Under Lock & Key

If there is nothing to be made known of the affects the bourgeois mis-education systems have on oppressed nations and internal semi-colonies within the (un)United State of Amerika, there is one thing that will give truth to power. The U.$. is a police state. The majority of the general public is a cop guard regime, and all parts of amerikan society are affected, and infected, with the virus of police-ism. Popular politics revolve around contest between the identities of so-called classes that don’t even relate itself to the revolutionary workers and exploited labourer of the internationalist proletariat.

The common theme of the COVID-19 era has been, big ups to the frontline workers, and first responders. But it shows how little resistance there is for the bourgeoisie news and social media, non-truths trend on instagram and snapchat while those who are truly exploited – from the prison population to the homeless and migrant labourer populations, the disenfranchised are steady marginalized into social sub-sects of the lumpen-proletariat. It sucks having little determination of one’s national independence. The oppressor nation has the power to Jedi mind trick its internal populations into accepting ideas of itself as suffering classes deserving of priority in the distribution of natural resources, while semi-colonies die the slow painful death. The U.$. has been sick long before the rise of COVID-19 imperialist world order.

Many on the liberal leftist side of Turtle Island remain hopeful of a sudden shift in the exploiters justice system, and the economical maneuvering of the petty bourgeoisie to redistribute wealth and punishment in equality. Thing is hopefulness is unlogical in circumstances that requires skepticism. It’s as critical as Vietnam, the draft and Muhammad Ali, refusing to attend the appointment with jungles of the Asian continent in the Amerikkkan draft. Chances are, most of those within the internal semi-colonies of these United $nakes, with the least to lose in breaking with the exploiter nation, they will be drowned out by the noise campaigns of dress-up revolutionaries, culture vultures, and agent provocateurs. The last being the most dangerous to nationalist leaders of the First World Lumpen amongst Turtle Island’s internationalist Maoist modeled groups.

Kicking New Afrikan Internationalist Principles as a USW Leader

The bourgeois nationalists are able to quote the phrases of classical revolutionary leaders and anti-imperialists but their necessities for true internationalism is just a metamorphisized lesser form of activism; never truly the form of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. As the U.$ofA imperialist and parasitic capitalist are brutally proliferating, the lies of the petty bourgeoisie are spread. These lies have become a sort of plague that infects the minds of our youth de-socialized as First World lumpen (FWL). True works of revolutionary nationalist culture are suppressed. Today’s youth (including many FWL) run to the bourgeois nationalist for education, and these ideas of reactionary, watered-down nationalist politics of New Afrikan and Aztlán liberation, with political jargon by Liberals’ approach to revolutionary action for national liberation.

Subjugation, colonialism and neo-colonialism is the cause of certain lack of knowledge. Then, with social media acting as the death alter, sacrificing one’s youth to do something the world SEES, these so-called nationalist and internationalists become inept, specifically when it come time for true actions to spring forth from the FWL. Yet, there’s a pattern throughout history for this. We see these individuals protesting against certain injustices, but is it truly Revolutionary Suicide? Does it liberate all beings subjugated?

Dialectical materialism is a concept that We’ve adapted to due to Maoist Internationalist form of thinking. One must know how to formulate a purpose of an ideology-movement. Once we’ve compared all past actions of national liberation, next we take revolutionary action. But how does the youth of today know the works of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, when their grandparents and parents were fed misinformation about liberation? We leave the youth no militant alternative but to turn to bourgeois nationalism. These individuals that speak of half revolutionary truths. They know the path of liberation, and what it will take to end oppression in the world, but in their actions of so-called change these bourgeois nationalist only aim to reform policies of subjugation. It’s like asking to desegregate a school, but there’s still white/black, girl/boy bathrooms, separating the ethnic groups of that school. We only enable police policies, which aim to further the impression of anti-socialism, capitalist-imperialistic psychology, determined psychology because of how police-ism has become a philosophy that has instinctively mingled with the psyche of certain amerikans, and as now the psychology of most amerikans, including Blacks, Chican@, Asians and First Nations.

#BLM/Black Lives Matter is an agenda that has attracted many followers. But everything that is a trend has attracted many followers. Just follow social media within the exploiter nation USA.com. The Republic of New Afrika and Aztlán need to realize that if we continue to separate the oppressed into subject classes and ethnic groups, their nations will forever be tools of bourgeois nationalists.

