Under Lock & Key

In the past, the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), and its mass org at the time, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League, campaigned to get the University of California to Divest from I$rael.(1) This was a correct strategy, because U.$. imperialism is the number one backer of the I$raeli war machine. Behind the flag of I$rael is the stars and stripes.

More recently, United Struggle from Within (USW) carried out a petition campaign, which read in part:

“Therefore with this declaration we angrily express our indignation with the state of Israel for committing genocide, and for the Israeli people for allowing it to happen in the 21st century after vowing”never again.”

The petition recognized that Palestinian political prisoners had supported the California hunger strikes in recent years and it was time to return solidarity. By 2016, comrades in 16 prisons had gathered 189 signatures. Recognizing the limitations of conditions, the petition also read:

“Within these walls we are as yet powerless to tap into the potential of the imprisoned lumpen; the oppressed internal nation lumpen in particular as agents of social change, but we are not yet powerless to sign a piece of paper to denounce the state of Israel and their support in the U.$.”

Still today, comrades are asking what can we do to support Palestine?

Settlers Supporting Settlers

The war against Palestine is what Amerika has always done from its very founding – land grab, occupation, genocide. Therefore, there is much support in the United $tates for I$rael’s current bombing campaign and invasion of Gaza. And the tactics being used against Palestine could easily be tried against indigenous people here on Turtle Island next.

MIM and others have documented the history of Amerikan labor union support for I$rael.(2) Yet, in recent months not only has the U.$. seen millions demonstrate to oppose U.$. militarism in Palestine, but labor unions representing millions of Amerikan so-called workers have signed a call for a cease fire.(3) While Amerikans have always been settlers, the United $tates is more and more a population of people who do not come from settler backgrounds. And more and more, people from non-settler backgrounds are joining the ranks of labor unions, big tech companies and other professional roles. This is one factor behind the wavering support for I$rael. Of course, it is the Palestinian resistance that is forcing Amerikans to take a position.

The cease fire call is a shift for many Amerikan labor unions away from outright Zionism to the left wing of white nationalism. Despite the cease fire statement, these unions will still be campaigning for Genocide Joe this year. And while some members of the International Longshoreman Workers Union (ILWU) participated in a one day protest/shut down of the port of Oakland in support of Gaza, there has been no sustained strike by Amerikan unions that are actively involved in shipping arms to I$rael.

The United Auto Workers (UAW), having been in the news for strikes last year, is one of the unions to issue a statement for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, the UAW has been hosting talks with employees of arms manufacturer Raytheon for a “just transition” to guarantee labor aristocracy union jobs in thefuture technologies of war and genocide. Brandon Mancilla, director or UAW’s Region 9A, announced in a tweet on Dec 1st the formation of a Divestment and Just Transition working group to explore how “we can have just transition for US workers from war to peace.” Behind the UAW’s ceasefire resolution, was UAW Labor for Palestine. Self-described on their website as a “nationwide group of rank-and-file UAW members” that seeks to “organize UAW worksites that send arms and other material to Israel.” They have faced great resistance from the UAW in general to taking any action to stop producing arms for I$rael. Like the Amerikan leaders who mumble words about humanitarian efforts in Palestine while continuing to authorize more and more shipments of war machines to I$rael, Amerikan labor makes statements about ceasefire, while continuing to produce these machines. Actions speak louder than words.

As we reported in ULK 84, arms shipments must get to the Red Sea before they face real resistance; resistance by Yemen’s armed forces. And following I$rael’s attacks on Iranian diplomatic soil in Syria in April, Iran has seized an I$raeli-linked cargo ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz. While the Strait, which accesses the Persian Gulf, does not lead to I$rael, it does lead to I$rael’s new Arab allies in the UAE.

Doing Better

The #1 thing people in the United $tates can be doing in the short-term to stop genocide in Palestine is to stop shipments of arms and aid to I$rael. Just as the imperialists have used blockades to weaken the Palestinian resistance. The question is how to make such a blockade meaningful and sustainable.

In the longer-term it is our responsibility in the United $tates to weaken imperialism from the inside. As we see the principal contradiction in the United $tates to be between nations, it is by supporting national liberation struggles at home that we believe we can best make this happen faster. And without building the revolutionary forces here in the United $tates, we do not foresee a successful, sustained blockade of aid to I$rael.

Another realm of struggle we should be tuned into is the struggle against political repression of those supporting Palestine, and especially the state imposing limitations on the exchange of information between Palestine and the world. The labeling of organizations linked to the Palestinian struggle as “terrorist organizations” is parallel to organizations in the oppressed nations in the United $tates being labelled “security threat groups (STGs).” As our readers know well the right to free speech and association is not guaranteed but must be struggled for within this bourgeois democracy.

Finally, correct political line must lead for us to succeed on all fronts. Democratic Party-supporting labor unions calling for “cease fire” is not the correct political line. Stopping all aid to I$rael is correct. Supporting national liberation struggles of the oppressed is correct. Recognizing the populations of the exploiter countries to be part of the bourgeoisie is correct. And recognizing the need for independent communist organizations in all parts of the world is correct for avoiding past mistakes that restricted the revolutionary potential of oppressed nations (see next section).

There is a reinforcing effect between revolutionary nationalist and communist movements around the world. Communism was more popular in Palestine when communists were demonstrating models of success in practice in other parts of the world. The revolutionary nationalism of Palestine today will impact the consciousness of revolutionary nationalism around the world, including within U.$. borders. Amplifying this effect in the short-term will help us build the type of movement that can provide real solidarity with Palestine in the short-term. The history and class interests of Amerikan labor prove that their current level of sympathies with Palestine are tenuous and lacking in militancy.

It is the struggle of the occupied indigenous populations, the largest of which is Aztlán, that are most parallel to Palestine in our context. Meanwhile New Afrika has probably been the most ardent supporter of Palestine in the United $tates historically. Though it’s also worth noting the prominence of Jewish voices in opposing the war from the United $tates, due to the connection the existence of I$rael has forced onto all Jewish people. As a resistance movement based in a compact area of land that is mostly urban, there is much to be learned tactically from the successes of the ongoing struggle in Palestine today that relates to the conditions of oppressed nations in the heart of empire.

The ICM, Pan-Islamism and Palestine

Support from communists around the world, especially those waging People’s War in the Third World, has been unwavering on the side of Palestine liberation since October 7th. But the history of the International Communist Movement (ICM) has led to setbacks in Palestinian and pan-Arab liberation.

