Under Lock & Key

On 22 May 2025, two staffers from the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. were shot and killed as they left an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum where many political and diplomatic officials were in attendance. The alleged shooter, Elias Rodriguez, remained at the scene and peacefully turned emself in shortly after police arrived to collect witness statements by announcing “I did it. I did it for Gaza.” As Rodriguez was led away in handcuffs, ey repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine!”. These details alone should make it clear that this targeted shooting of embassy staff was in no way motivated by racial hatred against Jewish people, but rather an act of armed protest for the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

However, the bourgeois press and zionist propaganda machine immediately began stirring up great outrage about the assassinations, calling the attack “anti-semitic”, “inhuman”, and other such vitriolic slander. This kind of absurd and distorted language about anti-semitism also appears in the U.$. “Justice” Department’s official press release and criminal complaint. Rodriguez is now facing a litany of charges, which will almost certainly result in a show trial where ey is found guilty and sentenced to a lifetime of imprisonment or possibly even execution (D.C.’s attorney general has called the case “death penalty eligible”).

The bourgeois propaganda has also been spilling crocodile tears over the “tragic” death of these two staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, placing a great deal of focus on how they were set to be engaged soon, and photos of their young, white, expensively-dressed selves at galas decorated with yellow ribbons (a symbol used by zionists to commemorate their hostages). Unsurprisingly, little attention has been given to inconvenient details that do not fit the narrative of this being an act of senseless anti-semitic violence. Yaron Lischinsky was not even Jewish, but was in fact a “Messianic Christian” from Germany who migrated to Israel and began working for the settler regime there as a teenager, presumably out of devotion to this bizarre and fascistic apocalyptic mythology combined with an old-fashioned love for apartheid that is still very much thriving in Germany. Sarah Milgram was an Amerikan Jew from Kansas who was working at the Israeli embassy in the public diplomacy department, coordinating and overseeing local delegations to Israel. Lischinsky was employed as a “researcher” in the embassy’s political directorate. Another detail that has been conveniently brushed under the rug in bourgeois propaganda about their engagement is that their marriage would not have been legally recognized in Israel due to its Jewish supremacist apartheid laws forbidding interfaith marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

The event the two had been attending is being branded as a gala dedicated to “humanitarian aid” in the Middle East. The event’s theme was, according to its organizers, “turning pain into purpose”; which ironically works better as a description for how Rodriguez interprets eir own actions than anything a gala for fascists could possibly achieve. We recognize, as savvy readers should, that the kind of “humanitarian aid” the imperialists love talking about is itself a weapon of control that is currently being used to massacre starving Palestinians who attempt to access the meager supply convoys that Israel and Amerika decide to allow into Gaza.(1)

Rodriguez’s explanation

Thankfully, we can readily expose any suggestions about this being an instance of “anti-semitic violence” as the fascist slander that it is. This is because Rodriguez had the foresight to prepare a written “explication” where ey explains how this targeted shooting of Israeli embassy staff was a political response to the ongoing I$raeli genocide in Gaza and offers eir own interpretation of how such an act ought to be understood.

In this manifesto, which was published online by an independent journalist shortly after the shooting (resulting in an FBI visit to eir home), Rodriguez describes eir “armed action” as being a matter of “theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions.”(2) This is contrasted with a “military action”, which is (presumably) defined by its relationship to concrete tactical and strategic objectives of an armed and organized political force. Ey draws a comparison to an assassination attempt against Robert McNamara in 1972, where an individual similarly outraged by the “impunity and arrogance he saw in that butcher of Vietnam as he sat in the ferry’s lounge laughing with friends” tried to throw the former U.$. Secretary of Defense and architect of the Vietnam War into the sea from the catwalk of the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. We could also draw a comparison between Rodriguez’s action and the 1938 assassination of Nazi German Foreign Office diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by a Jewish teenager, an act of protest against the forced deportation of Jews from Germany. Rodriguez does not cite this example emself, but we think it should be understood in the same moral context.

Rodriguez concludes eir explanation with “a word about the morality of armed demonstration”, which argues that eir action “would have been morally justified [if] taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge” even if it would have been “illegibile” and “seem insane” to most Amerikans at the time. This is contrasted with eir hope that many today will understand eir action as being “highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.” While we can understand and perhaps even share in this hope, we ultimately do not care what is legible or acceptable to a majority of the oppressor. We care about what actually moves humynity toward communism. What we can say for certain is that the action is legible to the masses, even though it does not concretely advance the revolutionary struggle.

More details about Elias Rodriguez’s political views and persynal life have since emerged from leaked chat messages and journalists interviewing eir acquaintances.(3) There is, yet again, no indication whatsoever from anything ey ever wrote that would corroborate bourgeois slanders about “anti-semitism” being a factor at all. Anybody who actually knew em said the same, with one acquaintance stating clearly that “everything I know about Elias leads me to believe he acted in protest of the Israeli State and Zionist ideology, not Judaism” and another remarking that ey “never, ever said anything remotely racist about Jews or anyone, not even in a joking way.”(3)

Unlike the bourgeois press, we have little interest in publishing salacious details about what people say in private conversations or spreading idle gossip about the lifestyles of individuals. On that note, we will simply say we agree with Rodriguez’s sentiment that “PSL [Party for Socialism and Liberation] sucks shit” (we will add, FRSO is not any better) and hope to see em continue studying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism from the perspective of the Third World proletariat while being held in enemy captivity.

Put the settler regime on trial!

From both the right and the “left”, Rodriguez’s actions are being condemned in the bourgeois press and on social media in the harshest terms; being smeared as insane, motivated by racial hatred or just senselessly violent. As we can see from eir manifesto, that could not be further from the truth. The pig regime and its news outlets, along with their cronies and lap dogs among the revisionist “left”, need to peddle this image because it hides the truth: Israel and Amerika are guilty of perpetuating more violence, racial hatred, and cold-blooded murder than any regime since Nazi Germany. The average Amerikan is complacent with causing far more death and destruction globally than merely two fatalities. In November 2023, one month into the current genocide, the WHO reported that a child in Gaza was being killed every 10 minutes. Current estimates from UNICEF place the number of children who have been killed or injured by Israel’s genocide in Gaza at over 50,000 since October 2023, approximately 82 children per day.(4)

This country purports its legal and penal system to be instruments of democratic justice, punishing everyone equally for crimes of equal measure. If that were the case, every i$raeli official, I$raeli Offense Forces (IOF) war criminal, and Amerikan politician with Palestinian blood on their hands would be on trial along with the large majority of amerikan journalists, military contractors, business leaders and other warmongers who whitewashed and profited from Israel’s genocidal crimes against humynity. These are the kinds of people who should be worrying about facing imprisonment or death row, not somebody like Rodriguez! As long as the united $tates continues to aid and abet the genocide in Palestine, in material aid or in rhetoric, there is not a judge or jury in the country who is fit to judge eir action. When this country as a whole is sentenced to some form of justice, when settler imperialism is ended; only then could the bourgeoisie and their running dogs talk about “senseless violence” without indicting themselves.

Much like we understand cops killed during struggles against New Afrikans to be enemies of the people, casualties of the low-level war enacted upon oppressed nations, we can see Rodriguez’s act through the same lens.(5) Rodriguez did not force any Palestinian families from their homes, nor did ey sit around a table and sign off on more checks for more bombs for i$rael. As is the case when any agent of imperialism, whether it’s a cop, an IOF soldier, or a staffer of the embassy to a genocidal nation, is killed in their line of work, “this is a classic case of the chickens coming home to roost”.(6)

In the days since Rodriguez’s act, according to the United Nations, 100 percent of Gazans are now “on the brink of famine”, (7) and the last functioning hospital in north Gaza has been forced to close by Israel (8) under threats of total extermination of its doctors and patients. Compare that to two settler lives lost and say more about “senseless violence”. The obsessive focus by the media on Elias Rodriguez and two deceased embassy staffers is simultaneously an attempt to shift the growing sympathies of the semi-conscientious sections of the Amerikan people away from Palestine, as well as an attempt to justify further criminalization of dissent, such as the still-in-development Project Esther, Trump’s plan to crack down on the broader solidarity movement. It is a continuation of a double standard dating back as far as this country’s existence: to kill a settler is to deprive an innocent humyn being of a life in a deplorable act; to kill an oppressed persyn is just the way the world works.

Dare to struggle! Dare to win!

While we do not think acts of individualized violence are an effective tactic in defeating imperialism, we refuse to join in the enemy’s chorus of denouncement and slander against Elias Rodriguez. Our duty as communists at this time is to guide the masses with scientific leadership and a correct political line that conforms with revolutionary practice. Rodriguez’s action highlights the importance of carrying out our central task of building independent institutions that can absorb this kind of spontaneous individual anger and refine it into disciplined collective action that truly serves the oppressed. In the present moment, it is imperative to understand that line is decisive and there is no place for vacillation in the revolutionary movement. As Mao remarked:

“When the Party’s line is correct, then everything will come its way. If it has no followers, then it can have followers; if it has no guns, then it can have guns; if it has no political power, then it can have political power. If its line is not correct, even what it has it may lose. The line is a net rope. When it is pulled, the whole net opens out.” (9)

We are disappointed (although not surprised) to see how many other so-called “communist” groups are pathetically bowing down to the oppressor by parroting their pearl-clutching about this disruption to the false peace and making lazy statements about “adventurism” while the genocide of Palestinians continues with no end in sight. Without a cohesive and principled revolutionary movement, we can expect to see similar incidents in the future. Our view of this incident is that it is essentially a consequence of the anti-imperialist movement being underdeveloped relative to the consciousness of the more advanced masses who are understandably frustrated by the lack of any meaningful outlet for their revolutionary energy.

Until Palestine is liberated and those responsible for the genocide are held to account for their crimes, any talk about “justice” in this case is just hot air.

Free Elias Rodriguez!

