The Voice of the Anti-Imperialist Movement from

Under Lock & Key

Got a keyboard? Help type articles, letters and study group discussions from prisoners. help out
[Idealism/Religion] [Theory] [ULK Issue 44]
expand

Talks about Sovereignty: A Scientific Approach

Sovereign Citizen white nationalists
The sovereign citizens movement has become among the top domestic terrorist groups on the FBI’s list in the United $tates for refusing to cooperate with the government. People of this movement assume an artificial independence as a nation and refuse to file taxes, carry any type of license or hold a social security card. Question is, where does the anti-imperialist movement stand with these individuals and how does their approach to liberation compare to that of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

It is reported that more than 300,000 people are self-declared sovereign citizens in the United $tates, and it is predicted to be one of the fastest growing movements in U.$. history.(1) So it is a reasonable question to ask whether these people are on to something or not.

It appears that the sovereign citizens movement is currently one of a mixture of oppressed nation lumpen, bourgeois nationalists and petty bourgeois organizations across the United $tates. For example, among those claiming to be sovereign citizen organizations are the New Afrikan groups like the Moorish Nation, the Mawshakh Nation of Nuurs and the Washitaw Nation, both Islamic and Hebrewic. Then there are the white nationalists responsible for publications and broadcasting programs for the movement: From the Embassy of Heaven, The Aware Group, the Republic of Texas, Rightway LAW, Freedom Bound International and Amen-Ra BTO, Inc.; and personalities like David W. Miller, Charles Weisman, Alfred Adask, George Gordon and Brent Johnson.

Lumpen class in search of answers

The talk of sovereign citizens in prison was first heard by the author in 2009, promoted by a variety of lumpen prisoners professing to be card-holding members of the jailhouse lawyers National Lawyers Guild. They claimed to possess the mysterious knowledge, which utilized in U.$. courts could result in riches from financial settlements, as well as the potential of an early release for prisoners who have learned the craft of cracking the code described as redemption.

Lumpen in the United $tates, in general, are always looking for a come up, but they rarely consider at what cost will they come up. They, in general, believe that if they can just grow their underground economy they can free themselves. This viewpoint is a product of the lumpen’s relationship to capitalism as belonging to internal semi-colonies. Lumpen are excluded from the prosperous imperialist economy overall, yet given tastes of that wealth via these underground economies that also provide an illusion of acting outside of the system. It seems that the popularity of the sovereign citizens movement in prisons can be explained this way, the difference being that it actually claims to be based in law.

With its promises of wealth, stature, independence and self-control, lumpen prisoners are not blamed for lining up to receive what they’ve been conditioned to know as being freedom. However, they are cautioned that everything that glitters isn’t gold. What we see at play is the principal contradiction that defines the lumpen class in our society: the individualist tendencies to come up at the expense of others that are required of an excluded class in a capitalist economy, and the need for collective action to overcome those conditions and attain true freedom. We even see the New Afrikan organizations promoting the ideas of sovereign citizenship have borrowed from the ideas of national liberation movements as well. But rather than fight for national liberation of New Afrika, they define their nation in opportunistic ways as if a nation is something that any group of people can just create out of thin air. We recognize nations as scientific phenomena, that exist in the real world and are defined as a group of people with a common culture, territory, language and economy.

It is important that lumpen prisoners begin to pick out the right things, that which they have persynally tested, inspected, researched and referenced to reality in the method of dialectical materialism. Lumpen prisoners have a problem in the areas of these last four key words: tested, inspected, researched and referenced. This failure is the main cause of the material circumstances leading to the divisions between the individualist lumpen prisoners vs. the self-sufficient collective of prisoners struggling for liberation within the movement towards national independence.

Too often lumpen prisoners get something, or hear of something from another inmate and they just run with it, spreading something that they are unfamiliar with and misinforming others. The sovereign citizens movement has benefited from this tendency.

What is sovereign citizens about?

Lumpen prisoners of white oppressor nation origins probably can describe a more definitive history of this movement beginning somewhere in the 1960s to challenge the legitimacy of U.$. tax laws and the U.$. government itself. It is doubted whether most oppressed nation prisoners can describe the founding groups, from Oregon and California, like the Posse Comitatus, which is based in extreme, unrealistic white supremacy.

