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When You Die, What Will People Say About You?

9/15/2021

In the middle of seeing people use social media on a regular basis to call out folks and make accusations (while claiming they are doing so for the good of everyone), you have to wonder what some people’s motivations actually are. In the midst of a petti bourgeoisie dominated reality where truth and justice and material reality are completely divorced from one another, and people routinely confuse idealism (subjectivity within your head) with actual on the ground material conditions, the same question about what incentivizes people to move gets arisen every day.

The idealism piece is a real problem because in many ways, it drives much of the dysfunction being mentioned here. The capitalist system is designed to negate reality because reality never favors its interests and capitalism is concerned about nothing beyond its interests. That system has absolutely zero sentimentality, but it intentionally and consistently propagandizes the masses of humanity to rely on sentimentality for every thought that we engage. In fact, this process is so automated that most people couldn’t even differentiate between an objectively tested and verified theory as opposed to the thoughts in our heads which are untested, unverified, and most often, not even based in anything beyond just what we have subjectively accumulated.

That last sentence sheds light on how people can actually convince themselves that publicly calling out people is the best actual way to address contradictions even though these people cannot point to one instance where this method has effectively resolved a contradiction. On the flip side, we can point to countless examples of how this method has led to absolute devastation within movement circles, but the people carrying out this “work” don’t care about that. They don’t because idealism has led them to incorrectly and dangerously believe that their way of doing things is the most correct to the point where they don’t even bother to seriously investigate the warnings our elders and ancestors have been providing to us for centuries. They don’t need to do that because they already have everything figured out. More bourgeoisie idealism.

All of this is the reason the age-old statement that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” is absolutely correct. People who think they mean well are often actually the conduits for creating conditions where abuse, police sabotage, and the destruction of legitimate work flourishes. And the statement that “history is repeating itself” is not a statement based in dialectical and historical materialism. Imperialism’s counter intelligence measures in 2021 and beyond will be much more devastating than they were in the 1960s and 70s because the capitalist system’s systemic mind conditioning techniques are much more advanced and institutionalized today than they were 50 years ago. Plus, social media has added a complex realm to this situation because now, in this bourgeoisie idealist dominated reality, anyone with an internet account and a computer can automatically elevate themselves into whatever type of personality they want you to believe they are. And, again, since idealism is dominant, no one ever even thinks to do some work to discover what people’s history of work looks like. People will argue with you all day before it even occurs to them to do a five minute Google search to find out who they are talking to. To find out what they are talking about.

The point to all of this is that there is an objective formula available to all of us to utilize to keep us traveling in the correct direction. Get in the practice of periodically asking yourself the same question. If you were to drop dead right now, what would people say about you? The answer to that question will never be provided by how many internet arguments you believe you won. It won’t materialize based upon how many people you overtalked or abusively dominated. And, it won’t be influenced by whatever image of yourself you spent so much time constructing that has absolutely nothing to do with who you really are as a person.

If you have attended as many funerals as I have, you learn to understand the format, especially in African cultural funerals of which I’ve attended on multiple continents (the cultural components are still the same because we are still the same people, despite 500 years of colonialism and violent separation). What always happens at these functions is people get up and talk about what impact the deceased had upon their lives. The selfless things that person did to influence them and help them become a better person. None of this can be manipulated. It cannot be given an Instagram face-over. The statements people make about you in this setting will be based 100% on your material actions and how those actions impacted people’s lives. So, when its your turn, as it will be one day. Maybe a long time from now, maybe immediately, but one thing that cannot be refuted from a material standpoint is that day is coming for all of us. When it does for you, what will people say?

