Nipsey Hussle; The Difference Between Conspiracies & History

Honestly, I didn't follow the career and works of this dear departed African.  I was closely tuned into rap music during the consciousness era of the late 80s and 90s.  Even into the 2000s, I regularly listened, but besides a few select artists, I haven't been much into rap music (recognize the differences between rap music and hip/hop culture) over the last 10 years or so.  By keeping my ear to the ground in our communities, I have heard some about the work our dear departed African was attempting to engage in.  And, having experienced enough trauma from existing in oppressed African communities, I, like many people, am triggered whenever seemingly senseless violence impacts our communities.  Whether its Jazmine Barnes in Houston, Ezra Hill in Chicago, 130+ people killed in Mali over the weekend, or Nipsey Hussle, the reoccurring pain of our people being systemically eliminated just for existing is a constant trauma in our daily lives.  

This trauma produces many different types of responses from us.  At the base of these responses are our human attempts to try and find some justifiable reason for the continued senseless violence meted out routinely against us.  We know there is an analytical perspective that explains why so many of us feel the need to engage theories about why this violence happens to us.  Some people call these theories "conspiracy theories."  And, yes, some of this can get pretty far out there, but any people who have experienced the generational trauma that we have are completely warranted in being a little excessive in trying to figure out why we suffer the way we do.  Especially since some of our distrusts and insecurities about who is wrecking havoc against us is firmly grounded in history.

I don't have much of a comment about Dr. Sebi and/or whether Mr. Hussle's proposed documentary about Dr. Sebi's works is the reason why Mr. Hussle was killed this past weekend, as many of us are claiming.  I don't know whether Dr. Sebi had a potential cure for AIDs or not (I can tell you that socialist Cuba has without question eliminated mother to child HIV transmissions).  I do know that police are not our friends under any circumstances whatsoever.  I do know that any African who believes anything the police say about anything, whether its African police or not is completely ill relevant, is an African who is in denial about history.  There are several documented instances of police agencies initiating chaos e.g. violence among our people in order to ensure dysfunction continues within our communities.  For examples, we can look at imperialism's efforts to destabilize the National Congolese Movement (MNC - Patrice Lumumba's political organization) in Congo, Central Africa, in the early 1960s.  Fighter pilots identified as anti-MNC insurgents, were captured only to reveal these pilots who were engaged in terrorist actions against MNC rebels fighting to restore democracy to the Congo were incapable of speaking any of the almost 250 languages that are spoken in the Congo region.  No Lingala, Kiswahili, or French.  In fact, these captured pilots only spoke English or Spanish.  Since that reality alone immediately eliminated the pilots as Congolese, the next question became who and where these fake Congolese had come from?  The answer?  These pilots were reactionary U.S. born Africans and/or so-called Cuban exiles (people opposed to the Cuban revolution) who were recruited to pose as Congolese to give the impression to the world that there was significant resistance to the Lumumbist forces fighting against imperialism in the Congo.

Transferring over to the city of Los Angeles, California, U.S., there are many more ill refutable examples of imperialist sabotage against African people.  The entire question of Bloods versus Crips is linked to white supremacy and its efforts to repress our people in Los Angeles.  This history is undeniable as the original so-called African "gangs" in Los Angeles only formed in the first place to protect African people from European violence being carried out by thousands of white youth labeled as the "Spook Hunters."  During the 1950s and 60s, a large percentage of Los Angeles Police (LAPD) were recruited from the Southern U.S. to help control the ballooning African population that was attracted to Los Angeles from the Southern U.S. to pursue the industrial boom that resulted from World War II and the Korean War.  With a police force that was supportive or at least apathetic to violence against our people, the original Los Angeles African street organizations like the "Businessmen, Gladiators", and "Slausens" engaged in self-reliance and defense against racist violence.  Once the industrial jobs dried up and the factories closed down in the late 60s and early 70s, poverty in Southern Los Angeles increased dramatically.  Continued overpopulation of that area of the city caused increased tensions within our communities and with white flight away from inner city Los Angeles along with the decline of the African liberation movement complete by the late 70s, our street organizations, now lacking any positive influences, began the crabs in a barrel process of turning against one another to fight for the meager resources they deemed worth protecting in our limited existences.  