The philosophy of the sovereign citizens movement is based in the theory that the U.$. government is operating as a fraud commercial entity that is bankrupted and indebted to foreign nations. Many sovereign citizens movement groups subscribe to this idea in that the original U.$. government was that of colonial Amerika based in British common law as a de jure government. After the civil war there supposedly developed a secondary government de facto of its previous state-based governments of settlers.

When they say de jure, they mean legal and therefore legitimate. In contrast, de facto means that it exists but it is not official. It is common to refer to a de facto government after a civil war to imply that things have not been settled and brought back to order. What that order is, is of course a political question in itself. The dictatorship over the capitalists in the south by the capitalists of the northern states after the civil war was a progressive one that marked the end of slavery and forced integration on the white settlers, though much of the progress on integration was later turned back by reactionary forces and proved an overall failure. Therefore, to question the legitimacy of the post-civil war government in the United $tates has a clear connection to this ongoing reactionary movement for white supremacy in North America. While these forces see independence and state’s rights as a means of maintaining their national privilege, the internal semi-colonies are attracted to national liberation struggles (and therefore other politics of local control) as means of ending the national oppression that is the other side of the dialectical coin. To have an oppressor nation, you must have at least one oppressed nation.

Many sovereign proponents, like the Whitten Printers, have broken down the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.$. Constitution to the least common denominator. They argue that it was created by the de facto government in order to nationalize Black slaves and afford free Black slaves with comparable rights of the unalienable Constitutional rights of white settler state citizens, leading us to question whether they are reading from the same history books as the rest of us struggling for self-determination.

These sovereign citizens hold that they are not subject to the nationalization process to become federal citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment de facto government because they weren’t slaves, they aren’t colored, and they never signed into any contract agreements with the de facto government. Basically, they are royal citizens holding on to the good ol’ days of the British colonies. Ain’t that cute.

Critics of the sovereign citizens theory assert that it fails to sufficiently examine the context of the case law from which they cite and ignore adverse evidence, such as The Federalist No. 15, where Alexander Hamilton expressed the view that the Constitution placed everyone persynally under federal authority. And as the Fourteenth Amendment itself reads, in part:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”(2)

Additionally,
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”(3)

All oppressed nation prisoners must be aware of these facts before they allow themselves to be rallied into support for a movement like the sovereign citizens. The sovereign citizens movement is a white oppressor nation movement whose interest is directly in conflict with yours. They want to preserve imperialism at the cost of your independence and self-determination. National liberation from the imperialist states is in the interest of all lumpen prisoners, and the best way to effect this objective is for all the semi-colonies of the United $tates to support national liberation struggles of the oppressed.

We must also remind comrades that the fascist movement in Italy and the Nazi movement in Germany were appealing to a primarily dissatisfied petty bourgeoisie as well as lumpen and proletarian elements with rhetoric against the state, the bankers and big businesses at the time with some nonsensical religious ideas mixed in and lots of chauvinism. In the event of further imperialist crisis, if the imperialists are pushed to take a fascist approach to managing the people and economy, the sovereign citizens and similar movements will be the ready made mass movements that provide the footsoldiers for such a project. The oppressed peoples of the world must combat this with proletarian internationalism and dialectical materialism and break free of the ignorance that allows us to be suckered by the false claims of such groups.


MIM(Prisons) adds: We want to give Loco1 props for working on this review of the sovereign citizens movement. S/he was one of a number of comrades who have written us about it. And as a very active leader in USW we asked h to write a critique of the ideology behind the movement. Loco1 was hesitant at first for lack of information and knowing where to start.

While limiting access to information helps prevent ideological unity across the imprisoned lumpen, this article goes to show the greater importance of method. Loco1 was able to spearhead this critique with limited resources at h fingertips, but using an analytic approach.