Let’s start by discussing what they won’t say. They won’t say how much money you had or what material possessions you claimed. They won’t say how much knowledge you had, either objectively or just within any ego warped perspectives. What they will be talking about is how much patience you had with people. We know this is what they will say so if you don’t practice patience with people, this would be a great time to start doing that. They will be talking about how available you were. Did you come ready to become a part of solving problems or were you the person who was great at criticizing shortcomings of others, without ever seeing them in yourself, while never offering anything to help alleviate the contradictions? They won’t be talking about how much you invested in properties, but they will talk about how much you invested in people. Not just your family, but the masses of people that you always claimed you fight for. If no one is talking about any of these things regarding you right now, that’s a clear sign of the areas you should start focusing on. We should also start identifying the people who exhibit those positive traits so that we can start giving them their flowers now, before they depart. We can initiate a cultural offensive where we start to honor true soldiers for justice instead of petti bourgeoisie politicians and celebrities when the true warriors for justice offer more to humanity in one fingernail than any of those other people offer in their entire lives.

Even if we don’t honor those people, it won’t bother them much because they are not living their lives as they are for recognition. True revolutionaries know there is never any personal recognition. If you are serious about dismantling this system you know that you cannot expect recognition from any element of that system and the moment you receive any, that’s a sign that you are falling off.

Of course, surely if you have read this far, you know that the real purpose of this piece is to encourage us to think about how we can be the type of people we claim we want to build a society around because clearly, we have a very long way to go before we reach that level of engagement. A good place to start is to tell yourself you will not get on social media and air out problems for any reason. If you have any courage at all, take the grievance to the person/people you are directing it at. Trust us, that approach works so much better at addressing the problem, but it’s a much harder approach than just posting something on social media. And, in this bourgeoisie capitalist reality, easy is much more attractive than necessary.

No one today is going to be any more articulate than Huey P. Newton was in 1970 when he used the Black Panther Party Newspaper to call out Geronimo Ji Jaga and the New York 21. And, if you balled up all of these supposed revolutionaries today into one they couldn’t equal Huey’s contribution, yet we know today that him doing that was instigated by police while opening up the Panthers to all out attack from the police. Attacks that eventually helped destroy the party. Everyone today claims to understand that history, but every day, you can see people doing the exact same thing that Huey did 50 years ago. How does that saying go? The definition of insanity is doing something the same way over and over and expecting a better result? So, as Amilcar Cabral taught us, to properly correct contradictions, its important that we “return to the source.” That source is our revolutionary African personality and culture. And that source always tells us to start by looking within. So, if we are truly interested in getting better and winning, we should all be asking ourselves on a regular basis, what will people say about us when we die? None of us are fooling our elders and/or the ancestors and when we are ancestors we won’t be fooling anyone still living. When we die, we leave the earth with nothing except the legacies we built. Its time to start taking that much more seriously than we currently do.

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A Critical Review of Netflix's "Blood Brothers - Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali

9/11/2021

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As is the usual trend within capitalist dominated popular culture, the power structure takes every opportunity to shape the history and perspectives of the people its subjugating. Their effectiveness at achieving this objective cannot be disputed. Most people today have been socialized to strongly prefer entertainment forms of stimuli and interaction over intellectual study and critical analysis developing skills. In fact, many people today will speak openly against the need and/or desire to study much of anything.

The Netflix produced documentary “Blood Brothers – Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali” is the latest example of their efforts to exploit our unwillingness to critically study our own history in ways that would force us to learn to think outside of the paradigms that they provide for us. Following on the heels of their 2020 documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X”, Netflix’s “Blood Brothers” explores the development of the personal relationship between Malcolm X and Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and the ultimate destruction of that personal relationship. Starting with Malcolm’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and Muhammad Ali’s brother Rahman Ali, a stream of scholars, historians, petti-bourgeoisie activists (Reverend Al Sharpton), and former activists (Peter Bailey), are interviewed to provide insight on Malcolm and Ali’s personal histories and the relationship between the two of them.
For people who are familiar with Malcolm and Ali, there isn’t an awful lot happening in this documentary that you haven’t heard and seen before, but from Netflix and capitalism’s perspective, that’s essentially their point. They are never attempting to actually educate anyone with these documentaries. Instead, what they desire to do is paint a picture of our history which defangs it, removing the militancy, while luring us in with plenty of sentimentality and a subtle suggestion that all this militant talk gets in the way of our being able to “all just get along.”