^Sources:
1. Al-Jazeera, 3 June 2025, _Israel kills 24 Palestinians at aid site in southern Gaza’s Rafah
2. Klippenstein, 22 May 2025, The Israel Embassy Shooter’s Manifesto
3. Klippenstein, 27 May 2025, _Read Elias Rodriguez’s Leaked Chats
4. Reuters, 10 November 2023, A child killed on average every 10 minutes in Gaza, says WHO chief
5. Triumphant, January 2024, _On New Afrikan Victimization, Under Lock & Key 85.
6. cipactli of Brown Berets - Prison Chapter, March 2013, Chris Dorner Demonstrates Contradictions Between Amerika and Oppressed Nations, Under Lock & Key 31.
7. Al-Jazeera, 30 May 2025, UN: ‘100 percent’ of Gazans on brink of famine
8. Al-Jazeera, 29 May 2025, Israel orders closure of al-Awda Hospital, a ‘lifeline’ in north Gaza
9. Mao, 1971, Talks With Responsible Comrades At Various Places During Provincial Tour^

In December 2024, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) published an article by J Sykes titled “Marxism-Leninism and the theory of settler-colonialism in the United States”(1), which repeats many of the same errors that appear in eir July 2022 article (2) arguing against Sakai’s thesis in Settlers that the white Amerikan working class constitutes a petty-bourgeois labor aristocracy.

While Sykes does not present any particularly new or interesting points about settler-colonialism or the imperialist country labor aristocracy, ey does present us with an opportunity to dissect revisionist arguments and identify the underlying theoretical errors that lead our opponents to take up an enemy line on this question. Our focus will therefore be on exposing how the FRSO line on this particular question is a reflection of their general tendency toward idealist dogmatism and metaphysical reasoning. We will see how this national chauvinist line on the Euro-Amerikan working class is connected to their enthusiastic support of revisionists like Deng Xiaoping and the bourgeois counterrevolution that restored capitalism in China.

Although it is perhaps not immediately obvious, both of these incorrect ideas arise from how they misunderstand the fundamental contradiction of capitalism in general and conflating it with the principal contradiction in particular.

General Remarks on Terminology

Before getting started, a quick note on terminology is in order. The words “white”, “settler”, “Amerikan”, and “Euro-Amerikan” will be used interchangeably here unless otherwise noted. The term “Euro-Amerikan” (often just shortened to “Amerikan”) is the most specific and precise term to use for the First World imperialist country oppressor nation. This is preferred over more colloquial terms like “white” (an unscientific “racial” category) and “settler” (potentially ambiguous) when referring to a specific oppressor nation in a particular historical context.

For readers who are not yet very familiar with Marxist terminology in general, MIM’s Glossary of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a useful resource that is available online and can be provided to prisoners for free upon request.

It is also worth mentioning that while the MIM line on the white working class was significantly influenced by Sakai’s work in Settlers, our analysis has generally focused on the labor aristocratic (rather than settler-colonial) nature of the Euro-Amerikan working class. This is because the emergence of a labor aristocracy in the advanced countries is a general feature of imperialism rather than a particular consequence of settler-colonialism. Sakai’s detailed historical investigation on how the Amerikan working class became a labor aristocracy under concrete conditions provides us with enough information to theorize about the entire First World in general. While there are unique contradictions in nations that developed in a historical context of settler-colonialism, we agree with Lenin and the Comintern that imperialism in general has chained entire nations to finance capital and that these oppressor nation workers have material interests that are more aligned with the continued exploitation of colonized labor-power than communism.

One may reasonably ask, then, why even bother to distinguish settler-colonialism from other forms of colonialism or imperialism? We have both practical and theoretical reasons to make this distinction. On a practical level, having a correct and rigorous understanding of settler-colonialism in a particular historical context would be critical for a revolutionary government addressing the land question and calculating reparations owed to internally colonized nations for the crimes of settlers (genocide, slavery, land theft, environmental destruction, etc). On a theoretical level, it is important because we can arrive at knowledge about the contradictions of imperialism as an abstract mode of production in general by investigating the particular contradictions governing the development of imperialism in a concrete historical setting. We will see what this means in more detail in our response to Sykes and critique of FRSO revisionism.

Responding to Sykes on Settler-Colonialism

In this section, we will quote from the Sykes’ article so it is clear to our comrades reading this in prison what exactly we are responding to here and to contrast our differences in line and method. Unless otherwise specified, all quotes in this section are from Sykes.

Sykes begins with a straightforward appraisal of Marxism:

“The purpose of Marxist analysis is so that we can know how to make revolution, so that we understand the terrain of struggle, formulate correct strategy and tactics, and identify our friends and enemies. We must understand the contradictions at work in society and unite all who can be united if we want to win. So, we need to be very careful and precise in that analysis.”

So far, we do not disagree. We will see, however, that nobody at FRSO is apparently up to the task of actually performing this analysis or correctly identifying any of the glaring theoretical errors that immediately follow.

Having paid lip service to dialectical materialism, Sykes proceeds to abandon it completely in eir analysis of U.$. class structure and idealist proposition that the principal contradiction in the United $tates is “between the capitalist class on the one hand, and the multinational working class and its allies on the other, particularly the oppressed nations.”

If FRSO had any “theorists” who had bothered to actually understand Marx’s work or the categories laid out by Mao in On Contradiction, they would know the fundamental contradiction is between the forces of production and the relations of production. This contradiction is the driving force of hystory. The class struggle is a reflection of this contradiction under a particular mode of production in a concrete hystorical context where class divisions exist. The class struggle is not equivalent to the fundamental contradiction. The fundamental contradiction existed in primitive communal societies and will also exist in an advanced communist society, since any humyn society will have forces of production (labor-power, natural resources, tools/machines) and collectivized ownership is a form of production relations. Class struggle is resolved through the abolition of class distinctions under communism. The fundamental contradiction would still exist, but it would no longer reproduce the conditions for class antagonism. These are totally separate concepts that describe different things. The distinctions may seem subtle but it is important for communists to get it right, otherwise we risk saying nonsense and taking up enemy positions, which is precisely our charge against FRSO here. This confused and distorted use of terminology is in fact a load-bearing pillar of Sykes’ argument, the theoretical core of an old and rotten line.

Sykes acknowledges the existence of national oppression in some vague sense and admits that Amerika “began as a settler colonial project, founded on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans”, but rarely identifies the oppressor nation in any concrete terms. This is what Maoists call “one-sided thinking”, which completely fixates on one aspect of a contradiction while ignoring the whole. We cannot have national oppression without an oppressor nation, just as we cannot replace the oppressor nation with the monopoly capitalist, no matter how convenient it would be if we could.

Sykes continues by dressing up this ahistorical idealism as if it actually has anything to do with Marxism:

“While it is true that the legacy of settler-colonialism in the United States certainly persists, the systems of oppression have not remained static. Dialectical materialism understands that the nature of a thing is defined by the contradictions inherent to it. Things aren’t fixed, but always changing and developing according to these contradictions.”

What is the difference between “the legacy of settler-colonialism” persisting into the present and actually being a settler-colony? This is the kind of language games revisionists use to vacillate on a question rather than take a clear, coherent and principled position. They know it would be absurd to claim that national oppression has ended in the United $tates, but they also want to argue that class struggle is the principal contradiction, so they do this sleight-of-hand that places the white Amerikan working class at the center of national liberation struggles by saying it is the same thing now as the class struggle. It is how they present ideas they presume, or perhaps wish, to be true as if they are material facts. It is how they smuggle the reactionary petty-bourgeois class interests of the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation into the international communist movement and to divert resources from national liberation struggles that could actually develop the principal contradiction and deliver serious blows to imperialism. This is a counterrevolutionary line that runs contrary to the interests of the proletariat.

Without providing any evidence or concrete reasoning for it, Sykes claims that “different contradictions have taken the principal, determining role” throughout U.$. hystory. The national question has always been the principal contradiction in the United $tates. This analysis so far is just a long, meandering way to argue that Amerika is not a majority exploiter oppressor nation. It is also a strange, even absurd, claim to make after admitting that the United $tates was founded on slavery and genocide from the very outset.

Those of us who live in reality know that the contradiction of national oppression cannot be resolved without national liberation. The FRSO position seems to be that the national question was subsumed by the class struggle in the United $tates at some point in hystory. This is reductionist and ahystorical.

We are finally offered something resembling a thesis on what settler-colonialism is and the role it played in U.$. hystory:

“U.S. settler-colonialism is a particular social formation with a particular set of contradictions at the heart of it. Historically it is a transitionary period in the early development of the capitalist mode of production. It is characterized by the dominant role played by the contradiction between settlers on the one hand and colonized people on the other. This contradiction is the main thing shaping the trajectory of the capitalist mode of production in the period of “primitive accumulation” during its nascent development. In this way, settler-colonialism fueled the rapid growth of the capitalist mode of production in the early United States.”

There is a concrete, material claim being made here without any evidence provided to support it. The definition of settler-colonialism as being a “transitory period” is dogmatic as it is self-serving to Sykes’ argument.

Sykes mentions that class divisions existed among the settlers, many of whom were indentured servants or otherwise indebted. This is presumably meant to suggest that only the upper echelons of the settler population drew material benefits from colonialism. However, even the lowest strata of the white settlers who originally came to the colonies as indentured servants were eventually able to pay off their debts and become land owners in the early 1700s. From the very earliest days of colonization, the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation considered access to land and upward mobility reserved to itself.(3) Meanwhile, well after the U.$. Civil War that nominally ended slavery (1865), white settlers continued to struggle to keep land promised by the government out of New Afrikan hands and expanded their land grab from First Nations.

Sykes claims that “this transitional settler-colonial period had to give way to mature competitive capitalism, bringing forth new contradictions”, suggesting that the contradictions of settler-colonialism were resolved in the United $tates by “two bourgeois revolutions, the War of Independence which overthrew the British colonial system and the Civil War, which overthrew the slave system of the Southern planter class.”