MIM(Prisons) has been working on reiterating MIM line on the Communist International in recent years as part of an effort to compile MIM’s work opposing crypto-Trotskyism. One of the key issues we have with Trotskyism is its view that the most advanced capitalist countries will/should lead the communist movement. MIM line says that the most exploited and oppressed nations will lead the way, and recognizes the need for independent initiative and direction from within each nation. We also see the need for a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations (JDPON) as a tool for overthrowing imperialism. Under the JDPON, it will be the communist minorities in former imperialist countries that are benefiting from the assistance of more advanced, socialist, former colonies.

From 1919-1943, the third Communist International (Comintern) was the first experiment in an international communist movement that involved parties in state power. At that time the idea that the advanced capitalist countries would lead the socialist revolution was more popular. Bolshevik leader Mirza Sultan-Galiev was one of the biggest critics of this position. In 1923, at the 9th Conference of the Tatar Obkom, Sutlan-Galiev stated:

“If a revolution succeeds in England, the proletariat will continue oppressing the colonies and pursuing the policy of the existing bourgeois government; for it is interested in the exploitation of these colonies. In order to prevent the oppression of the toiler of the East we must unite the Muslim masses in a communist movement that will be our own and autonomous.”(4)

MIM positively reviewed eir ideas:

“Sultan-Galiev was for the formation of a”Colonial International” to replace the Comintern as organization of central importance. He also called for the “dictatorship of the colonial nations over the metropolis.”“(5)

Sultan-Galiev applied this concept to Russians, who were far more oppressed and exploited than Amerikans today, as well as to the United $tates, which ey saw as built on the genocide and labor of First Nations and New Afrikans.

For a brief period, about 5 years after the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks had created a Muslim communist party separate from the Russian one. But this project was quickly abandoned. Decades later, USSR leader Joseph Stalin, who also played a leading role in the Comintern, abolished the Comintern in 1943. Stalin and Mao both said the communist international was no longer appropriate for the complicated conditions of international struggle. One of the problems with the communist international was the mixing of people from exploiter countries and exploited countries in one organization. Another was the mixing of people engaged in armed struggle against imperialism with those who are not. Sultan-Galiev’s proposal for a “Colonial International” addresses the first problem. However, eir ideas were not ultimately adopted by the Comintern, and ey was purged from the Bolshevik Party in 1923.

Current Events in Russia and Palestinian Communism

Last week a horrible mass shooting took place in Moscow, killing 143 people. The gunmen are reportedly from Tajikistan and working with the Islamic State-Khorasan, based in Central Asia. An Amerikan analyst explained that this group “sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims” and that a number of other Central Asian militants have allied with the Islamic State group due to their own grievances against Moscow.(6) Tajikistan is a former Soviet republic. One must wonder if a Muslim Communist International, separate from the Russian one, could have avoided the emergence of militant groups in Central Asia today that have violent beefs with Moscow. This goes both ways, with chauvinist attitudes by many Russians today towards the other former Soviet republics. As the capitalist/imperialist USSR collapsed in 1991, both sides of this national divide perceived the other to be exploiting them.(7)

On the Western side of the USSR Sultan-Galiev helped establish a separate Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921. This became a bastion for German Nazis in the 1940s, leading to the native Tatar population being relocated by Stalin, and the area populated by Russians and Ukrainians – leading to disputes over the territory today. This suggests that Stalin was correct to oppose Sultan-Galiev for narrow nationalism in the late 1920s and ultimately have em killed in 1940 as the Nazis were preparing to invade.

The problems with trying to unify too quickly with a communist international seems to have played a role in Palestine and the Arab world as well. The Soviet Union supported the partitioning of Palestine by the Zionists, leading to the Nakba (“The Catastrophe” or ethnic cleansing of Palestine) in 1948. Despite the Comintern having been dissolved in 1943, apparently it was still policy for the Communist Parties in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon to support the USSR line on the partitioning of Palestine against their own beliefs. This led to massive loss of support for the communists in Syria and Lebanon for years to come (there was not much support in Palestine until years later).(8)

While U.$. and I$raeli imperialism played a role in suppressing communist organizing, these internal contradictions and short-comings are what allowed such efforts to succeed. We can see how the strategies we choose today can have grave and lasting impacts decades later. That is why we, as communists, must do a better job of implementing an effective internationalism by recognizing the national self-determination of each oppressed nation. Independence in action must coincide with a struggle for unity in ideology.

“The early stages of socialism according to both Lenin and Stalin would see a vast multiplication of nations seizing their destinies. It was only under advanced communism that we could contemplate the disappearance of nations.”(7)

The above is in line with USW’s slogan of “unity from the inside out.” It is only with true self-determination of the oppressed nations that they can fully unite with other nations. Of course, the more unity we have the stronger we are. So we must struggle for unity, without forcing it before conditions are ripe.

We call on comrades to continue to make connections between Palestine and national struggles in occupied Turtle Island, and to build national liberation struggles here in the heart of empire.

<sup>Notes:
1. MIM - California, UC Divest From Israel! campaign page
2. Boston MIM, August 2005, Labor aristocracy hits the streets for I$rael, This article gives a more comprehensive background on the connection between Zionism and U.$. labor unions: Jeff Schuhrke, 11 November 2023, US Labor Has Long Been a Stalwart Backer of Israel. That’s Starting To Change., Jacobin.
3. Democracy Now!, 26 December 2032, Labor Demands a Ceasefire: UAW, Electrical & Postal Workers Call for Israel’s Assault on Gaza to End.](https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26/us_labor_movement_israel_palestine)
4. Joshua Alexander, 08 August 2016, Two Articles by Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, 1919, Anti-Imperialism.org.
5. MIM’s Pan-Islamic Page
6. Sophia Yan, 23 March 2024, Islamic State attackers publish selfie following Moscow attack, The Telegraph.
7. MIM, The role of the National Bourgeoisie: The decline of Soviet social-imperialism
8. Guerrilla History, 15 March 2024, History of Palestinian Communism w/ Patrick Higgins.</sup>

In our last issue we covered the mythology of sex crimes being painted onto Hamas in the imperialist media, and the flaunting of beautiful, young, “white” wimmin to rouse the hunger for war in the men of the United $tates, Britain and I$rael itself. In effect they have turned the genocide in Palestine into a rape revenge fantasy.