Examples of the above paragraph are plenty in this documentary. The relationship between Malcolm and Ali is portrayed as a personal relationship. A friendship gone bad. This would make sense if it wasn’t for the undeniable fact that their relationship wouldn’t have ever happened if it wasn’t for our struggle for African dignity and forward progress. It was that reality that produced Malcolm, Ali, and the Nation of Islam where they met. So, despite the effort by Netflix to advance the capitalist individualistic line of interpreting everything we do, there is no material basis for defining their relationship as just consisting of their two personalities. The individualism is continued throughout the dialogue when the gentleman who was interviewed (multiple times) dressed in the Nation of Islam “Fruit of Islam” uniform says that Malcolm “chose himself” while Ali “chose the Honorable Elijah Muhammad” as his explanation for why their relationship went bad. The belief that Malcolm went his own individual path when he left the Nation of Islam has been repeated so often, covertly and overtly, that there is no way you will convince us it is an accident. Unfortunately, for people who are not active in organized struggle, their perspective of the world is through an individualistic vision because that’s all they have to work with so that trick resonates with them, but any serious examination of Malcolm’s life demonstrates how absurd that analysis is. Even in the documentary when it makes the point of highlighting how hurt Malcolm was when he ran into Ali in Ghana (shortly after Malcolm had left the Nation of Islam), and Ali had rebuked and dismissed him, the portrayal of Malcolm’s individual alienation is inaccurate. The film makes the point of repeating a statement Malcolm allegedly made after leaving the awkward face to face with Ali while Malcolm was in a car with Maya Angelou and others. According to the documentary, Malcolm said “I’ve lost so much!” And this was displayed during the film to paint the picture of a completely dejected Malcolm, yet the truth is Malcolm didn’t respond by doing what people tend to do when they feel alienated, isolated, and painted into an individualistic corner. Malcolm didn’t spiral into drug use, or drinking, or any other unfortunate direction. Instead, he ramped up his political work. He formalized the creation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He further built important relationships with revolutionary Pan-Africanist leaders on the continent of Africa like Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture. In those 11 months after he was snubbed by Ali he did what we would argue was his most important work.

And, we recognize that many people would probably disagree with that last sentence because most of how their development of an organization has taken place is articulated through that same individualistic bourgeoisie vision. Rahman Ali, Muhammad Ali’s brother, said it during the documentary; the problem was the personal relationship between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad and Eljah’s personal relationships with the women he had babies with that Malcolm exposed to the public. Personal/individual, blah, blah, blah. As Kwame Ture was often fond of saying, the contradictions of capitalism are obvious for all to see!” Even within this same documentary, scholar Todd Boyd contradicts this individualistic and tired portrayal of the split between Malcolm and Elijah, even if he wasn’t aware he was doing it, when he says the problem was really a divergence of ideas.” This is probably the most critical statement in the entire documentary because it is absolutely correct in stating that Malcolm’s evolution as a revolutionary Pan-Africanist exceeded what he had learned in the Nation of Islam and this is the primary reason for the split, not the babies born out of wedlock. We understand the confusion here and Malcolm himself made a terrible error that compounded this confusion when he made the accusation about the babies public. As we have stated often, we should never do police work for them and unwittingly, Malcolm did just that when he made that statement, but we will come back to that point about police shortly. For now, its important to also add that another example of the rampant individualism is the way history is projected in the documentary (and in everything capitalist). The Fruit of Islam uniform wearing African in the documentary makes the statement that Malcolm learned “everything he knew from Elijah Muhammad.” This statement has been repeated often during the period of 1964 when Malcolm was hunted and in the almost 60 years since his assassination. Its another subtle effort to make our interpretation of history individualistic instead of collective. No one person, no matter how great, is responsible for everything anyone knows. The Universal Negro Improvement Association, the African Blood Brotherhood, and other organizations had as much to do with the intellectual development of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm’s father Earl Little (which obviously would have had a triggering effect of permitting Malcolm even to hear Elijah Muhammad’s teachings) so its insane to give Elijah Muhammad all of the credit for Malcolm’s awakening. Of course, this happens because for Netflix, and capitalism, they wish to make us believe that since we are not Elijah Muhammad, we cannot have the type of influence over anyone like he allegedly had over Malcolm, etc., and so therefore, there is no use for us to even try. The truth of course is that the masses make history, not individuals so we all play a role in everyone’s development, all the time. Malcolm’s evolution beyond the Nation of Islam was much more than just an individualistic venture on his part. It was part and parcel of his exposure to our international African liberation movement. That’s why its so symbolic that the statement that got him initially suspended by Elijah Muhammad was the statement he made about John F. Kennedy’s assassination where he used the analogy of U.S. imperialism in the Congo, Central Africa, to make the point about “chickens coming home to roost.” No where in what Elijah Muhammad was saying was there a connection to what was happening in the Congo. That was 100% Malcolm’s evolving consciousness which was fueled by his growing understanding and commitment to our revolutionary Pan-African movement.