It would be more correct to say that the particular contradictions of settler colonialism had a profound (and continuing) influence on the development of capitalism and imperialism in the United $tates. If these particular contradictions (between settlers and the colonized masses) did in fact simply “give way” to the fundamental contradiction of capitalism (between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat), then how do we explain the material fact that national oppression still exists in occupied Turtle Island today? Sykes would like us to believe the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation was simply replaced by the “monopoly capitalists” at some point, conveniently resolving the contradictions between settlers and the colonized masses. Note that this again conflates the contradiction of nation with the contradiction of production. We cannot simply substitute the capitalist class with the oppressor nation and call it a day. That is not how dialectical reason works. Sykes is resorting to metaphysics to defend an idealist proposition by arguing backwards from the white chauvinist presumption that national liberation is not the principal struggle for communists to focus on today.

Amerikan independence from Britain did not fundamentally change the class structure or relations of production in the Euro-Amerikan settler colony. The economic base and ideological superstructure that developed in Amerika remain inseparable from the genocidal land theft and exploitation of slave labor that remained at the very foundation of settler life. Whether a settler colony achieved independence from its host country or not is an irrelevant detail, what matters is the class structure that develops. Kanada never had a war for independence and is still to this day a subject of the British monarchy. This did not impede the development of capitalism in Kanada and the impact of any lingering “feudal remnants” is limited to the realm of superficial things such as street names, anthems and portraits on bank notes. While the aristocratic classes in Europe certainly enjoyed the spoils of colonial exploitation, it was settlers at the front lines who directly engaged in the plunder and genocide.

The Civil War did have a more significant impact on the class structure and property relations in the United $tates, chiefly by resulting in the abolition of chattel slavery and eventually giving limited neocolonial status (e.g. voting rights, property rights) to New Afrikans. This did not resolve the contradictions of national oppression, although it did transform external conditions such that the struggle for national liberation entered a distinctly new phase of development. According to Sakai, there were two distinct conflicts playing out in the Amerikan Civil War. The first “was between two settler nations for ownership of the Afrikan colony – and ultimately for ownership of the continental Empire” and the second was “the protracted struggle for liberation by the colonized Afrikan Nation in the South.”(4) It should also be noted that the abolition of slavery did not come from the class consciousness of white workers, nor did it engender among them any meaningful or lasting sense of solidarity with Afrikan labor.

On the contrary, white workers began to form organizations like the National Labor Union (NLU) to protect their jobs and wages from being in free competition with Afrikan workers. Groups like the KKK functioned as the paramilitary wing of this reactionary class interest. The abrupt end of Black Reconstruction in the southern United $tates and the institution of Jim Crow laws is proof that the reactionary nature of the Amerikan oppressor nation precluded revolutionary “multinational” class solidarity. The NLU (the first major federation of white labor unions, similar to the AFL-CIO today) is an instructive example on this point. As Sakai pointed out, “when the National Labor Union was formed in 1866, most of its members and leaders clearly intended to simply push aside Afrikan labor” and that a major point of contention among the white workers expressed in the first meeting was over “how the capitalists had used Afrikan workers to get around strikes and demands for higher wages by white workmen” and that the most “advanced” white workers argued for taking Afrikan workers into the NLU as a means of “driving them out of the labor market”.(5)

Similarly, it was not the monopoly bourgeoisie who organized pogroms against Chinese workers, forcing entire villages out of their homes at gunpoint – it was white workers acting in their own class interest. The bourgeoisie were generally quite content to exploit Chinese labor, which is why the white workers took it upon themselves to violently attack Chinese workers throughout the west coast and form reactionary anti-Chinese organizations such as the “Workingmen’s Party of California” and to support policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The most significant historical event responsible for consolidating the contemporary class structure in Amerika was World War II, where the United $tates emerged as the hegemonic imperialist world power and was consequently able to expand and intensify exploitation of the Third World to such an extent that the entire white Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation could be subsidized with plundered wealth from abroad. Suburbs became the new frontier homesteads on stolen land. While the rest of the world was recovering from a horrifically destructive war, the United $tates was able to leverage its military and economic advantages to become wealthier than ever. This allowed the United $tates to further shift the burdens of capitalist exploitation to the Third World and further consolidate the Amerikan labor aristocracy as loyal subjects of imperialism.

Sykes attempts to excuse all of eir ahystorical idealism by digging up a quote, presented with no citation or context, where Lenin described the U.$. War for Independence as “one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few”. Sykes also invokes a similar “famous” quote from Mao, who said that “In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people.”

Just because a great revolutionary like Lenin or Mao said something does not make it true or above scrutiny. Mao was being unscientific in making this assessment, which should be criticized regardless of the context. Like all ideas, the national chauvinism of white workers has a material basis in concrete social relations that developed in a particular hystorical context. Lenin’s remark appears in the context of a letter to U.$. workers in the early days of Soviet power and should be understood as more of a diplomatic gesture intended to garner political support for the Soviet Union rather than as a scientific statement about Amerikan hystory. It was also perhaps not so clear in Lenin’s time that the entire Euro-Amerikan nation was so firmly in the enemy camp, although even in March 1919 the Comintern was focusing their attention on struggling against the Second International and labor aristocracy by putting out statements like this:

“At the expense of the plundered colonial peoples capital corrupted its wage slaves, created a community of interest between the exploited and the exploiters as against the oppressed colonies – the yellow, black and red colonial peoples – and chained the European and American working class to the imperialist ‘fatherland’.”(6)

For an in-depth review of the how Lenin and the Comintern actually viewed the imperialist country oppressor nation working class, see Lessons from the Comintern: Continuities in Method and Theory, Changes in Theory and Conditions from MIM Theory 10.

Interestingly, Sykes admits that the United $tates does “solve its growing crises through the oppression of whole nations and peoples…in order to extract superprofits to prop up its rotten system” but then draws an erroneous conclusion that “the multinational working class and the liberation movements of oppressed nationalities [have] a common enemy – the monopoly capitalist class.”

This term “multinational working class” is used frequently in attempts to smuggle in oppressor nation chauvinism to allegedly Marxist politics! They simply cannot imagine a socialist revolution happening unless it has a white majority. This idea that a united front that includes white workers as a class is “necessary” to defeat imperialism comes from an idealist and national chauvinist assessment of the actual balance of forces. They assume pandering to white workers must be a strategic necessity and invent a political line that fits that assumption. However, hystory shows that most Amerikans will sooner rush to the defense of empire rather than struggle for the overthrow of a system that places them in materially privileged position in the global class structure.

We can draw a parallel between FRSO urging the national liberation struggles to unite with the white working class and the NLU urging New Afrikan workers to join their unions as a means to ensure the class position of New Afrikans remains subordinate to the interests of oppressor nation labor aristocracy parasitism. The practical ramification of the FRSO line would divert resources from the internal semi-colonies struggle against imperialism into pushing for the economic demands of First World parasitism. This holds back the communist movement and serves the imperialists. Hence, it is not merely wrong, it is an enemy position!

Sykes claims that a “real revolutionary movement” in the United $tates “must have working class leadership” and since “the working class…is fundamentally multinational in character” any revolutionary movement that doesn’t assume the necessity of settler leadership is based on “wishful thinking” and doomed to failure. This provides us with a good example of postmodern idealism, which rejects the scientific method and dialectical materialism by reifying subjective individual experience as the foundation for a theory of knowledge. In this context, the term “working class” seems to be understood as more of a vague cultural identifier rather than an objective material relationship to production. Sykes concludes that even though capitalism places some (unspecified and abstract) “greater pressure” on oppressed nation workers, their “white siblings” have a shared class interest because they are exploited by the “same bosses” and “the higher rate of exploitation in the oppressed nations drives down living standards for the entire multinational working class.”

If whites are exploited the same as everybody else, then why do they own more property and control more wealth than oppressed nations within U.$. borders? Why are oppressed nations incarcerated at such staggeringly higher rates than white Amerikans? How can we say that national oppression even exists if white workers are truly suffering the same oppression at the hands of the “bosses and landlords” as everybody else and that it is only the “monopoly capitalist class who reaps the superprofits from national opression”?

MIM has written and distributed volumes of literature showing precisely how the oppressor nation “workers” materially benefit from imperialism in general and how white Amerikans benefit from the oppression of internally colonized nations. This “monopoly capitalist” class has bought off the entire Euro-Amerikan nation with plundered wealth and rewarded them with preferential treatment in everything from home ownership, access to higher education, employment in higher paying white-collar professions and every other aspect of life in bourgeois society. This is not only about buying off the loyalty of white workers, it is also a practical necessity to have a large non-productive working class to oversee administration of the empire in exchange for access to a share of the surplus value produced by colonized labor power, allowing the imperialist country petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy to consume far beyond their own productive means. This is how imperialism maximizes the realization of surplus value as profit and reproduces a class structure where entire nations are chained to the interests of capital.

Sykes argues this basic realization about imperialism comes from “petty bourgeois ideas about the backwardness…of the working class”, rather than a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, and that it reflects a “pessimistic and defeatist attitude” toward the “revolutionary potential of the [imperialist country] working class”, rather than strategic confidence in the international proletariat.

The real “pessimistic and defeatist” line is Sykes’, who seems to believe that 220 million Euro-Amerikans have a decisive role to play in the movement to liberate 8 billion people from exploitation. If the international proletariat has to wait for a majority of Amerikkkans to wake up and join the revolutionary struggle against oppression, then it is indeed a bleak situation. Thankfully, we know that is not the case and have strategic confidence in the masses. It is neither necessary nor expedient for the proletariat to tail the left wing of white nationalism.

We should at least credit the FRSO for not calling their position “Maoist”, even though they do claim to uphold the Chinese revolution and dogmatically quote from Mao’s works. We can also credit Sykes with coming up with the new argument that a desire to “copy and paste an analysis of the Palestinian struggle onto U.S. conditions” is why communists consider the United $tates to be a settler colony. This absurd claim does not deserve a serious response, but at least it is something we have not heard before!

Having squeezed all that we can out of the idealist metaphysics lurking beneath the FRSO brand of revisionism on the labor aristocracy, national liberation and the principal contradiction, we will now discuss how this fits in with their revisionist line on the restoration of capitalism in China.