Understanding the above Los Angeles history, no one should be confused about it.  Regardless of how violent and ruthless the now "evolved" Crips and Bloods sets represented to the broader society, the fact is the forces who are responsible for ensuring the capitalist system continues unobstructed never wavered in recognizing that our youth organizations, not afraid to confront this oppressive system with force, could be transformed into an organized revolutionary mechanism with the right influences.  Again, there are numerous ill refutable examples of the power structure being caught working to destabilize our inner city communities in Los Angeles (as well as other urban areas around the world).  After the 1992 rebellion in Los Angeles (commonly and unfortunately labeled the "Rodney King" rebellion), over 300 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents were reassigned into South Los Angeles after their sabotage work in helping destabilize the already corrupt Soviet Union was complete.  This fact is easily verifiable, but the question that has never been asked on a broad level is, why did this happen?  What was the mission of these agents in South Los Angeles?  These 300 agents were all specialists trained and experienced in counter intelligence.  That was the type of work they performed in Eastern Europe.  Many of these people, like the FBI Held family, had long histories of engaging in counter intelligence work in the African liberation movement as well as the Soviet Union.  So, the question has to be exactly what type of work these people were commissioned to carry out in Los Angeles in the 1990s?  This wasn't two or three agents.  This was 300.  The answers are all around us.  In the early 2000s, a rumor was circulated throughout Los Angeles with such proficiency that is it difficult even today to find anyone familiar with Los Angeles politics who hasn't heard this rumor.  There was a shooter and/or shooters, who were shooting at vehicles traveling on Los Angeles freeways.  Several people were hit and injured and multiple cars were damaged.  The rumor was that the shootings were being carried out by local Indigenous (Latino) gangs affiliated with the Mexican Mafia.  The story goes that these people were shooting at vehicles that had African men inside with white tee shirts, the alleged uniform of the Rolling 60s Crips set that, according to this rumor, had stolen a drug shipment that belonged to the Mexican Mafia.  

Very little of the above rumor, if any of it, was ever true.  And, the only purpose this rumor served was to challenge peace among African and Indigenous communities in Los Angeles at a time when less violence was taking place between those two communities than at previous times in history.  By the same token, so-called gang shootings have been trending down in Los Angeles for quite some time.  The suggestion here is that a measure of U.S. imperialist intelligence efforts in South Los Angeles is to continue to ensure that our communities remain unstable.  A perfect way to accomplish this is to ensure that violence keeps going.  What better way to effect that than to have someone well perceived like Nipsey Hussle gunned down in broad daylight, a methodology perfected by the FBI in its war against African liberation organizations e.g. dragging Fred Hampton's body out onto the street after they assassinated him.  Making the Los Angeles Panthers strip naked before parading them on the street four days after they murdered Chairman Fred in Chicago.  Their objective?  Send the message to us that no matter what we attempt to do, we will fail.  Instill and/or reinforce the idea that we are incapable to sustaining positive interaction among ourselves and that whenever we try, we, unobstructed by imperialism, will destroy ourselves.  The truth is imperialist police agencies have always, and continue to, instigate instability in our communities by initiating drive by shootings and (as previously demonstrated with the Congolese example) making it appear as if its simply us further destroying ourselves (as if there must just be something wrong with us as a people).

The final question here is what motivation does this capitalist/imperialist system have to engage in such criminal activities against African people?  I can hear the reactionaries now.  "C'mon man!  How can you prove such outrageous charges against the police?"  There is much more evidence than even indicated above, but even those examples cannot be repudiated.  Plus, from the standpoint of imperialism, this makes sense.  The most unpredictable and uncontrollable element imperialism has to grapple with is its relationship to African people living inside and outside its epicenters.  In other words, we believe we pose the largest threat to imperialism on a worldwide basis because of imperialism's relationship to exploiting African resources and our proximity to every imperialist center on earth (due to slavery and colonialism we live in virtually every capitalist country on earth).  Imperialism cannot maintain itself without Africa being subjugated in the process.  That's why if you believe Nipsey Hussle's ties to Africa and African people in the U.S. is a coincidence (including his Eritrean dad's apparent Pan-African activist work), you just don't understand much about our existence in the world today.  Pan-African consciousness and organizing efforts pose the largest threat to imperialist interests and they will employ any tactics anywhere to keep us off balance.  Their future in power depends upon them being able to ensure our instability continues.

You can read all of this and dismiss it, but what you cannot dismiss, if you are genuine in wanting to see African people uplifted, is that this system has a vested interest in keeping us down.  And, the fact anyone who does anything to help us is in danger.  This is the systemic basis of our daily lives system.  Its possible, they could not even know exactly who Nipsey Hussel was or what he was doing.  Its not as if he was engaged in revolutionary organizing efforts.  From what I see most of what he was doing was centered around the same old find a way to co-exist with capitalism by finding a way for us to buy a piece of the system that is oppressing us approach.  Not criticizing.  Just stating a fact.  The reality is we pose such a threat that it doesn't matter what Mr. Hussle's politics were.  What's important to our enemies is anyone who has any type of message of uplift for us and a following could be a problem because some of the people listening could decide to take that message farther.  They know that their best way to circumvent anything productive happening is to eliminate the center of any efforts that have followers and since we see our ability to make history primarily through capitalism's individualistic lenses, once the "leader" is gone, its likely the efforts will fall apart.  Imperialism is concerned about our potential for change because they know we possess that potential even if we don't see it.

So, unless you know the shooters extremely well...And I mean better than anyone else and/or you have been a part of their process to carry out the killing, no matter what that process was, you are not in the position to say what did or didn't happen.  The fact is we don't know.  What we do know is much of what we think is our dysfunction is always being directed by those unseen, unheard, and unknown to most of us.  So, the point of this piece is since the last statement is strong and ill refutable, the least we can do knowing that is resist the urge when bad things happen to us to rush out and provide public relations for the police.