These systems of oppression were constructed in the exploiter nations constitution, a constitution bent on enslaving half of its population and disenfranchising the rest into minorities. Bourgeois nationalists disguised as bi-racial issue organizing groups. Protest that life or these lives matter, but lets argue the case why the BLM agenda screams Black Lives Matter, when more Blacks murder each other than so-called police do year round? Though pigs murder of so-called black men and women and children should be an issue addressed, it shouldn’t just be as one particular race or class, when race doesn’t exist to be national requirement of liberation and class struggle doesn’t really exist. The majority of Amerikan society are cops, what’s there to struggle over?

Take for example in other nations, like Palestine or Somalia, where it is known there’s a military presence by the U$ofA Africom and other oppressor nations, are all oppressing these independent national struggles that are less armed than the colonialist military settlers. The Liberal left of the U.$. scream pro-choice but in turn dictate to Third World womyn what they can or cannot do with their bodies. How is this pro-choice?? This is dividing the oppressed nations. And don’t mention the sterilization methods of U.$. state prisons, used against female prisoners to destroy reproductive powers of social rejects.

When FWL proletariat eradicate the pig system of abuse and instead begin building platforms to proliferate the ideas of MIM, nationalist organizers amongst lumpen organizations will have the voice of the people in the revolutionary objective.

With practical application of class disturbance, integration with the masses, and rigorous international study of Maoist theory, relevant to revolutionary history, with understanding of the nature of fighting and serving the people economically, we’ll address the flow of wealth that exploiters use to control world-wide populations.

Serving the oppressed in the First World, amongst the First Nation semi-colonies, tribes and lumpen organizations, means to eradicate super-exploiter systems and bourgeois nationalist personalities who advocate for said exploiting Amerikans. They won’t accept responsibility in the crimes against First Nation populations. They will hide and advocate increased police-ism reform vs. defund city council and police unions satisfying their guilty conscious with exploitation by the lesser of two evils.

Reformist and revisionist Black Lives Matter nationalists need to take their method of study and use it to shapeshift into an ideology, or philosophy that leads to MIM. These must become the FWL youths’ alternatives to ushering in a socialist revolution.

Global Jubilee and Reparations to Africans in CA, USA

In the United $tates of Amerikkka, Black New Afrikan George Floyd has their face plastered across the walls of convenience stores within the territories of occupied Dakota, Aztlán, New Afrika, and Makesh. But the true question is what will it take to unite the multitudes of FWL that lumpen leaders like G. Floyd mentored?

The pop culture of police-ism disguised as socialist nation building must be struggled against. Using the unity of fact checking and scientific decision making, leaders strengthen national resources like the independent institutions of learning, healthcare, labor, housing and entertainment. Not to fall into the politrix of revisionist co-opting for a lesser slice of servitude.

As USA.com states like California are manufacturing legislative measures like the African-American Reparations Bill to wave liability of wrongs committed against indentured servants/slave laborers of the Afrikan diaspora. There will be no reconciliations between New Afrikans and the oppressor nation pig regimes, unless the pigs swallow the cliff edge of the square they so gladly occupy. In by none but armed struggle will national reparations for all of New Afrika be possible, including We imprisoned.

The death rate of oppressed nation prisoners, a number that is still hidden from us, is part of what classifies them as semi-colonies, members of the lumpen proletariat by the political targeting of cop patrols disguised as social welfare workers. The fact remains the same prisoners exposed to COVID-19 suffer physical attacks form the cop union. The only way to mediate the national contradiction is to arm the prisoners re-entering society with a distrust for integration with a system that has deliberately exposed them to a terminal disease.

National liberation for fighters in the First World must materialize into stronger leanings towards the culture of anti-police-ism, struggling against increased police occupation of internal semi-colonies disguised as national liberation healthcare relief or economic rescue plans. It’s a trap, B. Don’t eat the swine of the captors, invaders from the petty bourgeoisie. None of what the pig state offers will appreciate in time. The military presence of the U.$. army brigades and national guard’s COVID welfare systems are surely signs of the time.

Be mindful, stay watching and prepare to fight! Uhuru Sasa!!!

[In ULK 13, we printed some definitions that came from studying MIM Theory 5: Diet for a Small Red Planet, which focuses on line, strategy and tactics. In this article, we summarize some of the ways we applied those concepts to real world examples while discussing the rest of the articles in MIM Theory 5.]

