la custodia salvadoreña. Esto es a pesar de
que había una orden del la corte que prevenía su regreso a El Salvador,
donde se había escapado de violencia pandillera cuando era joven. Ábrego
García no tiene cargos criminales, si sirve de algo, pero fue catalogado
como un miembro de MS-13 por un puerco mencionando un “informante
confidencial” cuando estaban acorralando trabajadores hace algunos años.
Como resultado, Ábrego García ha sido desaparecido de su familia y
mandado a una unidad de tortura en el mero país que huyo por razones de
seguridad.(2)
El ACLU obtenido una copia del “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” siendo
usado para deportaciones. Después de establecer que alguien es mayor de
los 14 años, de origen Venezolano y sin ciudadanía estadounidense, un
sistema de puntuación es usado para “validar” pandilleros. Un tatuaje de
“TdA” te da 4 puntos mientras 8 puntos son requeridos para calificar
como validado. La guiá del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional muestra
una lista de imágenes de tatuajes como coronas y estrellas que son
“TdA”. También, poniéndote mercancía de los Chicago Bulls y Michael
Jordan está en la lista. Cuando fue la ultima vez que has visto alguien
con un tatuaje de una estrella y portando Air Jordans?
Persiguiendo Activistas
Estudiantiles
Instituciones educacionales desde Universidad de Columbia en Nueva
York hasta es sistema de la Universidad de California están esforzando
la represión fascista en sus campos, de expulsando estudiantes durante
la presidencia de Biden, a haciéndolos desaparecer de las calles y de
sus hogares bajo el régimen de Trump. Estudiante de Tufts University
Rümeysa Öztürk esta detenida por escribiendo un articulo criticando el
genocidio en Palestina causado por los Estados Unidos y Israel y el
campamento estudiantil propalestina el año pasado, contó su historia en
una declaración reciente del 18 de Marzo 2025:
“Me llamo Mahmoud Khalil y soy un preso político. Les escribo desde
un centro de detención en Luisiana… Fui detenido el 8 de marzo por unos
agentes del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS, por sus siglas en
inglés). Se negaron a aportar una orden judicial y nos abordaron a mi
esposa y a mí de manera agresiva cuando regresábamos de cenar.…
“Mi detención fue una consecuencia directa de ejercer mi derecho a la
libre expresión, ya que abogaba por una Palestina libre y el fin del
genocidio en Gaza; genocidio que se reanudó con fuerza el lunes por la
noche. Con el acuerdo de alto al fuego que se pactó en enero ya roto,
los padres y madres de Gaza vuelven a mecer mortajas minúsculas en sus
brazos y las familias se han visto obligadas a escoger entre la hambruna
y el desplazamiento forzoso o las bombas. Es nuestro imperativo moral
persistir en la lucha por su libertad absoluta.”
“[La Universidad de] Columbia me fichó por mi activismo y abrió una
dictatorial oficina disciplinaria con el fin de saltarse el debido
proceso y silenciar a los estudiantes criticando a Israel. Columbia ha
cedido ante las presiones estatales, proporcionando expedientes
académicos de sus estudiantes al Congreso y acatando las últimas
amenazas de la administración de Trump. Algunos ejemplos claros de esto
son mi detención, así como la expulsión o suspensión de al menos
veintidós estudiantes de la Columbia —algunos despojados de sus títulos
pocas semanas antes de graduarse— y la expulsión de Grant Miner,
presidente del sindicato Estudiantes Trabajadores de Columbia (SWC, por
sus siglas en inglés), en la víspera de las negociaciones
contractuales.”
“En todo caso, mi detención es un testimonio de la fuerza del
movimiento estudiantil para cambiar la opinión pública hacia la
liberación palestina…” (4)
Otros estudiantes que han sido perseguidos se han escondido. A la
misma vez, estudiantes por todas partes del país están uniéndose para
apoyar y defender los que puedan ser destacados después. Elogiamos la
solidaridad que estamos viendo. Escuelas y prisiones son realmente
únicos en nuestra sociedad dado de las identidades de sus poblaciones y
sus habilidades a organizar. Con los anuncios recientes del régimen de
Trump que van a deportar ciudadanos estadounidenses con récord criminal
al Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo en El Salvador, prisioneros
tienen que estar preparados para confrontar el enemigo juntos en la
manera que lo están aprendiendo a hacer los estudiantes. Aunque hay
muchos ejemplos recientes que dice lo contrario, hay una historia larga
de prisioneros estadounidenses apoyándose debido a la consciencia del
grupo que viene con confrontando un opresor común cada día.
Fascismo De Regreso a su
Hogar
Los Estados Unidos ha usado el régimen de aislamiento de largo plazo
por décadas a un nivel no visto en cualquier otra parte en la historia
humana. Médicos para los Derechos Humanos (PHR por sus siglas en inglés)
salieron con un reporte en 2024 exponiendo el uso del régimen de
aislamiento en los centros de detención en contra de las direcciones del
gobierno para limitar su uso cuando es absolutamente necesario.
Documentaron alrededor de 14,000 casos de personas siendo puestas en
aislamiento por ICE de 2018 a 2023. El régimen de aislamiento tardaba
por un promedio de 27 días, con 42 casos tardando mas de un año. En
2024, ICE detuvo mas de 35,000 personas, ahora siendo el sistema de
detención inmigratoria mas grande del mundo.(5)
Condiciones probablemente son peor para los que son transferidos a El
Salvador, donde el Presidente Bukele ha declarado que la única manera
que los pandilleros pueden salirse del Centro de Confinamiento del
Terrorismo (CECOT) que construyo en 2023 sera en un cajón. Con una
capacidad de mas de 40,000, hay 65 a 70 prisioneros mantenidos en cada
celda. “Prisioneros de CECOT no reciben visitas y nunca están permitidos
a salir. La prisión no ofrece talleres o programas educativas para
prepararlos a regresar a la sociedad después de sus sentencias.”(6)
Bukele ha estado promocionando fotos de pandilleros con la cabeza
rasurada, vestidos de todo blanco, siendo maltratados por guardas
enmascarados por linea desde que abrieron la prisión. Esta campaña de
propaganda ha apelado a los elementos profascista de Amerika. Y con ese
apoyo, Trump esta incorporando esta prisión en el sistema internacional
de prisiones amerikanas y mandando cienes de personas ahí de los Estados
Unidos. Este es un cambio cerca de la casa del interconexión de sitios
oscuros, y prisiones famosas como Abu Ghraib y Guantánamo, que fueron
usados para torturar y aguantar preso sin juicio personas oprimidas al
través del mundo Musulmán.
