Fred Hampton: In Plain Proletarian English

I am a Revolutionary-Fred Hampton

Dedicated to Revolutionaries everywhere.

Kwame Toure / Afrika / pt. 2

Alright, now dig. Here comes this honky from Europe, sets foot on this country, the red people are here, but they don't exist, so he discovered it. This has been the history of white society, they have never recognized anybody who is non-white, so nothing happens until they come and find you. Ha!

But now you've got to dig this thing about Columbus real deep, because when they tell you he discovered America and he was a dumb honky, I mean he was real stupid. He died thinking he was in India that is how dumb he was. And because he was stupid, he titled the Red man Indians. That's why they have the name, because some dumb honky thought he was in India.

So you've got to understand that. That's how riddled with racism it is -- that you can't even recognize it. They don't even recognize how racist it is to say that Christopher Columbus discovered America. And they never will admit it; they can't, they can't.

Not only that, if you go to writing the real history of this country you would say that this country is a country of thieves. They started off by stealing this country from the red men and committing genocide against them. Not only did it steal the country from the red men—that didn't satisfy them—they stole us from Africa. You've got to understand that this nation is a nation of thieves and is becoming a nation of murderers in Vietnam, we've got to stop it, we've got to stop it. Because we have to save our humanity! Let white American do as it will, but as black people we have to save our humanity. That is very very important .

Kwame Toure/Stokely Carmichael

Malcom X~The Price of Freedom is Death

Commandante Che - EZLN - Viva Zapata

Commandante Che - EZLN - Viva Zapata latin america

Tu amor revolucionario
te conduce a nueva empresa
donde esperan la firmeza
de tu brazo libertario.

!Hasta siempre, Comandante!

Revoluutionary Theory #5-Zapatista

The time of revolution has not passed. Despite celebrating the collapse of Soviet-style communism and promising yet another social and economic renaissance, the world capitalist system is in deep trouble: East and West, North and South.

If you listen carefully to the celebrating voices, those of the rich and the powerful in their corporate offices and government buildings, you can pick up a nervous undertone. If you watch the policy-makers closely, you may notice that the smiles are often thin and the hands that hold champagne glasses sometimes twitch, involuntarily.

If you listen even more carefully, you can discover why. In the background you can hear another set of voices--those from below--far, far more numerous. These are voices the powerful do not want to hear, but they are having a harder and harder time ignoring them. Some of these voices are quiet and determined, talking together in bare tenements. Some are singing and reciting poetry in the plazas, or stirring young hearts with old tales deep in the forests. Some are discussing, planning their future, inventing new worlds. Many are angry, increasingly impatient, sometimes shouting on picket lines or chanting in the streets. All are talking about revolution, whether they use that term or not. The policy- makers of capitalism have good reasons to worry.

The Zapatistas

The voices and writings collected here come primarily from the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), the army that woke up the world on January 1, 1994 by seizing four towns in Chiapas, the southern-most state of Mexico.

The EZLN has organized itself among some of the most dispossessed people of the world. Its composition is almost as diverse as the outside world to which it speaks. Its soldiers are drawn from the forests, mountains and small towns of the region, both from the Indigenous and linguistically diverse Mayan population, and from immigrants from Central and Northern Mexico. Its soldiers have been subsistence cultivators and landless wage-laborers; they have grown and marketed their own export crops and they have worked on the plantations and ranches of others. They have cultivated their milpas (corn plots) on rocky hillsides and sought temporary manual work in the towns. They have toiled as unskilled laborers and skilled artisans. A very few are intellectuals drawn to the area over a decade ago by their ideals and hopes.

For those of us outside this movement, these de-
professionalized intellectuals serve as mediators to help us understand the larger political processes out of which the EZLN has emerged, and within which it continues to operate. They have drafted many of the communique's and served as the public voice for both the Army and the wider community. They speak our language and speak to us in words that are familiar. We can understand them easily because we all share the forms of discourse common to Western political traditions.

But, the words they speak, and the way they speak them, are translations of other words and discourses rooted in other, much less familiar languages and ways of being--the diverse Mayan cultures of the region. Fortunately for us, the Zapatistas are very self-conscious speakers, and often speak to us about their own speaking, so that we will understand the words that come to us through their mouths. They are the words of those who have gone before us to the people of Chiapas; they are the voices of people who have learned to listen.

As some of the statements you will find in this book make clear, the spokespersons who speak to us today are different from the urban intellectuals who went into the mountains years ago. Those intellectuals carried with them a whole left-wing baggage of theoretical and political preconceptions which proved totally inadequate for communicating with the local population.

In the confrontation of those preconceptions (which they now call "undemocratic and authoritarian") with the collective decision-
making traditions of the people living in Indigenous communities, those intellectuals were transformed (as were, undoubtedly, the locals). In these documents we only get glimpses of this transformation, but it seems to have been remarkable--one in which the authoritarian relations of the Zapatista Army came to be subordinated to the democratic processes of the communities. In the process the interlopers seem to have learned to see things with new eyes, to do politics in new ways.

Along the way they seem to have acquired a simple, vernacular way of speaking which makes reading their communique's and their interviews refreshing in comparison with the familiar, jargon-laden political diatribes of old-left guerrilla groups. It is probably this quality which has made the motivations, hopes and aspirations of the EZLN and the Chiapanecos so accessible to the wider Mexican community and beyond. The Mexican state's efforts to portray the EZLN as a group of outside agitators, of "professionals in violence," quickly collapsed in the face of the obvious: Theirs were not old voices but new voices, and their language was not that of ideology but of frustrated desires, urgent needs and committed determination.

Their words, the spokespersons tell us quite explicitly, come from the collectivity, not just the individuals. This, they say, is one reason why they wear ski-masks--so our reception of their voice can be divorced from the face, the personality of the individual. The desire to avoid caudillismo (someone being singled out, or even putting themselves forward, as "the leader" of the revolution) is quite explicit. This approach, of course, is primarily symbolic, as the individualities of the speakers inevitably do come through, as in the best-known case of Subcommander Marcos.

Thus formed through a political process of dialogue and collective struggle, the voices in this book articulate two fundamental messages. First, they explain why they reject the current institutions and development projects of Mexican business and government. Second, they explain their own new political synthesis and their own political proposal for the future of Mexico.

Zapatistas!

Documents of the New Mexican Revolution

Andrea Smith-Indigenous Feminism without apology

Native feminism is not simply an insular or exclusivist “identity politics” as it is often accused of being. Rather, it is framework that understands indigenous women’s struggle as part of a global movement for liberation. As one activist stated: “You can’t win a revolution on your own. And we are about nothing short of a revolution. Anything else is simply not worth our time.”

We often hear the mantra in indigenous communities that Native women aren’t feminists. Supposedly, feminism is not needed because Native women were treated with respect prior to colonization. Thus, any Native woman who calls herself a feminist is often condemned as being “white.”

However, when I started interviewing Native women organizers as part of a research project, I was surprised by how many community-based activists were describing themselves as “feminists without apology.” They were arguing that feminism is actually an indigenous concept that has been co-opted by white women.

The fact that Native societies were egalitarian 500 years ago is not stopping women from being hit or abused now. For instance, in my years of anti-violence organizing, I would hear, “We can’t worry about domestic violence; we must worry about survival issues first.” But since Native women are the women most likely to be killed by domestic violence, they are clearly not surviving. So when we talk about survival of our nations, who are we including?