Some of the appeal of the sovereign citizens and similar right-wing anti-government movements is based in an appeal to authority, where they cite a bunch of case law in an effort to convince you that they know what they are talking about. But this reliance on caselaw itself is idealism. It is similar to those who search for answers in ancient religions, as if there is a secret out there that just needs to be found and it will solve all our problems. This is appealing, it is a theme that sells many movies and books, but it is not reality. A real way to solve problems is to understand reality, the contradictions that make it up, and how things are moving so that we can transform reality. No one has been liberated by sovereign citizen paperwork, because it is just words on paper, and words on paper cannot magically liberate you from a real system that is made up of millions of people.

chain
[Idealism/Religion] [Migrants] [Europe] [ULK Issue 43]
expand

France Targets National Minorities on the Streets and in Prisons

national front opposes islamization

After the recent attack on Charlie Hebdo, the French satiric weekly magazine, there has been a lot of focus on the Muslim population in France. Islam is a religion and not a nationality, but because Muslims in France come predominantly from North Africa and the Middle East, anti-Muslim sentiments feed into xenophobia and attacks on national minorities. There are a lot of parallels between the situation for Muslims in France and the oppressed nations (such as New Afrikan, Chican@ and First Nations) within U.$. borders. And recently these contradictions have been exposed in French prisons as well.

French law prohibits asking people their religion and so no official statistics are collected on the size of the Muslim population. Based on a variety of studies it is estimated that about 10% (5 million) of the the people living in France are Muslim. The 3 million foreign-born Muslims in France mostly come from the former North African French colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.(1) Muslims in France face significant economic hardship and generally do not enjoy the spoils of imperialist plunder and exploitation shared with French citizens. Unemployment among youth (15-29 years old) in France in 2002 was at 15% for French citizens and 46% for migrants from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey. Even for immigrants with a college degree the rate of unemployment was twice that of natives with a college degree.(2) Similar disparities are seen in educational achievement by Muslims compared with non-Muslims. And a large portion of the recent immigrant population and their descendants are found in housing projects concentrated in and around France’s large cities.

As we find in Amerikan prisons, the French imprisoned population is disproportionately from the oppressed nations. Although Muslims make up less than 10% of France’s population, they constitute about half of France’s 68,000 prisoners. (Overall France has a much smaller prison population than in the United States, with less than 1 per 1,000 residents locked up compared with the Amerikan imprisonment rate of 7 per 1,000.)

One of the Kouachi brothers involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack previously spent 20 months in prison just outside of Paris. Media reports are claiming that he was locked up for petty crimes and turned to radical Islam based on his education and exposure behind bars, and that it was there he met another Muslim convert in prison who helped with the Paris attacks. Detailed background on this man suggests he became involved with Islamic leaders on the streets, but did radicalize in prison. It’s hard to say how much of this prison radicalization story is a ruse to justify targeting Muslim leaders behind bars.(3)

The Kouachi brothers, French citizens of Algerian parents, grew up in housing projects in Paris. They were poor and surrounded by others like themselves: national minorities in a country that is moving increasingly towards xenophobia. These national minorities find themselves isolated and disproportionately represented in the First World lumpen class.

A survey conducted in 2014 in France found that 66% of the French believe there are too many foreigners in France. 75% of the factory workers, who are part of that labor aristocracy which enjoys elevated non-exploitation wages and benefits, oppose France embracing globalization. The mass base for fascism is the labor aristocracy in imperialist countries,(4) and these same people are the base for the growth in support for the far-right National Front party which 34% of French people polled see as a credible political alternative.(5)

Kouachi’s history in prison is being used to underscore France’s concern about the radicalization of prisoners. Prisoners enter the system and learn about Islam from fellow captives. To address this “problem” French authorities are now experimenting with segregating those considered “Muslim radicals” from general population. This sounds a lot like long-term isolation or control units which are used in Amerikan prisons, torturing politically active prisoners. While details are sparse about the experimental units, prisoners subjected to these conditions are protesting the treatment. We can expect that this isolation will be used to target anyone who speaks out against the French government or other imperialist powers.

At the same time France does not appear to be slowing down the imprisonment of Muslims. For instance, in mid-January a 31-year-old Tunisian man was sentenced to 10 months behind bars after a verbal conflict with police in which he said that an officer shot in the recent attacks “deserved it.”(6)

The French government is facing the contradictions of a criminal injustice system that we see in all imperialist countries. Using prisons for social control means locking up oppressed groups, those who are most likely to disagree with and disrupt the capitalist system. But targeting oppressed groups for imprisonment creates an opportunity for prisoners to quickly become educated and radicalized against the system that put them behind bars. This is the system itself creating the conditions of its own demise.