Since that article, multiple news agencies have done further investigation into the claims made by the New York Times and echoed across the imperialist media. Yes! and The Intercept both conducted investigations, and to those paying attention, it seems very clear that there is actually no real evidence of rape committed on October 7th, especially by Hamas itself. Both investigations report on the experience of one of the lead investigators for the New York Times, who questioned eir own qualifications to be working on the article, and hit dead end after dead end while intentionally trying to dig up information on alleged rapes. This “reporter,” Anat Schwartz, also liked a tweet saying that I$rael needed to “turn the [Gaza] strip into a slaughterhouse.”(1)(2)

Another figure in this propaganda campaign, Cochav Elkayam-Levy, was hosted by the White House in December, whom it described in a press statement as the “Chair of Israel’s Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children.” Since then ey has been the center of scandal in I$rael where it has been exposed that the “Commission” is just one persyn, and despite its name is not an official state commission. Elkayam-Levy released a “Horrors Report” that was 4 pages long, listing newspaper headlines and some signatures. Meanwhile ey attempted to raise $8 million for the “Commission’s” investigation.(3)

While working on this article another New York Times piece came out claiming that an I$raeli prisoner was sexually assaulted. This came out months after her release and having given a press conference on her imprisonment. It also came out shortly after that new evidence had been uncovered to prove some of their claims about rapes on October 7th false. In reality, it was already known that these claims were false before the original article came out.(4) What is not debated is the fact that these wimmin were killed in the October 7th attack. The grandfather of the two girls killed by Hamas, mentioned in the NYT report on rape, said it “was the saddest day of my life.” So why is it so necessary for the imperialists to create these stories that they were raped as well? Finally, this new sexual assault story comes to light as I$rael is conducting an intentional mass starvation campaign and destruction of medical care in the Gaza Strip and as footage is released of I$raeli drones hunting down and murdering unarmed Palestinians walking down the street.

The imperialist media has at times painted the myth of sexual assaults on October 7th as the greatest tragedy in the conflict in Palestine. Greater than the almost 35,000 dead Palestinians, greater than the thousands of Palestinian babies starving to death as we write this, even greater than the hundreds of I$raeli lives taken.

Meanwhile, many U.$. prisoners are confused by the state to think that anyone with a “sex offender” label has assaulted children. And they see this assault of children, whether real or imagined, by another prisoner as the greatest tragedy that they will sacrifice their body and their freedom to avenge. This is a greater tragedy to them than the tens of thousands of oppressed nation men and wimmin being tortured every day by the U.$. prison system. The 100,000 rotting away in long-term isolation. The minds of multiple generations being zombified by chemical warfare agents being brought in and sold by the guards. Staff beating people to within an inch of their lives over frivolous trespasses. Some of our misled readers would rather attack another prisoner than avenge these atrocities of the state.

Young New Afrikan males are one of the demographics that are most likely to be raped in the United $tates because of their vastly disproportionate rate of imprisonment.(5) Palestinians face similar rates of imprisonment, with accounts of rape in those prisons of both men and wimmin. A recent UN report says allegations of I$raeli sexual assault and rape of Palestinan wimmin and girls are credible.(6) It is clear that by fighting imperialism – its occupations, its wars, its prisons – we can do the most to combat rape. It is clear that bombing Gaza is not stopping rape. It should also be clear that attacking other prisoners who are threatening no one does not stop rape.

Rape revenge fantasies are built up by the patriarchy, to tug at the emotions of the patriarchal men who are called to avenge the innocent who are defiled. This props up the very gender relations that lead to rape in the first place, where individuals take other individuals’ fates into their own hands through the use of inter-persynal force. These fantasies are used to divide the oppressed and rally the oppressors. They are used to justify division and oppression in U.$. prisons, and they are used to justify war and genocide in the Third World.

<sup>Notes:
1. Arun Gupta, 5 March 2024, Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation, Yes!
2. Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw, 28 February 2024, “Between the Hammer and the Anvil: The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Expose, The Intercept.
3. Ali Abunimah, 25 March 2024, Israeli “commission” on 7 October rape claims exposed as fraud, The Electronic Intifada.
4. Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, 4 March 2024, Kibbutz Be’eri Rejects STory in New Yortk Times October 7 Expose: “They Were Not Sexually Abused”, The Intercept.
5. MIM(Prisons), September 2007, Gender Oppression in U.$. Prisons, Under Lock & Key No. 1
6. Julian Borger, 22 February 2024, Claims of Israeli sexual assault of Palestinian women are credible, UN panel says, The Guardian.</sup>

The theme of this issue of Under Lock & Key was inspired by recent essays and interviews by Orisanmi Burton, previewing material from eir upcoming book: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Comrades in MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within (USW) have been studying Burton’s work. Though we have not had the opportunity to read the book yet, which comes out end of October 2023, we like a lot of the ideas ey has presented so far and the overall thesis that prisons are war.

As we go to press the genocidal war on Palestine is heating up. We have reports inside on Congo, El Salvador, Ukraine and Niger; and we don’t even touch on Guatemala or Haiti. History has shown that as war heightens internationally, war often heightens against the oppressed nations within the empire as well.

In this issue we have reports of political repression as war in U.$. prisons. We also feature articles from comrades who organized around, and reflected on the Attica rebellion and Black August. This is the history that Burton analyzes in eir work, exposing the state’s efforts to suppress the prison movement and how both sides were operating on a war footing. For over a decade readers of ULK have commemorated the beginning of Attica on September 9th with a Day of Peace and Solidarity, as part of the campaign to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. But how do we get to peace when we find ourselves the targets of the oppressor’s war?

Burton pushes back against some Liberal/reformist lines that have been advanced onto the prison movement to oppose the line of liberation. Burton’s ideas harken back to V.I. Lenin, recognizing prisons as a repressive arm of the state, and the state being a tool of oppression and warfare by one class over another. War is one form of political struggle, and a very important one at that.

It is this framework that we have used to push back against “abolitionism.” Our organization emerged from the struggle to abolish control units, a form of prisons that is torture and inhumane. We see the abolition of control units as a winnable, if difficult, battle under bourgeois rule. In a socialist state, where the proletariat rules over the former bourgeoisie, we certainly won’t have such torture cells anymore; but the abolition of prisons altogether is a vision for the distant future. We find it questionable that Burton frames revolutionary communist martyrs like George Jackson as an “abolitionist”.

Where we have more unity is when Burton takes issue with building the prison movement around the legalist struggle to amend the 13th Amendment of the U.$. Constitution that abolishes slavery except for the convicted felon. Burton points out the history of Liberal thought in justifying enslavement of those captured in just wars. As most in this country see the United $tates as a valid project, it could follow logically that it is just to enslave the conquered indigenous and New Afrikan nations, as well as nations outside the United $tates borders. We see how settlers in Amerika and I$rael are now justifying all sorts of genocidal atrocities against Palestine.

The challenge we have repeatedly made to the campaign to amend the 13th Ammendment is how this contributes to liberating oppressed people? How does it build power for oppressed people?