These Native feminists are challenging not only patriarchy within Native communities, but also white supremacy and colonialism within mainstream white feminism. That is, they’re challenging why it is that white women get to define what feminism is.

DECENTERING WHITE FEMINISM

The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves of feminism. In the United States, the first wave is characterized by the suffragette movement; the second wave is characterized by the formation of the National Organization for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of feminism, women of colour make an appearance to transform feminism into a multicultural movement.

This periodization situates white middle-class women as the central historical agents to which women of colour attach themselves. However, if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous women in an account of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of colour which intersect at points and diverge in others. This would not negate the contributions made by white feminists, but would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.

Indigenous feminism thus centers anti-colonial practice within its organizing. This is critical today when you have mainstream feminist groups supporting, for example, the US bombing of Afghanistan with the claim that this bombing will free women from the Taliban (apparently bombing women somehow liberates them).

CHALLENGING THE STATE

Indigenous feminists are also challenging how we conceptualize indigenous sovereignty — it is not an add-on to the heteronormative and patriarchal nationstate. Rather it challenges the nationstate system itself.

Charles Colson, prominent Christian Right activist and founder of Prison Fellowship, explains quite clearly the relationship between heteronormativity and the nation-state. In his view, samesex marriage leads directly to terrorism; the attack on the “natural moral order” of the heterosexual family “is like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America’s decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers.”

Similarly, the Christian Right World magazine opined that feminism contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal by promoting women in the military. When women do not know their assigned role in the gender hierarchy, they become disoriented and abuse prisoners.

Implicit in this is analysis the understanding that heteropatriarchy is essential for the building of US empire. Patriarchy is the logic that naturalizes social hierarchy. Just as men are supposed to naturally dominate women on the basis of biology, so too should the social elites of a society naturally rule everyone else through a nation-state form of governance that is constructed through domination, violence, and control.

As Ann Burlein argues in Lift High the Cross, it may be a mistake to argue that the goal of Christian Right politics is to create a theocracy in the US. Rather, Christian Right politics work through the private family (which is coded as white, patriarchal, and middle-class) to create a “Christian America.” She notes that the investment in the private family makes it difficult for people to invest in more public forms of social connection.

For example, more investment in the suburban private family means less funding for urban areas and Native reservations. The resulting social decay is then construed to be caused by deviance from the Christian family ideal rather than political and economic forces. As former head of the Christian Coalition Ralph Reed states: “The only true solution to crime is to restore the family,” and “Family break-up causes poverty.”

Unfortunately, as Navajo feminist scholar Jennifer Denetdale points out, the Native response to a heteronormative white, Christian America has often been an equally heteronormative Native nationalism. In her critique of the Navajo tribal council’s passage of a ban on same-sex marriage, Denetdale argues that Native nations are furthering a Christian Right agenda in the name of “Indian tradition.”

This trend is equally apparent within racial justice struggles in other communities of colour. As Cathy Cohen contends, heteronormative sovereignty or racial justice struggles will effectively maintain rather than challenge colonialism and white supremacy because they are premised on a politics of secondary marginalization. The most elite class will further their aspirations on the backs of those most marginalized within the community.

Through this process of secondary marginalization, the national or racial justice struggle either implicitly or explicitly takes on a nation-state model as the end point of its struggle – a model in which the elites govern the rest through violence and domination, and exclude those who are not members of “the nation.”

NATIONAL LIBERATION

Grassroots Native women, along with Native scholars such as Taiaiake Alfred and Craig Womack, are developing other models of nationhood. These articulations counter the frequent accusations that nation-building projects necessarily lead to a narrow identity politics based on ethnic cleansing and intolerance. This requires that a clear distinction be drawn between the project of national liberation, and that of nation-state building.

Progressive activists and scholars, while prepared to make critiques of the US and Canadian governments, are often not prepared to question their legitimacy. A case in point is the strategy of many racial justice organizations in the US or Canada, who have rallied against the increase in hate crimes since 9/11 under the banner, “We’re American [or Canadian] too.”

This allegiance to “America” or “Canada” legitimizes the genocide and colonization of Native peoples upon which these nation-states are founded. By making anti-colonial struggle central to feminist politics, Native women place in question the appropriate form of governance for the world in general.

In questioning the nation-state, we can begin to imagine a world that we would actually want to live in. Such a political project is particularly important for colonized peoples seeking national liberation outside the nation-state.

Whereas nation-states are governed through domination and coercion, indigenous sovereignty and nationhood is predicated on interrelatedness and responsibility.

As Sharon Venne explains, “Our spirituality and our responsibilities define our duties. We understand the concept of sovereignty as woven through a fabric that encompasses our spirituality and responsibility. This is a cyclical view of sovereignty, incorporating it into our traditional philosophy and view of our responsibilities. It differs greatly from the concept of Western sovereignty which is based upon absolute power. For us absolute power is in the Creator and the natural order of all living things; not only in human beings… Our sovereignty is related to our connections to the earth and is inherent.”

REVOLUTION

A Native feminist politics seeks to do more than simply elevate Native women’s status — it seeks to transform the world through indigenous forms of governance that can be beneficial to everyone.

At the 2005 World Liberation Theology Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, indigenous peoples from Bolivia stated that they know another world is possible because they see that world whenever they do their ceremonies. Native ceremonies can be a place where the present, past and future become copresent. This is what Native Hawaiian scholar Manu Meyer calls a racial remembering of the future.

Prior to colonization, Native communities were not structured on the basis of hierarchy, oppression or patriarchy. We will not recreate these communities as they existed prior to colonization. Our understanding that a society without structures of oppression was possible in the past tells us that our current political and economic system is anything but natural and inevitable. If we lived differently before, we can live differently in the future.

Native feminism is not simply an insular or exclusivist “identity politics” as it is often accused of being. Rather, it is framework that understands indigenous women’s struggle as part of a global movement for liberation. As one activist stated: “You can’t win a revolution on your own. And we are about nothing short of a revolution. Anything else is simply not worth our time.”

Andrea Smith is Cherokee and a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project.

thanks to

http://www.newsocialist.org/newsite/index.php?id=1013

Revolutinary Theory #3 Franz Fanon

Franz Fanon (1925-61) was born in Martinique in the French Antilles in 1925. He was educated in Martinique and in France and in 1943 he joined the Free French Forces in Dominica before being posted to Morocco. His anti racist sensibilities were sharpened by his wartime experiences as black Free French soldiers were treated as subordinate to their white counterparts and experienced racism on a daily basis.

After the war, Fanon continued his studies at Lyons Medical School where he took a course in psychiatric medicine as well as studying philosophy and editing a number of political magazines. After furthering his studies in psychiatry, he was appointed head of the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria in 1953. In 1954 he resigned to join the Algerian rebels, the FLN, fighting an armed struggle for independence from French colonial rule. This led to his expulsion from Algeria and a lifetime of critical, theoretical and practical work fighting against colonialism and racism.

As Deborah Wyrick usefully points out in her excellent introductory study, Fanon for Beginners, his work can be divided into three sections. These being; the search for black identity, the struggle against colonialism, and the process of decolonisation.2 Fanon’s work on black identity was formed through his experiences in psychiatry and is deeply influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. This stage of Fanon’s work is best illustrated by his
powerful book Black Skin, White Masks. This work can be seen as a pioneering example of psychoanalytical theory being used as a critical tool in political theoretical writing.