La mayoría de la prensa están reportando que los amerikanos pagaron
$6 millón dólares para que 238 prisioneros sean puestos en CECOT, que
algunos señalan que es mucho menos de lo que costaría a encarcelarlos en
los Estados Unidos. Pero es una cantidad que va a ayudar El Salvador
inmensamente para que puedan fundar su monstruosidad de cárcel. No tiene
sentido que los imperialistas están pagando para que aguanten a estos
prisioneros, pero después reclamen que no pueden regresar personas como
Ábrego García de regreso a sus familias.
En los 1980s, los Escuadrones de La Muerte patrocinados por los
Estados Unidos, entrenados en la Escuela de las Américas en Georgia,
mataron y desplazaron muchas personas en América Central que estaban
luchando por el socialismo y por poder sacar el imperialismo de sus
países.(7) Muchos niños de esta guerra en El Salvador fueron desplazados
a Los Angeles donde se unieron a Barrio 18 o crearon la nueva Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13), fueron perseguidos por el estado, y después
mandados a regreso a El Salvador. Reportamos sobre los esfuerzos en
haciendo paz entre estos grupos en 2013, que coincide con la inversión
por USAID y el desarrollo de las prisiones en El Salvador inspiradas por
los Estados Unidos.(8) Pero las condiciones para la gente de El Salvador
no mejoraron, y votaron por el Presidente Nayib Bukele que utilizo las
organizaciones lumpen en su organización política y después los
traiciono como un chivo expiatorio por el mal del país en una campaña
fascista de represión.(9)
La lucha contra el fascismo en este país depende en la reunión de
personas para defender las poblaciones migrantes y estudiantes que están
siendo atacados en este momento. En cuanto el fascismo continué a subir,
vemos las campañas de grupos como el ACLU acercándose mas a los de
MIM(Prisons). Mientras están pasando batallas legales importantes,
también vemos el reconocimiento extendiendo que no podemos depender en
las cortes para que nos salven. Debemos de tener un plan B. Debemos de
crear nuestro plan B.
Notas: 1. Soso of MIM(Prisons), January 2019,
Imperialists Push Coup in Venezuela to Secure Oil for Amerikans, Under
Lock & Key 67. 2. Democracy Now!, 2 April 2025. 3.
https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador
4.
https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/a-letter-from-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil
5. Physicians for Human Rights, 6 February 2024,
https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador.
6. Aleman & Cano, 17 March 2025, “What to know about El Salvador’s
mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there”, Los Angeles
Times. 7. MIM(Prisons), June 2009, FBI Arrests Peacemaker, Under
Lock & Key 9. 8. MIM(Prisons), March 2013, One-Year Anniversary
of Peace Treaty in El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 31. 9. Badgreen
of MIM(Prisons), September 2023, 8,000 Military and Police Deployed in
Cabanas Province, El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 83.
Hyping up the threat of dangerous gangs of “super-predators.” Using
confidential informants, tattoos, and appearance to label people “gang
members.” Using that gang
affiliation to imprison and torture people. These draconian methods
are familiar to readers of ULK, and to those who’ve spent time
in U.$. prisons in general. The Trump regime has made this headline news
for the whole country.
In recent weeks, hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported from the
United $tates to a supermax prison in El Salvador. The Trump regime
justified this with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the
deportation of non-citizens during wartime, and was last used during
WWII to deport Germans and Italians and roundup Japanese in internment
camps, seizing their assets for Euro-Amerikans. Trump claimed these
people were part of a gang conducting “irregular warfare” in the United
$tates, but there seems to be no evidence that Tren de Aragua is even a
widely functioning organization here. In February, the U.$. State
Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and a
list of Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
A federal court has ordered a halt to the deportations, but the
Department of Justice is defying the order. A legal battle continues,
while the executive branch continues to defy the courts.
Venezuela
has been a consistent target of U.$. imperialism since the rise of
Hugo Chavez to power in 1999.(1) As a result almost 600,000 Venezuelans
have been accepted into the United $tates with Temporary Protected
Status (TPS). Trump attempted to cancel TPS for Venezuelans, but a
federal court has deemed the move illegal. Without TPS, many from
Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere could no
longer legally work in the United $tates and could be legally
deported.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is getting special attention as the
Trump administration admitted eir deportation was a mistake, and that
they can’t get em back from Salvadorean custody. This is despite a court
order that prevented em from being sent back to El Salvador, where ey
had fled gang violence as a youth. Abrego Garcia has no criminal
charges, for what that’s worth, but was labelled a member of MS-13 by a
pig citing a “confidential informant” during a round up of day laborers
some years ago. As a result, Abrego Garcia has been disappeared from eir
family and sent to a torture unit in the very country ey fled for safety
reasons.(2)
The ACLU obtained a copy of the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” being
used to deport people.(3) Once establishing someone is over 14 years
old, of Venezuelan origin and without U.$. citizenship, a point system
is used to “validate” gang members. A “TdA” tattoo gets you 4 points
while 8 points are required to qualify as validated. The Homeland
Security guide lists photos of tattoos like crowns and stars that are
“TdA”. In addition, wearing Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan athletic
wear are listed. When was the last time you saw someone with Air Jordans
on and a star tattoo?
Student Activists Targeted
Educational institutions from Columbia University in New York to the
University of California system are enforcing the fascist repression on
their campuses, from expelling students during Biden’s Presidency, to
disappearing them off the streets and from their homes under the Trump
regime. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk is being detained for
writing an article criticizing the U.$.-I$rael genocide in Palestine.
Mahmoud Khalil, who was a respected negotiator between Columbia
University and the pro-Palestine student encampment last year, told eir
story in a recent statement from 18 March 2025:
“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am
writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana… On March 8, I was
taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my
wife and me as we returned from dinner. …
“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free
speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in
Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire
now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds,
and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against
bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their
complete freedom.”