In one essay Burton draws connections to how the state was handling the war against the Vietnamese people at the same time as the war against New Afrika at home.(1) We have a draft paper out on the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement that discusses the counter-insurgency in Peru, and how the fascist U.$.-Fujimori regime locked communist leader Comrade Gonzalo in an underground isolation cell and then used confusion around political line to crush the People’s War in that country. In Under Lock & Key 47, we reprinted an in-depth analysis of the use of long-term solitary confinement against the revolutionary movement in Turkey and the use of hunger strikes to struggle against it from 2000-2007. All of these historical examples, including to some extent New Afrika in the 1970s, involved an armed conflict on both sides. Today, in the United $tates, we do not have those conditions. However, we can look to the national liberation struggle in Palestine, and the connection to the prison movement there as a modern-day example.

Burton spends time exposing the politics of the federal counter-insurgency program PRISACTS. And one of the things we learn is that PRISACTS is officially short-lived as the counter-insurgency intelligence role is taught to and passed on to the state institutions. We see this today, especially in the handling of censorship of letters and reading materials we send to and receive from prisoners. We see the intentional targeting of these materials for their political content, and not for any promotion of violence or illegal activity. Our comrades inside face more serious consequences of brutality, isolation and torture in retaliation for attempts to organize others for basic issues of living conditions and law violations.

The arrest of Duane “Keffe D” Davis for involvement in the murder of Tupac Shakur has also been in the news this month. Keffe D is a known informant who confessed to driving his nephew to murder Tupac years ago in exchange for the dropping of a life sentence for an unrelated charge. Author John Potash notes that there were many attempted assassinations of Tupac prior to his death, at least one that involved the NYPD Street Crimes Unit. This unit was launched following the supposed “end” of COINTELPRO.(2) This directly parallels what we see with the “end” of PRISACTS and the passing of intelligence operations on to state pigs.

As we’ve discussed in drawing lessons from the repression of Stop Cop City, we need to take serious strategic precautions in how we organize. We must recognize the war being waged on us. If we treat this as something that can be fixed once people see what’s going on, or once we get the right courts or authorities to get involved, we will never accomplish anything. And as always we must put politics in command. There is an active intelligence counter-insurgency being waged against USW and the prison movement in general, and the best weapon we have is grasping, implementing and judging political line.

Prison is War is not just a topic for ULK, it is a political line and analysis. We welcome your future reports, articles and artwork exposing the ways this war is happening in prisons today.

<sup>Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi (2023).“Targeting Revolutionaries: The Birth of the Carceral Warfare Project, 1970-1978.” Radical History Review. Vol. 146.
2. John Potash on I Mix What I Like, 16 October 2023. (author of “The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders”)</sup>

A Quick Recap On Russian Imperialism

We have written in April of 2022 reviewing some quick FAQs with regards to the situation in Ukraine at the time. We believe some important points we must reassess and new points to bring up are as follows:

• Both Russia and Ukraine have problems of fascism in their society expressed through the most reactionary elements of the Wagner Group of Russia and the infamous Azov Battalion of Ukraine. Both sides are vehement anti-communists despite the sensationalist portrayals of Putin as a USSR-esque tyrant in mainstream media political cartoons. Ukrainian reactionaries will topple down Soviet era statues while for the Russian imperialists, Ukraine itself is a giant Soviet era statue that must be toppled down and engulfed into Russia. Ukraine would have never gotten its independence in the first place without the world’s first proletarian dictatorship of the USSR.

• Unlike the United $tates, Japan, Western Europe, and etc., Russian imperialism does not have a majority labor aristocrat population (despite a very significant one) and the class interests of the Russian proletariat lines up with the class interests of the Ukrainian proletariat against Russian and NATO imperialism.(0)

• At best, Soviet nostalgia expressed in Russia longs for social-imperialist era command economy coupled with resentment of the political-economic crises caused by the complete opening up of Soviet markets. It is an unscientific frustration of the general masses in Russia. At worst, it is a rallying tool for current Russian imperialism’s moral justification akin to how concepts like democracy, freedom, and women’s rights were rallying tools of U.$. imperialism’s military invasions in the Middle East. We wish to practice revolutionary optimism in regards for the anti-revisionist communists in Russia and Ukraine who could take this popular sentiment away from the hands of the imperialists and into the hands of the broad masses.

• Oftentimes in our current conditions where the anti-imperialist movement is weak and undeveloped, the best thing for U.$. imperialism’s involvement in the war in Ukraine is giving the masses the correct analysis from the vantage point of the international proletariat. We should avoid “cheer leading” between various imperialist powers where “various people’s wars and nations at war… [become akin to] fandoms for TV shows to obsess and argue over rather than a movement to popularize and create awareness for.”. We recognize the importance of organs like Under Lock & Key and independent institutions like United Struggle Within – both in their strengths and limitations – for the imprisoned section of the lumpen class.

The Wagner Group

One significant development this summer was an attempted coup by the Wagner Group against the government of Russia. For our readers who might not know, the Wagner group is a private military mercenary group of the Russian Federation formed through the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.(1) While its origins are unclear, the group has been claimed to have been founded by both Dmitry Utkin and Yevgeny Prigozhin with the the former having been the field military commander and the latter being the financier and military programmer.(2) Utikin, being a veteran of the Chechen Wars, was said to have had great admiration of Nazi Germany and his nickname in the battlefield was given by eir fellow imperialist soldiers as “Wagner” named after the German composer whose music was popularly used by Hitler and eir fascist goons as rallying songs during marches.(3) Due to the Nazi ideologies which were part of the Wagner Group’s political DNA from the start, fascist slogans and graffiti by the group’s presence in Ukraine has been known to have surfaced.(4)

On 20 May 2023 Prigozhin, at the time the top commander of the Wagner Group, took the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine.(5) Ey criticized top Russian officials of the military, the defense minister, and the chief of general staff withholding artillery ammunition from the Wagner Group and accused them of “high treason.”(6) Defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced that all members of “volunteer units” must be required to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1st in order to get Wagner and similar mercenary groups under a tighter leash. Despite Prigozhin’s close loyalty to Putin, the latter has chosen to back the defense minister’s decision.(7)

On the midnight of 24 June 2023, Prigozhin while denying to sign the contract and have eir fascist mercenary goons under Russian imperialist control announced a “march for justice” leaving Ukraine and having the first column enter Russia’s Southern Military District. Prigozhin demanded that Shoigu and Gerasimov be brought to him and held a blockade of the city. On the city of Voronezh, the group shot down Russian military helicopters and a command aircraft killing at least a dozen soldiers marking the start of the rebellion.(8) With Putin’s condemnation and the labeling of Prigozhin’s act as treason, the rebellion came to a quick end. On the Sunday of 24 August 2023, Russian authorities have confirmed that Prigozhin has died in a plane crash.(9)

The rhetoric that Russia is an anti-fascist or anti-colonial force in the global imperialist system is a bold-faced lie of Russian imperialism. Acknowledging this fact is in no way supporting Ukraine’s own fascism ridden government. It is the instinct of petty-bourgeois moralism to see armed conflicts as a side of the good guys and the bad guys. This war itself is an inter-imperialist battle where Russian imperialism seeks to gain global hegemony against U.$./NATO aligned forces and where the nation of Ukraine is caught in the middle of this geo-political tug-of-war. The fact that the fascists of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion and the fascists of Russia’s Wagner Group are fighting each other is just another telltale sign how fascism is an incoherent nihilistic political trend that must be stomped out.

