The system is fucked-up. If you are reading this, you probably know this already. You’re here because you know how fucked-up the system is. You know that it is based on the oppression of humans, nonhumans and the entire planet. You know that we need to fight this system, that we need to resist it with all we have. You may already be doing that anyway. I’m going to share some of the ways that I have resisted.
Resistance requires courage.
Resistance means standing up for what is right. It requires the willingness to go against an enemy so powerful that defeat seems inevitable. Sometimes, it may even require standing up to your loved ones. The majority of human beings, including our loved ones and even ourselves, are indoctrinated into this human supremacist, male supremacist, white supremacist culture that hates life. Anyone who dares to go against this culture is likely to be attacked on many levels, emotionally, socially, financially, or even physically. I’m sure many of us have faced this. I’ve faced such attacks for refusing to go along with mindless consumerism, for providing a radical view among non-political groups, and for refusing to conform to the dominant narrative. I have been coaxed, harassed, or threatened into submission. Regrettably, a few of these attacks have been successful. They serve to remind us how powerful the dominant system is, and how much of courage it requires to stand up against it.
Resistance means being prepared.
The system does not serve anyone. It is inherently flawed. Usually, these flaws are covered up by conveniences such as 24-hour electricity, hot water flowing out of a faucet, or the ability to instantly connect with anyone. The genocide and slavery that continues to go into making all this possible is well hidden. However, there are times when the injustices of the system become apparent, times when inherent flaws cannot be hidden anymore. The failure of the global supply chain during the initial parts of the lockdown is one example.
Everyday examples include extreme cases of violence against a person of an oppressed group, especially when the violence cannot be deemed to serve anyone. These incidences open up discussion about systemic flaws, and may lead to structural changes, for better or worse. Resistance means being prepared to notice and utilise such situations, to highlight the flaws within the system, and to direct the momentum for positive changes.
Resistance should also be strategic.
It means considering the best and the most effective means to achieve one’s goals. We are up against a system that has far more resources and more power at its disposal. We cannot be prodigal on our use of time and energy. Sometimes, this means backing off from a fight. It is not possible to win every argument, every legal case, every fight against the system. Effective resistance requires us to identify the fights that are worth spending our limited time and energy on.
Resistance comes in different forms.
Regardless of the nuances in our political ideologies, or the differences in our life situations, there are many ways to resist the system. For me, fighting for my right to planned parenthood is a form of resistance. For a woman who has submitted to patriarchy all her life, fighting against her family’s pressures to abort her daughter is resistance. Every form of resistance against this culture should be welcomed.
I believe Derrick Jensen could not be any clearer when he says:
“The good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look there is great work to be done.”
Salonika is an organizer at DGR Asia Pacific and is based in Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.
In the concluding part of this three part series we are offered a stark reminder of the scale of greed and corruption involved in the drugs trade, a clear analysis of the impact on poverty and a reading recommendations!
South Amerikan cocaine replaced French Connection and CIA controlled Southeast Asian/Golden Triangle-grown heroin as the drug of choice in the early 1980’s. Remember Miami Vice? Well, as might be expected, this country’s government, intelligence agencies and large banks immediately began a struggle to control this new trade. Remember: control-not get rid of-in complete contrast to their lying propaganda projects like the War on Drugs! Thus, they were in fact dealing with-not fighting-the South Amerikan governments, militaries and large landowners who controlled the raising, processing and shipping of the cocaine. (For a few years, however, the latter themselves had to battle a few independent drug lords, most notably Pablo Escobar Ochoa and his Medellin Cartel).
In this country at that time the youth gangs had next to nothing to do with the cocaine trade, which was then primarily servicing a middle and upper class-and white-clientele. The traffic employed a few old-school big time hustlers along with some Spanish-speaking wholesalers, who also had their own crews to handle matters. Although after the fact, the Hip hop cult movie favorites Scarface and New Jack City are good descriptions of that period, albeit they both-purposely-left out the dominant role that the U.S. government and intelligence agencies played in controlling things. All right, I know you’re down with all of that-and love it!
So let’s move on.
In the middle 1980’s the U.S. began backing a secret war designed to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government that had fought a long and bloody civil war to rid Nicaragua of its U.S.-sponsored dictator (Somoza) in 1979. But after being exposed to the world, the U.S. Congress forbade then-president Reagan from continuing this secret war. Like a lot of U.S. presidents, however, he just ignored Congress and had the CIA raise the money, recruit the mercenaries and buy or steal the military equipment to continue the war. Consequently, that’s how and why crack and the mayhem it’s caused came upon us. Here, however, you won’t see Hollywood and TV giving up the raw. With few exceptions like Black director Bill Dukes’ ‘Deep Cover’, starring Laurence Fishburn, and ‘Above the Law’ with Steven Segal, you have to search hard to see it portrayed so clearly. Later I’ll explain why.
Anyway, most people have heard that crack was dumped into South Central Los Angeles in the mid-’80’s-along with an arsenal of military-style assault rifles that would make a First Wave BPP member ashamed of how poorly equipped s/he was. Needless to say, the huge profits from the crack sales, coupled with everyone being financially strapped, magnified the body count! And, since crack was also so easy to manufacture locally and so dirt cheap, just about anybody in the hood could get into the business. Gone were the old days of a few big-time hustlers, except on the wholesale level.
But, make no mistake about it, the wholesale cocaine sold for the production of crack was fully controlled and distributed by selected CIA-controlled operatives.
So, to all of you dawgs who have been bragging about how big you are/were, a top-to-bottom organization chart would in fact look something like this:
At the top would be the president: Ronald Reagan;
then former CIA director George Bush, Sr.;
the National Security Advisor;
Secretary of State;
major banking executives;
Colonel Oliver North;
General Secord;
arms dealers;
mercenary pilots;
South and Central Amerikan government and military leaders, including Escobar and the Medellin Cartel originally;
U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, Customs and Border Patrol officers;
state and local police, and county sheriffs and their deputies, and their successors in office;
and at the bottom of the barrel: YOU DAWG!