In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon suggests that colonialism, with its explicit conceptual under-pinnings of white racial superiority over non-white peoples, has created a sense of division and alienation in the self-identity of the non-white colonised peoples. The history, culture, language, customs and beliefs of the white colonisers are, under colonialism, to be considered as universal, normative and superior to the local indigenous culture of the colonised. This creates a strong sense of inferiority in the colonised subject and leads to an adoption of the language, culture and customs of the colonisers by the colonised as a way of compensating for these feelings of inferiority in their self-identity. This creates a divided sense of self in the subject formation of the colonised.


This adoption of the culture and beliefs of the colonisers leads to a sense of alienation from their own culture by the colonised. Fanon also suggests that the adoption of the language and forms of representation of the colonisers has further negative effects on the indigenous subject in that representational stereotypes are constructed which tend to infantilize, primitivise, decivilize, and essentialise them.3 Fanon’s work on the role of representation in the construction of self-identity clearly shows the influence of the theories of Lacan, in particular his concept of the mirror-stage of identity formation. Here Lacan outlines a theory of identity formation in reference to the image of completeness in the body of another person outside of the self. This occurs in early childhood and begins a process of identification with images in the construction of the self which continues throughout adult life.4

‘As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then I recognise that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try, then to find value for what is bad - since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution, to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and, through one human being, to reach out for the universal.’5

The second stage of Fanon’s critical activity is the struggle against colonialism, which grew out of his active involvement in the Algerian war of independence and his membership of the FLN. This can be found in his works Dying Colonialism and Toward the African Revolution. Given the revolutionary nature of these writings and the context in which they were written it will be unsurprising to find that they are deeply influenced by Marx and the discourses of Western
Marxism6 including the work of the Marxist structuralist Louis Althusser. The complex discussion in regard to importance of Marxist thinking to the project of post-colonial theory would entail a large digression and unfortunately will not be manifested here.7

Fanon’s important contribution to the struggle against colonialism is his concern with history. For Fanon, the work of the struggle against colonialism involves the ‘claiming back’ of their own history by the colonised from the negative or nonexistent versions of it produced by the colonisers. He stresses the vital importance of the culture and representations of their past being central to the creation of both new positive forms of subject formation and new forms of social organisation which are necessary in the newly independent post-colonial era. This emphasis on the creation or rediscovery of new forms of history or the understanding of history in the plural shows some affinity with the work of Michel Foucault, albeit from a position inspired by a Marxist concept of the dialectic rather than Foucault’s non-dialectical post-structuralist analysis.

Much of this work can be found in Fanon’s most famous and widely read work, The Wretched of the Earth. Published in 1961, with a preface by one of his intellectual influences, Jean-Paul Sartre, Wretched of the Earth is a passionate and revolutionary work of political critique and is a cornerstone of post-colonial theory. ‘colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts, disfigures and destroys it… . … .To fight for national culture means in the first place to fight for the liberation of the nation, that material keystone which makes the building of a culture possible.’8


The process of decolonisation relates to the third stage of Fanon’s critical activity. Along with the reclamation and reconstruction of their own history and culture as the basis for the new post-colonial forms of nation and national identity, Fanon also discusses two further ideas which are of vital interest to later post-colonial work. These are concepts of ‘colonial space’ and ideas
surrounding the role of the middle-class intelligentsia in these new nations. Both of these ideas stem from Fanon’s understanding that it is important for postcolonial nations to develop new forms of social democracy rather then utilise existing colonial institutions and simply fill existing administrative positions with indigenous people. Using the example of city planning and urbanism, Fanon suggests that these colonial institutions are inherently racist, as they reproduce and construct the concepts and ideas of the colonisers. For example, most colonial cities contain areas where the colonial administrators and business people live and work. These are zones of privilege which largely exclude indigenous people and as such, they construct and reproduce the ideologies of the colonisers. Fanon argues for the radical rebuilding of these urban areas and all other forms of colonial administration and government in ways which will
construct more democratic, post-colonial forms of social organisation, to thoroughly reject the ideologies which underpin colonial rule.


He also argues that the education sections of the colonised population must be aware that their education is based on the ideologies and beliefs of the colonisers and although they are indigenous people, they must take care not to reproduce the concepts and beliefs of the colonisers in the period of postcolonial rebuilding.


Many of Fanon’s insights have been developed by a new generation of critics and theorists who have taken his ideas as inspiration but moreover have extended their scope through the application of further contemporary forms of post-structuralist analysis, whilst retaining Fanon’s radical spirit.


FOOTNOTES

1. For more details on these ideas see McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism
Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000 pp. 6 - 34.
2. Wyrick, Deborah. Fanon For Beginners
Writers and Readers Publishing. London 1998 p. 3.
3. Ibid p. 34.
4. For more details on Lacon’s theories see Bowie, Malcolm. Lacon
Fontana, London. 1991 pp. 17 - 43.
5. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks in Ashcroft, Bill. Griffiths, Gareth.
Tiffin, Helen.
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader
Routledge, London. 1995 p. 325.
6. For more details on Marxist theory see McLellan, David. Marxism:
Essential Writings
Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1989.
7. See Wyrick, Deborah. Fanon For Beginners op. cit. pp. 122 - 132.
8. Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth in Ashcroft, B. Griffiths, G.
Tiffin, H.
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader op. cit. p. 154.



READING LIST 2

Fanon

Wyrick, Deborah. Fanon For Beginners
Writers and Readers Publishing. London. 1998.

Gordon, Lewis, R. T. Deneon Sharpley-Whiting and Renee T. White
(Eds). Fanon: A Critical Reader
Blackwell, Oxford. 1996.

Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks
Trans. Markmann, Charles. Grove Press. 1967.

Fanon, Franz. A Dying Colonialsim
Grove Press, NY. 1970.

Fanon, Franz. Toward The African Revolution
Trans. Chevalier, Haakon, Grove Press. NY. 1970.

Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth
Trans. Farrington, Constance. Grove Press NY. 1963.

Barry, John. Beginning Theory
Manchester University Press. Manchester. 1999.

Sturrock, John. The World From Paris: Essays on Modern French
Thinkers and Writers.
Verso, London. 1999.

Sturrock, John. Structuralism
Fontana, London. 1993.

Hawks, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics
Routledge, London. 1992.

Sarup, Madon. An Introductory Guide to Post-structuralism and Postmodernism
Harvester Wheatsheaf. London. 1993.

Matthews, Eric. Twentieth Century French Philosophy
Opus. Oxford. 1996.

Behey, Catherine. Critical Practice
Methuen, London. 1980.

LINKS

http://landow.stg.brown.edu/post/poldiscourse/fanon/fanon1.html, an introduction to Fanon.
http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home.htm, k.i.s.s. (Keep It Simple Stupid) of the
panopticon is a cultural theory and new media literacy
http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~ckile/cultstudslinks.html, A site for Cultural Theory links

Revolutinary Theory #2 Remembering the Black Panthers

Remembering the Black Panthers

An example of revolutionary defiance and militancy

By Carlos ‘Carlito’ Rovira

The Panthers’ action at the California Statehouse in 1967 launched them onto the national spotlight.

Forty years ago, in October 1966, the Black Panther Party was born. This was one of the highlights in the history of the U.S. revolutionary movement, and the Black liberation struggle in particular.

Young African Americans dared to stand up and challenge the rule of the capitalist state, to the point of arming themselves to demand an end to Black oppression. Their vision of Black emancipation evolved into a vision of the liberation of all oppressed people and the smashing of the capitalist system.