Russia Sympathies Among the Masses

Many prisoner comrades have written to us since the previous article was published where they expressed some sympathies for Russian imperialism. Many arguments had to do with the fact that Russian imperialism was defending itself against the NATO/U.$. led powers.

A California prisoner commented:

”I hear too many well proclaimed communists taking sides with Ukraine. “Putin is a fascist,” “Putin is imperialist,” etc…

As a prisoner I have learned to be very cautious about taking sides, I see all kinds of evil up here everyday: a lot of schemes, manipulations, scam artists. I see all of them here in prison.

So why? Why is the United $nakes so interested in Ukraine winning? Why is it worth trillions of dollars to the U.$. for Ukraine to win? We, the common people like myself, does not understand things like the stock market, and the grain exchange. I understand that grain is sold for money. What I don’t understand is how a whole completely separate market created out of thin air, selling absolutely nothing but grain calling itself the grain exchange that is something only the capitalists who run the world understand.

If I had to guess with my simple mind, I would say that Ukraine sells its grain to the west at a premium as a means to launder dirty drug money. But that’s just my simple mind. It probably has more to do with the grain exchange, capitalism itself.“

One sentiment we can agree with this prisoner comrade is that the job of communists and revolutionaries in the U.$. would be to see U.$. imperialism as their principal enemy. Many communists can so far agree with this line, the problem comes in deeper with regards to the analysis of other major imperialist countries – especially ones that spout anti-imperialist rhetoric in words such as while in practice commit imperialism that rivals the traditional NATO imperialist powers..

We would like to iterate to this comrade that their mind isn’t so simple as ey might let off. We appreciate the humbleness that revolutionaries should have that this comrade has shown, but in the end the contrite and popular phrase that the imperialist governments are the real criminals is true. Sure, we wouldn’t boil down world imperialism to money laundering; but theft and murder are important objectionable aspects of imperialism. We see many imprisoned comrades who project the anti-people crimes they struggle to overcome onto the criminal ways of the imperialists, and for a starting point these oversimplifications might not be the worst thing as a step towards revolutionary thinking.

With that said we would disagree that Russia is doing self-defense with regards to their invasion of Ukraine. As the above points laid out, we should avoid choosing sides in inter-imperialist conflict even though the U.$. and NATO imperialist forces didn’t have direct boots in Ukraine (which the comrade has also expressed as well).

The real question comes in as how Lenin’s theses on “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War” would mean in practice in our current material conditions where the revolutionary forces are much weaker and arguably much more revisionist and opportunist than even the revisionist European and imperialist country communist movements which Lenin was writing polemics against.(10) One point that we can start from is this: the war that we should be focusing on is the war waged by Amerika against its internal semi-colonies of the Black, Chican@, and Indigenous Nations through mass imprisonment and police occupation. With this issue’s Under Lock & Key covering the topic of how “Prisons Are War,” we would like to further expand on how prisons play this role of low-intensity genocide against the masses.

<sup>Notes. 0.300 million exploited whites: where are they? (Not in the United $tates), MIM FAQ.
1. Andrew S. Bowen, 1 August 2023, Russia’s Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), Congressional Research Service.</sup>

^{2. Stewart Bell, 29 June, 2023, In Prigozhin’s shadow, the Wagner Group leader who stays out of the spotlight, Global News.}

^{3. Ibid.}

^{4. Brian Castner, 1 June 2022, The White Power Mercenaries Fighting For the Lost Cause Around the World, TIME.}

^{5. Joshua Yaffa, 31 July 2023, Inside the Wagner Group’s Armed Uprising, The New Yorker}

^{6. Kevin Shalvey, 10 July 2023, Russian rebellion timeline: How the Wagner uprising against Putin unfolded and where Prigozhin is now, ABC News}

^{7. Ibid.}

^{8. Ibid.}

^{9. Associated Press, 27 August 2023, Russia confirms that Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in last week’s plane crash, NPR.}

^{10. Lenin, 26 July 1915, The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War, Lenin Collected Works.}

In yet another act of terrorism, Shareen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-amerikan journalist, was targeted and killed by the illegitimate state of I$rael and its military. The I$raeli state, its occupation of Palestine, and its armed forces are and have been backed by the united state’s ruling class since 1932. On 11 May 2022, while on the job, covering an I$raeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, she was maliciously assassinated.

Shareen Abu Akleh became a thorn in the side of the I$raeli state as a result of her continuous on the spot coverage of daily state repression, human rights violations, and Palestinian genocide. She covered many detentions, home demolitions (which Palestinian homes were targeted in, and demolished to force them to relocate for I$raelis) military raids of schools and universities, and Masjids, and killings of Palestinians. This brave frontline work placed her on I$raeli hit lists.

Shareen Abu Akleh was a journalist for decades and a Palestinian revolutionary-nationalist, who being a trailblazer in her field, inspired many Palestinian and Arab wimmin to serve their people through the work of liberation journalism.

Her funeral brought out tens of thousands of supporters, mostly Palestinian, in Jerusalem. As pallbearers carried sister Shareen, the I$raeli military attacked them, and further disrupted the occasion with malicious zionist violence against Palestinian nationals.

Sadly, the colonization of Palestine, the Apartheid regime of I$rael, and violent and fatal repression of native inhabitants is all apart of the imperialist system. What does imperialism look like? It looks like land theft, it looks like millions of people living without power or plumbing, it looks like bombing and shelling of homes, schools, hospitals and finishing the job by attacking refugee camps. It looks like storming universities, confiscating study materials, it looks like the process of erasing an entire human group, and that’s exactly what’s taking place in Palestine. There will be many who call for justice for Shareen Abu Akleh, but the sad truth is that justice for her and justice for the Palestinian nation can only be achieved with the end of the I$raeli occupation.