Theory of Productive Forces

It is generally the case in hystory that the forces of production constitute the principal aspect of the fundamental contradiction and that changes to the relations of production primarily follow as a consequence of changes in the forces of production. For example, the rise of technology like the steam engine and mechanized agriculture (forces of production) had a transformative effect on the class structure of feudal societies (relations of production). This led to the emergence of new social classes (namely, the bourgeoisie and proletariat) with a revolutionary interest in overthrowing feudal aristocracy and building industrial capitalism.

Deng Xiaoping’s “theory of productive forces” essentially claims that a similar development in the forces of production was necessary to transform the relations of production in socialist China. The revisionist coup that began in 1976 implemented policies that replaced socialist economic planning with a return to capitalist price speculation and market incentives, opened up Chinese industry to foreign investment, and forcibly shut down collectivized farms in favor of private agriculture and family ownership. Maoists view this as a bourgeois counterattack on the masses in China, who had achieved great victories in constructing socialism and mobilizing hundreds of millions to engage in ideological struggle and serve the people.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao led the masses of China to show how it is possible (under certain circumstances) for the relations of production to become the principal aspect of the fundamental contradiction and consequently transform the forces of production. This approach to constructing socialism requires mass mobilization and sharp ideological struggle, such that the whole of society is engaged in consciously revolutionizing the relations of production. In practice, this means industrial and agricultural development is oriented toward meeting humyn needs (rather than profits) and ideological struggle against “bourgeois right” (the idea that some people deserve to have more than others due the nature of their work, their social position, etc) was heavily emphasized and continually advanced. This is why Maoists uphold the Cultural Revolution as the greatest advance towards communism thus far in history. This is also why we view a return to NEP-style economic policies, the dissolution of collectivized agriculture and the reification of bourgeois right as counterrevolutionary.(7)

Criticize Settler Revisionism! Criticize Deng Xiaoping!

FRSO has basically the same line as their predecessor organization, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS), in supporting Deng Xiaoping, the arrest and imprisonment of the “Gang of Four”, and the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). They defended this counterrevolution in China on the grounds of empricism and bourgeois individualist lifestyle fixations about the Gang of Four. See MIM’s 1999 congress resolution Repudiate sub-reformism; fight revisionism! for a more detailed polemic against the LRS and FRSO on this topic.

We are not surprised(8) to see an organization that still upholds Deng’s counterrevolutionary theory of productive forces consider the Euro-Amerikan working class as being part of the proletarian camp. Trotskyists make a similar error in how they understand the fundamental contradiction in the context of imperialism by obfuscating the nature of superprofits to support their chauvinist view that imperialist country workers are actually the most exploited in the world. Both of these revisionist errors are rooted in a one-sided view of contradiction and a dogmatic belief that First World wages are higher because the class struggle has advanced so much due to the more developed productive forces in advanced capitalist countries. In reality, imperialist country workers are able to live far beyond their own productive means by receiving wages many times higher than the actual value of labor-power and entire nations are subsidized by exploitation of the Third World proletariat. The imperialist country oppressor nation is an enemy class that cannot be relied upon to advance the struggle for communism.

For a recent critique of organizations nominally supporting the GPCR, but still promoting “working class unity” in the United $tates, see A Polemic against Settler “Maoism” by the Dawnland Group.

<sup>Notes:
1. J. Sykes, _Marxism-Leninism and the theory of settler-colonialism in the United States
2. J. Sykes, Red Theory: Against Sakai on settler colonialism and the national question in the U.S.
3. J. Sakai, Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern, Fourth Edition, pp. 21 - 22
4. Ibid., pp. 88-89

5. Ibid., pp. 99-100
6. Jane Degras, The Communist International: 1919-1943 Documents, Vol. I, p.18
7. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented in the early days of socialist Russia to transform backward economic conditions. It made use of capitalist profit incentives.
8. MIM Theory 10, Coming to Grips with the Labor Aristocracy, p. 28</sup>

One of the foremost promises of the Trump/Vance campaign was a crackdown on gender expression and transgender existence in the United $tates; we are now watching this being carried out. On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed Executive Order (E.O.) 14168 against “gender ideology”, and, as with most changes under his administration, the effects of this order strike most harshly at the oppressed masses – in this case, prisoners in particular. This executive order states that it “shall ensure males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.” Though its ramifications are being fought in courts, people behind bars have already seen changes play out for trans and gender-non-conforming prisoners. The Trump regime has also instructed amendments to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to remove special protection for gender non-conforming people in prisons, as ineffective as PREA has been.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there are about 2200 transgender people in the feds, which is about 1.5% of federal prisoners. Of those, only 20 are trans wimmin in wimmin’s prisons. While over 1500 trans wimmin are held in men’s prisons. A prisoner in FCI-Waseca reports that the 2 trans wimmin at that facility were immediately packed out to go to men’s facilities, but one was returned a week later.(Ultra Violet Vol. XXXVI, No.4, Spring 2025) The courts have issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the E.O., and multiple lawsuits have been filed. Anyone interested in contacting the lawyers who have filed the class action lawsuit (which covers all transgender people in the BOP) against the executive order can write:

As the basis for gender oppression is located in leisure time, and as prisons seek to control prisoners’ leisure time to a degree rarely seen elsewhere in this country, MIM(Prisons) identifies the struggles of trans prisoners as a particularly sharp form of gender oppression. Furthermore, as prisons reinforce the segregation of already-oppressed people along “sexed” lines, gender diversity – especially among trans wimmin – is punished both legally and extralegally behind bars. These punitive measures have only heightened under the new administration, and MIM(Prisons) surveyed trans prisoners regarding the recent changes.

A trans womyn at FCI Seagoville responded:

“The staff under our previous warden told the transgender prisoners that we were to turn in all our dresses, blouses, bras and panties to laundry and send our commissary-bought undergarments home. That lasted a day and then the same staff told us about the E.O. stated that there was a judicial claim that rescinded the order, therefore, go to laundry and get your clothes back. That lasted about a month, then the warden left under the Trump ‘federal buy out.’ Our new interim warden took our items away, stating unless we were part of the TRO, then she could take our items. Then said if we return our clothes ‘without a fuss,’ we could keep our hormones… for now.

“We had a laser hair treatment machine and then after the E.O. came out, it just up and disappeared. All our transgender programs, including our psychology lead support group, have been eliminated.

“A trans woman has been on suicide watch ever since she was told to turn in her girl clothes. Staff let her out after 2 weeks, sent her to laundry. The supervisor there said ‘you are a man, in a man’s prison, therefore you will wear man clothes.’ She went to psychology, where they basically told her that ‘we can’t help you.’ She went back on suicide watch and is still there.

“The transgender women here decided to hold our own support group out on the recreation yard. That lasted about 3 weeks, until the interim warden shut it down supposedly because drugs were found on the yard.”

The imposition of gender as a repressive system is clear here, with the confiscation of clothes items, and the forceful insistence that one of the girls discussed “is a man in a man’s prison.” These prison staff taking glee in sexually, verbally, and physically attacking these trans prisoners on the basis of gender are undoubtedly gender oppressors (see MIM Theory 2/3: Gender and Revolutionary Feminism).

With regards to the shutting down of the support group, we see these repressive tactics wielded against any group of prisoners that poses a threat to the system. More often, we see these slanderous lies about drugs and crackdown on leisure time wielded against political organizers, but clearly the prison administration sees trans wimmin discussing their lives and struggles as something dangerous. We would love to exchange ideas around gender with this group and others and offer the pages of ULK as an organizing space as you struggle to keep your local group functioning.

In FCI Seagoville, local USW comrades are helping organize the transgender wimmin incarcerated there. The linking of the struggle for transgender rights to the movement for broader solidarity in prisons is excellent, and we hope that the comrades there continue to build broad unity.

A trans man from FMC Carswell was not able to fully respond to our survey:

“I was just released from suicide watch 3 days ago. Things are hard and oppressive as well as slanderous but I’ll speak on these things when I’m in the right headspace.”

Ey went on to forward us documents regarding a legal case ey’s filing against the designated wimmin’s prison, telling us that the Trump administration’s decree that trans prisoners cannot access transgender medical or mental health services has led to eir self-injurious tendencies worsening, and that ey is suing on the grounds that they are not giving em proper treatment to keep em safe.

The willingness to take away services at the risk of peoples’ lives exposes the inhumanity of this system. Gender oppression is a system and until we destroy it people will be subject to such treatment.

A trans womyn from USP Tucson reported:

“[The prison guards are] glad that [the executive order] is being done so that they can stop all this… We used to only be able to be pat down by female guards, now that’s gone and male guards can touch us like that!”

This E.O. further drives home how what we understand as “gender” – that is, one’s relation to gender oppression – is neither defined solely by chromosomes, nor biological sex, nor identity. Certainly, strip searches and cavity searches are sexually violating, and are a form of gendered violence that people face by the very fact of being a prisoner of the United $tates. We wholeheartedly stand with this comrade in agreement that the imposition of male guards on trans wimmin is dangerous and shows how this executive order has nothing to do with “safety.”

However, we’d like to solicit input both from this womyn and from any other prisoners reading, regarding whether having strip searches by female guards is less violating. We have printed many reports and statistics exposing the role of female staff in gender the oppression of prisoners.(see ULK No. 1) So we think there’s more to do to stop sexual assault.

This comrade from Tucson also reported that there are 25 to 32 other transgender wimmin in eir prison, and that ey has been taking charge in helping to keep them all calm. Solidarity between prisoners is a necessary first step for the struggle for a world free of all forms of oppression. Sanity and solidarity are necessary in this time, but ultimately are useless without a clear understanding of the ways to fight back (both in the short term – grievances, petitions, legal suits – and in the long term, fighting for a classless, and thus genderless, world). Can you turn your support group into a study group, or a group designated to supporting each others’ grievance campaigns, work/hunger strikes, etc.? Make contact with USW members to organize with them, as the wimmin in Seagoville have done, or join USW? We can think of no better way to support each other than to stand up for each other.