“… Columbia [University] targeted me for my activism, creating a new
authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence
students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by
disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump
administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension
of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their B.A. degrees
just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC President Grant
Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
“If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the
student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian
liberation. …”(4)
Other targeted students have gone into hiding. At the same time,
students across the country are coming together to stand with and defend
those who may be targeted next. We commend the solidarity being shown.
Schools and prisons are somewhat unique in our society due to the
collective identities of their populations and their abilities to
organize. With the recent announcements from the Trump regime that they
will be deporting U.$. citizens with criminal records to the Terrorism
Confinement Center in El Salvador, prisoners need to be prepared to
stand together as students are learning to do. While there are many
recent examples to the contrary, there is a long history of U.$.
prisoners standing up for one another due to the group consciousness
that comes with facing a common oppressor every day.
Fascism Coming Home
The United
$tates has been using long-term solitary confinement for decades on a
scale not seen elsewhere in humyn history. Physicians for Human
Rights released a report in 2024 exposing the use of solitary
confinement in ICE detention centers contrary to government directives
to limit its use to absolute necessity. They documented at least 14,000
cases of people being put in solitary confinement by ICE from 2018 to
2023. Durations in solitary averaged 27 days, with 42 cases lasting over
a year. At the time, in 2024, ICE held over 35,000 people, making it the
world’s largest immigration detention system.(5)
Conditions are likely worse for those sent to El Salvador, where
President Bukele has stated that the only way gang members will leave
the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) ey built in 2023 is in a
coffin. With a capacity of over 40,000, there are 65 to 70 prisoners
held per cell. “CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never
allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational
programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.”(6)
Bukele has been promoting images of shaved gang members, dressed all in
white, being warehoused and man-handled by masked prison guards online
since the prison opened. This propaganda campaign has appealed to the
pro-fascist elements of Amerika. And with that support, Trump is
incorporating this prison into the Amerikan international prison system
and sending hundreds of people there from the United $tates. This is a
shift closer to home from the network of dark sites, and infamous
prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, that were used to torture
and hold without trial oppressed people across the Muslim world.
Most press sources are reporting the Amerikans paid $6 million for
238 prisoners to be held in CECOT, which some point out is much less
than what it would cost to imprison them in the United $tates. But it is
an amount that will greatly help El Salvador to fund their monstrosity
of a prison. It doesn’t make sense that the imperialists are paying to
have these prisoners held, but then claim they cannot return people like
Abrego Garcia back to their families.
In the 1980s, U.$.-sponsored death squads, trained at the School of
the Americas in Georgia, killed
and displaced countless people across Central America that were
fighting for socialism and to remove imperialism from their
countries.(7) Many children of this war in El Salvador were displaced to
Los Angeles where they joined Barrio 18 or formed the new Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13), were persecuted by the state, and then exported
back to El Salvador. We’ve reported on efforts at peace
between these groups in 2013, which coincided with investment by
USAID and the building of new U.$.-inspired prisons in El Salvador.(8)
But conditions for the people of El Salvador did not improve, and they
voted for President
Nayib Bukele who both utilized the lumpen organizations in eir
political organizing and later turned on them as a scapegoat for the
ills of the country in a fascist repression campaign.(9)
The struggle against fascism in this country relies on the coming
together of people to defend migrant populations and students currently
under attack. As fascism rises, we see the campaigns of groups like the
ACLU coming closer to those of MIM(Prisons). As important legal battles
are taking place, we also see the spreading recognition that we can’t
rely on the courts to save us. We must have a plan B. We must build our
plan B.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We just wrapped up our Fourth of You-Lie annual fundraiser. The
results so far aren’t great. We’ve only received about a third of the
number of donations we got from comrades inside for all of 2023, and
less than a third in the amount received. That means we need to get
twice as many donations in the next 6 months as we got in the first 6
months of this year to maintain where we were. And ideally, we want to
be increasing the percent of funding that comes from donations from
prisoners. The amount of donations we receive from prisoners is one way
we measure mass support for our work and whether we should keep doing
it.
Our education programs continue to develop. We’ve mailed out the
first group response to our University of Maoist Thought study group on
the Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army. We’ve
completed an update to our study guide for The Fundamentals of
Political Economy, a must-read text. Comrades on the outside also
completed a study of MIM Theory 14: United Front that is
reflected in the content of this issue. We will likely continue this
theme in ULK 87, looking at the united front in Palestine more
and printing your reports on building united front for the September 9th
Day of Peace and Solidarity.
We are also entering Black August as this issue hits the cell blocks.
And soon after that, the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.
Besides the Runaway
Slaves Coalition statement on the United Front for Peace in Prisons,
we did not get any submissions on these topics. But as always we have
our September 9th Organizing Pack that prisoners can request to get more
information on the history of this day, and countless books and
pamphlets on the Black liberation struggle that you can get from our
Free Books to Prisoners Program in exchange for political work.
The week of December 6-13 has been marked as a week of solidarity by
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. Over the years comrades have suggested a
boycott of any activities that financially benefit the prison system.
This is the tactic being implemented in December, with the campaign
focusing on ending prison slavery and overall abolition of prisons in
general. Our next issue will be out in early November. So if you are
organizing for this week of solidarity, send in art or articles to share
for ULK 87.
This issue features content produced by United Struggle from Within
comrades as part of our campaign to connect the prison struggle to the
student movement for Palestine. Some of these materials were also used
in a pamphlet
put together and distributed on the streets, to get these messages into
the hands of students and outside supporters.
As we finalize the content for this issue, reports are coming in of
the disproportionate deaths of prisoners in the recent heat waves.
Prisoners and prisons are being excluded from new worker protection laws
dealing with heat. This June was the hottest on record. And yet the
imperialists still aren’t getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions
to slow global warming. We welcome your reports on heat and climate
change, especially organizing efforts and how to build a united front
around these campaigns, for the next issue of ULK.
Amerikan Elections
Finally, i thought we should say a few words on the upcoming U.$.
presidential election. For those that don’t know, our slogan is, “Don’t
Vote, Organize!” We aren’t too interested in who becomes president
because there is no anti-imperialist option.
As has become the trend, the Democratic Party wing have been
campaigning hard to “stop fascism”. Our line has not changed since 2016,
when we argued that Trump was not instituting fascism as president
then either. But that does not mean we should not be vigilantly looking
for the emergence of fascism and opportunities to combat it.