There are basically two ways we can make errors in our political work. We can make rightist errors or ultra-left errors. How we avoid these errors depends on our ability to assess our material conditions, because what is left and what is right changes as conditions change. For example, we spent time discussing focoism and opposing it as ultra-leftist because it calls for armed struggle in the First World. Yet, we recognize that armed struggle is a necessity to overthrow imperialism when we reach that stage.

Looking left

While focoism was the main example, we tried to define ultra-leftism in a more broad sense. Ultra-leftism in general means giving the appearance of being to the left of the political spectrum to the point of moral purity. In practice, however, it’s really so far to the left that it’s useless to real revolutionaries because it makes us seek unrealistic goals. Ultra-leftism denies our material reality and replaces it with idealism. A second example of ultra-leftism might be spending all one’s time attacking other revolutionaries for not being perfect.

Ultra-leftists hurt the Third World because every time a comrade has to pull one of these cats over and pull their coats, they take away time, energy and resources that can be used for the development of the Third World nations. Take the approach that one prisoner wrote in to ULK on commissary for example. S/he writes that instead of everybody buying store and keeping our stomachs from touching our backs when our oppressors are feeding us like we’re children, we should send all our money home. Not to our brothas and sistas in the Third World, or the institutions established by comradz in the U.$. that truthfully provide for them. But send all the money home. And then what?

This is an example of ultra-leftism because, to some, this may seem revolutionary and rebellious but in reality it is irrational thinking. The idea is based in purity rather than a strategy with the objective goal of overthrowing imperialism. You can tell that the motivation is purity because the question is how do we not contribute to the system rather than how do we contribute to something that will change or end the system. This ignores material reality because you can’t take the food from prisoners; then we’ll really underdevelop our situation.

Looking right

When looking at rightism, the main problem we face is “revolutionaries” that want to organize the majority of the people in the United $tates. By catering to the majority in a First World country a party’s politics are inevitably watered down - because the majority (in a First World country) are not oppressed. They put out a right opportunist line and get just whoever comes along. Basically, if you’re an organization in the First World and have a large following you stand for bourgeois ideals. Once a person understands this you can pretty much place your bets on the small underdog movement for the correct line/vanguard status.

While we must defend against right opportunism within our ranks, we might ally with those who are openly reformist and therefore to the right of us. Revolutionaries work on reforms because some do improve the lives of people on a small scale, but ultimately we do it to show the people that reforms do not work in the end and what they really need is full-scale revolution. Trying to get some resources that will help advance the revolutionary’s goals is a winnable battle worth fighting.

An example of a reform that can help a small percentage of the oppressed and could be used as a tactic in a larger strategy is limiting the number of people going into these torturous control units. Doing that work exposes the United $tates’ cruelty, disregard for international law, brutality, etc. Hence it may help to work on SMUs, IMU, MCC, Ad-MAX, etc. struggles and inhumanities because as Mao said about public opinion. “The task of communists is to expose the fallacies of the reactionaries. . . and so accelerate the transformation of things and achieve the goal of revolution.”

While we may unite with and lead reformist battles, revolutionaries should not join liberal mass organizations because they will eventually be forced to water down their politics for the sake of the single issue organization or risk alienation. Also, by working within a single issue organization, revolutionaries may inadvertently be holding it back by disempowering potential recruits, thereby disempowering the group. One way they do this is by alienating potential new recruits with their more worked out politics, leaving the potential recruits feeling as if they have nothing to offer.

Mass organizations and single issue work are good ways for the middle class to contribute to the anti-imperialist cause. We need to be looking to build alliances with them when it genuinely serves the international proletariat. In addition, we need to pay close attention to mass organizations because a lot of people are brought into politics through them. And we need to be there to challenge them to struggle for the real solution of humyn beings, communism.

Find the opening

In addition to reading MIM Theory 5, we studied two articles from the Black Panther newspaper entitled “In Defense of Self-Defense” and “The Correct Handling of a Revolution.” In the latter article, Huey P. Newton wrote that, “the party must engage in activities that will teach the people.” In our discussion of how to do this, one comrade discussed what s/he coined “MIM(Prisons) University of Thought,” which includes the various study and discussion groups MIM(Prisons) facilitates. Through this institution, individuals have the opportunity to learn through study: the Party, its line and its history. Individuals can study the organization of movements through out our struggle for communist leadership by the proletariat and learn not only its victories and successes, but also its stagnation and failures.