If Trump’s recent executive orders have shown us anything, it’s that concessions from the bourgeoisie towards oppressed people – trans healthcare, media representation, things like that – can be taken away just as quickly as they are granted. Oppression against trans people represents the cutting edge of gender-based oppression in the United $tates today, and trans prisoners are feeling it the most sharply.

Nobody is made safer by commissaries no longer carrying makeup and bras, or by prisoners being denied even the right to choose the name they use. The gender-oppressors in this country are by and large united around a reactionary return to “biological gender.” Just as there’s no such thing as “human nature” abstracted away from society, there’s no such thing as “biological gender” in a vacuum. No humyn is born biologically predisposed to desire makeup and small underwear, nor is a humyn born biologically predisposed to cut their hair short. Gender is a complex system almost entirely social in nature, and MIM(Prisons) defends those attacked by reactionaries who have at the heart of their attacks not “safety” or “logic” but a lashing out at the erosion of the hetero-patriarchal nuclear family.

For understandings of gender that go beyond the crude male-female hierarchical binary the state would impose, we advise reading MIM Theory 2/3, and Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. And see our resolution Attacking the Myth of Binary Biology: MIM(Prisons) Eliminates Gendered Language. We would love to correspond more with any other prisoners, but especially trans and queer ones, and discuss our thoughts on what “gender” actually is.

In a world free from oppression, what would gender look like? We don’t know for sure. What we do know, though, is that deviations from the rigid, Euro-Amerikan-centered, patriarchal gender system would see space for gender oppressed individuals to flourish rather than being punished as they are in the United $tates.

The current rollback on transgender rights is alarming and dangerous, but we can’t get caught up in simply attacking one axis of oppression without attacking the whole thing – the dominance of the oppressor class, epitomized in the world today by imperialism and in the United $tates by national oppression (of which incarceration is a significant part). Joining the anti-imperialist movement is the fastest path to ending oppression of all people.

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

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

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

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

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

Rest in Power Bilal Sunni-Ali!

Long Live the Republic of New Afrika!

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

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

The Facts

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

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

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

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

Luigi’s Ideology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Public’s Reaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Thoughts

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

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

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

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

^{(2)YouGov Poll, December 2024}

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

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

Spoilers

A Thousand and One is a drama film set during the years of 1994-2005 in New York City. The movie follows a hairdresser and recently released prisoner Inez de la Paz (played by New Afrikan rapper/actress Teyana Taylor) who has spent the past years imprisoned in Rikers Island. A persyn who has been part of the foster home system growing up, Inez returns to her former care in Brooklyn where she sees her son, Terry (who is also in a home), out on the streets. Trying to escape from the home, Terry is hospitalized and Inez secretly visits him and takes Terry to illegally raise him as her child under a false birth certificate/social security card in Harlem.

Inez reunites with her former romantic partner/lumpen associate during her times as a petty thief named Lucky. At first, Lucky is hesitant to join in on this plan to build a new family with his former street partner, but eventually marries Inez and promises to take care of Terry. At the time, Pig Rudy Giuliani has begun his campaigns to start an improved New York City which they place much hopes for as life-long residents of NYC.

By 2001, Pig Giuliani’s attacks on the New Afrikan masses of NYC through the stop-and-frisk policies are coming down hard and we see Terry, now a teenager, being affected by this. Despite being a soft-spoken kid excelling at school, the street pigs frisk him and his friend with no other reason than being New Afrikan. Alongside Terry’s entrance into young adulthood, Inez’s marriage begins to meet difficulties as Lucky has become involved in affairs with other wimmin.

By 2005, Lucky succumbs to cancer as Terry prepares for college. The effects of gentrification are beginning to take the offensive against the masses as Euro-Amerikans begin to move in and Inez’s new landlord attempts to drive them out of the apartment using loophole methods to evict them early. In school, Terry’s guidance counselor asks for his birth certificate and social security card for a job program for underprivileged students. Without telling his mother, Terry submits his forged papers which comes back as invalid. After Terry confesses that the government documents were fake, the counselor calls social services who enter Inez’s home. Terry warns his mother about this and she begins to flee as under the imperialist law, despite caring for and stepping up to be the mother for Terry, Inez has committed a kidnapping of a ward of the state. The social services agents reveal to Terry that Inez is not his biological mother and that the two have no real blood relations. The pigs exposes Inez’s lumpen past to Terry leaving him distraught and in tears.

In the end, Inez confesses to Terry the truth. Inez was not the womyn who abandoned Terry on the street corner in his memory. She had found Terry for the first time lost in the streets when she was recently released as a prisoner from Riker’s island. Inez explains to Terry that she saw her younger self in him and that she could not stand to see another child go through the system that she was put through: the foster homes, the juvenile centers, the prisons, etc. Terry, crying, expresses the fear that he feels in becoming independent as he enters adulthood and affirms to Inez that he still loves her as a mother. The two separate on their own paths and before leaving, Inez promises Terry that “this isn’t goodbye.”

Down With Gentrification, Wimmin Hold Up Half the Sky

At the beginning of the movie, we see Inez de la Paz work as a street hawker offering hair/beauty services on the streets. We would say that this is a good portrayal of who we mean when we talk about the First World Lumpen or semi-proletariat who might not participate in overtly anti-people or parasitic ways of self-subsistence (such as sex work or drug peddling) and lives similarly to the semi-proletariat we see in the Third World. In our modern times of the 2020s, we see many folks using social media pages for these grey area side hustles while also maintaining a lower labor aristocrat level minimum wage job (oftentimes in the service industry). In the 1990s when this movie was being set, holding a cardboard box and approaching passer-bys was the common move. Readers might imagine Inez de la Paz to be in an extremely vulnerable political-economic situation as this semi-proletariat/First World Lumpen who had just been released from prison and not much support. However, the movie makes clear that Inez is a tough womyn and avoids both the traps of a damsel in distress needing a male figure out in the dangerous streets nor the over-masculinized New Afrikan womyn whose humynity is stripped away. In an artistic and political sense, we would say the movie did a great job in this regard and is an example we can look up to for creating socialist art/realistic portrayal of the masses under oppression.

Another trap that the movie avoids well is the habit of ruminating on the sensationalist/traumatic pain of New Afrikan life under U.$. imperialism. Mich art which depicts stories of the oppressed nations will fall victim to depicting a suffering masses who suffer like how the sky is blue. A Thousand and One refuses to show Inez, Terry, and Lucky as part of a faceless hoard of suffering while also refusing colorblind individualism: it intertwines the national oppression Black people face (the gentrification, the foster system, the prison system, the education system, etc.) while showing the deeply impersynal effects imperialist institutions have on these very humyn characters and how they take control over their lives without letting the system win. Because of this strong humynization of unapologetically New Afrikan characters, what might seem like a sensationalist plot twist at the end where Inez is revealed to not be Terry’s biological mother is welded to the material reality of the masses’ conditions.

The humnynization of these characters (the foster orphan, the former prisoner, the cheating husband, etc.) that this film undertakes fights against the dehumynization that already exists on these archetypes within the Amerikan imperialist-patriarchal superstructure (especially the oppressed nations and, in this case, principally New Afrika). We as Maoists believe that despite the great storytelling and care that A.V. Rockwell has put in for this story, this film is still part of the U.$. imperialist-patriarchal machine. One persyn and their creation (in this case a film director and her film) will be swept into the wave of the bourgeois superstructure. There will be many Euro-Amerikan viewers of the film who might watch this during February while it is being recommended to them by Netflix in their petty-bourgeois suburbia homes. Would they appreciate/recognize the persynal revolution that Inez has underwent throughout this story? Would they understand the self-determination that Inez has taken over her life against these social forces for the new generation to find happiness? Or would Inez’s motivations and reasons become watered down to a story of the strong independent Black womyn whose intentions were good but her methods of trying to find happiness for Terry was just wrong and too radical? Or worse, they might just paint her as a criminal con artist whose vicarious happiness to a boy she never met gave her a chance to play the act of a mother and a stable family the system eventually took away from her as well. Ms. Rockwell has put great effort into the humynization of these characters, we are afraid that a film alone is not enough to change the consciousness of most people in the level necessity for a society without oppression. That would be a job for a cultural revolution under a proletarian dictatorship.

One thing that interested me as a Maoist revolutionary is the role of motherhood that Inez was able to master over Terry despite her having the knowledge that Terry was not her biological son: a fact that is so overemphasized and shoved down the masses throats when it comes to their legitimate claim over a child. Biological determinism (like in “race”) is a core principle of the imperialist-patriarchial superstructure: gender, motherhood, etc. is determined by one’s bloodline or something they are “born with.” The reality however, is that conditioning of individual by an entire society’s relations of production and class struggle is the true driving force for these roles. For Inez de la Paz, an individual New Afrikan womyn who has recently been released from Rikers Island, to use what she has learned as her life as a lumpen to fight against this broad society’s conditioning and condition herself using individual determination is a great depiction of the social potential of the lumpen class. Historically, abandoning the bourgeois quest of giving orphaned children a nuclear family for them to go into and instead giving them a new environment to live on as orphans has been the successful practice of solving the problem of orphan street kids in the Soviet Union. While a Maoist telling of this story would perhaps depict independent institution building for people like Terry and Inez, the story that is told instead serves good medium for studying and appropriating bourgeois individualism of the Amerikans for the interests of the oppressed nations.

I would like to conclude the review of this movie with two quotes:

“The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.” - Mao Zedong

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” - Bobby Sands

Let The Memory of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams, A New Afrikan Poet and Revolutionary, Reaffirm Our Commitment to the Struggle

Marcellus Williams, also known as Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniel, was murdered by the amerikkkan state on 24 September 2024. He was a proud Muslim New Afrikan, a poet, an advocate for Palestinian children, and a prison imam at Potosi Correctional Center. Despite a vast quantity of evidence showing that Williams did not commit the crime of which he was convicted -

“Williams was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and burglary in 2001 for the 1998 killing of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, a 42-year-old reporter stabbed 43 times in her home. His conviction relied on two witnesses who later said they were paid for their testimony, according to the Midwest Innocence Project, and 2016 DNA testing conducted on the murder weapon “definitively excluded” Williams.”