Comrades in Texas have reported on lumpen gangs being used by the
state as enforcers in Coffield
Unit and Allred
Unit. Another reader in Allred more recently reported that staff
using drugs to bribe prisoners has continued:
“The prison administration here at Allred Unit have been getting away
with killing prisoners for so long with the help of these so-called gang
members that they fear not the possibility of accountability.”
The use of gangs to police prisoners is not new in Texas history.
However, in the past this role was filled by the euro-Amerikan prisoners
who enjoyed privileges in exchange for enforcing discipline on the
oppressed nation prisoners.(see Robert T. Chase’s book We Are Not
Slaves) While we have written extensively on the revolutionary
potential of the First World lumpen, and even lumpen organizations,
these organizations also have this reactionary potential, making them an
unreliable ally of the proletariat.
In fact, it is quite damning that these L.O.s are consciously working
for the imperialists to violently repress other oppressed nationals. We
address this further in this issue with the ongoing campaign (and
debate) around “Stop Collaborating!” Of course we see the same thing in
Third World countries around the world where the imperialist have built
death squads by bribing various lumpen and military men. And we do
recognize such death squads as a form of exported fascism with no real
base in the Third World itself.
Here in the heart of empire it is more typical to see the
euro-Amerikan petty bourgeoisie play the role of fascist foot soldiers.
We saw a glimpse of this in the attacks of bands of young white men on
the UCLA encampment for Palestine as cops idly stood by. And we’ve seen
it in various street clashes over the last decade with groups like the
Proud Boys attacking radical left demonstrators or gender-non-conforming
events.
But these remain fringe events. While Trump represents a certain
heightening of contradictions in this country, the U.$. state is still
very stable. No one can become president of the United $tates without
support from the imperialists. The current support of the ultra-rich for
another Trump presidency has been pinned largely on the possibility of
Trump era tax cuts expiring if Biden wins a second term. So this is
hardly a sign of the imperialists recognizing the need for a strong man
to move this country into a more authoritarian direction. On the
contrary, it is a sign of a further eating away at the stability of the
United $tates by undercutting state funding through neo-Liberalism. Yes,
the contradictions are heightening, no it is not time to join in united
front with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever ends up being the more
status quo option they give us in November.
In May of this year, Texas governor greg abbott pardoned a man named
daniel perry. Some of you may remember the incident in which daniel was
convicted of murder. Recall the summer of 2020. The hope, optimism and
liberty many felt as they bum-rushed the streets in protest in cities
worldwide decrying anti-blackness.
In the midst of this surge of proactive and progressive human energy
after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, was
a tag team, husband and wife duo in Austin, Texas. Austin, the state
capital, was the most active and longstanding protest site in the state
during that summer. In the eye of this storm was Garrett Foster and eir
wife, Whitney Mitchell. Mitchell, who was confined to a wheelchair,
wanted to be involved in the ground swelling movement of humynity, and
would not let being confined to a wheel-chair detour em. Garrett was eir
guide and aid.
Garrett and eir wife attended many of the protests that summer,
mostly centered around the police headquarters and state capital in
downtown Austin. Garrett, a u.$. air force veteran, routinely adorned
fatigues and carried a rifle which ey was legally permitted to possess
by the laws of the state. In July of 2020, while walking and escorting
eir wife Whitney down Congress Avenue, Garrett and daniel got into a
verbal altercation. daniel was an Uber driver and was on the job. daniel
was also legally armed. daniel, behind the protection of an Uber
vehicle, began revving eir engine up in order to intimidate protesters.
Mr. Foster addressed this behavior verbally and after doing so, daniel
rolled down the window and shot Garrett Foster multiple times, killing
em.
During the pre-trial proceedings, this case, along with the case of
kyle rittenhouse, received a swarm of media attention on conservative
networks. The neo-confederates believed that the two white supremacists’
acts of murder had struck a blow for all of them (them being the white
settler amerikans, particularly the neo-confederacy).
At that time in 2020, greg abbott appeared on the tucker carlson show
and vowed that in the event of guilt ey would pardon daniel perry. In
May, abbott made good on this vow and pardoned daniel perry, stating
that ey “stood his ground”.
i hope this news upsets the reader. At the very least i hope this
news brings you in on the not so little secret my comrades and i have
long known. You wanna know what that secret is? Sure, i’ll tell you.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LAW, ONLY POWER STRUGGLES.
The good, if i can even call it that, is that some will see this and
finally realize the illegitimacy of law in Texas and amerikan society.
To understand why this was such a thrust and showcase of reactionary
power, we have to understand the history of the pardon and commutation
in Texas. Briefly, in the 1980’s the legislature passed measures to
limit the power of the governor to pardon and commute sentences. What
they passed made sure that in the case of pardons, at least 10 of 18
members of the Pardons and Parole Board, all of which are appointed by
the governor, would have to recommend a pardon. All 18 members
recommended the pardon of daniel perry. A spit in the face of bourgeois
democracy and the bourgeois legal process. So now We can see that it’s
okay not to play by the rules, this will free us of some of our
handicapping hang-ups. Will you step up and commit to wrestling power
out of the hands of tyranny? We All Have A Choice To Make; Power to the
People! Power to New Afrika!
The Biden/Harris campaign released the above image criticizing some
language coming from recent Donald Trump campaign speeches for the 2024
U.$. Presidential election. Meanwhile Trump continues to lead by a
landslide for the Republican ticket, which is not surprising, as Hitler
viewed the Amerikan project with envy.
The United $tates has been milking it’s alliance with the Soviet
Union to fight fascism for over 75 years now. If it were not for the
sacrifices of the Soviet people, over 20 million of whom died in the war
fighting fascism, and if it were not for the strategic leadership of the
Comintern in building alliances with some imperialist powers to fight
others, we might not have had 75 years of self-righteousness to have
leaned on by U.$. leaders.
Usually U.$. officials would raise the “Hitler” comparisons when it
was time to expand imperialist wars against another Third World country,
such as Iraq or Panama. But today the leading Democratic presidential
candidate is using it against the leading Republican candidate at the
same time that the Democrat is facing legal charges for enabling
genocide emself. It seems the mask is coming off.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a complaint in
federal court in November on behalf of Palestinians that is seeking
recognition of the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the requirement for
President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do all they can
to prevent Israel’s genocidal acts.(1)
While the occupation of Palestine by I$rael and their imposition of
an apartheid state has long been genocidal, the war has reached
unprecedented levels since the Hamas-led attack against I$rael on 7
October 2023. By mid-December, a whopping 85% of the population of Gaza
has been displaced from their homes and 1% of the population has been
killed by the I$raeli onslaught. At least 8 of the murdered and around
100 of those injured were at the hands of “civilian” settlers.(2) Large
numbers of the displaced have no access to food or clean water.