Another related activity would be a campaign for the creation of giving (books, postal stamps, money, art, music, etc) by comrades that have to give. And everyone has something to give. An institution should be established that allows prisoners to send donated books to the cause, as well as funds. MIM(Prisons) has the lit project to distribute literature. This same institution can be used for prisoners who either have to send their books home due to excessiveness, or going to a control unit, or who want to just contribute to the cause. Some might wonder why not recycle them on the yards? But only at small levels can this be effective activity in educating the prison mass. If we want to become internationally unified, we must then think internationally.

Such a project not only progresses our efforts to receive the favor of the masses, but it also gives us an institution to counter the bourgeois-imperialist propaganda that is spread throughout this U.$. capitalist imperialist society.

Part of Huey’s point was to teach through action. So not only are people learning from the books, but they are learning from the sharing and coordinating of materials as a collective group outside of a for-profit/business structure. Even an illiterate comrade could learn from the example of the program. Other activities mentioned that can teach the people were breakfast programs, community rehab on parks and other resources and lawsuits to fight censorship.

In addition to this summary, our study and discussions are reflected in a number of articles composed by comrades that appear in this issue and will appear in the future. We also added to and further developed the study guide for this topic (Strategy & Tactics), which we encourage all serious comrades to study when they get the chance.

Comrades in MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within (USW) have been studying diligently to solidify and advance the line, strategy and tactics of the anti-imperialist prison movement. This issue of Under Lock & Key will introduce this discussion, while focusing on strategies utilizing the bourgeois legal system. In the imperialist countries we face a strategic period where our battles are legal ones as we build our organization and infrastructure.

In March 2010, MIM(Prisons) recorded its 1000th incident of censorship in the u.$. prison system. And this is just a small sample of the repression that goes on in the belly of the beast. The strategy behind our legal battles is two pronged: 1) when we win we create more space to do the organizing work that is much needed in the movement, and 2) when we lose we build public opinion about the reality that there are no rights, only power struggles, and what real power looks like. Therefore, if done well, every battle moves us forward.

Organizationally, we stand at a juncture where MIM(Prisons) has established itself with a consistent practice, while upholding the political line developed by the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Meanwhile, our allies stand ready to do more to organize the movement. This includes our comrades in the anti-imperialist prisoner organization, United Struggle from Within, which is led by MIM(Prisons), as well as other lumpen organizations at various levels of political development.

As a result, we are focusing on the need to build an anti-imperialist United Front through our work in the prison movement. We are making a call to all lumpen and prison-based organizations who believe in the need for self-determination of all nations to join us in developing this United Front on the basis of some key principles. MIM(Prisons), USW and others are already hashing out these principles, and we want to make sure that it is as agreeable yet powerful as it can be.

Theoretically, we stand on the legacy of decades of struggle and political line development led by MIM. By studying their work, we are able to leap forward theoretically, as each generation must do by learning from the previous. There are some theoretical questions we will be developing further in future months, both in the pages of Under Lock & Key and in larger publications we plan to publish.

We will continue to explore important aspects of strategy for months to come. We begin here with some definitions to help our readers grasp and participate in this discussion.

Definitions

Imperialism: the global economic system that exists today. First World corporations have expanded to the point where they must invest money overseas to continue to grow, so they export their capital to the Third World. These foreign investments in Third World economies, safeguarded by military force, stifle the growth of the local bourgeois classes. With no national bourgeoisie, or a weak one at best, a national economy is unable to grow. Imperialist investment then ensures its own dominance by paying dirt wages to workers who have no options, and enjoying the freedom to escape local taxes and environmental restrictions.

Anti-Imperialism: the belief that nations have the right to struggle for liberation when faced with oppression by other nations. Opposing imperialism means opposing the system where some nations use their power to exploit other nations’ wealth. Imperialism stifles all indigenous economic and political activity. Anti-imperialists work to release local development forces to better meet the needs of the people.

Nation: a group of people on one connected piece of land with a common economy, language, and national psychology.

Principal Contradiction: the highest priority contradiction that communists must focus their energy on for a long period of time - a strategic period. The concept of the principal contradiction comes from dialectical materialism, which says that everything can be divided into two opposing forces. These contradictions are the basis for any changes that thing goes through. Defining the principal contradiction is a crucial step to developing ones political line.

The principal contradiction in the world today is between the imperialist countries and the countries they oppress and exploit. Based on this fact, we say the principal task is to build public opinion against imperialism and to build institutions of the oppressed that are independent of imperialism, in order to seize power from the imperialists.