While prisoners alone will not bring down imperialism, the lumpen in First World countries are potential allies of the international proletariat. And national polarization and xenophobia will feed the development and political consciousness of this lumpen class.

chain
[United Front] [Idealism/Religion] [Colorado State Penitentiary] [Colorado]
expand

Breaking the Colorado Ad-Seg Cycle of Violence

Less than a week ago I progressed from Colorado’s control units (or what our lying Governor called “restrictive housing”) to the new maximum custody status. For a step into progress it feels like regression. Guards not only disrespect you blatantly, but come up with ways to make slick comebacks to our most basic requests. The deal is this: we are one foot out of segregation with one foot still in. If we mess up here, we will be sent back to the hole. And the guards are creating more hostile environments to get us to combat one another. Revolutionary education has never been more needed.

A few days ago, a New Afrikan and a Chicano got into a fight. The fight really wasn’t more than a two-punch-it’s-over type of thing; both individuals hit each other one time. But that triggered a wave of 30+ guards to our unit that at the time only had five people there! Two guards came in with shotguns that were loaded with rubber bullets, which do penetrate skin. This is new. Pepper spray was once used to end fights.

Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Rick Raemisch implemented new measures to rid the state of administrative segregation. But what this really did was create new titles for the same program. Only now, what little comfort we had is now all gone: food items off canteen gone, all tea, kool-aid, and other comfort items are gone. TVs now will be given after 90 days. So even if you’ve completed your punitive time from your other facility, it doesn’t count when you arrive in solitary at Colorado State Penitentiary.

Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) has effectively created one of the most intensively repressive systems Colorado has ever seen. Mr. Raemisch has instated runaway wardens to create lockdowns and other tensions at these places.

In the United States of Amerikkka there is no such thing as rights, only power struggles. I’ve not seen a yard in a year. I’ve spent this time trying to educate myself so that I will be ready to educate my people when I finally do get to a yard. Colorado isn’t a place where there are very many hard followed political lines. Unlike California, nations aren’t necessarily separated. It makes Colorado a prime spot to build peace among people to pave the way for better living.

It angers me how many “spiritualists” fight demons in the spiritual realm while waiting for a higher power to step in. I feel that all religion, with the exception of militant political Islam, encourages people to just accept their society as it is and do absolutely nothing to change it. These same spiritualists should invest time in changing these conditions in the physical realm to free all oppressed people now, and who knows maybe it will bring about a better world. Those who, through fear or fucked up character, embrace organized religion in prison to cop out or find some sense of self, need to find some sense of reality. These places get worse until we unite and make them better. This requires structure, discipline, leadership and hierarchy. There is no other way.

New blood must be given to this system. Education is the key to make any situation better.


MIM(Prisons) adds: To create conflict and excuses for repression we see prison workers set up conflicts between different nations. Just like this fight between a Chican@ and New Afrikan, it could be over anything but the prison has an interest in promoting division between prisoners. This is just one reason why we need a United Front for Peace in Prisons. This United Front is building peace and unity among the oppressed in prison, and then turning that unity into growth through revolutionary education. Together we can take a stand against the criminal injustice system.

While we agree with this comrade that religion is used as an excuse to wait for a higher power to bring change, we do see a role for religious groups in the United Front. Those who truly believe in putting an end to people’s suffering should step up and take a role in organizing against the oppressors. The liberation theologists in that were very popular in the 1980s in Latin America provide a solid example for this revolutionary organizing. They broke with the individualism of religions that calls all outcomes “fate” and leaves people to pray for a change that will only come through action. While Maoists are scientists who do not believe in the idealism of religion, we will not force these views on others who take up the struggle on behalf of the oppressed. We expect scientific thinking to spread to all people over time once the oppressed have been liberated and given a chance to learn and think freely.

chain
[Idealism/Religion] [ULK Issue 28]
expand

The Failure of Spiritualism to Fight Oppression

This missive is directed to those who have taken up the responsibility in leading the masses up the road to absolute spiritual consciousness.