FREE THE LAND!!! FREE PALESTINE!!!

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is a grassroots initiative that began in the early 2000’s to gain international support for the occupied Palestinian nation against I$rael’s continued military suppression, genocide and land theft.

In recent years the BDS movement has indeed gained international support, even in the face of reactionary pro-imperialist backlash from the states who support genocide, land theft and military crimes.

The goal of BDS is to isolate I$rael on the international field by upholding the “simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity”.

Students around the world have been pressuring their schools and universities to join the ‘Academic Boycott’, initiated in 2004 by the Palestinian campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of I$rael (PACBI). As student activism again comes to life here in the United $tates, it is important that students engage in internationalist frameworks. Amerikan student activists should support the academic boycott of I$rael, which is part of the overall BDS movement. Students should do this not as a mere moral cause, but the understanding that over 50% of the U.$. states strongly support the I$raeli military-apartheid-colonization, so much so that 35 states have Anti-BDS laws. They support the frequent military raids of Palestinian universities under the pretext of ‘countering terrorist activities’, the imprisonment and murder of student activists peacefully protesting, closure of schools and the recent I$raeli military move to arbitrarily control what is and isn’t taught in universities. A new government procedure allows the military to restrict visiting professors who teach subjects supposedly ‘not relevant to Palestinians’.

In the United $tates, the free flow of ideas has begun to be brought to an end. Book bans, Don’t Say Gay laws, the backlash against Critical Race Theory, what’s next? Will the same reactionaries rally police/ military force to suppress your student demonstration? The book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán has been banned in prisons in many parts of occupied Aztlán. Will the reactionaries prevent your free thought? NEWSFLASH THEY ALREADY ARE! Students in North America should pressure their institutions to join the Academic boycott and the wider BDS movement. END ALL COLLABORATION WITH THE ILLEGITIMATE STATE, until Palestine is free.

MIM(Prisons) adds: One of the first essays many students of MIM study is On Contradiction by Mao Zedong. In it Mao explains how change must come from within. The liberation of Palestine depends on an effective national liberation struggle from within Palestine, but it can be assisted by resistance to the funding and arming of the I$raeli state by Amerikans whose government is the primary prop of I$rael. A strong anti-imperialist movement in this country would be able to limit the sale of military goods to I$rael, Ukraine and anywhere else where the empire wants to fight wars against its enemies without sending its own troops.

^{Notes:
(1) ‘Palestinian-american journalist assassinated,’ Monical Hill, FreedomSocialist,vol.43,no.3
(2) ‘Academic fortify boycott of Israel’, Raya Fidel, FreedomSocialist,vol.43,no.3}

Crime is a child of poverty and miseducation, which are both created and perpetuated by Plutocrat Policy(s).

The real criminals are too rich and too big for jail, while the poor are incarcerated for simply living a survivalist existence, for responding and/or reacting to poverty and miseducation in reactionary, economically desperate and miseducated ways.

Prison is mainly based on inflicting punishment and resentment, rather than cultivating genuine healing via essential self-criticism that has historically proven to decrease recidivism. Prisoners’ growth will defeat the purpose of spending or investing 20-plus million dollars building each prison. Genuine rehabilitation is a bad investment to the Plutocrats.

The entire so-called criminal justice system is nothing but a replacement and extension of slavery. A job-generating industry for all government branches and departments between the slave patrollers (street PIGs; Plutocrat Imperialist Goons) and Overseers (D.O.C.; Department of Cruelty) as was the case with post-Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676.

Crime, is all founded upon, and backed up by the exception clause of the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime…”

Thus, to genuinely heal or rehabilitate prisoners is to end the new slavery; meaning, leading to the shutting down of prison, and mass lay-offs within the entire so-called criminal justice industry system, made up of slave patrollers (street PIGs), judges, state and defense attorneys, counselors, doctors, nurses, canteen vendors, civilian food service and maintenance workers and county jail and prison overseers (DOC). Millions of jobs when tallied up nationally, all off so-called crime, the new cotton, tobacco and/or sugar.

Crime, as an industry, can only end by first and foremostly ending poverty and miseducation. Even rape is a result of miseducation, or psychological defects of miseducation by the system of patriarchy. However, poverty and miseducation will not end without first and foremostly ending and replacing the CIPWS (Capitalist Imperialist Patriarchist White Supremacy) with a Proletarian Internationalist Dictatorship.

Whenever and wherever there is poverty and miseducation, material conditions are ripe for the warrant of crime or revolution. For neither takes place without the desire for and/or the aspiration of better days, or a higher standard of living.

History is proof, that revolutions do not automatically occur and succeed with the collapse of the CIPWS elite and their Plutocrat’s superstructure. Revolution can, and will only occur and succeed when and where the revolt which leads to revolution is culture. When and where the masses are revolutionary conscious and active in every aspect of human life. When and where every human embraces the power to determine the egalitarian destiny of his and/or her own community. Revolution is when and where power changes hands, in our case, from CIPWS to PID (Proletarian Internationalist Dictatorship) ensuring egalitarianism meaning All Power To The People. Revolution begins with education like crime ends with education.

In egalitarian solidarity and struggle.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This is great summary of the connection between the system of mass incarceration in the U.$. and the need to end imperialism. We agree that this criminal injustice system is a replacement for slavery in relation to controlling New Afrikan populations, and that it funds millions of jobs for Amerikans. However, this system is very different from cotton or sugar in that no value is being created, rather the potential value that the oppressed nations could be producing to benefit their people is being squandered by locking them up in unproductive conditions for years and decades.