The U.S. government, terrified by the potential for revolution and the influence these Black leaders and freedom fighters were gaining, resorted to the most extreme violence to destroy the BPP. It is a campaign that is still felt today.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, as the party was first called, was formed in Oakland, Calif., by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The name—and the famous panther logo—came from the Lowndes Country Freedom Organization in Alabama which organized for independent Black political action with the help of Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

The formation of the Black Panther Party was the culmination of a resistance movement over the long history that characterizes the oppression of African Americans in the United States, from the lashes of slavery to the beatings and murders by the police in modern times. It grew up in the aftermath of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X—a powerful voice for militant Black self-determination and liberation. It drew inspiration from the Deacons for Defense and Justice, organized for African American self-defense against racist Klan and police terror in the South.

The Panthers recognized the need for an organization that was capable of addressing the racist violence that the Black masses faced. Every gain being made by the Civil Rights movement was being matched by violence and lynchings by racist cops and the Ku Klux Klan, in the North and South alike.

The right to armed self-defense

The Panthers won respect and admiration for their militancy and defiance in the face of the racist police state. For example, less than a year after their founding, on May 2, 1967, a group of 30 Black Panthers walked into the California state capitol building armed with shotguns and automatic rifles. The armed but peaceful demonstration was to protest the Mulford Act, aimed at prohibiting citizens from carrying firearms on their persons or in their vehicles.

As the Panthers walked towards the entrance of the capitol building, they were approached by television and other news media. They used the occasion to call upon African Americans everywhere to arm themselves against the systematic brutality and terror practiced by the power structure.

But the party’s efforts went far beyond their call for armed self-defense and their patrols of racist cops. They also carried out consistent community work, gaining the confidence of the people not only in the Black community but among other oppressed nationalities as well.

Panther chapters sprang up in the African American communities of major cities from coast to coast. Wherever they established branches, they tried to set up outreach programs like free breakfast for children and free clothing drives. They used every one of these opportunities to expose the avaricious nature of the rich and powerful who exist at the expense of the poor.

The Panthers became a symbol of militancy and discipline in the Black community.

The Panthers were influenced by Malcolm X’s rejection of “turn the other cheek” pacifism for the Black liberation struggle, as well as by the socialist movement in the United States and around the world. Their “Black Power” salute combined with street corner sales of Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Books” of quotations.

The international situation during this period also contributed to the birth of the Panthers. The 1949 Chinese Revolution, the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution and the heroic struggle of south Vietnam’s National Liberation Front against U.S. imperialism, along with the other national liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America and Asia had a great impact in inspiring revolutionaries in the United States, including the Black Panthers.

Their militancy and revolutionary politics quickly put them in the center of the African American liberation struggle, as well as in the growing mass movements that were sweeping the country.

Capitalism is the problem

More and more, the party put the blame for the plight of the African American people on the capitalist system. It rejected the view that the problems of racism could be solved within the confines of the exploitative system, or that it was possible to accumulate enough capital in the Black community to rival capitalism with “Black capital.” Instead, Panther speakers called for socialist revolution within the context of the Civil Rights era. Their uncompromisingly revolutionary and anti-capitalist stance was the most prominent in what became a new trend within the Black liberation struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.

As part of the political training of its membership, the BPP studied Marxist literature like the Communist Manifesto and the writings of Mao Zedong.

The Black Panther Party was a disciplined and organized revolutionary political entity. The Panthers put forward the need for professional, organizational sophistication in building a revolutionary political party.

While the party’s Ten-Point Program reflected its political views and line of march, it was the membership rules that ensured the internal discipline of the organization. Membership rules touched a range of matters, including mandatory collective study of revolutionary theory; respect for women inside and outside the BPP; and respect for the property of the poor.

Revolutionary multinational alliances

The Panthers advocated a united front of revolutionary organizations to guarantee the success of a revolutionary struggle in the United States. Their organizing efforts extended to Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian, other nationally oppressed people and the white working class.

They forged alliances of various kinds, such as with the American Indian Movement and Cesar Chavez and the farm workers’ movement. The Panthers stood in solidarity with the struggle for women’s equality, especially supporting those sectors of the women’s movement that were anti-imperialist and anti-racist. To the surprise of many, on the heels of the Stonewall rebellion, Panther leader Huey P. Newton publicly supported the struggle to end gay and lesbian oppression.

The Panthers perspective was toward building a multinational alliance of revolutionary organizations. Their most notable effort was the Rainbow Coalition, organized in June 1969 in Chicago by Panther leader Fred Hampton, which consisted of the Black Panther Party; the Young Lords, a U.S. organization of Puerto Rican revolutionaries; and organizations representing Chicanos, Asians and poor whites. Hampton’s vision was to eventually merge these allied organizations into a single revolutionary entity, to forge a revolutionary organization with representation from the full spectrum of the working class.

Wherever their agitational work was conducted, on the streets, on campuses or at public events, the Panthers upheld the principle of solidarity with the liberation movements in the oppressed and colonized countries. At the height of the Vietnam War, the Black Panther leadership made an open gesture of internationalism by offering to send party members to fight alongside the National Liberation Front in their struggle against U.S imperialism.

Fierce U.S. repression

Faced with the Black Panther Party’s tremendous growth and revolutionary orientation, the U.S. government struck back. It organized a massive political-military campaign, involving the FBI and police departments around the country, to destroy the Panthers’ leadership.

In a now well-documented campaign called COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program, the FBI orchestrated covert operations—personally overseen by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover—to provoke conflicts between the Black Panthers and other organizations. They employed a network of infiltrators and provocateurs to disrupt the party’s discipline and leadership.

Police attacks were common. Cops routinely raided party offices and the homes of Panther members. Dozens of Panthers were killed outright, often in cold blood. The most notable of these cop assassinations was the Dec. 4, 1969, murder of Fred Hampton in Chicago while he slept. He was 21 years old.

Dozens more Panther members and leaders spent years in prison.

The campaign to jail Panther leaders and activists long outlived the organization itself. Mumia Abu-Jamal, who at 16-years-old had been the minister of information in the party’s Philadelphia branch, was framed up and sentenced to death in 1981. He has been in prison ever since, despite a worldwide effort to save his life.

The Black Panther Party ultimately could not withstand the government onslaught. The combined police attacks and covert operations compounded internal differences. Unable to withstand the tremendous repression, by the mid-1970s the Black Panther Party was essentially defunct.

Lessons for today

Bourgeois historians often try to downplay the role of the state in the destruction of the Panthers. When they do acknowledge the state repression, it is to discourage revolutionaries—especially from the oppressed nationalities—from taking action. Do not dare to struggle, you cannot stand up to the power of the capitalist state.

Revolutionaries draw different lessons. The rulers were not then and are not now invincible. The fact that the U.S. government relentlessly attacked the Panthers before they had a chance to steel the discipline of their rank and file only points to the need to build disciplined organizations of professional revolutionaries today in preparation for the battles to come.

As long as capitalist oppression exists, the rise of revolutionary movements, like the one that gave rise to the Black Panther Party, is a historical certainty. The Panthers showed that revolutionary ideology and organization, embraced by the most oppressed sectors of the working class, is what the ruling class fears the most.

Everything the Black Panthers did and the sacrifices they made will not be in vain. Those organizing for socialism in the United States embrace their history and strive to emulate their courage and revolutionary spirit.

Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine.

Revolutionary Theory # 1 Insurrectionary anarchism

Kia Ora Whanau

This will be on on going Sunday arvo conversation about Revolutionary theory.