The most disgraceful element of this documentary was its dismissal of the role of the U.S. government in sabotaging the relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad Ali, Malcolm and Elijah, and our entire movement. The documentary spends no more than 60 seconds talking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counter intelligence program and even during those few seconds, they talk about the FBI as if they were casual observers who was simply rooting for friction to develop within the Nation of Islam. The truth is the FBI orchestrated the dissension that took place surrounding Malcolm. The FBI’s own files illustrated that they had high level informants within the Nation of Islam who’s primary role was to disrupt communication between Malcolm and Elijah and to create distrust between them. The FBI memo from director J. Edgar Hoover just days after Malcolm was assassinated spoke of a financial reward for the work of these informants with a congratulatory theme for their efforts to completely sabotage the work Malcolm was doing (that they manipulated the Nation of Islam to do their work for them). And, to add insult to injury, the people who put this Netflix documentary together had the complete disrespect for the masses of African people to even place John Ali, the man who was pretty much without question the FBI’s highest ranking informant in the Nation of Islam, in the documentary. He was the guy who was the National Secretary who played goalie in preventing Malcolm’s effort to communicate directly with Elijah Muhammad while filling Muhammad’s head with lies about Malcolm’s intentions. He’s also the same guy who gave the press conference after Malcolm’s house was bombed on February 14, 1965, accusing Malcolm of placing his wife and daughters in danger by setting the fire to the house himself. All of this and much more and the directors didn’t ask Ali a single question during the documentary about his role in any of it. In fact, the only semi-journalistic question they asked him is why he thought Malcolm was assassinated to which a fourth grader could have provided a more articulate answer. Absolutely disgraceful.

Finally, the documentary makes the point towards the end, through Todd Boyd, of stating that Muhammad Ali’s legacy of resistance i.e. refusing to be inducted into the U.S. military to fight in Vietnam, had been whitewashed through his role in the 1996 Olympics, etc. What they don’t mention is that from the time of Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975, when the Nation of Islam was dismantled by Elijah’s heir apparent son Warith Deen Mohammad and Muhammad Ali began practicing Sunni Islam (and not the Nation of Islam’s brand of Black nationalist Islam), until Ali’s death in 2016, Ali made no public pronouncements about our struggle for liberation. His physical challenges are noted, but even his actions during that period i.e. the 96 Olympics, meeting with U.S. presidents, etc., contrasted with any type of independent African liberation stances. The point there is the most potent weapon against the individualistic interpretation of our history is the advancement of our mass struggle for justice and the need for everyone to belong to organizations fighting for our liberation. If more of us had that focus, we would understand clearly that we cannot depend upon our enemies to properly teach our history. Its our enemy’s job to misrepresent our history as they did with Ali those last 41 years of his life post-Nation of Islam. Its also their job to present Malcolm as a sad lesson in isolation, something none of us would ever wish to emulate. And, because so few of us explore our history on our own, we don’t realize how rich Malcolm’s life was. None of us wish to exit the planet the way Malcolm was unfortunately forced to exit, but that day in February 1965 will never define his legacy. African people are shot down all day everyday so clearly, that’s not why so many people know who Malcolm X is. Its that rich legacy of his courage and struggle for our dignity that inspires us to respect him and its that which our enemies work overtime to dim in our consciousness.