Now I know that you already knew in your hearts that there were some big dawgs over you, but I bet you never imagined the game came straight out of the White House, or that you were straight up pawns on the board. If that sounds too wild, then tell me why it’s harder to find any government, CIA, military or bankers, like George Bush, Sr., and his crew, in prison, than it is to win the lottery? Yeah, they double-crossed Noriega, Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, and made Oliver North do some community service, but that’s all. The real crime lords-the government, military, CIA and banking dons-all got away. Finally, and only after Congresswoman Maxine Waters made a stink about it, was the CIA forced to do two investigations and post on its official website their findings together with an admission of being a drug dealer.
Naw dawg, y’all were played! Face it.
That’s what happened to you O.G.’s from the ’80’s. But as Morpheus said in The Matrix, let me “show you how deep the rabbit hole goes”. Gradually the U.S. government was forced to crack down on the cocaine coming through Florida, but by then the South Amerikan cartels and their government and military allies had found new routes through Mexico. At first the the members of the Mexican underworld were just middlemen; but quickly recognizing a golden opportunity, they essentially seized control of most of the trade between South Amerika and the U.S.They forced the South Amerikans into becoming junior partners who were responsible only for growing and processing, the cheaper the better. The Mexicans now purchased mountains of cocaine for transshipment and smuggling into the U.S. wholesale market, resulting in oil and automotive industry-type profits.
One might wonder why the South Amerikans-powerful players would go for a deal like that. As ever the answers can found in the Machiavellian and serpentine maneuverings of the United States government and its poor Mexican counterpart. You see, in the 1980’s the Mexican government was overseeing an economy that was so bad, that for all practical purposes, it was bankrupt. Indeed, the U.S. and and its underlings in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) were forced periodically to give the Mexican government millions upon millions in loans, in return for unfair trading concessions, in order to prop it up with the economy.
The U.S. was then and is now extremely vulnerable to conditions in Mexico:
because common sense and past experience has told its rulers that the worse things became in Mexico, the more conditions would force its already dirt poor majority to find a way to enter the U.S. to find a means to feed themselves and their families. And the U.S. could not keep prevailing upon the IMF and WB to lend Mexico more money-especially since the U.S. ruling classes saw another way temporarily to plug up the hole in their control of matters in the international financial world. Thus, another unholy alliance was formed. This one was between the U.S. government, CIA, State Department, banks, and the other usual suspects on one side; and their Mexican counterparts-including their first fledgling cartels-on the other, with the South Amerikans now in a junior partnership role.
However, I don’t want to give the impression that it was arranged diplomatically, all neat and tidy. Far from that! No, it evolved through visionaries amongst the usual suspects, putting their ideas before other select insiders and working to craft an unwritten consensus. It was the same way that they along with Cuban exiles in Florida-had used the earlier cocaine trade to fuel the growth around Miami. Only this time it would be Mexico, a much more pressing and unstable situation. It was recognized by all parties that Mexico’s underworld would eventually land in the driver’s seat due to its ability to take the kind of risks called for, its geographical proximity to the U.S. border and, most important, its strong desire to avoid confronting the U.S. and Mexican governments as Pablo Escobar had done.
Mexican Underworld
Thus, the members of the Mexican underworld were more than willing to guarantee that most of their drug profits would be pumped back into the moribund Mexican economy through large building projects, upgrading the tourist industry, big-time farming and other clearly national ventures. And, on the messy side, their gunmen were becoming experts at making reluctant parties fall into line by offering them a stark choice between gold or lead. Nevertheless, avoid thinking that the Mexican and South Amerikan underworld ever became anything but hired hands of the big dawgs in the United States government and their partners in the banking industry, who always remained in a position to destroy their underlings’ smuggling and money laundering operations through tighter control of U.S. borders and/or by making it extremely difficult to launder the mountains of small-denomination bills which the traffickers had to deal with.
In fact, that’s what happened when then-president George Bush, Sr., ordered the invasion of Panama, which was/is a major offshore money laundering hub, after hired hand Gen. Manuel Noriega had become unruly in 1989. Plus, these hired hands would insure that their chosen corrupt politicians would always win in Mexico’s elections by distributing the planeloads of money that the South Amerikan gangsters and government/military partners would make available as overhead. But more important for the United States, a major part of the proceeds would be pumped into the Mexican economy in order to forestall the looming bankruptcy.
Consequently by the middle 1990’s the Mexican underworld had established the superpowerful Gulf, Juarez, Guadalajara, Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels. Moreover, the underworld had consolidated its power by not only controlling who all were elected to key political posts in Mexico, but had also perfected the art of bribing key local, state and regional police heads as well as strategic generals in Mexico’s armed forces. Check out the movies Traffic, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and Antonio Banderas/Selma Hayek’s Desperado. Once again, after the fact, you’ll see Hollywood making money by spilling the beans. But you should not let the stunt work lull you into thinking there’s no substance to the plots!
Remember: Mexico’s cartels wouldn’t be able to function without the collaboration and protection from the highest levels within the U.S. establishment.
Just as the CIA has openly admitted it was a drug merchant during an earlier period, you can believe nothing has changed-except partners! The hilarious part is that none of the wannabe real gangstas in the U.S. know that in reality they’re low-paid, low level CIA flunkies without pensions or benefits; or they can’t wait until they get out of prison to become undercover government agents-slingin’ crack. Alas, most people think it’s crazy to believe that the government of the U.S. would allow its cities and small towns to be flooded with cocaine from South Amerika. Even the wannabe gangstas don’t really believe that. They prefer to think that such ideas are good for conspiracy junkies and cling to the illusion that they are more than just pawns on the chessboard.
Further, if one does not get beyond the idea that this whole thing was just a plot to destroy the Black and Brown peoples-a favorite, though shortsighted theory-there’s no way to see just how deep the drug game really is. I repeat: the main objective was to pump billions of dollars into the Mexican economy in oder to avoid a complete meltdown and the subsequent fleeing to the U.S. of sixty or more million Mexicans out of its ninetyplus million inhabitants. This would have been a crisis that would have dwarfed the numbers who are just beginning to make their presence known!
Actually, the big dawgs in the U.S. probably didn’t know just how they were gonna control the fallout that would inevitably accompany their cocaine/crack tax. They routinely tax alcohol, gambling (from the lotteries to the casinos), and even prostitution in certain areas, don’t they? So yeah, it was a clandestine operation to use cocaine to rescue Mexico and stave off an economically induced invasion of the U.S. by its destitute populace.