In Struggle & Solidarity

Ana

Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which opposes formal anarchist organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate direct action (violent or otherwise), informal organization, including small affinity groups and mass organizations which include non-anarchist individuals of the exploited or excluded class.

Many anarchist communists, such as the publishers of Barricada magazine in the United States and foreign immigrants to the US such as Luigi Galleani and Johann Most have been insurrectionary anarchists.[1]

Here, a text from the magazine "Killing King Abacus" outlines some of the basis points of insurrectionary anarchist praxis.

Insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to all social problems, a commodity on the capitalist market of ideologies and opinions, but an on-going praxis aimed at putting an end to the domination of the state and the continuance of capitalism, which requires analysis and discussion to advance. We don't look to some ideal society or offer an image of utopia for public consumption. Throughout history, most anarchists, except those who believed that society would evolve to the point that it would leave the state behind, have been insurrectionary anarchists. Most simply, this means that the state will not merely wither away, thus anarchists must attack, for waiting is defeat; what is needed is open mutiny and the spreading of subversion among the exploited and excluded. Here we spell out some implications that we and some other insurrectionary anarchists draw from this general problem: if the state will not disappear on its own, how then do we end its existence? It is, therefore, primarily a practice, and focuses on the organization of attack... The State of capital will not "wither away" ...attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation, and compromise.

Alfredo M. Bonanno, an Italian insurrectionary anarchist has also had an impact on this specific tendency, writing such works as "Armed Joy," "The Anarchist Tension," and others. Another Italian insurrectionary with great impact on anarchists was Luigi Galleani. Leon Czolgosz, President McKinley's assassin, was considered an insurrectionary anarchist. A well-known German insurrectionary anarchist was Johann Most.

In the USA, Barricada, Willful Disobedience, Killing King Abacus, and other magazines caused interest in insurrectionary anarchism to grow. Insurrectionary anarchists are generally interested in class struggle. Many also identify with related theoretical positions such as anarchist communism, Situationist theory, autonomism, primitivism, and green anarchism.

From Infoshop OpenWiki

http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/Insurrectionary_anarchism

[edit] External links

• Insurrection v.s. Organization: Reflections from Greece on a Pointless Schism, essay from Peter Gelderloos, author of How Non-violence Protects the State
• Anarchism, insurrections and insurrectionalism, article from Anarkismo.net critical of insurrectionary anarchism
• Crimethought: Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism, article from Guerrilla News Network
• Talk and Tactics and Bloody Revolution: Insurrectionary Anarchism in Seattle, audio stream interview from A-Infos Radio Project

[edit] Insurrectionary groups and publications

• Barricada An insurrectionary anarchist publication from the USA
• Killing King Abacus An insurrectionary anarchist publication from the USA
• Insurrectionary Anarchists of Seattle
• Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories, Canadian insurrectionary anarchists
• La Anarquia, Argentine insurrectionary publication (in Spanish)
• Social War, Italian insurrectionists (in Italian, English, French and Spanish)
• Modesto Anarcho, an insurrectionary anarchist journal and website based out of Modesto California.
• At Daggers Drawn Insurrectionary anarchist publication translated from Italian by Jean Weir. A poetic overview of the insurrectionary perspective.
• A Murder of Crows an insurrectionary anarchist magazine out of Seattle.

The page was seeded with material from Wikipedia

2pac 1992 Speech

1992, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement invited Tupac to speak at its banquet in Atlanta (more)

Def Poetry - Amir Sulaiman - Danger

I am a poet, writer, speaker. In many ways writing is my most signifigant means to self discovery. God willing, the people find benefit in it. I also give lectures and workshops on Freedom of Speech and the Artists Sacred Obligation, Art & Spirituality, and Manifest Liberation: Liberty of the Body, Mind and Soul:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=25954906

http://www.muslimhiphop.com/index.php?p=Hip-Hop/Amir_Sulaiman

http://www.amirsulaiman.com/

Resistencia del Pueblo Tuhoe

Entrevista con Tame Iti, activista por la soberanía de la Nación Tuhoe, en Nueva Zelanda

AKIR AND IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE-Apocalypse/Treason

About Immortal Technique

I work all the time, I try to keep distractions out of my life which is difficult because I am always connected to the streets and the people. The Middle Passage and the Green Lantern mixtape these are my life's work right now, I live and breathe Revolution, Rebellion is in my blood and HipHop is the heart that pumps it. The fight has brought us to many places but with the completion of this weapon of mine I am building it will take us to even more places. Harlem and Washington Heights is home for now, but the Earth is my turf and I'll be out there fighting soon.

When I am done we are going everywhere around the world we will ask for nothing from these devils take the right that is yours.

http://www.myspace.com/immortaltechnique

After Colonialism

thanks to Muslim Stan for this

“After Colonialism”: Fanon and the Process of Decolonization

Frantz Fanon presented the details of his decolonization paradigm in ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. His analyses of colonialism and decolonization have had a profound impact on the philosophies of many thinkers. Furthermore, his seminal work has had a far-reaching influence on resistance movements throughout the world.

It is astounding to consider that in 1800 Western powers held approximately 35 percent of the earth, in 1880 about 67 percent and in 1914 a grand total of 85 percent of the earth was held as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions or commonwealths of European nations. (Said, 1993:8) Throughout colonialism, the colonized people produced many forms of active and passive ‘resistance’. I needed to put quotation marks for the word ‘resistance’, because it was only towards the end of the 19th century, that such resistance developed into coherent political movements; for most the people of the earth, much of the 20th century involved the long struggle and eventual triumph against colonial rule, often at enormous cost of life and resources. After most of the colonized world achieved their ‘independence’, each colonized country moved from colonial to autonomous, postcolonial status. This process, also known as decolonization, went through a painful political, social and economic transition, which ultimately dealt with the crucial question of resistance. Resistance was the core and key element of the liberation program bringing about a result of independence. Although common wisdom argues that resistance may take many different forms, including passivity or remains of cultural representations and reflections, Fanon however believed the only successful resistance is active political resistance, which could possibly bring about freedom and independence from colonial rule. It is because Fanon was not only seeking to achieve autonomy for colonized country but also colonized man to achieve his self-recognition.

One of the most important contributions of Fanon’s work was revitalization of the concept of violence. As Cesaire opened avenues for Fanon, he convinced that ‘[W]e must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism’ (Cesaire, 2000: 35-36) Fanon embraced the constructive value of its destruction against colonizer and colonized. Because, for him, ‘decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.’ Through the violence colonized terminates both his enemy and inferiority complex inherited within his social imagination. In his case, surely, it was the revolutionary counter-violence. Violence, as a huge and complex issue, made an excuse for critics of Fanon to naively damn him. They, indeed, have missed the extremely significant point and vital to the resolution of a crisis of colonized man that Fanon was trying to discern from the violence. For him violence was not the ultimate goal, rather it was a tool for the struggle of colonized man to re-become and achieve self-recognition in the process of decolonization. Therefore, he argued that ‘decolonization is replacing of a certain “species” of men by another “species” of men.’ It was ‘the veritable creation of new men.’ Annals of colonization and imperialism undisputedly convinced him that there would be no successful outcome of resistance without implementing revolutionary counter violence.