You will never find us discouraging anyone from watching and reading anything. Watch the documentary, but what we will tell you is you are ill-responsible if all you know about Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, and our African liberation movement is what you learn from these documentaries and motion pictures. There is so much information out here at our fingertips that anyone who doesn’t pursue it to make that your foundation, not Netflix, is really just resigned to remaining in the slave mentality that they joyfully target to produce these projects in order to ensure we continue to stay in that mentality.

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Individualism, Idealism & The Savage Attack against African Identity

9/9/2021

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In 2021 its not difficult to find African (Black) people throughout the U.S. who will tell you with a straight face that they do not believe that they are descendants from Africa. Instead, these folks claim that their ancestry extends for thousands of years within the Western Hemisphere. The correct response to this perspective is bless the good souls of these people because the cause behind their position is a complete lack of knowledge about Africa beyond what the capitalist system has force fed us for 500+ years.

The diamond industry that produces the rings that people buy when getting engaged to be married, the gold people buy for their selected jewelry, etc., is propped up based on the exploitative industry of theft of those minerals from Africa. The aluminum that makes sporting rims for vehicles not to mention foil to wrap our food in, is based on the exploitative bauxite industry in Africa. The production of the most desired and admired vehicles like Tesla, Mercedes Benz, BMW, etc., is based on exploiting Africa’s steel, zinc, Lithium, and rubber mineral resources. Also, the oil that provides the fuel for those vehicles is largely exploited from Africa. Even the simple enjoyment of a chocolate bar cannot happen without the exploitative cocoa industry which is based in Africa. This entire systemic apparatus of exploitation of all African resources was built from the colonization of Africa which began approximately 530 years ago. Before these brutal industries were established, the blueprint for this process was created through one of the worst holocausts in human history, the transatlantic slave trade. Literally millions of Africans were violently uprooted from Africa and displaced to the entire Western Hemisphere. The forced labor of these Africans provided the initial seed money that fueled the industrialization period. And this period contributed to the development of the capitalist system that is represented by the multi-national corporations like Nestle, Tesla, Chevrolet, Toyota, Shell, etc., that dominate all the exploitative industries previously mentioned.

These multi-national corporations have built their fortunes on mass murder and domination of the entire continent of Africa, but they will never publicly admit any of this. Instead, they have spent the last 500 years concocting a mass narrative that they are on top because of their hard work, focus, and undeniable belief in their God. This tactic has obviously been overwhelmingly successful for multiple reasons. The first reason is that this approach elevates the individualistic perspective of history that capitalism depends upon into the dominate position. Once individualism is dominant, fantasy and the illusion of forward progress will always continue to be an effective tool because now objective reality has been replaced with subjective desire and the hope of progress. What people wish the world was has replaced what the world actually is as the dominant reality. And, on top of all of this dysfunction, the vision of Africa has been built based on this individualistic model that paints a lying portrait of Africa as a “dark continent” with primitive people, no technology, no civilization, and no hope. This backward vision of Africa contrasted with the vision of the capitalist Western world as the citadel of human progress and civilization has driven the masses of Africans in Africa, Europe, and the Western world to believe that they have to make a choice between the civilizations of the forces who have subjugated them and the poor suffering continent that, in their eyes, offers them nothing to be proud of. In this tainted scale, the capitalist world wins because it represents forward progress and all that is desired in the world. There is even a saying that “to this point, only capitalism has proven an ability to produce the products that advance the planet.”