How can any individual choose work in guiding the misguided or unconscious to the discovery of the eternal truth, but at the same time instruct people to turn away from the world and only focus on themselves? If we are one in spirit, then wouldn’t helping the world be a righteous practice of helping oneself? I have learned that the only way I can really help myself is by rejecting the interests of the individual desires and submitting my will to the interests of the world.

The value systems which dominate the world in this current era of imperialism are philosophies propping up the values of the powers of the world. The perpetuation of ideas like economic “survival of the fittest,” and economic competition in a “free market” are but subtle justifications for the exploitation and oppression of others. These philosophies come from individualism (selfishness) which, if analyzed deeply enough, will turn out to be an illusion for the fact that every person’s given situation is the result of what the world has put into motion.

Matter is the physical manifestation of the spirit, so how do we ignore the lessons of history which provide us the ability to precisely analyze the spirit through the material which it produces? A spiritualist can only conclude that the current force which dominates the world is the negative, so the ideas which are applied to overcome the negative force must be put into practice in material reality to give the future a clear understanding of what has proven to be effective and what has not. Our practice is our dialogue with the future.

We can effortlessly project the message to the misguided and unconscious that selfishness, lust, and hate are the epitome of evil, but what good does this do when we ignore the current physical manifestations of these evil forces in material reality? For the oppressed nations who suffer under the full pressure of the physical world, it must be understood that the struggle to end oppression is not an illusion but the natural continuance of the spirit. Spiritualists who reject this eternal fact may have good intentions but inevitably create the duality which divides and isolates the spirit from matter to create the illusion of “mental oneness” with the spirit while ignoring the spirit in matter.


MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate the direction this comrade is going here in trying to convince spiritualists that they need to join the fight against oppression. This is a good example of uniting all who can be united in the anti-imperialist struggle. There is much in the theory and writings of popular religions that is amenable to the struggle for justice and equality, so there is room for unity between materialists and idealists there.

But as materialists, we do not agree with the idealists that “matter is the physical manifestation of the spirit.” Materialists recognize thoughts and ideas (such as religions) as products of the physical world we live in and interact with, as this comrade hints at above. And as monists, we do not believe in a spirit or essence that stands apart from a thing itself, including humyn beings. These basic pieces of our philosophy will determine what conclusions we make and what actions we take.

Materialism has already proven to be more correct than any brand of religion in the results it produces in the real world. And once the masses of the oppressed have grasped materialism in practice by taking their own destinies in their hands and throwing off the yoke of oppression, they will have no use for religious thinking and we will set about educating everyone in materialism. As scientific thinking advances and becomes the norm, the class interests of the oppressors that keep religion alive to serve their interests will be eliminated and we expect belief in religions will slowly fade away in the transition to communism.

chain
[Idealism/Religion] [Download and Print] [ULK Issue 48]
expand

Truly Quoting Marx on Religion

Often we hear or read quick quotes which are taken to mean something, or infer something different from the intended meaning. Marx’s quote on religion is just such an example.

We have all heard or read Marx’s “statement” that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” This is not an accurate quote of what Marx wrote in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” This quote has given rise to the belief that Marx did not take the issue of religion seriously and dismissed it as folly. This is not true.(1)

Let’s review in context what Marx did write about religion:

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about conditions is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower.

Clearly Marx is not discussing the seriousness of religion, or the role it plays in the lives of oppressed peoples. Marx realizes the power of delusion that religion holds over people. I disagree with MIM(Prisons) that religion “is simply a belief in authority.”(2) Perhaps that is true for some people. But I believe it is a panacea for woe and oppression – a search and hope for a better life than the one believers currently lead. It is the oppressed’s answer to the question of existentialism.

Due to the anxieties of existence – anxieties people experience as the result of natural causes like floods, famine and earthquakes, or man-made causes such as enslavement, exploitation or oppression – that make people feel powerless, they often resort to magical thinking, or beliefs in supernatural agents as a plea for the anxiety to end. Thus was born religion, its roots in anxiety.

Religion is a potent tool of capitalism and imperialism. To eliminate one, all must be eliminated if the people are to experience true freedom and liberation.