According to Fanon, the colonial world was a Manichean and compartmentalized world. In this dualistic and segregated world, Fanon arrived to understanding of Hegelian-like master-slave paradigm where he saw this partition of two different species’ through their residential places within the city. Although both inhabited in the same city, colonial life for colonizer and colonized was extremely different in nature. At this point, one expects Fanon to use Marxist class analysis to explain social and economic disparities between these two ‘classes’. For Fanon, this disparity was due more than class struggle. It involves with the question of race and its severe psychiatric consequences. ‘This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem.’


Here, the core issue lies in colonial everyday life and its effects on colonized people. Colonization created compartments for ‘native’ and ‘settler.’ For the colonized, ‘the first thing, which the native learns, is to stay in his place, and not to go beyond certain limits.’ In order to crush these limits and constraints, colonization should be dismantled by struggle. This struggle, by any means, would lead violent resistance. Initially Fanon observes the consequences or fruits of individual use of violence.

At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect. (Fanon, 1963: 94)
Then, he theorizes individual use of violence and native’s regain of dignity at the level of society. The nation, colonized country, despised people and oppressed society should use violent means to reestablish their dignified self.
The existence of an armed struggle shows that the people are decided to trust to violent methods only. He of whom they have never stopped saying that the only language he understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force. (Ibid, 83)

As Fanon states above, an armed struggle and use of violence transforms and metamorphoses an entire nation and individual in their struggle for liberation. Fanon praised violence and theorized it for the process of decolonization; he himself never engaged in any act of violence of the type he considered a prerequisite in order to arrive the level of rebirth.

It has been suggested that two other Marxist revisionist were also written into the philosophical script for violence. According to Hannah Arendt;
Fanon, who had infinitely greater intimacy with the practice of violence than either [Sorel or Pareto], was greatly influenced by Sorel and used his categories even when his own experiences spoke clearly against them. (Arendt, 1969: 71)
Friends and associates however, deny, this, arguing instead that he was especially impressed with the revolutionary categories of Rosa Luxemburg. From her, he barrowed the theory that if or when capitalist modes of production were introduced into pre-capitalist economies, the difference between the two (which were now sharing the same economic environment) would also be so great that their conjunction would disrupt not only economic forces, but also create social unrest and violence. Although Fanon drew heavily on Marx, the revisionist and especially Sartre for the philosophical script for violence, he, nonetheless, modified their views. By his later years Marx’s alienation was primarily an economic and social experience: the alienation of the producer from the means of production. Fanon modified this alienation to mean two things: the alienation of colonial people from their material resources, and from their national and cultural identity; and the alienation of individuals from themselves as a consequence of French assimilation policies. Disalienation in both cases was however possible through revolutionary violence. (Perinbam, 1982: 91-92)

Fanon, like Césaire, believed deeply that ‘Europe is indefensible.’ Therefore, he did not advise colonized people to try to imitate neither European development model nor its capitalist prosperity. Rather, he investigated the source of European wealth, where he used Marxist schema. He characterizes this ‘wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized, protected robbery.’ When Fanon builds up his argument about how developed world has accumulated capital and wealth, he clearly uses Marxist analysis of capital accumulation, which occurs at the expense of exploited people.
The well being and the progress of Europe have been built up with sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races… The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too…Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth, which smothers her, is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialized in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. (Fanon, 1963: 96-102)

Although Fanon argues that ‘the wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too’, he never believes workers would take the foremost or leading position in a movement aiming revolution in colonial world. He stresses his point as following:

In the capitalist countries, the working class has nothing to lose; it is they who in the long run have everything to gain. In the colonial countries the working class has everything to lose; in reality it represents that fraction of the colonized nation, which is necessary and irreplaceable if the colonial machine is to run smoothly. (Ibid, 108)

His discontent towards political parties in colonial context convinced him that they are not genuinely integrated with the colonized masses. That’s why; he developed the idea of ‘illegal party’ and linked this group with the peasantry. Combination of these two forces would lead to emergence of a new kind of revolutionary force which, also, would help to accelerate lumpenproletariat of cities to participate into struggle. Fanon argued that ‘the outbreak of the rebellion in the towns changes the nature of the struggle’ because ‘lumpenproletriat, that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.’ He schematized and constructed his revolutionary forces in a colonial country without political parties. For him peasantry was the only revolutionary force in the nation. He added ‘illegalists’ to stimulate this ‘revolutionary force’.

Fanon details and constructs his arguments on a solid domain when he analyzes issues of bourgeoisie and national consciousness. Looking at the situation in the Colonial World, Fanon defines four main social classes to form the resistance for revolution against colonizers: bourgeoisie, the urban proletariat, the peasants, and the lumpenproletariat. Fanon argues that in the underdeveloped countries the bourgeoisie has not played initial role that Marx outlined in the Communist Manifesto. Another reason why the national bourgeoisie fails to play a progressive role in the decolonization process is its slavish imitation of European patterns of thought and its unquestioning assimilation of ideas to which it was exposed during its training in European universities. (Hansen, 1977:133-35)

Fanon also argued about national culture in the process of decolonization. He was a black-man from Martinique who matured most of his thinking among the white-man in Europe. He evaluated national culture to create a language, which can be used in national struggle. Although there are different views on how to conceptualize national culture in resistance theory, succinctly speaking, he made himself clear by declaring national culture would only have a tangible value if it were for the liberation struggle.

A national culture in developed countries should therefore take its place at the very heart of the struggle for freedom, which these countries are carrying on. (Fanon, 1963: 233)

In Fanon’s understanding, art and national culture will not be for entertainment; rather they are the tools for colonized people to contribute into the resistance. In his politics, the concept of art for art’s sake will have no place. Art will be didactic and it will aim at promoting the ends of society. (Hansen, 1977: 195)

Throughout his brilliant work, Fanon outlines his perception on colonialism, decolonization and struggle lines for liberation. His main concern is achieving freedom. It may sound as an abstract or common goal, which can be easily found among many theorists whom dealt with colonialism and imperialism. What make Fanon’s ideas distinct are his real life experiences. His apprehension of colonized people’s everyday life taught him clearly that resistance against colonization is a serious business; it is always a life-death matter and certainly violent process. Parry argues that for Fanon, ‘the colonized prior to modern movements for national independence were passive, stultified, unproductive. Presumably this characterization applied only to the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, since Algeria is credited with sustained military and cultural resistance against the French occupiers.’ (Parry, 1996: n103)

Then, how are we going to establish a resistance theory, a ‘counter hegemonic work’ that will grasp both decolonization process and post-colonial identity? Can we talk about a universally abstract form of resistance against colonization? Why Algerian, Caribbean and Indian decolonization processes are differ from each other? Is it because of their nature of ‘resistance’ or colonizers political economic geopolitics in those particular regions?