All of the above is exactly why we are fond of asking Africans who claim not to be African to inform us about studies they have engaged in about our African history. Here there is always an oblivion. Not just a lack of knowledge, but the complete absence of any information about Africa whatsoever. Think about it. Even the most basic elements of history are denied to practically everyone who exists in the Western world. The average person, even those of African descent within the U.S. for example, could not provide you a reasonable answer to any one of the following questions; what is capitalism? Where did capitalism come from? What role did Africa play in the development of the Western world? What was the process for carrying out the slave trade? What did an average day for a captured African look like in the 1500s? 1600s? 1700s? 1800s? What did a typical day on the slave plantation look like? Where does your biological family exist in the world today? In what ways did we fight back? What examples of resistance do you know about? All of these questions will be met by 95% of the population with utter confusion and these are the basic questions required to have even a fundamental understanding of who we are. Without that foundation, any and everyone, no matter how intelligent, is forced to accept the narrative of our enemies and embrace a Western identity (even if they do so in any form of resistance i.e. “I’m Black only”) because this process has completely cut us off from who we actually are.

And, with no healthy foundation of who we are, we are not in the position to understand even the basic history of what great contributions Africa has contributed to human history. None of these non-African, Africans, can ever tell you a single thing about Africa’s unquestionable contributions to the development of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. None of them can tell you about our contributions to science, debate, and even our creation of the world’s first documented university (Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa). They don’t know that the Greek philosophers they have been taught to believe laid the table for world philosophy got their training at Timbuktu (and they even wrote about it). They know nothing of our matriarchal histories throughout Africa where women identifying people were elevated without men being subjugated.

This complete cut off from Africa places us at the mercy of our colonial identities. As a result, we have come to view the world completely through the vision provided to us by these colonizers. We believe we are Black British, Afro-Cubans, Black Brazilians, Black-Canadians, African-Americans, Nigerians, Kenyans, etc. We see our interests as tied to the micro-states where we were born and where we live. Meanwhile, these micro-states have zero commitment to representing our interests, especially since they know that their continued prosperity is tied to the collective exploitation of Africa. So to them, we will forever be a threat to them, even if we don’t understand why (which we don’t) because they know that one day we will wake up and realize that the riches that they command come from the same place that we do.

African identity is much more than glamorizing our past. For proponents of Pan-Africanism its really a recognition that there are 2 billion Africans worldwide, living in 120 countries and in each of those countries we occupy the bottom of society. And, at the core of this is the continued subjugation of Africa.

The great thing about Pan-Africanism is an African can be Puerto Rican, Dominican, Brazilian, Canadian, etc., and still recognize that our core interest and progress as a people is intrinsically linked to the liberation of Africa. We would never wish to deny our experiences over the last 500+ years because our ability to survive despite the trauma we experienced is a badge of honor and a testament to the strength of our African culture which is without question the resource that has guided us through this hell we have experienced. What does that culture look like? When people say things like “what Black people do” really what they are saying is our refusal, conscious or unconscious, to change or compromise who we are is actually our African culture manifesting itself in ways that protect us. This has permitted us to survive as we have. Torn, beaten down sometimes. Confused, but still here and as a result, potentially ready to fight back.

That African culture has never left us, whether we know that or not is ill-relevant. Its always been here and we use it all day, every-day. And, our culture is a collective one and that’s why the individualist approach has never worked for us and it never will. All that approach will do is confuse us into accepting the logic of our enemies that our problems are our fault as individuals. Some individual failing that God is punishing us for because we are inferior. This is the basis of white supremacy which is the foundation of the capitalist system and we already told you where capitalism came from so clearly, none of this is healthy and productive for us to pursue.

Its time for us to raise the bar. No talk about identity that isn’t accompanied by study and analysis of our history. It’s tragically unfortunate that people are paying these corporations hundreds of dollars to tell them what we already know, that we are Africans. Its tragically unfortunate that so many of people, completely ignorant about who we are, feel the need to lie and make a history they cannot document instead of learning the true and glorious history of who we are. Its tragically unfortunate that capitalism has reduced truth down to nothing more than a subjective interpretation that varies from individual to individual “based upon your truth being your truth.” This is absolute nonsense designed strictly to justify the injustices that are normalized as the natural order of things. We are Africans, period. Even Mother Nature knows this and any African who straightens their hair is reminded of this as soon as the elements of Earth hit that hair.

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When You Die, What Will People Say About You?

A Critical Review of Netflix's "Blood Brothers - Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali

Individualism, Idealism & The Savage Attack against African Identity

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