Whether the Amerikan courts will recognize what is happening to the
Palestinians in Gaza as genocide is questionable according to legal
experts. But legal filings continue to be submitted to bolster the
case.
The “We Declare Genocide” tribunal held within U.$. borders last year
already found the United $tates guilty of genocide against the internal
semi-colonies who are facing an ongoing low-intensity warfare.(3) Of
course, this finding does not have official legal standing by the United
$tates government itself. The CCR suit is attempting to get that for
Palestine, and further brings attention to the genocidal acts of U.$.
imperialism around the globe.
The United $tates has single-handedly prevented the United Nations
Security Council from implementing a ceasefire in Palestine. The United
$tates picks and chooses who is allowed to commit war crimes and who is
not, and the UN is toothless to stop it.
During the second inter-imperialist war, the United $tates was in a
position to play the good guy because of rival interests with the
fascist countries and the opportunity it allowed them to exert power
over Europe as a whole. I$rael on the other hand is the #1 U.$. client
state, receiving far more funding from the Amerikans than any other
country since World War II. As Biden said, if I$rael didn’t already
exist they would have to create it. This puts the U.$. in a position
where it is impossible for them to oppose the genocide in Gaza.
The settler state is by definition a genocidal state. Stalin helped
give the United $tates a fig leaf to cover that legacy in the form of
supporting the Soviet defeat of Hitler. That fig leaf is drying up and
falling off. And the legitimacy of U.$.-run international institutions
like the UN and the United $tates itself are coming more and more into
question by global public opinion.
On 4 August 2023, 8,000 military troops and police were deployed in
the countryside province of Cabanas, El Salvador in part of the campaign
to crack down on the MS-13 and Barrio 18 lumpen organizations (L.O.s) –
many of whom have fled to the region from the cities.(1) One thousand
police and 7,000 soldiers were deployed to set checkpoints blocking all
roads leading in and out of the area.(2) The congress of El Salvador
added new criminal codes as part of President Nayib Bukele’s war on the
two organizations that will enact mass trials based on what area they
lived in and which organization controlled that particular territory.(3)
These actions are merely an expression of Salvadoran President Nayib
Bukele’s war on lumpen organizations operating in El Salvador.
The Anti-Gang
Campaign Waged by the President
Bukele’s anti-gang campaign is best characterized as a set of “mano
dura” (“iron fist”, i.e. tough-on-crime) policies. Said policies reflect
an overall seven-phase plan offered to combat lumpen organizations known
as the “Territorial Control Plan”. As of 1 August 2023, only five of the
seven phases have made its way into the daily existence of Salvadoran
society. Those five phases are outlined as follows:
Preparation: Increased military and police presence in
municipalities with high degrees of L.O. presence.
Opportunity: Providing alternative opportunities to Salvadoran youth
(e.g. legal labor) to sway said youth from joining L.O.s.
Modernization: Modernizing (or rather, militarizing) the national
police.
Incursion: “Modernized” rehash of phase one.
Extraction: “Extracting” the remaining L.O. members continuing L.O.
activities.(4)
While Bukele spits out anti-establishment rhetoric – painting emself
as neither left nor right, criticizing both the dominant so-called left
and right wing parties of El Salvador to do so, and claiming to offer
“innovative” nonpartisan solutions that will take care of the societal
ills plaguing the masses – eir politics and so-called solutions do
nothing but feed into the development of a militarized far-right
state.(5) In fascist fashion, Bukele exploited the concerns of the
masses, offered them a scapegoat, and targeted symptoms rather than root
cause to the contradictions that produce violence in Salvadoran society.
Interestingly enough, Bukele seems to be fully aware of this and
seemingly embraces it in an ironic fashion by self-appointing emself as
the “World’s Coolest Dictator” on Twitter.(6)
One thing to make note is that the fascism of the Third World is
imported from the First World. Bukele has had big rise through eir
business career as a comprador-bourgeois businessman, and is now in the
comprador-bourgeois state itself. The crisis of these lumpen
organizations in El Salvador has shown that imperialism’s neo-colony of
El Salvador cannot rule the way it did before, and therefore a comprador
fascist movement has been exported onto it. While Bukele’s political
support was far less overt and hands on than the likes of Pinochet of
Chile and Syngman Rhee of southern Korea, the regime’s close ties to the
Trump administration shows this trend. Bukele’s regime is now rejected
by the left-wing imperialist faction of the U$A, the Biden
administration.
The Old Ideas of Nuevas
Ideas
We define fascism as the open terroristic violence of finance capital
during a time of crisis when the bourgeois state cannot govern itself in
the way it did before. Despite the constant police/military occupation
of the ghettos, barrios, and reservations (alongside the great reversals
of abortion rights); in the context of the United $tates, this has been
the standard method of strategy exert rule onto the oppressed nations
and uphold imperialist-patriarchy. Mass imprisonment, police/military
occupation, and protracted low-intensity genocide are not the exception,
rather the rule. We believe that when global political-economic crisis
threatens U.$. imperialism, U.$. imperialism will start to crack out the
real tests of open terrorism. It is out of that reasoning that the U$A
cannot be considered fascist at this time.
On the other hand, it is arguable that the bourgeois state of El
Salvador (due to the existing crisis of the two dominant L.O.’s: MS-13
and Barrio18) cannot rule itself the way it once did before, and with
that – Bukele’s rise could be considered a fascist movement. In El
Salvador (like many third world neo-colonies) the objective conditions
of the bourgeois state is much weaker than in the U.$. The fact
horizontal-structured L.O.s such as MS-13/Barrio18 are capable of
causing intense crisis exposes this. Another big difference is the
qualitatively different anti-people nature of the lumpen-proletariat
class of the Third World compared to the First World lumpen. In this
sense, Bukele’s political movement can be considered more fascist than
Trump’s on the crisis aspect – although Trump’s mass base of imperialist
country labor aristocracy is a much stronger fuel for a fascist movement
than the crisis-jaded proletariat and petite-bourgeoisie of El Salvador
who long for a single day where ultra-violent anti-people activities are
no longer an expectation of daily existence.