MIM(Prisons) responds: Overall, we have great unity with what this comrade writes about religion and Marx’s view of it. But eir disagreement with something we wrote is a bit of a strawpersyn argument. First, it is ironic to use Christopher Hitchens to criticize us as too dismissive of religion. Hitchens was popular for his atheist ideas among the Amerikan petty bourgeoisie. His attack on so-called “Islamo-fascism” was better received than his allies on the left (led by Bob Avakian) and right (epitomized in David Horowitz). All three represent the spectrum of white nationalist thinking that uses religion as an excuse to attack the oppressed nations, primarily in the Islamic world today.

Islamo fascism

In this attempt to critique, we think this comrade takes the quote from the Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons out of context. The article presents the religious view in a discussion on science, correctly stating that it is simply a belief in authority, rather than a belief in one’s own ability to study reality and find truth.

The MIM article also discusses pre-scientific thinking, addressing religion’s role as a “panacea for woe and oppression.” In pre-capitalist times, such thinking was the norm and religion was more than just an attempt to deal with the bad times, it was an attempt to explain all aspects of reality. Once scientific thought was developed and popularized, it has been the class interests of the oppressors that have kept religious ideology alive to serve their interests, as this comrade alludes. But that doesn’t mean everyone who is religious is a dupe. Muslims are currently striking some of the greatest blows against U.$. imperialism, so they must have a pretty good grasp on how to actualize their own interests in a world that throws many horrors in their direction.


Notes:
1. “God is not great: how religion poisons everything” by Christopher Hitchens p9-10
2. “Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons” March 2012. p17.

chain
[Idealism/Religion] [Religious Repression] [South Carolina] [ULK Issue 48]
expand

South Carolina Offers Prisoners Religion or Starvation

I am a prisoner in the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC), where the prisoners are forced to march around in filthy, tattered uniforms, and most are packed three to a cell, with one sleeping on the floor. But in addition to a huge list of miserable conditions here, the state has a sickening carrot-and-stick method of converting prisoners to Christianity.

Our cafeteria basically serves dog food, and even that is withheld from prisoners as punishment for minor rule infractions. The prison only serves real nutritious food to prisoners who have attended a certain number of religious indoctrination programs. This amounts to many prisoners not being able to eat well unless they convert to Christianity and jump through all kinds of Jesus-themed hoops.

Prisoners are also being recruited, in the guise of “education,” into an indoctrination and training program that eventually ships them to other prisons to proselytize and spread Christian propaganda. As a requirement, new recruits must sign a paper that declares their willingness to be transferred to any prison SCDC desires. Often prisoners sign up for this program to temporarily escape the violent conditions at other prisons, only to be returned to the same brutal dungeons after completing the program. In such institutions, prisoners are commonly beaten, stabbed, and raped. Who wouldn’t sign up for the Christian fascist training program to escape that?

It all amounts to the prisoners being coerced into religious social control programs. And many of us must choose between going to church or going hungry; between being indoctrinated or being beaten, stabbed, or raped.


MIM(Prisons) responds: It is typical of the Amerikkkan criminal injustice system to force feed their approved form of “education” on prisoners while denying them real education through censorship or just refusal to offer programs. Religion has a long history of being used as a tool of social control by obscuring the material conditions that determine our reality on Earth.

Many people ask us about religion because they have heard that communism is anti-religion. In some ways communism is the best way for religious people to uphold their beliefs and put an end to the evils of murder, rape, hunger and other miseries of humyns. Some argue that Jesus Christ must have been a communist because he gave to the poor.

An issue with religions, however, is that they uniformly reject scientific thinking. Religions require people to accept on faith that there is a higher power controlling life for humyns. So the first problem with religions is that they are fostering idealist thinking. Even those who do not believe in organized religion often look for answers in ideas, rather than a scientific study of the material world.

In addition, historically many religions have acted as apologists for the oppressor class in power, telling the oppressed people not to worry about their terrible conditions in this life because a better afterlife awaits them if they just suffer in silence. There are notable exceptions to this, including the liberation theologists of Latin America, some Muslim activists, and others.

Overall we see the best of the religious movements and groups as allies in the fight against imperialism. But we still caution people that religion, like television, is an opiate for the mind. Even worse, religion provides a philosophical justification for never searching for real solutions to the problems and contradictions we face. Belief in spirituality or religion is not a dividing line question to work with MIM(Prisons), and we accept into USW all who take up the anti-imperialist struggle. We will be honest in our push for everyone to study materialist thinking and why we oppose idealism.