Anti-Imperialist United Front: the loose alliance of classes and parties that work to undermine imperialist domination. To achieve our principal task, we must unite all who can be united on the side of the oppressed against imperialism. Developing an anti-imperialist united front, is facilitating the growth of the winning side of the principal contradiction in the world today.

Internationalism: ethical belief or scientific approach in which peoples of different nations are held to be or assumed to be equal.

Line: Line is generally a belief, but line can also be a goal. For instance, our belief is that only through communism can we abolish the oppression of groups of people over other people. At the same time it is our goal to abolish the oppression of people over other people.

Strategy: our long-term plans to get to various goals on the way to communism. For every stage in the revolutionary struggle, there is a strategy.

Strategic Confidence: the belief that the proletarian forces will win based on a concrete analysis of society. Our strategic confidence comes from an analysis of the contradictions within imperialism, which are bringing about its own decay and destruction. As a minority within the united $tates, the oppressed and progressive forces have a hard time developing strategic confidence when focused narrowly on local events and struggles. Therefore, internationalism is a must for the oppressed nations in the united $tates to obtain liberation from imperialism, which threatens to further immiserate and oppress a growing segment of society as crisis ensues and fascism knocks on the door.

Tactics: Short-term plans, some of which may be used again and again in slightly different circumstances. Tactics are short term and flexible based on day-to-day changes in the situation.

Rightism: In general, rightists tend to be too conservative. A rightist is someone who tends to make everything a matter of tactics. Rightists don’t care about long-term goals or plans.

Ultra-leftism: Ultra-leftists will tend to judge real-world revolutionaries in the light of principles that only Jesus/Moses/Muhammad-type figures could implement. Ultra-leftism thus smacks of religion/idealism. The ultra-left also tends to go to extremes to achieve their objectives.

(note: Rightism and Ultra-leftism are both errors WITHIN the revolutionary movement. We are not talking about the “right” and “left” wings of the amerikan government commonly referred to in the bourgeois press.)

Proletarian Morality: Proletarian morality is based in the basic concept of doing no wrong in the masses’ eyes, but it also goes further than this. It means implementing certain codes of conduct within the party to which all party members must strictly adhere to. This means that we cannot do anything which the masses could see as morally wrong, such as accepting gratuities in exchange for favors, or stealing from the masses. Proletarian morality is not idealist, but recognizes what needs to be done to create a more just world. Pacifists apply an idealist form of morality by saying that violence is never justified. Similarly, anarchists denounce hierarchy and oppression in the hands of the oppressed, even if used as tools to destroy hierarchy and oppression in the bigger picture.

Pragmatism: a philosophy of going forth without theory or line, utilizing wishy washy strategies, and pushing tactics from that thinking. Instead of seeing the whole they see the part. Pragmatists react to a situation, rather than analyze it and address the real problem.

Empiricism: the belief that knowledge is derived from experience through direct observation of phenomena. In contrast, we recognize that 99% of practice is now history and not things that we will experience directly.

Dogmatism: the belief in, or promotion of ideas without basis in fact or without depth. Dogmatists are stubborn, and view things arrogantly and narrow-mindedly.

notes: most of the definitions above came from study and discussion of MIM Theory 5: Diet for a Small Red Planet, download pdf

Hip-hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people’s political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon, if you don’t know how to use it, if you don’t know where to point it or what you’re using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters and brothers.” – Assata Shakur

There are four main elements that make up what hip hop culture really is: Break dancing, DJing, MCing and Graffiti art. Each element plays a major role in hip hop. This beautiful culture originated in the Bronx, NY from the oppressed lumpen proletarians. The music from this culture was diligently expressed through MCing (rapping) about oppression and the conditions the oppressed people were going through in this capitalist decadent society. It was not about money, cars, jewelry and negativity but as the years went by and white capitalist businessmen saw a fortune in this culture that they could exploit the voices that created hip hop were greatly silenced.

The common refrain of many submissions we got for this issue of Under Lock & Key was that “Hip Hop is Dead.” But the reality is much more complex, and we are not ready to dismiss hip hop. The objectification and commodification of culture often signifies the end of its existence as a culture, as Fanon argued. However, in the height of imperialism, where the capitalists have learned to fashion their products to niche markets, all cultures will be commodified, and yet the oppressed still need a culture to call their own.