Despite the strongman militarization and self-identification as the
“world’s coolest dictator,” Bukele and eir government held secret
meetings with the leaders of these organizations to lower the crime
rates. The U.$. department of treasury states:
“In 2020, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s (Bukele) administration
provided financial incentives to Salvadoran gangs MS-13 and 18th Street
Gang (Barrio 18) to ensure that incidents of gang violence and the
number of confirmed homicides remained low. Over the course of these
negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, gang leadership also agreed to
provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in
upcoming elections. Nuevas Ideas is the President’s political party and
won a two-thirds super majority in legislative elections in 2021. The
Bukele administration was represented in such transactions by Luna, the
Chief of the Salvadoran Penal System and Vice Minister of Justice and
Public Security, and Marroquin, Chairman of the Social Fabric
Reconstruction Unit. In addition to Salvadoran government financial
allocations in 2020, the gangs also received privileges for gang
leadership incarcerated in Salvadoran prisons, such as the provision of
mobile phones and prostitutes.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Luna also negotiated an agreement with
gang leaders from MS-13 and Barrio 18 for the gangs’ support of
President Bukele’s national quarantine in gang-controlled areas.
Separately, Luna participated in a scheme to steal and re-sell
government purchased staple goods that were originally destined for
COVID-19 pandemic relief. These items were transferred to private
companies and then resold on the private market or back to the
government. Luna’s mother, Alma Yanira Meza Olivares (Meza), acted as
the negotiator in some of these transactions. Additionally, Luna and
Meza developed a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars from El
Salvador’s prison commissary system. They also created fraudulent job
positions within the prison system, in which supposed “employees” would
receive monthly paychecks and return most of the earnings back to Luna
and Meza.”(7)
Despite all the comprador-bourgeois fascism that came with Bukele’s
military strongman strategy to get rid of the crisis of
lumpen-proletariat violence in eir country, the independent leadership
of these anti-people L.O.s was an indispensable and unavoidable class
force in lowering the death rates. With all the talks about the
pragmatist “tough on crime” and “round them all up” narratives expressed
by the imperialist and comprador press, Bukele’s government gives money
and political immunity in exchange for political support and cooperation
of gangs. MIM(Prisons) will not be surprised if there are opportunist
and anti-people MS-13/Barrio18 members in the undemocratic injustice
system of El Salvador today who sees Bukele as their political-economic
patron and sponsor.
The facts presented above provide a case against Bukele’s
tough-on-crime policies as ineffective, yet bourgeois propaganda is a
powerful tool and these policies, due to their perceived success, may
find new homes abroad in Honduras and Guatemala.(8)(9) This sets
potential precedents for a new-wave of mano dura “solutions” throughout
Latin America.
As mentioned above, these policies (however popular and effective or
ineffective they may be) are aimed towards symptoms, not causes. However
qualitatively different the First World and Third World lumpen may be,
it is in this that there is a unifying struggle against the real cause
of their oppression – namely, imperialism. Bourgeois propaganda may be
powerful, but concrete conditions are concrete conditions and concrete
conditions require concrete solutions, not old ideas.
In social media, which Bukele’s regime has utilized greatly for
public image, whenever news reports of the humyn rights abuses in
Salvadorian prisons overcrowded with L.O. members were shown, the
comments were flooded with Amerikan chauvinists and Trump supporters
saying similar actions should be done against the oppressed nation
lumpen organizations in the United $tates. The truth is, U.$.
imperialism already often breaks their own bourgeois democratic values
when it comes to imprisoning and lumpenizing their oppressed nations.
Guilty by association policies has been a long standing practice against
Black and Latin@ masses to the point that merely being family related to
a lumpen organization member can get you labeled as part of that
organization by the pigs. The settlers/Amerikans will jeer at the
oppressed nations telling them that they don’t have it as bad as the
victims of Third World fascism while hoping and wishing for the day that
Third World fascist policies can one day become a reality within U.$.
borders. This issue’s topic of “Prisons Are War” seeks to highlight this
message and tell our readers that low
intensity genocide is already happening to them.
Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” is an overnight viral hit, accumulating millions of listens and ranking as the most streamed song on iTunes in Amerika and right now 28 million views on Youtube plus over a million likes. With that catchy southern twang, and a message speaking to workers directly, it is clearly resonating with a lot of people – but what does this mean?
Let’s look first at the lyrics to get a sense of what this song is all about. There’s two main parts of the song that i think really get to the root of what Anthony’s trying to convey. Ey points out:
“Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat And the obese milkin’ welfare Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground ‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down.”
So there’s two matters here: one is the issue of fat people milking welfare, and the other is the plight of the Amerikan workers. Welfare is no doubt a gift of imperialist parasitism paid with super-profits, and MIM pointed out a long time ago how Amerikan minds and bodies are rotting on imperialist parasitism, highlighting the contrast between affluent imperialist countries and the poor exploited countries.
MIM said basically that overcoming imperialism is the only way to reshape food production and consumption, to address the disparity in obesity rates with an equitable distribution of resources to effectively tackle the issue. But so long as imperialism remains, so does parasitism which always fattens up the unproductive of the empire and feeds on the hard working poor of the world. So now here’s the other issue, that question of the plight of the Amerikan workers. Factually, the U.$. government safeguards its labor aristocracy (most of whom are unproductive workers in the service industry) through a multifaceted approach, utilizing OSHA guidelines, mandating minimum wage laws, regulating maximum working hours, and ensuring collective bargaining rights. This is all ensured with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Department of Labor (DOL), and so on.
In terms of safety, the U.$ is among the safer of countries for workers as it pertains to workplace fatality – still far from perfect. Our most dangerous industry is agriculture, forestry, and fishing with a fatal injury rate at 20 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers. Migrants from south of the U.$./Mexico border make up around 75% of U.$. farm workers so it is no surprise that the most dangerous industry affects Amerikans the least.
But back to the song. The refrain goes:
“These rich men north of Richmond Lord knows they all just wanna have total control Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do ’Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end ’Cause of rich men north of Richmond.”