Related Articles:
chain
[Theory] [Idealism/Religion] [Nevada]
expand

The Bible or the Bullet?

How often do we analyze the connection of religion with terror and oppression? Likewise, how much do we seek to minimize the role of Christianity in the imperialist and sinful occupation of America?

They came troding on their horses like thieves in the night; holding a musket in one hand, and a Bible in the other. They were offered as presents to the peaceful, native inhabitants; yet, they had to choose - the Bible or the bullet? To live peacefully and share America with the native people wasn’t enough for these new strangers, they wanted complete control over every facet of this land.

Native blood filled the trenches of European savagery, and tears of the children brimmed the gulch of mourn. The squalling of native women vibrated throughout Mother Earth as their thighs sanguine with virgin blood from rape. In plain daylight, they could see the Grim Reaper crouched over to catch his breath from the restless slaughter of natives. The only alternative to this hideous crime is acceptance of the Bible.

At the arrival of merchant ships were crowds of black faces with the obnoxious smell of slavery; millions of lives were expired on the Middle Passage, decorating it with the Holy Grail of Africans. Then, by force of the goad of death they were ushered into the fields of back-breaking labor. Their blood seeped into the cotton they picked, and tears fertilized the soil that grew the master’s economy. The only alternative was acceptance of the Bible; given to pacify the hopeless slaves with a false sense of faith and spiritual dignity.

“Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I’ve ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst…” (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of)

Today, the courts of law have strong links to the imperialist religion of Christianity and its Bible. In fact, it’s the FOUNDATION of their laws, so they protect it. It is the peace-offering and balm for oppression, without it you’ll receive the bullet. Since Christianity play an important role in carrying out the imperialistic agenda of capitalism, tantalizing the minds of the oppressed; then, America’s laws are also rooted in such a design. One of their law books says: “It has been broadly stated that the common law draws its subsistence from Christianity, that Christianity is part and parcel of the common law, and that the Bible is the foundation of the common law. However, these statements have been held to have application in a qualified sense, in that Christianity’s divine origin and truth are admitted, and the law will not permit Christianity to be reviled and ridiculed openly, and will punish such acts as tending to a breach of peace and jeopardy of the public welfare, as discussed in Blasphemy…1” (5A Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S))

The only reason this religion is so “legally protected” is because it is in fact the foundation of American life. The Bible’s history is linked to and condones territorial expansion; so, its the best source of religious justification for imperialism. If one submit to the religious tenets of Christianity, oppression will go smoothly. The master gets to do what he pleases and the oppressed accepts it. However, opposition to this placebo religion will be met with the bullet! The Bible or the bullet, the American way of life.

You can not believe in Christianity and not capitalism; and you can not believe in capitalism and not believe in racism, they all go hand in hand! Hence, Christians may publicly deny Christianity’s gruesome role in perpetuating tyranny, however; it just proves this enemy is a chameleon, and its conspiratorial design must remain masonic in nature. So, while protesting his system, we subliminally give him genuflection during sanctimonious services. Then, we pray to him in our legal papers with statements like:

WHEREFORE, Petitioner PRAYS that the Court grant Petitioner relief to which he may be entitled in this proceeding.

WHEREFORE, Petitioner PRAYS of this Court to appoint counsel to represent Petitioner.

One of the greatest curses from which American victims suffer is immunity of our perpetrators-government officials. They protect their employees of organized crime by granting them immunity from liability for their actions. In exchange for protecting capitalist interests of the government, he’s protected. He’s told to ignore his moral conscience in his despotic exercise of power. Official immunity is political bribery, as it encourage immoral acts by waiving accountability. He “can not be held liable for the neglect of the duty of that body…If there is a refusal, neglect, or failure, with respect to the exercise of power or discharge of duties of such body, IT IS THE DEFAULT OF THE BODY, AND NOT OF THE INDIVIDUAL COMPOSING IT…” 67 C.J.S. 206. The following is a statement made by Spec. Charles A. Graner, one of the U.S. soldiers allegedly involved in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

“The Christian in me says it’s wrong, but the Corrections Officer in me says I love to see a grown man piss himself…” (as quoted in The Washington Post, May 22, 2004).