The reason why MIM(Prisons) is focusing on hip hop in this issue on culture, is that hip hip came from the oppressed nations in the u$. Today, “hip hop” is pretty much considered synonymous with oppressed nation youth culture even as that culture continues to evolve in many different ways. This is true in the united $tates, but also true to an extent in many parts of the world today.

We put our hope in the oppressed nations because of their objective interests in progressive change. That interest comes through in hip hop culture, as much as the white corporate media and its white consumer audience do to discourage that. Still the mainstream acts like all you need is a certain type of a beat in a commercial and it’s hip hop. Or dress your employees a certain way and it’s hip hop.

In their day, the Black Panther Party criticized Black bourgeois elements who fetishized pieces of African culture with no context as “pork chop nationalists.” There was no connection to a real people with an existing lifestyle. The Panthers were greatly influenced by Frantz Fanon, who wrote in an essay entitled “Racism and Culture”:

“Exoticism… allows no cultural confrontation. There is on the one hand a culture in which qualities of dynamism, of growth, of depth can be recognized. As against this, we find characteristics, curiosities, things, never a structure.”

Hip hop developed as a living, dynamic life of a people; oppressed people in north amerikan ghettos. As we’ll touch on below it is still a living evolving culture that has been both adopted and adapted by people around the world. But before going global, hip hop culture was commodified by white record owners for white consumers. They sold this exotic culture to white youth looking for rebellion and excitement. Decades before, thousands of white youth gave money and support to the Panthers to express their desires to challenge the dominant culture and status quo. With hip hop, corporate amerika could sell a much more sanitized and safer version of Black rebellion to whites. And while there were benefits in terms of the building of public opinion around the struggles of the oppressed, this was soon drowned out in what became a new form of cooning - reinforcing racist ideologies.

Commodification of Hip Hop

Hip hop culture began in the late 1970s, but it wasn’t until the middle to late 1980s that the cultural life and expression of hip hop grew to influence youth throughout amerika and the world.

During the late 1980s and early 90s, the culture continued to thrive. In this era, Black and Latino youth further developed their voices through hip hop to express their anger, fears, ideas, art and frustrations within the dominant white-oppressor culture, with its police brutality and poverty.

Hip hop culture isn’t just about the music, it’s about a lifestyle - from the clothes we wear, style of hair, taggin’ rail cars and walls with radical art and graffiti, unity and more. It’s a culture of resistance.

As Immortal Technique wrote in his article, “Gangsta Rap is Hip Hop” a few years back, what was called Reality Rap in the early years of hip hop was a reflection of the conditions that the MC’s saw around them. These images were influenced by machismo and other viewpoints that were part of the survival techniques of those coming up in that environment. As survival also required recognizing that the system does not work for us, this Reality Rap was a reflection of the mass revolutionary spirit that had fueled the Black and Brown power movements of the previous generation.

The first response from white amerika was predictably negative, but the amount of attention given to hip hop quickly escalated as fears rose. There was a reason why the George HW Bush and Bill Clinton administrations spent so much time disparaging artists like 2pac and Ice-T. Someone was telling Dan Quayle and Tipper Gore to carry out their censorship campaigns. (see Hip Hop in the Scopes of the State)

To counter their critics, rappers said they were merely reporting the truth. It is true that the rapper has usually served as a block reporter, but there are two problems that have skewed this reporting. The first is bourgeois views of “objective” reporting, that pretend that what is reported and how it is reported could be somehow outside of class struggle. This view allows the oppressed to report on conditions thru rap without taking an approach that serves our struggle. The attitude is “this is just how it is”, which leads to acceptance and reinforcement of the status quo.

This becomes an even bigger problem with the pressures from an industry, which tries to protect its bourgeois interests. This brings us to the second problem: the block reporters who make it are the ones reporting in a way that sells to white youth and please white corporations.

Coming from the depressed ghettos of the 1980s, flooded with crack cocaine by the CIA, there was no question of whether or not to become a professional rapper if the opportunity presented itself. As Tupac rapped in his song Don’t Stop, “If I wasn’t spittin’ it’d be prison or death/This rap game all we’ve got left.” Yes, a lot of us found a way to eat, but the result was a lack of potency in the music and a watered-down culture where cars and ice are the motivating factor. It is a culture that is teaching our youth that it’s all about them (as individuals). That it’s cool to be a dope fiend (sippin’ syrup, etc.) and to be victims of HIV/AIDS (it’s ok to have multiple sex partners, without ever mentioning protection). Is there any wonder why the highest rates of HIV/AIDS are among Blacks and Latinos between the ages of 13-24?