The Mexican people, especially its Indigenous population, were made poverty-stricken by 500 years of colonialism, slavery, peonage, neo-colonialism and the theft of one-third of their country by the United States in the 19th century.
Sadly, though, our First Wave’s degeneration into the glamorization of gangsterism, the Second Wave’s hunger for respect and recognition that was fueling the senseless gang carnage, the Hip Hop generation’s ability to provide the youth with vicarious fantasies to indulge their senses with the hypnotic allure of the temporary power that the drug game could bring them-led the youth in the United States back to emulating the First Wave’s Superfly and Scarface days. Others also see that: My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there’s a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in Black people. The best example is Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hip hop…Hip hop is created thanks to the conditions that crack set: easy money but a lot of work, the violence involved, the stories it produced-crack helped birth hip hop.
Now, I’m part conspiracy theorist because you can’t develop something that dangerous and it not be planned. I don’t think crack happened by accident…Crack offered a lot of money to the inner city youth who didn’t have to go to college. Which enabled them to become businessmen. It also turned us into marksmen. It also turned us comatose. (Ahmir Thompson, aka Quest Love, “The Believer”, in Never Drank the Kool-Aid, op. cit.; also, “The Believer-Interview with Ahmir Thompson“). With the deft moves of a conjurer, the big dawgs in the U.S. seized upon all of this and began to nudge these elements around on the international chess board-within their giant con game. Moreover, these big dawgs in the United States had very little choice where to start their triage in order to gain some relief from their manufactured domestic crisis.
I’ll tell you why.
Cocaine in its powder and crack forms is so addictive that the cultures that use them regularly-the rich and famous, the Hollywood Set, corporate executives, lawyers, doctors, weekenders, entertainers, athletes, college kids, suburbanites, hoodrats, hustlers, pipers, etc.-bring a guaranteed demand! In most ways, it could be argued, the effect has been the same as with alcohol and tobacco, which have never been successfully suppressed in the U.S. It follows then that despite all of their propaganda about Just Say No and the bogus War on Drugs, the big dawgs never had any intention of even trying to eradicate the use of cocaine. In fact, crack had turned their lower class neighborhoods into lucrative mainstays of the big dawgs’ alternative taxing scheme At the same time, however, the Black and Brown communities were becoming major headaches that if left unchecked could eventually evolve into a real strategic threat!
In contrast to the relatively tranquil non-Black/Brown communities, which used more, mostly powder, cocaine, the trade in the Black and Brown hoods and barrios was accompainied by an exponential increase of drug-related violence especially after the gangs got seriously involved. Now, as I’ve pointed out, the gangs were mainly just pursuing respect prior to getting involved with hustling drugs. And the carnage connected to that was not a real concern to the big dawgs. But the crack/cocaine trade was different from the earlier dumping of heroin in those communities which was accompanied by the comparatively isolated violence of the Black Mafia-style groups. That violence, though terrifying, was also more selective. The more widespread availability of crack and assault weapons led the big dawgs to understand that if they didn’t aggressively deal with the ultra-violent inner city drug gangs, the latter would eventually move to consolidate their gains by forming South Amerikan and Mexican-style cartels. Afterward, they, like their Mexican forerunners, could gradually take over inner city politics for themselves once they realized that the money and power would not of themselves provide them with the kind of respect and dignity they sought.
To understand why not, just observe the rich and famous hip hop artists who continue to wild-out because they sitll lack the respect and dignity that comes with struggling for something other than money or power: in short, some type of (political or higher) cause.
Anyway, the hip hop generational favorite TV drama The Wire lays out the entire phenomenon pretty much as it had earlier played itself out in Baltimore and other urban areas. In fact, the fictional TV series derives its realness from an earlier long-running expose featured in a Baltimore newspaper (another after the fact but still useful piece of work to study). Indeed, the parts of that show which depict earlier years of the Black gangs getting deep into the crack trade clearly illustrate my points about the gangs evolving into proto-cartels-and then being triaged before maturing into real strategic threats, thereby leaving the crack trade intact.
It was set up as a tool to neutralize the Second Wave before its members woke up to the fact that, despite their money and power they were being used: played like suckers, a rub that the more astute big dawgs feared that money would not soothe. Thus, all of your draconian gun-related and mandatory sentencing laws were first formulated on the federal level, where most of the big dawgs have their power, and then forced upon most of the states. This was to insure that the Second Wave would never be able to consolidate any real power. Precisely because the latter were proving themselves to be such ruthless gangstas, in imitation of their Hollywood idols, coupled with the power they derived from their share of the undercover tax being extracted from their communities, the ruling classes took the position that they should be triaged before they got too big, a period which averaged from one to three years in a run, and that everything they acquired should be taken.
The martyred hip hop icon The Notorious B.I.G. put it all together in his classic song, rightly titled Respect:
Put the drugs on the shelf/Nah, I couldn’t see it/Scarface, King of New York/I wanna be it…Until I got incarcerated/kinda scary…Not able to move behind the steel gate/Time to contemplate/Damn, where did I fail?/All the money I stacked was all the money for bail. (“Biggie Smalls”, The New York Times,1994, in Never Drank the Kool-Aid, op. cit.)
Let’s get another thing straight!-like the angle that continues to have shortsighted individuals chasing ghosts about why powder cocaine and crack are treated so differently. In the big dawgs’ calculations, there is no reason to punish harshly the powder cocaine dealers and users in the same manner as the crack crowd.
Racism has not been the driving motive; rather it was the armed threat posed by these proto-cartels!
The big dawgs witnessed a clear example of what might come by way of the Jamaican Posses that cropped up in the Black communities. These young men from the Jamaican and Caribbean diaspora were also a consequensce of the degeneration of those regions’ lower classes’ attempts to throw off the economic and social effects of their former slavery and colonial oppression. Led by the socialist Michael Manley and inspired by the revolutionary music of Bob Nesta Marley (which can be glimpsed in the later movies, Marked for Death with Steven Segal, and Belly with DMX and Nas), the Jamaican Posses were the Black Mafia on steroids! Moreover, despite their quasi-religious nationalism and their ability to operate with heavily armed soldiers in the U.S. and the Caribbean, their ten thousand or so members were nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands in the wings of the Black and Brown communities!