Both Parry and Lazarus argued that national ‘anti-colonial’ and ‘resistance’ theories have vague conceptualizations within the postcolonial literature. (Parry, 1998; Lazarus, 1999) Parry charges that,

All anti-colonialist manifestos assail colonialist assumptions; socialist programs register a rupture with dominant forms of Western thinking, and far from articulating nostalgia for the past, contemplate a condition transcending both the precolonial and the colonial. (Parry, 1998: 46)

Parry’s argument above is similar to when Fanon emphasizes on Westernized intellectual (who through the medium of culture has filtered into Western civilization [Fanon, 1963: 219]) and the national liberation party who starts imitating pre-colonial period, mainly attitudes of colonizing power. So, what will be the common authentic ground for resistance and post-colonial recovery? At this point, one should also articulate on national consciousness before and during the decolonization process. A solid and authentic national culture and anticolonial nationalism may well be a productive ground in order to avoid imitation of past colonial power. Parry argues that,

Fanon was not alone in declaring that ‘[I]t is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows’, a dialectical formulation and a Marxist sentiment which neither categorically rejects anticolonial nationalism nor proleptically embraces a contemporary cultural politics of transnationalism. (Ibid, 48)

Lazarus stresses that ‘Fanon addressed himself with such insistence to the question of national liberation, some Marxists have envisioned him as a nationalist –no matter how progressive- rather than as a revolutionary socialist’ and they focused on these issues to criticize him. Fanon’s ideas are charged with ‘abstract totalization against subaltern thought’, ‘theoretical anti-humanism’, ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘Eurocentrism.’ (Clegg, 1979: Bhabha, 1989: Miller, 1990) Among those critics, Miller goes further and argues that Fanon’s discourse on nation and national liberation falls into ‘irreducible Eurocentrism.’ Miller claims that Fanon disregards (when he speaks of African culture) local knowledge and treats precolonial history, as it has never existed. On the other hand, Lazarus believes that Miller misreads Fanon by claiming that ‘Fanon’s representation of African culture in the era of colonialism as representation of a history-less, culture-less precoloniality. Miller fails to reckon with Fanon’s construction of colonialism as a total and elemental rupture within African history.’ (Lazarus, 1999: 83-85)

Lazarus argues that ‘at the theoretical level, Fanon’s error consists in a confusion of dominance with hegemony.’ Under the colonial rule, it is hard to claim that entire population was subject to ‘hegemonic’ oppression. As Ranajit Guha argued, members of the subaltern classes experienced dominance rather than hegemony. There were class divisions among the ‘dominant’ and ‘hegemonic’ reach of colonialism. It is to say, different than urban subjects of colonialism, subaltern masses maintained ‘a certain distance’ to the colonizer’s culture by preserving their traditional culture. (Ibid, 89-91)

For Fanon, regardless of emphasizing on subaltern consciousness, question remains same: ‘In short, is the struggle for liberation a cultural phenomenon or not?’ (Fanon, 1963: 245) He answers this question by returning his central point:

The nation is not the condition of culture, its fruitfulness, its continuous renewal, and its renewal, and it’s deepening. It is also a necessity. It is the fight for national existence, which sets culture moving and opens to it the doors of creation. (Ibid, 244)

Fanon is well aware of the fact that without independence and termination of colonial oppression, there is no point of speaking about culture. Since he argues the colonized can only reach his manhood and dignity by freedom, at the same token culture, too, could be preserved only by national liberation. Otherwise we could only talk about some cultural remains of colonized people, which lost its spirit and productivity.

Conclusion

Similar to nature of colonialism new nations are built with a cement of blood and anger. Fanon lived in the middle of violence, and wrote about prime necessity of political violence. Fanon transformed his theory of violence into a resistance metaphor in order to activate and revitalize whom he called the ‘masses’. He has been criticized for using the term violence without making any distinction between power and coercion. This loose usage of terms also reflected in his perception of national culture. Although fanon’s work and his critics’ claims should be studied in a lengthy paper, I think, we should emphasize on his core ideas within the constraints of colonial situation(s). Because whatever Fanon argued was due to practical circumstances he went through. His analysis of the decolonization, roles of peasantry, proletariat, lumpenproletariat and national bourgeoisie still opens new avenues for the contemporary thinkers. In addition, current world affairs, new face of capital, and economic expansions of North forces us to rethink about Fanon’s ideas and observe that they are still extremely relevant.

i In his Phenomenology of the Mind, Hegel constructed a solid ‘master-slave’ paradigm based on ‘recognition.’ Hegel asserts “self-consciousness exists in and for itself only in being recognized by another self-consciousness.” Hegel goes on the show how the process of this pure Notion of recognition “appears to self-consciousness”. To put this in another way, the self-consciousness is embodied as an individual being of Life, the “I”. What the other is for the “I” is an “unessential, negatively characterized object.” Though the fact is that each of them is self-consciousness, and it is one individual confronted by another individual, they do not yet recognize each other as independent individual but as merely the purely negative being of self-identical consciousness. Hegel asserts that it is a necessity that each individual will engage in a life-and-death struggle. It’s necessary because “they must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth…. And it is only through staking one’s life that freedom is won.” Now, we have one being “only recognized” and the other “only recognizing”. This leads to the master/slave situation. The independence the master has achieved is based on a mediated relation. The slave works on the objects in accordance with the forms of the master’s desires. The slave relates to the master as a provider and produced of the objects of desire satisfying. The objects relate to the master through the shaping efforts of the slave. However, the master’s desires are met immediately in the sense that he confronts no independent beings but merely negative things. The immediacy of the satisfaction of master’s desires makes his desires fleeting, without check.
ii See Lazarus’ summary of debate at pages: 84-95

Bibliography

Arendt Hannan, On Violence, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1969
Cesaire Aime, Discourse on Colinialism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2000
Fanon Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, New York1963
Hansen Emmanual, Frantz Fanon, Social and Political Thought, Ohio State University Press, 1977
Lazarus Neil, Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 1999
Perinbam, B. Marie, Holy violence: the revolutionary thought of Frantz Fanon : an intellectual biography, Three Continents Press, Washington, D.C.,1982
Parry Benita, Contemporary Postcolonial Theory, Resistance Theory/Theorising Resistance or Two Cheers for Nativism, Arnold, London, 1996
Liberation Movements: Memories of the Future, Interventions, Vol.1(1) 45-51, Routledge, 1998
Said W.Edward, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, New York

MALCOLM X: By Any Means Necessary

http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/

An African hero: Biko - the forgotten martyr

Thirty years after he was murdered in police custody, the African trade unionist remains a thorn in the side of the ANC and a stark reminder of a more radical approach to dealing with apartheid and its aftermath. By Raymond Whitaker
Published: 12 September 2007

I met Steve Biko once. His miserable death on the floor of a South African prison cell, 30 years ago today, still lay a few years in the future. So did his friendship with the white newspaper editor, Donald Woods, resulting in the book and film, Cry Freedom!, which made him an icon. But if the name of Biko became a thorn in the side of the white regime, today's commemorations will be equally uncomfortable for South Africa's black majority government.

In the early 1970s, few whites had heard of Steve Biko. I had, because I was covering "alternative" politics – such stirrings against apartheid that white liberals and their allies in other communities could get away with – for a South African newspaper, The Star. However it was anything but a full-time assignment.

Never did the grip of apartheid seem as complete as it did then. Nelson Mandela had been locked up on Robben Island for the best part of a decade; in the all-white parliament, the lone dissenting voice was that of Helen Suzman. Blacks could only practise politics in the "homelands" created for them in the poorest, most arid parts of the country.

A handful of organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), of which I had been a member not so long before, sought to keep the non-racial flame alive. But the enforced segregation of the universities, and the sheer gulf between the daily lives of whites and the rest, made it increasingly difficult to find any common ground. To the horror of the well-meaning whites at the head of Nusas, their black counterparts began to accuse them of holding back the cause of black empowerment through paternalism and unconscious racism.

At the forefront of those levelling the charge – which many of those liberals might now admit had considerable truth – was a young activist called Steve Biko. A former leader of strikes and sit-ins at his segregated medical school near Durban, he had quit his studies and formed the South African Students' Organisation, which excluded whites. Now he was coming to Johannesburg for a conference where the split with Nusas would become final, and I hoped to interview him about his espousal of Black Consciousness, which argued that blacks had to overcome the feelings of inferiority instilled into them, the "oppression within", before they could deal with whites as equals. "It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life," he explained in 1971.