White-owned corporations saw a profit to be made and stepped in to co-opt the movement. They became owners of record labels and put up money so these impoverished and oppressed people could sell their soul and music for crumbs while these CEO’s got millions upon millions of dollars.

With the help of the rappers, the record labels promoted a one-sided image of oppressed youth, an image that has been pushed on the oppressed for hundreds of years - one of uncontrollable libidos, violence, substance abuse and general barbarism. They did this through lyrics about smoking crack, robbing and shooting other Blacks and Latinos in oppressed communities, misogynist raps and raps with no substance. We started to stray away from the four elements and this type of hip hop started to negatively influence the youth and poison their minds. While culture reflects life, it also influences it. And arguably, the corporatized thug image contributed to the thousands of deaths that plagued southcentral Los Angeles and other amerikan ghettoes in the 1990s.

Hip Hop is Dead until it takes up revolutionary politics

So with this contradiction in the culture of the oppressed came total destruction of the originality and with this concrete analysis there must be change. Like comrade Lenin once said, “concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism.” We must regain the true culture of hip hop, which is based in the real struggles of the people and helps to teach, empower and unite the masses. This culture can be used to ignite the lumpen proletariat to support the revolutionary cause, like Mao once said, “Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people.”

Culture is an essential element of the history of a people, and it’s social development. Culture in general, and hip hop culture in particular, plunges its roots into the base of the material reality of the environment in which we live in the hoods and barrios and it reflects the organic nature of society, which is more or less influenced by the dominant white society and culture of our oppressed communities. Currently the revolutionary side of hip hop is not the dominant aspect of the contradiction with the corporate/oppressor side. Amilcar Cabral once had this to say about culture:

“Study of the history of liberation struggles shows that they generally have been preceded by an upsurge of cultural manifestations, which progressively harden into an attempt, successful or not, to assert the cultural personality of the dominated people by an act of denial of the culture of the oppressor… it is generally within the cultural factor that we find the germ of challenge which leads to the structuring and development of the liberation movement.”

We saw this germ in the Reality Rap two decades ago. If hip hop is to transform into a true vehicle for social change, we must demand that our artists keep it a hundred and give us more analysis in their music. Stop promoting the use of addictive narcotics, that they become more active in our communities, and give our youth the encouragement to study, unify, and resist oppression. Hip hop needs to reflect the struggle, and push it forward. If they fail to do this, hip hop remains sterile and dead.

Hip Hop as Reflection of Amerikan Culture

During the 1990’s, people like Dolores Tucker and Tipper Gore earned the loathing of the booming hip hop culture as they targeted it for censorship and blamed it for the moral depravity of oppressed people. There was a lively debate around whether art reflected life or the other way around. But the answer to those involved was clear: people didn’t start rapping about murder, drugs and misogyny because they were trying to corrupt the youth. The youth were corrupted by a system that did not provide them with positive outlets and this was reflected in hip hop, both for good and for bad. Everybody knows censoring rappers isn’t going to improve the hood, but improving the hood will change what people are rapping about.

Even after its takeover by white-owned corporations, hip hop continues to be under fire for its misogynistic, materialistic, explicit content and for delivering negative messages to today’s youth. What they did is sanitize the rebellious voice of the oppressed, while maintaining the negativity as a form of pseudo-rebellion to reinforce racist stereotypes of what oppressed nation youth are all about. Yet, upon deeper examination, one tends to see that the messages are merely the same ones being transmitted to the society at large by the institutions which govern society.

The parallels between the ideas propagated through the mass media and other sources; and the ones rapped about on the radio by recording artists are not hard to recognize. While this society proposes to thrive on such “rights” as “freedom of speech” and embraces such abstract concepts as individualism, materialism, and using sex to make a profit, it lambasts and condemns artists who are the products of such defunct ideas and who have chosen to endorse and promote them for monetary gain–similar to their capitalist counterparts and employers, only creatively set over catchy beats in rhyme form.

While the hip-hop/rap culture is made up primarily of lower-class, urban youth, generally from the New Afrikan community, the question that arises is: Why are these destructive, negative values so unacceptable now? It seems that as soon as these inner-city youth find a way to use this society’s own value system to their benefit, and use their experiences and conditions of poverty, drugs, and crime as an avenue to create material wealth, they are demonized for their efforts. “Rap music” is condemned, rather than society as a whole. This theme is a regular refrain for many rappers who tell their critics through rhyme, “I am what you made me.”