The cry from the big dawgs’ mouthpieces in Congress was about the gunplay, not so much the drugs. What was not said, however, was the big dawgs’ anxieties about stopping these gunslingers before they got over their mental blocks about using their weapons against the police-or the system. Stop them while they’re hung up on imitating their Hollywood and Euro-Mafia icons who made a mantra out of not using their weapons against the police. Indeed, with a few exceptions, the Second Wave allowed itself to be disarmed and carted off to prison like pussycats! In addition, to appease some of the conservative segments in the U.S. which were upset about capitalism’s globalization drive, the big dawgs dangled the prospect of thousands of new jobs for the rural communities which were being destroyed by it (hence, the Prison Industrial Complex and its neo-slavery).
Therefore, we must struggle against the shortsighted idea that racism alone is the driving motive which has fueled the construction of the Prison Industrial Complex. Instead, if you do a follow-up and add your own research, you’ll be able to document the who, when, where and how the big dawgs set everything in motion; as well as how they continue to use us as pawns in their giant international con game.
Conclusion, ask yourself the following questions:
1. How can we salvage anything from how the people of the First and Second Waves allowed their search for respect and dignity to degenerate into gangsterism?
2. In what ways can we help the Next Wave avoid our mistakes?
3. What can we do to contribute to documenting who the real
big dawgs are behind the drug trade?
4. Why have they never been held accountable?
5. How come our families and communities have been the only ones to suffer?
6. How can we overcome our brainwashing?
7. How can we truly gain respect and dignity?
8. In what ways can we atone for our wrongs and redeem ourselves, families, and communities?
9. What are some ways to fight for restitution and reparations for all of those harmed by the government-imposed undercover drug tax?
10. How can we overturn the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and finally abolish legal slavery in the U.S.?
Once you answer those questions and begin to move to materialize your conclusions, then you will have made the choice between Liberation or Gangsterism: Freedom or Slavery.
By way of references here is a list of recommended reading:
In the first of a three part series this writing lays out the historical context of black and asian movements to reclaim identity and self-worth and a detailed account of the tactics used against them.
Within two generations the youth of this country have come full circle. Starting in 1955, youth were driven by two major motivations: one, the acquiring of enough education or apprenticeships, the use of their unskilled labor or street smarts to land “good” jobs or establish hustles, and to make as much money and obtain as many material trappings as possible. The second was to use the education, apprenticeships, unskilled labor, street smart jobs, hustles and the material trappings provided by them to win a measure of respect and dignity from their peers and society in general.
Simultaneously, they were learning to respect themselves as individuals, and not simply be eating, sleeping, laboring and sexual animals.
The First Wave: circa 1955-1980
The Civil Rights Movement in the South successfully motivated Black, Puerto Rican, Euro-Amerikan, Chicano-Mexicano, Indigenous and Asian youth to use their time, energy, creativity and imagination to discover their true self-worth and earn the respect of the entire world while struggling toward even broader goals that were not measured by one’s material possessions.
Over time each segment cheered on, supported, worked in solidarity with and/or discovered its own common interests and closely linked missions connected to broader people’s goals. Thus, Black youth elevated the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Power and Black Liberation Movements. Puerto Rican youth energized their elders’ ongoing struggle to winindependence for their home island. Euro-Amerikan youth attacked the lies, hypocrisy and oppression that their parents were training them to uphold in the schools, society and overseas. Native Amerikan youth were returning to their suppressed ancestral ways and fighting to regain control over some of their land.
Asian youth were struggling to overcome a system and culture that had always used and abused them. Indeed all of them came to see clearly that neither education, jobs, money, hustles or material trappings could, by themselves, win them the victories they needed, or the new type of dignity and respect they deserved.
Moreover, from 1955 until circa 1975, these youth joined, formulated, led and supported struggles worldwide against racial oppression and bigotry, colonialism, oppression of women and youth. In the process they were winning themselves the respect, admiration and gratitude of the world’s oppressed as well as their peers. Further, in addition to becoming people that societies must take seriously, these youth were positive contributors who had much to give and were willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals. They were youth who were capable of imagining a better world and fighting to realize it while remaining youthful and having a good time doing it. All in all, they earned a much-deserved place in history.
From the Mountain to the Sewer
Yet here we are 30 years later and the youth nowadays have been stripped of that hard-earned freedom, self-respect and dignity. They are being told-over and over-that the only way to regain them is again to acquire education, skills, good jobs, or the right hustle(s). This means, once again, to acquire as much money and material things as one can in order again to win respect and dignity from one’s peers and society-and thereby begin to start loving one’s self, and seeing one’s self as more
than simply an eating, sleeping, working and sexual being.
How the hell did we get back to 1955?
First off, let me make clear that even with all of the glorious strides the youth made within the First Wave, they were not the only ones fighting for radical or revolutionary changes. In fact, more than anything, they were usually only the tip of the spear. They were the shock troops of a global struggle, motivated by
youthful energy and impatience, with no time or temperament for elaborate theories, rushing forward into the fray, ill prepared for the tricks that would eventually overwhelm them.
So to understand what happened, we must examine some of the main “tricks” used to slow down, misdirect, control and defeat them. And without a point, a spear loses all of its advantages.
Strategic Tricks Used Against Them
Understanding these tricks, their various guises and refinements, is the key to everything. You will never really understand what happened to get us to this point, or be able really to move forward, until you recognize and devise ways to defeat them.
They were and remain:
1. Co-option
2. Glamorization of Gangsterism
3. Separation from the most advanced elements
4. Indoctrination in reliance on passive approaches
5. Raw fear
Co-option was used extensively to trick just about all of the First Wave youth into believing that they had won the war. In particular, to every segment of youth, from university students to lower class communities, billions of dollars and resources were made available. This was supposedly for these youth to determine what should be done to carry out far-reaching changes, while in reality they were being expertly monitored and subtly coaxed further and further away from their most radical and advanced elements. This was done mainly through control of the largess, which ultimately was part of the ruling class’ foundation, government and corporate strategy for
defeating the youth with sugar-coated bullets.
In time, consequently, substantial segments of these previously rebellious youth found themselves fully absorbed and neutralized either by directly joining or accepting the foundations’, sub-groups’, corporations’, universities’ or “approved” community groups’ assistance-or by becoming full-fledged junior partners in the system after winning control of thousands of previously out-of-reach political offices. And, for all intents and purposes, that same trick is still being used today.