The state nevertheless passed the decision, with the approval of the Supreme Court, to murder him in cold blood.

Williams was convicted in 2001, by a jury consisting of 11 white men and one New Afrikan. According to Al Jazeera, a New Afrikan juror was improperly dismissed from the jury, with the justification that they would not be objective.

Prosecutor Keith Larner said that he had excluded a potential Black juror because of how similar they were, saying “They looked like they were brothers.”

In a country that supposedly grants everyone the right to a “trial by their peers”, the fact that a New Afrikan on trial for the murder of a white woman was not allowed a jury of his peers – of New Afrikans – makes it clear that amerikkka cannot be “reformed” into “accepting” the New Afrikan nation, no matter how much surface-level anti-racist rhetoric is in the media nor how many bourgeois New Afrikans are elected to positions of power. For skewing Williams’s jury towards white men the judge would owe blood debts to the oppressed nations and the proletariat far greater than any average criminal under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ey was right about one thing – a jury of New Afrikans, of Williams’s peers, would have been more likely than a jury of white men to consider his innocence. That is why more than half of the people with death sentences in the United $tates are Black or Latin@ according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

Williams’s conviction, for the murder of a white woman, shines clarity on why it is necessary to have a proper analysis of the gender hierarchy in the First World. The trope of a New Afrikan man murdering or “raping” a white woman has been used to stir up the most vile representations of national oppression ever since New Afrikans were imported as a permanent underclass and oppressed nation, from Emmett Till to Marcellus Williams. The rapidity at which the criminal injustice system will commit atrocities against New Afrikans accused of violence against white women makes it clear that the question of “gender oppression” is far more tied up in national and class oppression than pseudo-feminists would have one believe. Since time immemorial, the oppressor-nation men and women both have been spurred into action by the suggestion of a New Afrikan acting violently towards a white woman; Williams’s case is no different.

“From 1930 to 1985, the white courts not only executed Black murder and rape convicts at a rate several times that of white murder and rape convicts, it executed more Black people than white people in total.”(2)

Hours before ey was executed, the Supreme Court reviewed Williams’s case, and denied the request to halt or delay his execution. This is despite millions of signatures on a petition, and a great deal of social media activism around the case. The righteous anger of millions was not enough to save Williams’s life. True radicals, not reformists nor revisionists, need to look past the idea of incremental reforms, of politely asking the amerikkkan state to consider the humanities of those it has deemed worthless. If the time and energy that had been put into the (nevertheless righteous) cause of petitioning for Marcellus Williams had been put into studying, organizing, and building towards a movement of New Afrikan liberation, or towards an overturn of the amerikkkan empire and its justice system, not only would Williams’s life have likely been saved (as he would have been granted a true trial by his peers), but the lives of many others convicted (wrongfully or not) of crimes that pale in comparison to the crimes against humanity committed by the First World bourgeoisie and its lackeys would have been saved as well. Any justice for Williams can only be attained when we feed this righteous outrage into such systematic solutions.

Many of the narratives from supporters surrounding his death would have the reader believe that the only reason he was undeserving of death was his lack of culpability. Undoubtedly, the murder of an innocent man is something that will tug at the heartstrings of many, and can be used as an agitational opportunity. But as communists, we recognize that the use of the death penalty by the bourgeois state, and especially a jury of euro-amerikans deciding the fate of a New Afrikan, is always murder. So too are the deaths of New Afrikans at the hands of the police; so too are the deaths of the Third World proletariat by starvation, natural disaster, or oppression by paramilitaries serving as U.$. attack-dogs. Whether or not Williams was guilty of his crime, whether or not the hundreds of others on death row are innocent, the system will never prosecute those who uphold the world order that leads the oppressed into a life of crime, will never order the lethal injection of those with the blood of millions of oppressed-nation proletarians on their hands.

Williams was a devout Muslim and served as an imam for those in prison. The topic of religion has been covered many times before in Under Lock and Key, but this case serves as an example of how religion serves as a liberatory force for many in prison – helping them to transform themselves, and to find allies among all those fighting against amerikkka and the capitalist system throughout the First and the Third World alike. Williams’s last words were “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”; the author sees this as an example of why, rather than condemning religion as some pseudo-“Maoists” and chauvinists will do, we recognize religion to be, as Marx explained, the sigh of the oppressed people. Islam brought Williams a sense of comfort and cosmic justice as he headed to his death, without keeping him from organizing and speaking out against the moribund and oppressive priSSon sySStem.

Let Marcellus Williams’s death remind all of us that this country’s injustice system doesn’t care how much people protest, or petition. Ultimately, polite pleas to higher authority will go ignored. The only thing that will keep such high-profile injustices like this, as well as the more covert violence against New Afrikans and other oppressed nations, from happening again, is freedom from the amerikkkan state, won through struggle and revolution. And we must remember, unlike so many of the liberal activists who took up this cause, that we fight for Marcellus not only because the evidence shows he has a higher chance of being innocent than most people on death row, but because the oppressive and racist amerikkkan empire should not have the right to decide whether a single New Afrikan lives or dies.

Williams’s poetry is a beautiful and striking example of proletarian-internationalist art, in how it captures the revolutionary consciousness of New Afrikans in the United $tates, and in how it draws the link between New Afrika and Palestine.

^Note: 1. Elizabeth Melimopoulos, 25 September 2024, Why was Marcellus Williams executed? What to know about the Missouri case, Al Jazeera.
2. see MIM Theory 2/3:Gender and Revolutionary Feminism for more on the intersections of nation and gender*^

The student movement for a free Palestine must correct the following errors: capitulation, the First World obsession with “mutual aid”, refusal to learn from history, blind fumbling in the interest of “doing something”, hastiness to condemn (rather than critique) the struggle here and abroad, surface level third-worldism as a justification for inaction, and the fetish for determining who’s making “real communist revolution” in place of a dialectical-materialist analysis of history.

1: The Liberal Trend, The Capitulationists, The Refusal to Stand IN OPPOSITION to Empire

The first trend I will critique consists of centering one’s own pro-Palestine political action around things that in fact stop short of anything that aids the fight for a free Palestine and an end to i$rael. People following this trend do not fight for things such as divestment from (or destruction of) weapons manufacturers or rejecting politicians who support i$rael in words, policy, or money. Rather, these people and groups focus on things such as organizing donations for individual Palestinian families, securing scholarships for Palestinian refugees and diaspora, or, in a more specific and truly condemnable example, the schools who capitulated and abandoned their encampment for paltry promises such as a house for Arab and Muslim students.

People rush to defend these forms of “resistance” with “we’re centering Palestinian voices”, while not recognizing that none of the things they’re fighting for (NGO-style refugee aid, more Palestinian-diaspora petty-bourgeois in elite ideological institutions of the amerikkkan state) are in any way actually opposed to the amerikkkan empire or contribute in any way to a future in which Palestine and its people are free from i$raeli and amerikkkan aggression. We saw the protests in 2020 end in symbolic gains that were not in any way contradictory to the U.$. empire, nor did they bring true freedom from the brutality of kkkops in the ghetto. Today, this trend threatens an unpleasant end for the currently-still-radical Palestinian liberation movement – a ceasefire on i$rael’s terms, maybe two states, more scholarships for the Palestinians who survived and were wealthy enough to get to the United $tates, and everyone who was uncomfortable chanting anything besides “ceasefire now” (the big brother of “defund the police”) gets to feel good about “playing their part”.

In the past, people have been harsh on MIM(Prisons) for refusing to capitulate to accepting any concessions for the First World that come at the expense of the Third World, or even concessions that don’t necessarily come at the expense of the Third World but serve to pacify the First World. Most notably, this is expressed in how angry people get about the analysis proving that prisoners, while no doubt an oppressed class and a hotbed for potential for organizing, are not exploited, so MIM(Prisons) doesn’t generally promote the fight for better wages for prisoners. To self-criticize, even I myself originally was upset about MIM(Prisons)’s stated intentions not to fight for healthcare for transgender prisoners, interpreting this as latent transmisogyny rather than a recognition that healthcare for trans prisoners (as important a battle as I believe it to be) is not a struggle in the interest of the global proletariat. Incidents like the capitulation of student encampments at Northwestern University, Vassar College, and other elite universities display clearly how radical a line that really is.

Going forward, two things are going to have to happen in order for further protests for Palestine of this form to yield meaningful results: first, protesters are going to have to recognize that everything they do in protest should be in the actual, direct interest of the oppressed people of Palestine, not in the interest of “anti-racism” or “solidarity” or any bullshit half-measures. Second, protesters will have to prepare to be faced with violence and with the full force of state repression. Here’s a little logic-puzzle version of what happens when you say “we’re staying here, we’re causing trouble, and we’re not moving until you (divest/get rid of your dual degree program/get this politician out of our town/whatever)”: there are three options. Option one: you give in, you leave there, you stop causing trouble, you get your House or your scholarships or your vote-in-six-months. Option two: they give in, they accept your demands and nothing less. Option three: they break out the tear gas, the riot batons, the robot dogs, the big-ass battering-ram pigmobiles. And here’s the truth of it all: if you let it be option one, you’re worthless, you’ve sold out the people of Palestine. If you don’t let it be option one, if you make The Man choose between option two and option three. Well, if he doesn’t have a really good goddamn reason to choose option two, it’s gonna be option three. That’s the unfortunate truth, so you better be ready, and start doing wrist and shoulder stretches, because plastic flexicuffs hurt worse than the metal ones, what’s up with that.

2. The Dogmatic Trend and its Flaws

What I just laid out describes the main current that I see “on the ground” in so-called pro-Palestine “activism” that does nothing at all for Palestine itself. I doubt I’m telling you guys anything new here, besides confirming that such things are happening and making the particulars clear. On the flip side of activism-theater, refusal to study history, and “wins” for the First World, I also have noticed that there is a trend to be unbelievably reductive and flippant when it comes to what one’s orientation towards Third World liberation groups engaged in armed struggle should be, what course of action should be taken in the First World, and a refusal to engage in good-faith conversation about either of those subjects without dogmatism.