While rappers are being chastised for glorifying violence and criminality, the chastizers fail to confront the underlying causes of such crime and its solution, instead placing the blame on rap culture. From a young age, youth are taught by society that accumulation of wealth is the desired goal of life, to look out for yourself and obtain as much as you can. At the same time – through acts of war at home and abroad – our country reinforces the idea that during the quest for the “almighty dollar” any means may be employed to get more money, including violence, murder, and deceit. When a person not from a privileged upbringing and background employs these same tactics, even for the same objectives, they are labeled “criminals” and are subject to incarceration and, in some cases, death. The laws that govern this country blatantly display the fact that they were made to protect the privileges of the upper-class and oppressor nation at the expense of the lower-class and oppressed nations.

If we want to get to the root of the problem, our attacks shouldn’t be aimed at a rap culture that developed from the harsh conditions of this society and which only reflects the same backward ideas and values that have been indoctrinated into the masses since birth. Instead, our attacks should be concentrated at a capitalist system that institutionalizes these degenerate values and ideas, and the ugly conditions it has consequently created in this country. Only when we begin to confront the root causes of crime, poverty, unemployment and racism will we be able to teach and educate our youth, and society as a whole, to new positive and progressive ideas and values, based on people helping and caring about other people-in one word: socialism. Anything short of this is a failure to confront the real issues and is simply a step backward.

Hip Hop Lives in Palestine, Senegal, Somalia…

When hip hop blew up in the amerikan market, it was only natural that the capitalists tried to push it globally, as much of the Third World is so brainwashed into worshiping anything that comes from the united $tates as being superior. In many cases, the Third World has adapted hip hop to their own conditions and needs though. In fact, Third World hip hop has consciously rejected many aspects of hip hop that we are also critical of: the killing, the misogyny, the drugs and promiscuity. Many Third World nations are not comfortable with all that. In Muslim countries in Africa, there are hip hop heads who very much look up to rappers from the u$, but do not imitate much of the negative lyrical content. (see http://www.africanunderground.com) There is a class difference between the Third World masses and the u$ lumpen, who have become cultural leaders globally because of u$ imperialism not in spite of or in opposition to it.

While we can be very critical of hip hop for promoting drug use, violence against the oppressed, misogyny and racism, others want to back-handedly criticize it for empowering the oppressed. In contrast, revolutionary artists often embrace while redefining the gangster and the hard images of both mainstream and underground rap music. With the globalization of hip hop and the “I’m more hard” and “I’m more gutter than you” personas that are even pushed by the mainstream, we’ve seen the appearance of Third World voices with a more internationalist voice.

New York-based artist Immortal Technique said in his title track about the Third World, “it makes the hood in amerika look like paradise.” Meanwhile, Somalian rapper, K’naan, claims to be from the most dangerous place in the world and challenges the studio gangster images of rappers in the u$ in his song “What’s Hardcore?”:

I’ma spit these verses cause I feel annoyed
And I’m not gonna quit till I fill the void
If I rhymed about home and got descriptive
I’d make 50 Cent look like limp bizkit
It’s true, and don’t make me rhyme about you
I’m from where the kids is addicted to glue
Get ready, he got a good grip on the machete
Make rappers say they do it for love like R-Kelly
It’s hard
Harder than Harlem and Compton intertwined
Harder than harboring Bin Laden and rewind
To that earlier part when I was kinda like:
We begin our day by the way of the gun
Rocket-propelled grenades blow you away if you front
We got no police, ambulances, or fire fighters
We start riots by burning car tires
They looting, and everybody start shooting…

This is the kind of “Reality Rap” that the OG’s from Los Angeles used to spit, before “gangsta” became a caricature.

A thriving Palestinian hip hop scene has popularized the slogan, “Hip Hop’s not dead, it lives in Palestine.” This is coming from youth who are using hip hop to express their desires for national liberation, combating the slander being used to label their people as terrorists.

The idea of a global culture is still a new reality. But if such a thing can exist that is really based in the lives of real people, then it must represent the interests of the world’s majority. Maybe a culture that arose from the oppressed in the heart of the empire, and was then popularized by the empire itself, can be turned around by the masses to become just that. We are currently seeing two futures of hip hop play out. One has billions of dollars behind it, the other has billions of people. If we can still call it “hip hop” culture in all its different forms around the world, then we can bet on the oppressed peoples’ version winning out.