Glamorization of Gangsterism, however, was then and continues to be the most harmful trick played against the lower class segments.
The males, in particular, were then and continue to be the most susceptible to this gambit, especially when used opposite to prolonged exposure to raw fear! Let me illustrate by briefly describing the histories of two groups that presently enjoy nothing less than “icon” status amongst just about everyone aware of them. These two groups’ “documented histories” clearly show how that trick is played, and continues to be played, throughout this country.
The first of these two groups is the original Black Panther Party, which was bludgeoned and intimidated to the point where its key leader(s) “consciously” steered the group into accepting the Glamorization of Gangsterism. Because this glamorization wasless of a threat to the ruling classes’ interests, it won the Party a temporary respite from the raw fear the ruling circles were levelling against it. In the process the organization was totally destroyed.
The second of the two groups was the Nation of Islam ‘connected’ Black Mafia, which had a different background, but against whom the same tricks were played. It also left in its wake a sordid tale of young Black men who were again turned from seeking to be Liberators into being ruthless oppressors of their own communities.
These men never once engaged their real enemies and oppressors: the ruling class.
Hands down the original Black Panther Party (BPP) won more attention, acclaim, respect, support and sympathy than any other youth group of its time. At the same time the BPP provoked more fear and worry in ruling class circles than any other domestic group since Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower presided over the neutralization of the working class and the U.S. wing of the Communist Party. The BPP was even more feared than the much larger Civil Rights Movement.
According to the head of the FBI, the Panthers were the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country“. That threat came from the Panthers’ ability to inspire other youth-in the U.S. and globally-to act in similar grassroots political revolutionary ways. Thus, there were separate BPP-style formations amongst Native Amerikans (the American Indian Movement); Puerto Ricans(the Young Lords); Chicano Mexicano Indigenous people (theBrown Berets); Asians (I Wor Kuen); Euro-Amerikan (the Young Patriot and White Panther Parties); and even the elderly (the Gray Panthers). Also, there were literally hundreds of other similar, lesser known groups!
Internationally the BPP had an arm in Algeria that had the only official “Embassy” established amongst all of the other Afrikan, Asian and South Amerikan revolutionary groups seeking refuge in that then-revolutionary country. Astonishingly, the BPP even inspired separate Black Panther Parties in India, the Bahamas, Nova Scotia, Australia and Occupied Palestine/State of Israel!
On the other hand, the Nation of Islam (NOI) had been active since 1930. Yet it also experienced a huge upsurge in membership in the same period. This was mainly due to the charismatic personality of Malcolm X and his aggressive recruitment techniques. Malcolm’s influence carried on after his assassination, fueled by the overall rebellious spirits of the youth looking for groups which would lead them to fight against the system.
Therefore, there’s a mountain of documents which clearly show that the highest powers in this country classified both groups as Class A Threats to be neutralized or destroyed. These powers mused that if that goal could be achieved, they could then use similar methods to defeat the rest of the youth.
So how did they do it?
Against the BPP the powers used a combination of co-option, glamorization of gangsterism, separation from the most advanced elements, indoctrination in reliance on passive approaches and raw fear; that is, every trick in the book. Thus, fully alarmed at the growth and boldness of the BPP and related groups as well as their ability to win a level of global support, the ruling classes’ governmental, intelligence, legal and academic arms devised a strategy to split the BPP and co-opt its more compliant elements. At the same time they moved totally to annihilate its more radical and revolutionary remainders.
They knew they had the upper hand due to the youth and inexperience of the BPP; and they had their own deep well of resources and experiences in using counter-insurgency techniques much earlier against:
Marcus Garvey’s UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement
Association);
the Palmer Raids against Euro-Amerikans of an Anarchist
and/or left Socialist bent;
the crushing of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World)
and neutralizing of the other Socialists;
their subsequent destruction of any real Communist power in
Western Europe;
their total domination and subjugation of the Caribbean
(except Cuba), Central and South Amerika-except for the fledgling guerilla movements;
and everything they had learned in their wars to replace the
European colonial powers in Africa and Asia.
Still, the BPP had highly motivated cadre, imbued with a
fearlessness little known among domestic groups. The ruling class and its henchmen were stretched thin, especially since the Vietnamese, Laotians and Kampucheans were kicking their ass in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the freedom fighters in Guinea-Bissau and Angola had the U.S.’ European allies-whom the U.S. supplied with the latest military hardware-on the run. So although the BPP was inexperienced, the prospect of neutralizing it was a mixed bag.
The members of the BPP still had a fighting chance.
The co-option depended on them neutralizing the BPP co-founder and by-then icon, Huey P. Newton. Afterward, they used him-along with other methods-to split the BPP and lead his wing along reformist lines. It was hoped that this process would force the still-revolutionary wing into an all-out armed fight before it was ready, either killing, jailing, exiling or breaking its members will to resist or sending them into ineffective hiding-out.
At this time, even with the BPP’s extraordinary global stature, no country seemed to want to risk the U.S. wrath by “openly” allowing the BPP to train guerilla units, something which, given more time, could nevertheless have come to pass. So, surprisingly, Huey was allowed to leave jail with a still-tobe-tried-murder-of-a-policeman charge pending. Thus, the government and courts had him on a short leash, and with it they hoped to control his actions, although probably not through any direct agreements. Sadly, the still politically naive BPP cadre and the other youth who looked up to Newton could imagine “nothing” but that “they”-the people-had forced his release.
Veterans from those times still insist on clinging to such tripe!
Yet it seems Newton thought otherwise, and since he was not prepared to go underground and join his fledgling Black Liberation Army (BLA), he almost immediately began following a reformist script. This was completely at odds with his own earlier theories and writings, as well as at odds with basic principles that were being practiced to good effect by oppressed people throughout the world.
Even further, he used his almost complete control of the BPP Central Committee to expel many, many veteran and combat-tested BPP cadre in an imitation of the Stalinist and Euro-gangster posture he would later become famous for. This included an all-out shooting war to repress any BPP members who would not accept his independently derived-at reformist policies.