It is men like him the doctrine of immunity protects. Now, if he can’t be held responsible for his actions; that it is to the default of the body itself; then, how can you hold the body responsible for negligence of its duties to the public? You can not grab capitalism by the horn and drag it to an international court because it’s an intangible structure! You can not charge capitalism itself for its exploitation and oppression of humanity, because it can only exist through its physical, human agents and abettors! And they can’t be held liable for such an intangible “body,” as it is the default of the body, and not of the individuals composing it - according to their own law books.

The fact that they are granted immunity proves they know the system is an unjust and immoral one. Why else would there be a strong need to protect them from punishment? As in slavery, slave-masters felt immune from moral accountability for the institution of slavery, because it was “ordained” by God when He “cursed Ham”; and they were only carrying out the duties imposed on them by God, who is also an intangible entity, for the institution of slavery! And to this day they have not shown public remorse for such a heinous crime. So here they are telling us to blame God Himself for the crimes committed against humanity, not them. Just as they are telling us to blame the governmental “body” and not the individuals composing it. Hence, perpetrators dexteriously evade punishment by placing the blame on intangible entities; and those whites who don’t support this system are called traitors. Religiously and politically they escape punishment by using this tactic; religiously and politically they force whites to follow them for fear of being a traitor.

In America places like homeless shelters, ghettos, and prisons are cesspools of capitalism, the cellar of America’s social structure. It is this element against which Congress pass laws, and against whom the courts enforce those laws and pass down punishment - not to corporate or government officials. Remember, the laws of America has capitalist roots; so it will protect and support any that help strengthen its imperialist design, it’s the bullet!

Since capitalism can’t escape its own nature, it find a way to capitalize on those below poverty level. It does this by making crime itself an economic market and scheme to create jobs for those willing to protect its interests. So you see the police patrolling the ghettos and harassing the poor. They’re not there to prevent crime but to preserve it, to do so is to protect their asset-crime! Why else would police officers, prosecutors, judges, parole officers, etc. pursue these occupations as CAREERS when they publicly condemn crime? Some would say “to fight crime”; yet, these hypocrites must rely on crime for their livelihood for without it they wouldn’t have a job! So in essence they actually support the very thing they claim to despise.

The support it to the point they provoke and partake in crimes against citizens, remember Rodney King, Amadou Diallo? They do it with faith their superiors will be loyal to them for their service in supporting the system. Unfortunately they’re right most of the time by the fact countless brutalities and “justifiable homicides” go unpunished. The victims must watch the guilty go free; and justice, the ligament to peace, is broken asunder. Then there’s civil unrest; a national outcry. Some go out in rage seeking to avenge the murder of the spirit of justice, and like the Rodney King riot, crimes are committed. So in the end they still profit.

Many American citizens are ignorant of how this structure operates because they have conformed to the Bible; and, censorship raised its ugly head in every institution in America to minimize detection of the bullet. It’s the venom of falsehood they spit in our children’s eyes, and make them blind of the truth about this nation’s corruptions. They engender in our children a sense of patriotism America doesn’t deserve. It’s a process started early in schools with patriotic songs like:

“This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to New York Island…”

They raise our children with the false impression that America rose from a beautiful an humble beginning; implying the native inhabitants willfully shared this land with European immigrants, and everyone lived happily ever after. It’s a cynical falsehood and denial of the bloody history of America. It is to deny the countless lives of Native Americans by greedy and desperate nomads in territorial expansion. Murder and imperialism spread like an epidemic across American soil, and attached itself as parasites to its native hosts.

The strong campaign of historical censorship by schools and media is responsible for victimizing our children. They victimize our children by instilling in them a sense of patriotism they may not have were education and media more honest. Yet, they grow up with this sense of patriotism, stolen from them through deceit, and join the military forces. In such forces they become the human agents of America’s greatest source of international fascism and imperialism. As soldiers pumped with the embalming fluid of national pride, they go out and oppress the people of color around the world. When they arrive by water, air, and land; there’s only one question to be asked - the Bible or the bullet?

chain
Go to Page [1] [2] [3] 4
Index of Articles