On 28 December 2021, Hisham Abu Hawash of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine has gained a victory against I$rael’s counter-revolutionary “administrative detention” policy. Hawash’s lawyer, Jawad Boulos, has stated that I$rael pledged for Hawsah’s release on 26 February 2022 and therefore the hunger strike will end.(1)

Hawsah is a 40-year-old father of 5 and a member of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine. He is among several Palestinian revolutionaries waging a hunger strike in protest of I$rael’s unjust policy, which locks up Palestinians without any due trial. He has faced 8 years of time imprisoned with 4 of those years under administrative detention.(2)

The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (PIJ) rightfully threatened counter-attacks if Hawsah ever died in custody.(3)

Palestinians across the occupied land have gone in protests supporting the strikers. One protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on 6 January 2022, included signs which read: “Those starving behind bars feed the universe with dignity” – a slogan we extend to hunger strikers not only in Palestine but across the world.(4)

The Reactionary Policy of Administrative Detention

Administrative detention is a form of arrest or imprisonment done without trial – usually for issues of “terrorism” or rebellion. Many imperialist countries use the tactic of administrative detention to control unruly populations/groups.(5) In the United $tates for example, around 182,869 migrants from the Third World were held in detention centers through this method in 2020.(6) Despite the more advanced and developed contradictions between I$rael and Palestine, compared to oppressed nations in the United $tates and Euro-Amerika the year after, I$rael held a mere 1,595 Palestinians in administrative detentions. Amerika has truly earned the title “Big Satan” in contrast to I$rael’s “Little Satan” status on this front.(7) The administrative detention policy of the I$raelis work through the arrest and detention of Palestinian revolutionaries and activists. The idealists arguing for I$rael will say that administrative detention has been applied to I$raelis as well – notably, against ultra-chauvinist zionist terrorists and unruly settlers. Throughout the years, only 9 I$raelis were held in administrative detention; Palestinians and Arabs number in the thousands.(8) Any sober minded person and materialist will be able to recognize that the exception proves the rule in this case like so many often times.

DOWN WITH ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION!

THOSE STARVING BEHIND BARS FEED THE WORLD’S DIGNITY

^{Notes: 1. Joseph Krauss, “Palestinian prisoner ends hunger strike in deal with Israel” Associated Press, January 4th 2022}

^{2. Ibid.}

^{3. Ibid.}

^{4. Ibid.}

^{5. “Israel’s Policy of Administrative Detention,” European Parliament}

^{6. “United States Immigration Detention Profile,” Global Detention Project}

^{7. “Prisoners society: Israel issued 1,595 administrative detention orders against Palestinians in 2021,” Press TV}

^{8. “Stop Administrative Detention,” Prisoner Support Human Rights Association}

These last couple of months, all that was on the news was the U.$ evacuation of Afghanistan and the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. U.$. citizens, military personnel (i.e. veterans, active duty) and politicians have been showing their distaste for how Joe Biden pulled the U.$. troops out of Afghanistan; where scenes of Afghanis who aided the U.$. in their failed attempt to incorporate a U.$ controlled government in their homeland, frantically rushing to the Kabul airport to catch a ride with the U.$. citizens and troops. During the frantic and chaotic evacuation, ISIS-Kabul (ISIS-K) committed a suicide-bomb attack, which killed 13 U.$. troops, leading Joe Biden in a press conference to state, “.. We won’t forget and we won’t forgive. We’ll hunt you (ISIS-K) down till the end of the earth…”. I had to laugh at the screen once I heard the words leave Joe Biden’s mouth, because of the contradictions that this U.$. government hands out to the world and her own citizens continuously.

The U.$. preaches of peace and unity to the world over, but terrorizes or keeps a sniper scope on territories of the world, where it wants control over in the disguise of “the spreading of democracy.” But the only democracy that needs to be spreading faster than the COVID-19 virus and all its variants, is the New Democracy controlled by the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Oppressed Nations(JPDON). Under the JDPON all oppressed nations may dictate their own destiny and as a collective of oppressed nations keep imperialism in the cage where it rightfully deserves to be in.

The democracy that the imperialists want to implement and maintain will only bring death and destruction. Our FWL men, women, and children are being deemed as terrorists then are murdered and imprisoned by the U.$. piggy force. Just how our TW brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews are being murdered and imprisoned by these imperialist armies and drones. Just how the comrade O.G. Hawk poem in issue #74 stated: “… FBI, CIA, and all of America’s comrades have hurt more people than anybody on earth crying that democracy is what it’s worth!”

We can go back into history and see the shaded hand of the U.$. stirring the pot of confusion and destruction, while the other hand points an entirely different picture of the truth. From the “War on Drugs” to the recently ended “War in the Middle East”, both were supplied with the money, drugs and weapons by the U.$ government and counterparts. The U.$. piggy force are trained to be in a war zone when they hit the local streets; for to them our neighborhood blocks are their Iraq and Afghanistan. How many of We have been terrorized by the U.$. government? As this article was being written, Haitian migrants were being whipped by U.$. border control officers on horse back at the Southern border of this country; an Afghani man and a couple of Afghani children were bombed in a drone attack when mistaken as a convoy of ISIS-K members. The latter is one of many over this ended 20 year war, that the U.$. government won’t admit. Prisoners from the East coast to the West coast are still being tortured with inhumane treatment, as We the FW lumpen are being singled out and put under manipulation techniques to enchant the spell of defeatism; deferring both the leaders and comrades from continuing on with the fight to liberate oneself from a capitalist/imperialist power.

We won’t turn the other cheek, extend the hand of friendship and sing “kumbaya” or whatever make-me-feel-warm-&-fuzzy-inside bullshit that the imperialists use as a ploy to keep We in a docile state. Holding on to the hope for that perfect union that Martin Luther King Jr., his descendants and followers of the non-violent movement have yet to experience. Just as Biden said about ISIS-K, the FW lumpen and TW proletariat won’t forget nor forgive the capitalist/imperialist governments for the genocide of all indigenous peoples and folks around the world, for colonialism and neocolonialism, the destruction of the planet Earth for profitable gain for the few; while everyone else is fighting each other for the top or a closer to the top spots of this fucked up capitalist pyramid scheme.

As We liberate our minds and each other from the imperialist/capitalist doctrines, culture and power, We’ll come to see justice being served to the worlds most wanted terrorist group, and a new age will emerge. An age of Freedom, Justice, and Equality for the majority of the world.

The Escape

On 6 September 2021, 6 Palestinian prisoners of war have escaped an I$raeli maximum security prison known as Gilboa by digging a tunnel with plates and panhandles.(1) The tunnel was 72 meters long, and the I$raeli Security Agency has suspected that the excavation had started around November of 2020.(2) This incident is being talked of as the most significant prison break in the history of Palestine.

The 6 Palestinian prisoners were members of Palestinian nationalist organizations (The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the al-Quds Brigades) which have resisted the I$raeli occupation.(3) Out of the 6, four of the escaped freedom fighters were serving life sentences.(4)

In response to the prison break, the I$raeli Prison Service (IPS), launched a lockdown on Palestinian prisoners: break time has been cut to one hour a day; prison canteen has been closed; and the number of captives able to walk in the yard has been decreased. 400 prisoners, who have been deemed “Jihadist” and a threat to the security of the prisons, have been separated from one another as well. On top of this, family visits have been completely taken away by the pigs.(5) For our readers on the inside, these tactics by the I$raeli prison pigs to punish all for the actions of some sound similar as the United $tates and I$rael are very similar in character. Both are settler-colonial states, and both trade and exchange tactics/information used to better repress their respective oppressed nations.