At the same time, on a parallel track, U.S. and local police and intelligence agencies were using their now infamous COINTELPRO operations to provoke the split between the wing Huey dominated and other, less compliant BPP members. This finally reached a head in 1971, after Huey’s shooting war and purge forced scores of the most loyal, fearless and dedicated above-ground BPP to go underground and join those other BPP members who were already functioning there as the offensive armed wing. Panther Wolves, AfroAmerican Liberation Army and Black Liberation Army were all names by which these members were known, but the latter is the only one that would stick.
At this time the BLA was a confederation of clandestine guerilla units composed of mostly Black Revolutionary Nationalists from a number of different formations.
Nevertheless, they still accepted the BPP’s leadership and Huey Newton as their Minister of Defense. But obviously Newton didn’t see it that way. Even more telling, it was later learned that Newton’s expensive penthouse apartment-where he and other Central Committee members handled any number of sensitive BPP issues, was under continuous surveillance by intelligence agents who had another apartment down the hall. Thus, Newton and his faction were encapsulated, leaving them unable to follow anything but government sanctioned scripts; unless he/they went underground.
This only occurred when Newton fled to Cuba after his gangster antics threatened the revocation of his release on the pending legal matters which the government held over his head. Add to that, the glamorization of gangsterism was something that various ruling class elements had begun to champion and direct toward the Black lower classes, in particular. This occurred especially after they saw how much attention the Black Arts Movement was able to generate. Indeed, these ruling class elements recognized it could be used to misdirect youthful militancy while still being hugely profitable. They had, in fact, already misdirected Euro-Amerikan and other youth with the James Bond-I Spy-Secret Agent Man and other replacements for the “Old West/Cowboys and Indians” racist crap, so why not a “Black” counterpart? Thus was born the enormously successful counter-insurgency genre collectively known as the
Blacksploitation movies: Shaft, Superfly, Foxxy Brown, Black Caesar and the like, accompanied by wannabe crossovers like Starsky and Hutch, and the notorious Black snitch Huggie Bear.
Psychological warfare!
Follow the psychology: You can be “Black”, cool, rebellious, dangerous, rich, have respect, women, cars, fine clothes, jewelry, an expensive home and even stay high; as long as you don’t fight the system-or the cops! But, if you don’t go along with that script, then get ready to go back to the early days-with its shootouts with the cops, graveyard, prison, on the run and exile! Or you can be cool even as a Huggie Bear-style snitch, and interestingly, like his buddy, the post-modern/futuristic rat Cipher of The Matrix, who tried to betray ZION in return for a fake life as a rich, steak-eating, movie star. And most important: no more fighting with the Agents! Get it?
In addition, the ruling classes bolstered the government’s assault by flooding our neighborhoods with heroin, cocaine, marijuana and “meth”. In the process they saddled the oppressed with a Trojan Horse which would strategically handicap them for decades to come. All of those drugs had earlier been introduced to these areas by organized criminals under local police and political protection. But now the intelligence agencies were using them with the same intentions that alcohol had long ago been introduced to the Native
Amerikans and opium had been trafficked by the ruling classes of Europe and this country: to counter the propensities of oppressed people to rebel against outside control while profiting off their misery.
Against this background Newton began to indulge in drugs to try to relieve the stress of all that he was facing. He became a drug addict, plain and simple. That, however, didn’t upset the newly-constructed gangster/cool that Hollywood, the ruling class and the government were pushing. Although many BPP cadre and other outsiders were very nervous about it, Newton’s control was by then too firmly fixed for anyone to challenge-except for the BLA, whose members were by then in full blown urban guerilla war with the government.
At the same time, the reformist wing of the BPP did manage to make some noteworthy strides under its only female head, Elaine Brown. Newton’s drug addiction/gangster-lifestyle-provoked exile caused him to “appoint”-on his own and without any consultation with the body-Elaine to head the Party in his absence.
An exceptionally gifted woman:
she relied on an inner circle of female BPP cadre, backed up by male enforcers, to introduce some clear and consistent projects that helped the BPP to become a real power locally. It was a reformist paradigm, though, that could not hope to achieve any of the radical/revolutionary changes called for earlier. On the contrary, Newton in his earlier writings had put the cadre on notice of a point when, in order to keep moving forward, the aboveground would have to be supported by an underground. Yet it was Newton who completely rejected that paradigm upon being released from jail, although he still organized and controlled a heavily armed extortion group called “The Squad”, which consisted of BPP cadre who terrorized Oakland’s underworld with a belt-operated machine gun mounted on a truck bed and accompanied by cadre who were ready for war!
In classic Eurogangster fashion, Newton had turned to preying on segments of the community that he had earlier vowed to liberate. But, of course, the police and government were safe from his forces. With no connection to a true undergound-the BLA-there was no rational way to ratchet up the pressure on the police, government and the still fully operational system of ruling class control and oppression. Newton and his followers had been reduced to completely sanctioned methods. Consequently we can see all of the government’s tricks bearing fruit. In a seemingly curious combination of Co-option, Indoctrination in Reliance on Passive Approaches (that is, passive toward the status quo), and Glamorization of Gangsterism, Newton’s faction of the BPP had limited itself both to legal and underworld-sanctioned methods.
They also fell for the trick of Separation from the Most Advanced Elements by severing all relations with their armed underground,the BLA, whose members would lead the BPP if the Party got to the next level of struggle-open armed resistance to the oppressors. Finally, Newton, his faction and activists from all of the other Amerikan radical and revolutionary groups succumbed to the terror and Raw Fear that was being levelled on them. The exception was those who waged armed struggle, who themselves were killed, jailed, exiled, forced into deep hiding or into continuing their activism under the radar.
Epilogue on Huey P. Newton and his BPP faction:
Elaine Brown both guided Newton’s and her faction to support Newton and his family in exile while orchestrating the building up of enough political muscle in Oakland to assure his return on favorable terms. Thus, Newton did return and eventually the charges were dropped. Nevertheless, Newton continued to use his iconic stature and renewed direct control of his faction again to play the cool-political-gangster role; and like any drug addict who refuses to reform, he kept sliding downhill, even turning on old comrades and his main champion, Elaine Brown, who had to flee in fear. Sadly, for all practical purposes, that was the end of the original Black Panther Party.
Check-mate!
Later, as is well-known, Newton’s continued drug addiction cost him his life, a sorry ending for a once great man.