I am speaking in particular about people who will say (correctly) “fundraising and mutual aid and liberal-left protests don’t do anything for Palestine”, but then follow that statement up with “the ONLY thing that will ACTUALLY free Palestine is communist revolution”. Though the last month has only strengthened my convictions that communism (in the form laid out by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, and practiced in the USSR and China) is correct, and true, and the only pathway to the permanent liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world, it seems disgustingly chauvinistic to imply that the thing that a First-Worlder can do that has the most material impact on the people of Palestine is to focus on one’s home country, on some idea of “making revolution”.

Notably, other than MIM(Prisons) and another group I am working with who I shall not name, I have noticed that people who say such things don’t ever enjoy discussing what “making revolution” looks like, in this day, in this country, beyond platitudes. I see this trend frequently among communists who I know offline, but also among certain prominent users of popular “anti-revisionist” communist online discussion boards (I say this not to gossip or shit-talk, but rather because I believe it behooves one to recognize that even spaces that portray themselves as “anti-chauvinist” or “anti-revisionist” do not by default take Third World liberation and the contradictions that it would entail seriously. Judging by former discussions I’ve seen on the Maoist forums, this warping of the idea of “revisionism” to defend inaction isn’t a new trend per se).

This correct rejection of mutual aid and petit-bourgeois identity politics, followed by the proclamation of the vulgar line of “nothing you do has an impact for the people of Palestine if you aren’t making communist revolution in your home country”, seems to me to be a disguised version of the same sentiment that leads to disgusting and chauvinistic lines such as “well, we should critically support Hamas, but they aren’t communist, so the most important thing is to be critical of them”. Did Torkil Lauesen believe that the most important thing that a First-Worlder could do was “make revolution”, and that in the absence of a clear path forward, one should sit on their heels and wait for one to appear? did Ulrike Meinhoff? Would any of the people who say, whether behind their screens or out on the streets or in the encampment, “the only thing you can do for the people of Palestine is make communist revolution”, genuinely try and claim that they’re doing more for Palestinian liberation than Hamas, Lauesen, or Meinhoff? Of course I don’t intend to advocate adventurism, I don’t believe that we in the First World should be taking up the gun or robbing banks, but I do believe that a refusal to engage with the question of what a liberated Palestine (and, if Cuba and South Africa, for example, are any precedent, not necessarily a communist Palestine) would look like beyond First World radical academics’ ideas of “building revolution” is just a flipside of the chauvinism displayed in the “well, at least we’re doing SOMETHING” rhetoric of mutual aid and peaceful protest.

No matter whether they distort Marxism, Maoism, or third-worldism, they inevitably find their way to the same conclusion: none of the groups currently debating and fighting and sacrificing for the Palestinian cause are worthy of my time; they’re all revisionist, bourgeois, labor-aristocrats; students are all postmodernist bourgeois-wannabes risking their educations and sometimes their lives for the bit; protesters are all shills for the DNC; thank goodness I don’t have to feel bad about my inaction. The dogmatists, the “do-nothing”-ists, imply, in essence, the same thing that the first type of chauvinists implicitly believe. The job of a First-Worlder is to fundraise, or to go to art builds, or to read and daydream about the day a revolution free of contradictions springs from the soil, while the job of a Third-Worlder is to die.

3. Both Are Worse

As I’ve already said, my central point is thus: both trends, more than anything else, serve as a justification for the ostensibly class-conscious First-Worlder to not do anything that would compromise their comfortable lives, a veritable “class-suicide hotline.”

“no, First Worlder, don’t go beyond liberalism and bourgeois legality, don’t commit your valuable free time to reading and study, don’t risk getting expelled – parade-type protests, symbolic encampments, and mutual aid funds are totally sufficient and just as important! You have so much to chant for, you have so many tech jobs to land!”

“no, First-Worlder, don’t get involved, don’t join any groups, don’t talk to the lower and deeper masses, don’t learn from resistance movements of the past – you haven’t fought with enough other First Worlders online or in your book clubs, god forbid you accidentally make a mistake and learn from practice!”

These are the two trends that we must combat in the struggle for a free Palestine here in the belly of the beast, where all the funding and weapons for the ongoing genocide continue to flow from.

In the West Bank, I$rael has killed at least 502 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, the day Operation Al Aqsa Flood commenced by the Palestinian resistance. At least 4,950 people were injured, 3,985 people were displaced, 8,088 people were arrested and 648 structures were demolished.(1) All of this is not even mentioning the recent declaration by I$raeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in occupied West Bank are now state land for I$raeli settlements.(2) As we know, the I$raeli war has focused on Gaza, where official estimates put the death toll at 38,000, while public health experts estimate that number could be as high as 186,000.(2.5)

These figures alone are abstract, so to paint a better picture of accounts from those living in the West Bank now, contextualizing history and statistics will be provided. It is estimated that 3.25 million people live in the West Bank, meaning that just from the above statistics 0.54% (17525 affected / 3.25 million population) of people were directly affected with countless more affected indirectly from the intensified settler terror in just 6-7 months. The amount of deaths has been three times as high as 2022 already. The lack of infrastructure to collect accurate data also makes this statistic likely an underestimate of the severity, with it only getting worse on the ground as we speak.

The aim of this article is to historicize the initial I$raeli response in the West Bank to the Al Aqsa Flood before the prisoner exchange and temporary “end” (which was constantly violated by I$rael) of hostilities in Gaza. It will be the first part of a series of articles that cover the occupation of the West Bank. Together, Gaza and the West Bank make up the “occupied territories” of Palestine that have not yet been seized by I$rael.

Operation Al Aqsa Flood, settlers panic in West Bank

The very existence of settlers are premised on the displacement of the native people and colonial occupation of entire nations or sections of nations. This is on top of the exploitation of land and labor of the colonized to feed an ever-growing parasitic strata. The I$raeli colonial projects on the border of Gaza were challenged on October 7th, with resistance seizing their land back from the settlers by force. The sense of control from having some of the best surveillance methods and technologies in the world, while being backed by the most powerful imperialist power, was shattered. The carefully crafted methods to maintain and further colonization to feed I$raeli settlers while helping their Amerikan overseers to pacify the entire region under its boot was challenged. The I$raeli project floats on nothing, it produces nothing for the world beyond feeding the hunger of settlers and their imperialist allies off the backs of the colonized. Desperately, it sought to reduce its reliance on those it displaced and colonized, knowing full well what that’d mean. I$rael sought out Third World labor, begged for a share of profits from its imperialist overseers and tried to become more “self-sufficient”. Ultimately it failed in its endeavors, finding itself reliant on imperialist backers to sustain itself against militant resistance from all sides. Once that runs dry, I$rael is doomed and its dream will be ruined, with a victory for the resistance and the liberation of Palestine!

On 11 October 2023, a lock down on West Bank was declared, shutting down more than 500 checkpoints and the only major international border crossing, which is with Jordan, at Allenby Bridge.(3) The I$raeli settlers were faced with a war on two fronts, resorting to extreme measures in fear of losing control of their occupation. Their fears were further confirmed with the death of General Leon Bar, a senior officer of the West Bank Division of the I$raeli Offensive Forces (IOF) on 12 October 2023.(4) Alarms were set off in both “Beitar Illit”, near Bethlehem, and “Ma’ale Efraim”, near Ramallah, due to fears of resistance infiltration on 13 October 2023. On the same day, raids were conducted in Nablus, Aqabat, Jaber camp, Areeha, and Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The IOF began an invasion of the city of Nablus and clashes continued in Jenin as resistance fighters confronted the invasion. Hamas’s brigades, the Izz al Din al-Qassem Brigades, were one of the known resistance factions who fended off the IOF invasion, while also fighting in the Ain Al-Sultan and Aqabat Jabr camps in Areeha.(5)

As of October 14th, 842 acts of resistance were carried out in the West Bank in just a week. Of those confirmed, there were 241 shooting operations, 30 qualitative operations, one settlement infiltration, 570 confrontations in various forms, and 98 demonstrations and marches. Twenty two IOF injures were confirmed, a number were killed, and there were 56 martyrs on the side of the resistance. The confrontations took place in 254 areas, including Nablus (45), Al-Quds (38), Ramallah (38), Al-Khalil (33), Jenin (27), Tulkarem (19), Bethlehem (17), Qalqilya (13), Areeha (11), Salfit (9), and Tubas(4).(6) Just a week since Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the resistance was stiff against I$raeli attempts to subdue the West Bank under its grasp. A resistance to settler-colonialism and national oppression within the United $tates must adopt similar discipline, rejecting integration for self-determination for oppressed nations in solidarity with the struggle against imperialism across the world.

The resistance in the West Bank continued, with the al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, which are the military wing of Popular Resistance Committees, targeting the Belt Furik checkpoint and the IOF post established on “Mount Gerizim” on 15 October 2023. The IOF by this time had abducted more than 500 in the West Bank and Al-Quds.(7) On 17 October 2023, protestors in the occupied West Bank demanded the fall of president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, a neocolonial puppet entity ruling over West Bank. The response was repression, with tear gas and stun grenades used to disperse the protestors.(8) Amidst the protests, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which are military wing of Fatah, were able to successfully target zionist occupation checkpoints and clashed with them on the same day.(9)

Sheikh Hassan Yousef, co-founder of Hamas, was abducted by the IOF in his home in Ramallah after giving a speech there on 18 October 2023. This was part of a larger campaign of abductions by the IOF which expanded that day.(10) Confrontations further escalated within the West Bank, with a victory for the resistance occurring with the Saraya Al-Quds, which is the militant wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), part of the Tulkarm Brigade carried out numerous strikes, offensive operations, ambushes, explosive detonations, and ambush executions. It was a 28 hour battle, which led to the IOF completely withdrawing from the Nour Shams camp.(11) The cowardly settlers retaliated the next day at the Al-Ansar mosque, believing that Hamas and PIJ used it as a headquarters. This resulted in the death of two, and the arrest of dozens who were suspected to work with the Jenin Brigade or other resistance groups.(12) On the same day, Zionist special forces stormed the Askar camp in Nablus, clashing with the resistance.(13) Just four days later, on 26 October 2023, the IOF carried out a massive arrest campaign across the West Bank with armed clashes breaking out.(14) This preludes the rise of resistance in the West Bank the next day, with violent confrontation in the Al-Aroub camp, against the “Nitzani Oz” checkpoint, the “Dotan” checkpoint, Jabal Al-Tur and Abu Dis on 27 October 2023.(15)

I$raeli invasion of Gaza, settler counter-offensive

The invasion of Gaza officially began on 28 October 2023. On this day, many cities in the West Bank went on strike in support of the resistance in Gaza.(16) A specialized hospital in Nablus was targetted in the West Bank due to the IOF’s suspicion of the resistance groups there.(17) On 2 November 2023, armed clashes broke out across various cities in the West Bank following a wide campaign of arrests.(18) On 4 November 2023, the resistant youth in the West Bank threw Moltov cocktails at settlers’ vehicles near Marda and at zionist forces in Al-Aroub camp. In addition, they threw stones at settlers near Hizma and Route 443.(19) The important part to note here is the role of the youth and how a large section of the Palestinian people are under 18. The resistance’s mobilization of the youth to fight is important to learn from, especially in contexts of settler-colonialism and national oppression, for application to the United $tates. The Black Panthers were mostly teenagers.

