Ajamu Baraka
Global Research
29 March 2018
“They called in [Roy] Wilkins; they
called in [A. Philip] Randolph; they called in these national Negro
leaders that you respect and told them, ‘Call it off.’ Kennedy said,
‘Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.’ And Old Tom said,
‘Boss, I can’t stop it, because I didn’t start it.’… And that old shrewd
fox, he said, ‘If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put
you at the head of it.’… (Malcolm X on the 1963 “Farce on Washington”)
Liberals and Democrat party connected
organizations and networks have been quite adept at getting out in front
of movements to pre-empt their radical potential and steer them back
into the safe arms of liberal conformism. Before resistance to the
election of Donald Trump could be developed into a radical rejection of
the neoliberal order, the new alignment of ruling class forces that
coalesced around the candidacy of Hilary Clinton launched a pre-emptive
strike against Trump with the two-fold objective of preventing him from
governing and ensuring that opposition to Trump did not take on an
anti-system character.
A similar thing happened after the 2006
massive marches of undocumented migrant workers that had a militant
anti-capitalist component. It was quickly marginalized and transformed
into something called “immigrant rights” with the highest demand being a
demand to become legalized settlers. Then, on the 50th
anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington when Black people
were still experiencing the devastating and disproportionate impact of
the capitalist crisis of 2007-08, members of the Black Mis-leadership
class warmly welcomed the first Black president to join in the day’s
festivities ensuring that the gathering would be devoid of any
meaningful politics.
Unfortunately, for the young people who
sincerely want to understand and confront gun violence, the opportunism
of the democrats made these students and their pain easy targets to
advance the agenda of the democrat party that sees this issue as one
that will advance their electoral agenda.
While the democrat party and liberals
pretend to respect and celebrate the young people, they know that the
narrow focus on largely irrelevant gun control reforms like more
background checks, banning certain ammunition clips, and sale of assault
weapons will do nothing to confront what Dr. King referred to as the
deep malady at the heart of U.S. culture that makes it so fundamentally
violent.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, points out in lavish detail on the subject in her new book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.”
She reminds the reader of the central role of violence and the reason
why the second amendment was seen by the ruling elite of the U.S.
settler state as a fundamental right, second only to freedom of speech.
She argues that the gun control and the normalization of violence was
essential to how white nationalism, racialized dominance, and social
control through systematic violence operated in the U.S. It was the
method in which white settlers appropriated Native land and controlled
their massive enslaved population.
So the young people will need to
understand that this normalization of violence is reflected in the
social institutions, values, and ethical framework of their society. The
violent, white male shooters that are now turning their guns on the
society at large are not an aberration but a logical, almost inevitable
consequence of a culture in which people are degraded and de-humanized
as instruments for others pleasure and exploitation, made into things,
through what Dr. King called the process of “thingingfication.”
A respectful engagement with these young
people is one in which you struggle with their understanding of the
terms of their culture, its history and reality. We must be honest with
them and help them to understand the role of violence not only as a
cultural product but as the main instrument that created their nation. That
violence is systemic to the system and history of their
settler-colonial nation and for the maintenance of the U.S. empire.
Judging from some of the statements, many
of these young people are close to making the right connections. That
it is the “thingingfication” of the racialized “other” that more people
cannot see the moral contradiction between the concern for gun violence
in the U.S. and their continued support for U.S. militarism abroad.
Radical politicization means that they
and the public at large come to terms with the fact that the arms
industry and the proliferation of arms/weapons is not just a problem
domestically but that it is a billion-dollar industry in which
representatives from both parties are implicated. And if the NRA is a
terrorist organization, what does that make the arms industries and the
U.S. state?
However, as long as those young people
are ensnared by the morally challenged liberal democrats, their
ideological development will be arrested, and a few will emerge as “new
leaders” given salaries, awards for being in the struggle for two weeks
and will become weapons used to block authentic radicalization among
their constituency. That is how hegemony works.
Fredrick Jameson reminds us of the lesson
that these young people will have to learn that they will not learn
from their liberal benefactors: “The lesson is this, and it is a lesson
about systems: one cannot change anything without changing everything.”
So, it was a good week for both bourgeois
parties. The democrats didn’t get called out for their collaboration
with Trump and the republicans on the budget. The Trump folks have more
ammunition to use to mobilize their supporters in opposition to what
they will frame as efforts to violate the constitution and take away
their guns and give more power to a repressive government. Even the
intelligence agencies benefited from the week’s events with attention
being shifted away from the FBI scandal that is threatening to blow the
cover off of official criminal activity to undermine the electoral
process, not by the Russians, but unelected forces in the U.S. state.
But for those of us from the colonized
Black and Brown zones of non-being, we can never allow ourselves to be
distracted by the diversionary and accommodationist politics of the
latest carefully crafted spectacle, especially one that proports to be
advancing a superior moral politics.
We must always remind ourselves that some
can march with the confidence that “their” government might be trusted
with regulating weapons and protecting their lives but that the
protection of our fundamental human rights rest with our ability to
defend our collective rights, and no one else.
Through our painful lived experiences,
we understand and must live by the insight provided by our dear brother,
James Baldwin, who counseled us that we must be vigilant when our
oppressors speak of morality and the sanctity of life:
“The “civilized” have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death; these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the conscience of civilized world.”
Distraction can be deadly, let’s us get and stay woke!
Ajamu Baraka is the
national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016
candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor
and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing
columnist for Counterpunch. His latest publications include contributions to “Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi. He can be reached at: Ajamubaraka.com
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