The second part of this series will be published on the 27th December 2020. Original artwork was created for this piece by Siri: thank you!
On 11th October, 2020, Indigenous peoples called a Day of Rage Against Colonialism. Main actions organized were against the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples and for an alternative to Columbus Day. Colonial statues were felled across the United States.
In Arizona, O’odham Anti-Border Collective protested the construction of a border wall. Customs and Border Protection Agencies assaulted the Indigenous protestors with tear gas, rubber bullets, and arrests.
Joyce Echaquan, a 37 year old Indigenous woman, died in a hospital in Quebec. From her deathbed, she had live-streamed the racist and misogynist comments of her nurses. Vigils, rallies, and demonstrations were organized after the video went viral.
Disputes over fishing rights between Indigenous peoples and commercial fishers in Nova Scotia led to mob violence. The commercial fishers have threatened, abused, sabotaged against the Sipekne’katik First Nation group. Indigenous peoples across the nation are organizing solidarity actions.
Secwepemc people in Canada have demanded a halt in the construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. The pipeline threatens salmon population, on which both neighboring human and nonhuman communities depend upon. The protestors were assaulted by arrests.
Wet’suwet’en people have been protesting the Coastal Gas Link pipeline for over a decade. On February, the Wet’suwet’en launched a series of rail, port and highway blockades. More recently, calls for solidarity actions have begun to circulate as the Coastal GasLink pipeline is preparing to drill under the Morris river.
Check out the Facebook page of the Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidimt’en Territory.
In July, members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy occupied a proposed development site in Ontario. Community mobilization and highway blockades were organized as a response to the militarized raid on August 5th by the Ontario Provincial Police. The Ontario government has tried to isolate the encampment by criminalizing and arresting supporters. Resistance has been going strong since then.
This is the fourth part in the series. In the previous essays, we have explored the need for a collapse, the relationship between a Dyson sphere and overcomsumption, and our blind pursuit for ‘progress.’ In this piece, Elisabeth describes how the Dyson sphere is an extension of the drive for so-called “green energy.”
Techno-utopians imagine the human population on Earth can be saved from collapse using energy collected with a Dyson Sphere–a vast solar array surrounding the sun and funneling energy back to Earth–to build and power space ships. In these ships, we’ll leave the polluted and devastated Earth behind to venture into space and populate the solar system. Such a fantasy is outlined in “Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis” and is a story worthy of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It says, in so many words: we’ve trashed this planet, so let’s go find another one.
In their report, Mauro Bologna and Gerardo Aquino present a model that shows, with continued population growth and deforestation at current rates, we have a less than 10% chance of avoiding catastrophic collapse of civilization within the next few decades. Some argue that a deliberate and well-managed collapse would be better than the alternatives. Bologna and Aquino present two potential solutions to this situation. One is to develop the Dyson Sphere technology we can use to escape the bonds of our home planet and populate the solar system. The other is to change the way we (that is, those of us living in industrial and consumer society) live on this planet into a ‘cultural society’, one not driven primarily by economy and consumption, in order to sustain the population here on Earth.
The authors acknowledge that the idea of using a Dyson Sphere to provide all the energy we need to populate the solar system is unrealistic, especially in the timeframe to avoid collapse that’s demonstrated by their own work. They suggest that any attempt to develop such technology, whether to “live in extraterrestrial space or develop any other way to sustain population of the planet” will take too long given current rates of deforestation. As Salonika describes in an earlier article in this series, “A Dyson Sphere will not stop collapse“, any attempt to create such a fantastical technology would only increase the exploitation of the environment.
Technology makes things worse
The authors rightly acknowledge this point, noting that “higher technological level leads to growing population and higher forest consumption.” Attempts to develop the more advanced technology humanity believes is required to prevent collapse will simply speed up the timeframe to collapse. However, the authors then contradict themselves and veer back into fantasy land when they suggest that higher technological levels can enable “more effective use of resources” and can therefore lead, in principle, to “technological solutions to prevent the ecological collapse of the planet.”
Techno-utopians often fail to notice that we have the population we do on Earth precisely because we have used technology to increase the effectiveness (and efficiency) of fossil fuels and other resources* (forests, metals, minerals, water, land, fish, etc.). Each time we increase ‘effective use’ of these resources by developing new technology, the result is an increase in resource use that drives an increase in population and development, along with the pollution and ecocide that accompanies that development. The agricultural ‘green revolution’ is a perfect example of this: advances in technology enabled new high-yield cereals as well as new fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, and mechanization, all of which prevented widespread famine, but also contributed to an ongoing explosion in population, development, chemical use, deforestation, land degradation and salinization, water pollution, top soil loss, and biodiversity loss around the world.
As economist William Stanley Jevons predicted in 1865, increasing energy efficiency with advances in technology leads to more energy use. Extrapolating from his well-proved prediction, it should be obvious that new technology will not prevent ecological collapse; in fact, such technology is much more likely to exacerbate it.
This mistaken belief that new technology can save us from collapse pervades the policies and projects of governments around the world.
Projects like the Green New Deal, the Democrat Party’s recently published climate plan, and the UN’s sustainable development goals and IPCC recommendations. All these projects advocate for global development and adoption of ‘clean technology’ and ‘clean industry’ (I’m not sure what those terms mean, myself); ’emissions-free’ energy technologies like solar, wind, nuclear and hydropower; and climate change mitigation technologies like carbon capture and storage, smart grids, artificial intelligence, and geo-engineering. They tout massive growth in renewable energy production from wind and solar, and boast about how efficient and inexpensive these technologies have become, implying that all will be well if we just keep innovating new technologies on our well worn path of progress.
Miles and miles of solar panels, twinkling like artificial lakes in the middle of deserts and fields; row upon row of wind turbines, huge white metal beasts turning wind into electricity, and mountain tops and prairies into wasteland; massive concrete dams choking rivers to death to store what we used to call water, now mere embodied energy stored to create electrons when we need them–the techno-utopians claim these so-called clean’ technologies can replace the black gold of our present fantasies–fossil fuels–and save us from ourselves with futuristic electric fantasies instead.
All these visions are equally implausible in their capacity to save us from collapse.