The armed clashes continued between resistance fighters and zionist forces in Qalqilya, following raids on cities and a large campaign of abductions.(20) The Lion’s Den, a Palestinian resistance group in the West Bank, claimed responsibility for conducting shooting operations near “Itamar” which was successful on 8 November 2023.(21) In Jenin, a day afterward, the Al-Qassam fighters and all resistance formations in the Jenin camp engaged in armed clashes with the IOF. Reinforcements were sent toward the Balata camp by the IOF after the resistance discovered a special zionist force. In the end, the battle resulted in a victory for the resistance after two hours, with the IOF withdrawing without being able to abduct resistance fighters or occupy the area.(22) The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, militant wing of the PFLP, were able to target the occupation forces in Jenin with explosive devices on 11 November 2023. The same day, resistance fighters open fired on the “Belt Hefer” settlement and “Nitzanei Oz” checkpoint in Tulkarem. It ended successfully, with a safe return for the resistance forces and heavy damage to the targeted areas.(23)

The Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, part of the Tulkarem Brigade, announced a general mobilization in the West Bank and Al-Quds on 12 November 2023.(24) The Al-Qassam Brigades – West Bank, announced responsibility for storming the Tunnel Checkpoint in the south of occupied Al-Quds in the morning. Here the resistance was able to attack enemy forces at the military checkpoint separating northern Bethlehem and southern occupied Al-Quds.(25) On 20 November 2023, the Mujahideen Brigades were victorious in firing upon an incursion of IOF soldiers in Jenin, clashing with special forces in Tubas, and shooting a jeep in Tubas.(26) On November 21st, an IOF drone targeted a site in Tulkarem camp, continuing to prevent ambulances from reaching the site. Afterward the IOF stormed the Thabet Thabet Hospital to prevent the ambulances from working.(27) Only a few days later on November 23rd, a wave of widespread arrests were carried out, clashing with the resistance and locals in Balata refugee camp, Al-Arroub, Dura, Beit Liqya, and Qalandiya refugee camp.(28) On November 24th, the Mujahideen Brigades, succeeded in bombing the “Dotan” military checkpoint southwest of Jenin.(29)

Conclusion

The resistance in the West Bank face similar conditions to the nationally oppressed in the United $tates. One key difference is the proximity to imperialism with integrationist pull that pacifies resistance. Aside from that, both are firmly occupied under the boot of the colonizers with no state of their own and both face mass incarceration to destroy resistance and further colonization. The resistance’s capability to form a united front to fight back and coordinate in conditions of immense surveillance and repression is important to note. I$rael used all of its capabilities, controlling the supply of food, water, medicine, internal movement, and etc… but it still failed in face of resistance. A strategy within the United $tates will have to encompass these factors and surpass them, coordinating not only internally but externally with the Third World against forces of imperialism and colonialism.

In the next part, there will be a discussion of the prisoner exchange and temporary “end” of hostilities, at the least, along the beginning of I$rael’s advance in Rafah along with the emboldened colonization which I$rael embarked on in the West Bank. Specifically, declaring more than 800 hectares of land as part of I$rael, aiming to fully annex the West Bank.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر

Notes:

(1) Israel kills more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, May 16th, 2024

2. Israel seizes 800 hectares of Palestinian land in occupied West Bank, March 22st, 2024

(2.5) Sharon Zhang, 8 July 2024, Researchers Estimate True Gaza Death Toll at 186,000 or More, Truthout.

3. Palestinians in occupied West Bank are under Israeli lockdown, October 11th, 2023

4. Israel: Another High-Ranking Officer Killed in Gaza Resistance Operation, October 13th, 2023

5. Resistance News Network, October 13th, 2023

6. Resistance News Network, October 14th, 2023

7. Resistance News Network, October 15th, 2023

8. PA forces fire tear gas at West Bank protesters after Gaza hospital strike, October 10th, 2023

9. Resistance News Network, October 17th, 2023

10. Resistance News Network, October 18th, 2023

11. A new massacre in Nour Shams camp, Tulkarm, October 22, 2023

12. Israel strikes mosque in occupied West Bank refugee camp. October wwth, 2024

13. Resistance News Network, October 22st, 2023

14. Resistance News Network, October 26th, 2023

15. Resistance News Network, October 27th, 2023

16. Resistance News Network, October 28th, 2023

17. Resistance News Network, October 30th, 2023

18. Resistance News Network, November 2nd, 2023

19. Resistance News Network, November 4th, 2023

20. Resistance News Network, November 7th, 2023

21. Resistance News Network, November 8th, 2023

22. Resistance News Network, November 9th, 2023

23. Resistance News Network, November 11th, 2023

24. Resistance News Network, November 12th, 2023

25. Resistance News Network, November 16th, 2023

26. Resistance News Network, November 20th, 2023

27. Resistance News Network, November 21st, 2023

28. Resistance News Network, November 23rd, 2023

29. Resistance News Network, November 24th, 2023

A comrade attending rallies supporting Palestinian resistance to the I$raeli war distributed ULKs this winter and talked to attendees. Here are a couple of the interviews ey sent to ULK.

1.What brought you to this event?

Well, seeing as I am Black and a Christian, I find it important to come out and demonstrate solidarity with the people of Palestine as I believe our struggles are connected. Many people tend to see what is going on in Palestine as a sort of religious conflict, portraying it simplistically as a conflict between Jews and Muslims. Many Christians in this country support Israel because the Church tells them to, when in reality Christians are just as persecuted as Muslims in Palestine. I mean, they just bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius – one of the oldest churches in the world – last night.

2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical, between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?

Yes, I see many parallels actually. The biggest one being that they are both settler-colonial projects. It is important to remember that in both cases, the land was not empty when the settlers arrived. Israel has been waging a war against the Palestinian people in order to clear and settle the land. When the Europeans came to America, the first thing they did was wage war against the Indigenous population to do the same thing. They are both guilty of ethnic cleansing. Think about the Nakba. Think about The Trail of Tears. In Ohio, they said the land was “too good for Indians” – similar justifications were made for the initial Nakba.

I would also say that Israel is almost as racist as the United States. They have different laws for different people. That’s apartheid. Zionists call us anti-semetic, yet they treat non-White Jews like second-class citizens. Look at how they treat Ethiopian and South-East Asian Jews within their borders. You know they sterilized them in the 1970s and 1980s. Zionism isn’t about Judaism, it’s about white supremacy. So I think there are very real parallels to draw between Israel and the United States as they both are rooted in war, ethnic cleansing, and white supremacy.

3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@, First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to realize self-determination?

I’m not entirely sure if I think it is possible, but I support it. That said, I am very skeptical. The only feasible way I think that could happen is if the American Government allows it to happen by carrying it out themselves, but I really don’t see that happening anytime soon.

4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?

I think we could demonstrate our support and solidarity by boycotting Israeli products and participating in the BDS movement as a whole. By continuing to protest. By not allowing Israel to participate in soccer. And by not allowing Israeli academics to sanitize what has happened in the past 70 years. It is important that we utilize our legal means and push politicians to support an end to the genocide.

Second Interview

1.What brought you to this event?

I’m here to show support against the repression of Arabs in Palestine, to demonstrate mass support, and to lift the spirits of others who find these war crimes unacceptable.

2. Do you see any parallels, either current or historical, between i$rael and the united $tates? if so, can you elaborate?

Yeah, I see parallels in that they’re settlers, racists, and repress native populations. But I also see parallels between First Nations and the Palestinian people – especially in their emancipatory spirit.

**3. We promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed nations from oppressor nations and imperialism more generally. What do you think about the idea of the oppressed nations (i.e. Chican@/Latin@, First Nations, New Afrikans, and other Third World Peoples) within the so-called United $tates breaking from the United $tates in order to realize self-determination?

Yeah, of course! The first priority is emancipation of those groups, even if that means through violence.

4. Finally, what do you think is the best way we could demonstrate our support and solidarity to the Palestinian people?

I think we can demonstrate our support by continuing to go to these demonstrations and by showing our support for fringe groups such as Hamas, PFLP, etc…the militant fighters.

NOTE: PFLP is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization that arose during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and was one of the Palestinian organizations greatly influenced by the Maoism of the time. In those early years they gained notoriety for hijacking airplanes and remain on the U.$. terrorist list to this day. They took a pan-Arab approach to the revolution, and co-ordinated with many organizations outside the Arab world, including providing training to communists from Azania (aka South Africa). This connection is relevant to why South Africa today has brought charges of genocide against I$rael to the International Criminal Court, as well as the fact that Palestinians today are facing the same apartheid conditions that Africans in South Africa once faced. PFLP took part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th along with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The latter is also a Maoist-inspired group that came out of PFLP.