These are your typical Amerikan’s grievances with the system: the government is too big, and the feds won’t keep their greedy hands off your money. Considering Biden’s new plan for 87,000 new IRS agents and his incessant drive to intervene in the affairs of crypto currency companies and his promotion of a new IRS rule to require anyone who earned over $600 on payment apps (like Paypal, Venmo, etc.) to file a 1099-K form to ensure taxation is being paid by lower classes – yeah, maybe this resentment is understandable. But really, Amerika is ranked 32nd out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio.(1) Belgium (42.8%), Germany (39.9%), Denmark (38.9%), etc. pay higher taxes, and also receive better social programs. Even the tax rate in Hungary (35%) is higher than in the United $tates (16.4%), which is just above i$rael (15.5%). Since the top 25% of earners pay 89% of all income taxes, and since virtually all Amerikans make more than 90% of the rest of the world in income, is the dollar really worth shit, are Amerikans really taxed to no end, as Anthony claims? [editor note: Not to mention U.$. dollar values being propped up by interest rate hikes that are decimating the value of currencies in exploited countries that must pay debts in U$D.]
No, so what are Amerikans complaining about? Taxes in the U.$. contribute to funding programs such as education, healthcare, social security, unemployment benefits, housing assistance, food assistance, veterans’ services, infrastructure projects, environmental protection, and public transportation; Amerikans have access to clean water, electricity, smartphones, cars, internet connectivity, modern healthcare, education, reliable infrastructure, well-stocked supermarkets, and recreational facilities, which are often unavailable to many in the third world.
So again, what are Amerikans complaining about? Typical Amerikkkan tears over the incompetence of their imperialist leaders who are unable to share the super-profits from the neo-colonies effectively. This is why we rely on science, not frog-in-the-well subjectivism, to inform us about the world.
Frustration
In recent years the labor aristocracy has been shook. The 2016 and 2020 elections show deep-going upset in different segments of the population, which is leading to strange ideological currents among the youth (including a return to religious dogma on the one end and a clinging to nihilism on the other). Some people have just given up on society, so a kind of Kaczynskian primitivism is also making a come-back.
We’re seeing some class problems blow up too, with unions taking more action across the board (with the rail workers, the baristas, and now the script writers and actors in recent months). The crypto-Trotskyite “left” is capitalizing on these grievances to pick up speed and organize, especially among students and younger workers who want a bigger piece of the Amerikan-bloodsuckin’ pie.
Inflation has driven up prices and this month it was revealed how Amerikans have racked up more than $1 trillion of credit card debt.(2) While high credit card debt in general is an indicator of high access to consumption, the recent increases seem to be linked to higher prices. The student debt crisis is also haunting the Amerikan consumption rate, because Amerikans own $1.77 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of the second quarter of 2023. That’s serious, and students have gotten to the point of just saying “hell no, we ain’t paying that.”
The government, or at least some forces in it, are responsive to that, with the Biden regime talking about “student loan forgiveness.” But it hasn’t been successful. The first time, the Supreme Court ruled that the Secretary of Education did not have the power to waive student loans under the HEROES Act. So Biden is now trying the Higher Education Act of 1965 to justify it, and ey just recently was able to perform an IDR Account Adjustment for 800,000 borrowers. This still doesn’t make the youth all that happy, and a large percentage of the older generations opposed the attempt at debt forgiveness.
Aside from class issues, there’s still heat picking up with the abortion issue and the question of censorship, and other things regarding your typical sex and drug issues. There’s a clear polarization between the youth and the old when it comes to how they approach this and see the world, the former seemingly liberal and the latter seemingly conservative. Generational disputes are all too common a sight now, each generation blaming the other for all the problems we face in the world today.
There is clearly a LOT of frustration, a LOT of unease and anger too – but is that really enough for a revolution? We will have to see the historical forces that the youth (especially the oppressor nation youth movement in the 1960s) and how to discipline this force for non-adventurist and scientific forms of resistance than individualist hedonism.
Proletarianization?
The proletariat’s more than the working-class, it’s defined by a more precise relationship to the ownership of the means of production, consumption, and relations to other classes. It’s the class that is not only dispossessed (without private property), it’s the class with nothing to lose but its chains. Do Amerikans now got nothing to lose but their chains?
Let us look at it from the standpoint of material comfort. Homes built in the last 6 years are 74% larger than those built in the 1910s, an increase of a little over 1,000 square feet – the average new home in the United $tates now spreads over 2,430 square feet.(3) The Biden regime is claiming that the bourgeoisie added 236,000 jobs in March(4) and a solid 187,000 jobs in July(5), and that the unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.5%, matching the lowest level in half a century. They’re claiming also that wages are rising faster than inflation. These claims would indicate that the situation for Amerikans isn’t really all that bad.
In 2019, MIM(Prisons) explained in “Economic Update: Amerikkkans Prospering in 2019” that amerikans are prospering with a stable economy and low unemployment, increased average wages and leisure time, more homeownership and accumulated wealth, etc., all kinds of indications of economic prosperity. There were some issues in 2020-2021 because of the pandemic and surely an economic crisis of big proportions is bound to crop up, but right now the tides seem to have stemmed – at least temporarily.
There is really no sign of proletarianization on the horizon. Maybe it will happen soon, but Comrade Mao said “Marxists are not fortune-tellers.”(6) To speak of lumpenization is perhaps more accurate than predicting proletarianization, i think both are possibilities with the decline of Amerikan capitalism.
While the contradictions described in MIM(Prisons)’s article on the expected recession in 2023 have not been resolved, the crisis has still not hit here in the heart of empire. The self-destructive nature of capitalism-imperialism will lead to wars and other man-made tragedies where these parasitic economic privileges we have will eventually end. Some examples of “fortune-telling” by Mao would be what time, date, and year a recession starts or an imperialist-war breaks out. Maoists do not concern ourselves with this type of prophecy – it is actually the labor aristocrat and petty-bourgeoisie movements of fascism that loves conspiracies and finding prophecies (such as the fascist nonsense promoted in the Elders of the Protocols of Zion and the reactionary QAnon Movement that seems to love Anthony’s song).
Right/Left Divide
In Amerika, the left of capital and the right of capital divide themselves on the issues of culture war but functionally have the same vested political interests in maintaining the status quo of capitalism-imperialism. Occasionally some of these people on the left wing of parasitism present themselves as radicals, anarchists, even sometimes Maoists, but the truth of it is that these are not communists.