And while solar panels, wind turbines, and dams are real, in the sense that they exist–unlike the Dyson Sphere–all equally embody the utter failure of imagination we humans seem unable to transcend. Some will scoff at my dismissal of these electric visions, and say that imagining and inventing new technologies is the pinnacle of human achievement. With such framing, the techno-utopians have convinced themselves that creating new technologies to solve the problems of old technologies is progress. This time it will be different, they promise.
And yet if you look at the graph of global primary energy consumption:
it should be obvious to any sensible person that new, so-called ‘clean’ energy-producing technologies are only adding to that upward curve of the graph, and are not replacing fossil fuels in any meaningful way. Previous research has shown that “total national [US] energy use from non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-quarter of a unit of fossil-fuel energy use and, focussing specifically on electricity, each unit of electricity generated by non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity.”
In part, this is due to the fossil fuel energy required to mine, refine, manufacture, install, maintain, and properly dispose of materials used to make renewable and climate mitigation technologies. Mining is the most destructive human activity on the planet, and a recent University of Queensland study found that mining the minerals and metals required for renewable energy technology could threaten biodiversity more than climate change. However, those who use the word “clean” to describe these technologies conveniently forget to mention these problems.
Wind turbines and solar arrays are getting so cheap; they are being built to reduce the cost of the energy required to frack gas: thus, the black snake eats its own tail. “Solar panels are starting to die, leaving behind toxic trash”, a recent headline blares, above an article that makes no suggestion that perhaps it’s time to cut back a little on energy use. Because they cannot be recycled, most wind turbine blades end up in landfill, where they will contaminate the soil and ground water long after humanity is a distant memory. Forests in the southeast and northwest of the United States are being decimated for high-tech biomass production because of a loophole in EU carbon budget policy that counts biomass as renewable and emissions free. Dams have killed the rivers in the US Pacific Northwest, and salmon populations are collapsing as a result. I could go on.
The lies we tell ourselves
Just like the Dyson Sphere, these and other technologies we fantasize will save our way of life from collapse are delusions on a grand scale. The governor of my own US state of Washington boasts about how this state’s abundant “clean” hydropower energy will help us create a “clean” economy, while at the same time he fusses about the imminent extinction of the salmon-dependent Southern Resident Orca whales. I wonder: does he not see the contradiction, or is he willfully blind to his own hypocrisy?
The face of the Earth is a record of human sins (1), a ledger written in concrete and steel; the Earth twisted into skyscrapers and bridges, plows and combines, solar panels and wind turbines, mines and missing mountains; with ink made from chemical waste and nuclear contamination, plastic and the dead bodies of trees. The skies, too, tell our most recent story. Once source of inspiration and mythic tales, in the skies we now see airplanes and contrails, space junk and satellites we might once have mistaken for shooting stars, but can no longer because there are so many; with vision obscured by layers of too much PM2.5 and CO2 and NOx and SO2 and ozone and benzene. In the dreams of techno-utopians, we see space ships leaving a rotting, smoking Earth behind.
One of many tales of our Earthly sins is deforestation.
As the saying goes, forests precede us, and deserts follow; Mauro Bologna and Gerardo Aquino chose a good metric for understanding and measuring our time left on Earth. Without forests, there is no rain and the middles of continents become deserts. It is said the Middle East, a vast area we now think of as primarily desert, used to be covered in forests so thick and vast the sunlight never touched the ground (2). Without forests, there is no home for species we’ve long since forgotten we are connected to in that web of life we imagine ourselves separate from, looking down from above as techno-gods on that dirty, inconvenient thing we call nature, protected by our bubble of plastic and steel. Without forests, there is no life.
One part of one sentence in the middle of the report gives away man’s original sin: it is when the authors write, “our model does not specify the technological mechanism by which the successful trajectories are able to find an alternative to forests and avoid collapse“. Do they fail to understand that there is no alternative to forests? That no amount of technology, no matter how advanced–no Dyson Sphere; no deserts full of solar panels; no denuded mountain ridges lined with wind turbines; no dam, no matter how wide or high; no amount of chemicals injected into the atmosphere to reflect the sun–will ever serve as an “alternative to forests”? Or are they willfully blind to this fundamental fact of this once fecund and now dying planet that is our only home?
A different vision
I’d like to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, as they end their report with a tantalizing reference to another way of being for humans, when they write, “we suggest that only civilisations capable of a switch from an economical society to a sort of ‘cultural’ society in a timely manner, may survive.” They do not expand on this idea at all. As physicists, perhaps the authors didn’t feel like they had the freedom to do so in a prestigious journal like Nature, where, one presumes, scientists are expected to stay firmly in their own lanes.
Having clearly made their case that civilized humanity can expect a change of life circumstance fairly soon, perhaps they felt it best to leave to others the responsibility and imagination for this vision. Such a vision will require not just remembering who we are: bi-pedal apes utterly dependent on the natural world for our existence. It will require a deep listening to the forests, the rivers, the sky, the rain, the salmon, the frogs, the birds… in short, to all the pulsing, breathing, flowing, speaking communities we live among but ignore in our rush to cover the world with our innovations in new technology.
Paul Kingsnorth wrote: “Spiritual teachers throughout history have all taught that the divine is reached through simplicity, humility, and self-denial: through the negation of the ego and respect for life. To put it mildly, these are not qualities that our culture encourages. But that doesn’t mean they are antiquated; only that we have forgotten why they matter.”
New technologies, real or imagined, and the profits they bring is what our culture reveres.
Building dams, solar arrays, and wind turbines; experimenting with machines to capture CO2 from the air and inject SO2 into the troposphere to reflect the sun; imagining Dyson Spheres powering spaceships carrying humanity to new frontiers–these efforts are all exciting; they appeal to our sense of adventure, and align perfectly with a culture of progress that demands always more. But such pursuits destroy our souls along with the living Earth just a little bit more with each new technology we invent.
This constant push for progress through the development of new technologies and new ways of generating energy is the opposite of simplicity, humility, and self-denial. So, the question becomes: how can we remember the pleasures of a simple, humble, spare life? How can we rewrite our stories to create a cultural society based on those values instead? We have little time left to find an answer.
* I dislike the word resources to refer to the natural world; I’m using it here because it’s a handy word, and it’s how most techno-utopians refer to mountains, rivers, rocks, forests, and life in general.