Had I understood the concept better at the time, I would have realised that there was no chance of getting Biko to talk to a paper like The Star, which in his view shared all the faults of the whites in Nusas. But just to encounter him, or watch him glowering at an exam-room table behind a cardboard sign bearing the name "Saso", was to feel his charisma. Tall, handsome, articulate – "Why do you call yourself black, when your skin is brown?" a judge once asked him. "Why do you call yourself white, when you are actually pink?" he shot back – he bore himself with rare confidence that showed no hint of any "oppression within".

The apartheid government of Prime Minister John Vorster should have realised immediately that Biko was a threat, but all it saw was his call for blacks to work separately from whites. In its glee at the discomfiture of Nusas and similar organisations, it gave Saso room to operate. By 1973 it realised its mistake, and "banned" Biko, confining him to his hometown in the eastern Cape and prohibiting him from writing or speaking in public and anyone else from quoting his words. But it was too late: when first the students of Soweto, then black townships across the country, rose up in 1976, the Black Consciousness movement was their inspiration. It had filled the vacuum left by the African National Congress, most of whose leaders were jailed or in exile.

If the townships revolt undermined the myth of white omnipotence, Biko's death destroyed any claim the regime had to morality. Not only was he beaten unconscious while being detained without trial in Port Elizabeth, he was then carried nearly 1,000 miles in a police van, naked and in a coma, to Pretoria, where he died of a brain haemorrhage on 12 September, 1977. The police minister, Jimmy Kruger (memorably played by John Thaw in Cry Freedom!) claimed Biko had been on hunger strike, telling parliament: "His death leaves me cold."

That added to international revulsion against South Africa. In 1980 the singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel had a world hit with Biko, in which he sang: "You can blow out a candle/ But you can't blow out a fire/ Once the flames begin to catch/ The wind will blow it higher." His words referred equally to the resistance inside the country and the pressure by Western publics on their governments to withdraw support for the apartheid regime.

For the first time countries began imposing sanctions against South Africa, starting with the UN Security Council mandatory ban on arm sales to the country. Cry Freedom! in 1987, with Denzel Washington as Biko and Kevin Kline as Woods, gave Steve Biko the same kind of international name recognition as Nelson Mandela. So why is it that Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, never mentions the name of Steve Biko once?

After he became president, Mr Mandela made some amends, saying on the 20th anniversary of Biko's death: "That he was indeed a great man who stood head and shoulders above his peers is borne out not only by the testimony of those who knew him and worked with him, but by the fruits of his endeavours.

"History called upon Steve Biko at a time when the political pulse of our people had been rendered faint by banning, imprisonment, exile, murder and banishment. Repression had swept the country clear of all visible organisation of the people. But at each turn of history, apartheid was bound to spawn resistance; it was destined to bring to life the forces that would guarantee its death.

"It is the dictate of history to bring to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko, a fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people."

Although Mandela claimed in the same address that the ANC welcomed Black Consciousness from the early 1970s "as part of the genuine forces of the revolution", an unhappy schism has existed.. More than a decade earlier the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had split from the ANC in protest at the desire of Mandela and his peers to work with all races in South Africa. The Black People's Convention, which Biko founded as an umbrella movement of Black Consciousness groups, threw in its lot with the PAC in post-apartheid South Africa, and has ended up on the political margins, with scarcely any representation in parliament.

If Biko were alive today, it is quite possible, given his charisma, that he would be the leader of a far more vigorous opposition to the ANC government than the existing one. Instead, the ANC successfully co-opted most of his following. As a martyr, however, he remains potentially unsettling: the commemorations of his death have included an international conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT) examining his politics and relevance to modern-day South Africa, touching on politically sensitive issues such as land transfers and black economic empowerment. Organised by the Steve Biko Foundation, it is part of a series of events across the country which the SBF has named 30:30 – 30 years since his death, and his age when he died.

His son Nkosinathi, who manages the Foundation, was just six at the time of Biko's death. "In his short life he made a tremendous contribution not only to the political freedom of South Africa, but to the mental liberation of black people worldwide," he said. "In popular culture, he is a very powerful symbol of hope, an icon of change. He helped to articulate our understanding, our own identity that continues to resonate in young South Africans to this day. His ideas have a real influence well beyond the political field, in cultural organisations, in research organisations and in churches."

Not enough, according to Premesh Lalu, an associate professor at the University of Western Cape. While it was important to remember Biko's death, said Mr Lalu, "I personally think there is much more to be said about Biko and done with Biko's thoughts." To an ANC government vulnerable to left-wing accusations that it has pursued rigidly orthodox capitalist economic policies that have not done enough for the masses, it is not an entirely comforting thought.

There is disenchantment among young South Africans, who see the country's leaders embroiled in scandal and a new black elite growing richer while most blacks find it harder and harder to keep up with inflation.

Though most of the wearers are too young to remember him, Steve Biko's face, given a Warhol-style treatment, has become a popular icon on T-shirts recently. Nkosinathi rejects any suggestion that this might be trivialising his memory, arguing: "He is one of the attractive symbols of popular culture. Not just here but on the streets of New York, Brasilia and Liverpool, he is someone who resonates well." Kopano Ratele, a researcher with the University of South Africa's Institute of Social and Health Sciences, agreed, saying: "People who were teenagers or in their twenties in the 1970s still remember Biko with nostalgia, and they credit him for giving them a sense of pride in themselves."

It will be interesting to see how President Thabo Mbeke, whose obsession with maintaining control of the ANC and the government is entirely at odds with the kind of grass-roots activism for which Biko stood, will reconcile these contradictions tonight when he delivers the eighth annual Biko Memorial Lecture, which will bring the conference at UCT to a close. Mr Ratele is in little doubt. If Biko were still alive, he said, he would be disappointed to see his ideas compromised by poverty and inequality. "If you are unemployed and poorly-paid and you see the rich blacks, of what use is your pride?"

Additional reporting by Ian Evans in Cape Town

30th Anniversary of Steve Biko's Murder

Biko

September '77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead


You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

And the eyes of the world are
watching now
watching now
(Peter Gabriel)

From Ridwan's awesome blog
Soweto riots of 2007
http://ridwanlaher.blogspot.com/2007/09/soweto-riots-of-2007.html

> Today is the 30th anniversary of Steve Biko's death at the hands of
> police in apartheid South Africa. As the radio talk back remembers
> the apartheid regime of South Africa and we a subjected to the
> endless bleating of non-Indigenous liberals about the state of South
> Africa then, I cannot help but recall that whenever Australia was
> asked to vote at the UN regarding apartheid, they dissented.
>
> I also cannot help but hope that one day Australia's oppressive
> covert state of apartheid will be recognised for what it is and that
> our Koori, Noonga, Nunga and Murri brothers and sisters are still
> dying in disproportionate numbers at the hands of police.....whilst
> the rest of suburbia kid themselves that this is the 'lucky country'
> and we are all about a 'fair go'.
>
> History will judge this country and it will be found wanting.
>
> Jo


Apartheid in Strayaliea will be brought down by International pressure,
how many Steve Biko's do we need we have had at least 400 state
murders in custody since 1990.

http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/05/life-death-of-steve-biko.html

http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/07/robert-sobukwe.html
http://zar.co.za/biko.htm

MERGER Biko (Live on Revolver 1978)

Huey P. Newton: Interview From Jail