The Day of Rage

In response to this crackdown, I$raeli prisons faced strikes and riots. In Katziot prison, seven cells were set on fire by Palestinian prisoners and hunger strikes have been set to begin in Gilboa on Friday, 17 Septemebr 2021.(6) The Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission has declared that 1,380 prisoners have joined the hunger strikes.(7)

Outside of the prison walls, the nationalist organization Hamas has declared a “Day of Rage” on the Friday of September 10th.(8) At the al-Aqsa mosque, supporters of the escaped freedom fighters have organized a sit in protest after the end of prayer. The I$raeli forces stormed the mosque in response to the protest and killed one man and arrested another. The man killed was a Palestinian doctor named Hazem al-Jolani.(9)

About a week after the escape, the 6 prisoners were recaptured into imprisonment. One of the freedom fighters, Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri, was put in solitary confinement with nothing but a blanket and was subjected to physical and psychological torture.(10) All other prisoners involved in the escape were sent to separate high security prisons as well.(11)

Internationalism in the Prison Movement

While studying Engels’ writings on the bourgeois state, Lenin said the following:

“Engels elucidates the concept of the ‘power’ which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command.”(12)

As Lenin explains, prisons serve a class purpose in maintaining power in class society. In the world we live in today, the bourgeois class utilizes prisons to control their “unruly” populations under their command. Under socialism and proletarian dictatorship, prisons will exist as well (albeit under principles of rectification and rehabilitation learned from the past socialist experiences rather than punishment for punishment’s sake). For the case of not only the 6 prisoners of war who escaped Gilboa, but also for all prisoners in Palestine and all prisoners in the United $tates, their facilities are a material form of capitalist-imperialist power locking them up in their every move. Here in the United $tates, we have had historic moments of prisoners fighting against the repression and seeking for redemption and liberation through class struggle. The Attica uprising of 9 September 1971 is a prime example of that class struggle. With Attica as the battle cry of the revolutionary prison movement in the United $tates, we hope to reach that cry across the oceans and to Palestine itself.

From Attica 2 Gilboa!

Down with the I$raeli Prison Service! Down with the Department of Corrections!

^{Bibliography 1. Toi Staff, September 14, 2021, “Jailbreak probe said to find 11 Gilboa prisoners started tunnel dig in November.” Times of Israel 2. Ibid. 3. The Palestine Chronicle, September 6, 2021, “Six Palestinian Prisoners Break out of Gilboa Prison after Digging Tunnel” 4. Ibid. 5. Middle East Eye, September 10, 2021, “Palestinian killed during ‘day of rage’ solidarity protests for prison escapees” 6. Khaled Abu Tomaeh, September 14, 2021, “Palestinian prisoners to begin hunger strike Friday,” The Jerusalem Post. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10.Yeni Safak, September 16, 2021, “Palestinian prison escapee to keep fighting for freedom.” 11. Middle East Eye, October 1, 2021, “Israel: Recaptured Palestinian jailbreakers transferred to solitary confinement” 12. Vladimir Lenin, August 1917, “State and Revolution.”}

Previously I argued that taxpayers are not responsible for government capital policy because they are ignorant. My error was pointed out to me and now I see the truth – the January 6th rioters showed me that they are willing to fight for my oppression therefore their ignorance is irrelevant – they are indeed more responsible than I assumed, therefore I must ignore my compassion for their humanity as unnatural as that is for me. The object is more important than the subject.

When evaluating responsibility, it is tempting to be blinded by the subject. For instance, government officials are directly responsible for enforcing capital policy. However, collaborators often look like our neighbors, friends or even family. These collaborators will support & encourage oppression & tyranny out of ignorance or out of a callous heart. Ignorance cannot be excused if freedom is ever going to be won. When the object of freedom becomes important enough all barriers must fall, even if that means forcing ourselves to do what is not natural.

Rights are never granted, rights are won. Unfortunately, this includes basic human rights such as freedom. To win freedom from the tyranny & oppression that comes with a capitalist economy, the opposition must fall. This necessity does not come naturally, that is because the values instilled in our youth are instilled by capital policy (submission), these values are what allows capitalists to steal your freedom. We must relearn a greater value.

There exist those that will take more than one has to give, that is what capital is (inequality). There is only so much resource & for one to have more than one needs he/she has to deprive another of what they need. For one to be rich, one must be poor.

As I watch the January 6th investigation, one thing is clear. That is the effort was weak. I think that is because the rioters knew in their hearts that they were fighting for the exploitation of an oppressed class. Ironic that they choose to capture the Capitol Building in order to keep their capital wealth at the expense of the oppressed class.

For those of us that are fighting for freedom, We will not make a half-hearted effort because it is our very survival that we are fighting for. We are not fighting for material wealth because we have none. Because our oppression is total & complete then so is our fight for freedom.

We will not fight for one building, not even for one city, or one country. We are fighting for equality. We will not stop until all opposition is fallen. Our fight comes from the heart & that is why it is stronger than the January 6th fight for material wealth.

The difference is that I am sick & tired of being oppressed so that another can live lavishly. The difference is that unlike the January 6th rioters I am not here to have a big party with a bunch of friends at the Capitol Building – I am here to win my freedom and to fight for the freedom of all oppressed people and I will not stop and lay down, I will never stop!!

That is what Marx means by permanent revolution, we must never stop fighting because the very moment we relax is the moment the exploiters continue to exploit as they have always done. Sun Tzu said we can “never leave an enemy on the battlefield.” If we do they will come back again.

As communists we must know our enemy is the object and not the subject. Compassion can blur our vision of the object and it is in these moments I must remember that the capitalists never had any compassion for the oppressed.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This point is relevant as Amerikans remember the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Afghans sigh in relief as the invader of their country pulls out. Professor Ward Churchill took a lot of heat for quoting Malcolm X on chickens coming home to roost after 9/11 and referring to Amerikans as “little Eichmanns.”(1) Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi in Germany who ran logistics for the system of concentration camps there. He was captured years after the war and in his trial claimed he was just following orders, just a cog in the machine, and should not be blamed for the deaths caused by that machine.

Since the end of the second imperialist war, the Amerikans have run the largest system of concentration camps in the world. While they lack the mass murder of the Nazi system, they are genocidal nonetheless against the oppressed nations that make up the majority of the prisoners. The day will come when Amerikans will be charged for their decades of crimes against humynity. Our success at building anti-imperialism and accountability in the United $tates today will ease the transition to a more just future on these lands.

^{Notes: 1.Ward Churchill, Some People Push Back.}