The digital landscape’s been churning out a lot of these personalities in recent years. MIM(Prisons) has commented on some of these trends in Some Discussions on Bad Ideas (ULK 79), with attention to how
“communist groups are far outshadowed online by memes, twitch streamers, tik tok spheres, instagram pages, internet forums, and the likes when it comes to converting kids to communism than communist organization internet presence. This has given rise to the problem of communism becoming more akin to a sub-culture talked about on social media sites like twitter and reddit than a political movement. Different political stances from Maoism, Trotskyism, all the way to Stirnerite Anarchism cease to become guides to action, but a thing to put on your bio. Various people’s wars and nations at war become more akin to fandoms for TV shows to obsess and argue over rather than a movement to popularize and create awareness for. Political line ceases to become a belief and action that one takes, but a take one has so they can get on the algorithm. Line struggle turn into flame wars with no purpose of uniting with others, but exist only to express one’s individual self for the cathartic feeling of having the correct line.”
One of these recent digital trends has been known as “MAGA Communism,” with notable support from the likes of people named Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle. This camp has positioned itself against the left and the right, opposing liberalism but also conservatism, taking bits from both sides. [MIM(Prisons) previously referred to Haz in the intro to our review of Pao-Yu Ching’s *From Victory to Defeat for eir meaningless definition of socialism, saying that every country in the last 100 years has been socialist.]
When it comes to songs like this one, it is seen as a message of class struggle by this camp. Haz claims “this song about class struggle by @aintgottadollar, a working class Virginian has gone viral overnight with millions of views from ordinary Americans. The masses are far ahead of the current right wing and leftist grifter ideologists who benefit from dividing the people!”(7)
Similar sentiment from a like-minded camp, calling itself “Patriotic Socialism,” is echoing much the same; you will find this view all over social media, especially the cesspool of Twitter where these ideological currents permeate. Opportunistically, they’re all invoking class struggle.
Well yes, the song is about class struggle but what kind of class struggle? Comrade Mao pointed out “this question of `for whom?’ is fundamental; it is a question of principle.”(8) i don’t see any real concern for the international proletariat in this song, i don’t see any mention of how this dying empire treats the rest of the world with diseases, bombs, sanctions, subversion, and other ways to bring death and destruction to fatten up the Amerikan ticks. So who does this song serve?
Comrade Mao said “all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines.” That’s why when analyzing literature and art, ey said, “the first problem is: literature and art for whom?”(9) This song is serving the interests of the labor aristocracy, albeit a disaffected branch of the labor aristocracy that has elements of both the right and left-wing of white nationalism.
Anthony eyself has said that “both sides serve the same master – and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country.” This is conveniently being ignored by the MAGA right, who have taken Anthony as their savior and prophet. For example, here is what the right is saying:
“Rich Men North of Richmond is a key example of the populist-nationalist vs establishment paradigm. The anti-establishment message is gaining traction right now, and explains the dynamic we see in the GOP primary where career politicians are struggling against outsiders.” – Jack Posobiec (10)
“You might notice a theme there… [speaking of both Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” & Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town”] People are starved for music that speaks to them about today’s problems.” – Rogan O’Handley (11)
“Oliver Anthony is a star […] inside of the hearts of the people […] millions of us, with whom he has touched with his music, as somebody who is just desperately searching for a better world in a place that has been strip mined by our elites, and we are angry about it.” – Benny Johnson (12)
Ben Shapiro also praised the song, calling it “the cry of a lot of people in the United States” who feel “there are too many people who have their hand in their pocket, particularly elites in the federal government.”(13) So why ain’t the mainstream left vibing with it? Well a main reason is the song’s attack on the fat people (which they’re calling “fatphobic”) and Anthony’s denunciations of the “welfare state,” but i also think a contributing role is the general anti-southern chauvinism that is characteristic of the liberal-subjectivists in our country. Anthony is from the rural Appalachians, specifically North Carolina.
MIM(Prisons) notes that “there are various groups of people in the United States who share the physical misery of these rural masses – American Indians, Chicano farm laborers, Black tenant farmers in the South, the dispossessed whites of Appalachia. But most of these groups are scattered and weak, living on the fringes of capitalist society, away from its vital centers.”(14)
While the urban petty bourgeoisie’s reaction to Oliver Anthony is partly based in a disdain for southerners, the question is, how do we transform the thinking of those with gripes against the system? How do we get them to drop their vested material interests in parasitism, militarism, and conservatism? That requires more investigation, more practice. To speak of Anthony as this enlightening Buddha of the century is not scientific, his thinking is still backwards and merely reflects some tussles between the labor aristocracy and the imperialist bourgeoisie, but it is not great enough a leap to really consider this some kind of revitalization of Joe Hill or Woody Gutherie.
I think the most important thing to grasp in light of this song is that imperialism is basically in crisis and there’s a lot of discontent at home, and this is fueling contradictions of all kinds. Comrade Mao made it extremely clear that “there is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.”(16) The question we need to deal with is how to tackle and wrangle with these contradictions.
The key to contradictions and their resolution is practice. Comrade Mao conceived of it in this way: Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. Stepping up practice is a big leap along the way of figuring out problems and having our thinking correspond to really-existing laws that govern society. As fascism and social-fascism step up to the plate and imperialism crashes into deeper peril, advancing our work as Maoists is key to ensuring our survival and our ability to meet the challenges that come ahead.
The challenges ahead are gonna be difficult but we are taught not to fear hardships or sacrifices, not even death. Focusing on ideological unity, strengthening our organizational bond, digging deeper, and keeping at it, more answers will reveal themselves about the nature of what’s going on and what we need to do. More practice is what we need. That lofty criterion of practice is our compass to success and our life-blood.
With practice, we gain insight, we gain consciousness, we gain unity, and we gain struggle and pain too. It ain’t supposed to be easy. We are up against a big ass labor aristocracy serving a strong imperial empire and its representative drones in the White House. But they won’t win. That’s what strategic confidence is all about. This is all a paper tiger, and practice proves that empire ain’t all that.
So long as the proletariat of the Third World is revolutionizing, and the empire is dying, the situation is excellent in my eyes. Our day is coming, don’t let the grifters, tricksters and swindlers fool ‘ya.
