Store
by Rand Gould
“Politics: That is the religion of today; that is the cancer that annihilates every possibility of community and puts to an end every period of ferment.” – Fredy Perlman, “Letters of Insurgents” (1976), p. 196
For much of this year, the masters, who I call the “Scum-In-Charge of the Kleptocracy” for obvious reasons, have seen their greatest fear realized in the streets of America as massive crowds of people cross the political color line – erected in the early 17th century to confront the neo-Confederate occupation army of highly militarized police, i.e., armed racist thugs – in protest over the horrifying May 25th Memorial Day murder of African American George Floyd, on camera and in slow-motion, in Minneapolis, Minn., by Killer Klown Kops (KKKops) Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and Jay Alexander Kueng.
That greatest fear is the very same that launched the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) back in the ‘60s – a program which, among other things, selectively assassinated Black leaders like Malcolm X and Fred Hampton, who advocated for unity among Blacks and whites in the fight against racism, white supremacy and capitalism. This is proof the SICK will do anything to keep in place their very successful, very American identity politics-based strategy of divide and control that has served them so well over the centuries.
The political strategy of divide and control – yet another reason “I’m not inclined toward ‘politics’” as Robert F. Williams stated in “Negroes with Guns” (1962) – has been in operation since the 1640s, when the colony of Virginia legalized the enslavement of Black Africans. Prior to that, the enslavement of Blacks was only “legal” in Catholic countries and colonies pursuant to the Pope’s 1537 edict “Sublimis Deus.”
Divide and control was the Jamestown plantation owners’ answer to the unity of their Black and white workers that led to a successful rebellion against them in the early 17th century until brutally suppressed by British troops shipped across the Atlantic to restore “order.”
“Pay one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
In the rebellion’s aftermath, the plantation owners – primarily second and third-born sons of the English land-owning gentry – realized they couldn’t control their workers the way things were, so they came up with the clever political solution of dividing by skin color into two groups: Black chattel slaves and white indentured servants. The Blacks were now effectively divided from the white workers and kept in line with whips and chains wielded primarily by these white servants, who in reality remained slaves themselves until they served the term of their indenture or died – but whose children would be born free.
Thus, this racist system of chattel slavery, white privilege and white supremacy was born, remaining in effect to this very day, albeit in an altered form: Enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, which many abolitionists correctly felt was “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell,” as the masthead of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator so succinctly put it. In sum: politics.
Divide and control is a time-proven and effective capitalist strategy: Divide the people, the workers, into various groups and subgroups; create conflict where there is none and incite it further where it already exists; or, as capitalist financier Jay Gould put it in his theory of staying on top: “Pay one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
This allows the SICK to maintain control and hold onto “their” property, which is the fruit of stolen labor, via wage slavery. Electoral politics with its donkey-and-elephant-show of Democrats and Republicans is a somewhat attenuated example of this. No matter who you vote for, the government obediently facilitates the interest of the SICK, i.e., profits. The only real debate is how those interests are best facilitated.
To this day, the overwhelming majority of Americans remain oblivious or resigned to the idea that their systemic exploitation and oppression, i.e., capitalism, is the natural way of things, which it mos’ def is not. Consequently, they blindly pursue their own peculiar, self-isolating identity politics agendas or knowingly work for the feds as part of the new COINTELPRO. Things are not that much different from what they were back in 1855, when Frederick Douglass stated:
“The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves by encouraging enmity of the poor laboring white man against the Blacks, succeeds in making said white man almost as much a slave as the Black slave himself … Both are plundered by the same plunderers.”
This has long been the SICK’s strategy to keep us all under control while they rob us and the rest of the world blind. This is why the KKKops kill more Americans than terrorists and have done so with impunity for years. White people should note, the police kill more of them than Black people, although it’s much more likely they’ll kill you if you’re Black.
According to Isabel Wilkerson, “Between 1880 and 1950, an African American was lynched more than once a week for some perceived break of [this] racial hierarchy,” (“The Road to Freedom,” Smithsonian, Sept. 2016, p. 40). In 1951, William L. Patterson noted a change and pointed out: “Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet” (“We Charge Genocide,” 1951). Rope, bullet or knee – it makes little difference if you find yourself on the receiving end of this political control scam like George Floyd did, who paid for it with his life like so many before him.
No real justice will be meted out to these KKKops, who act with impunity because doing the SICK’s bidding gives them immunity. Thus, it would’ve been best if George Floyd’s killers had been “convict[ed] … on the spot,” with the people, all of us, “meeting violence with violence, lynching with lynching,” as suggested by Robert F. Williams.
This is far more than a case of an aberrant KKKop – the proverbial “bad apple.” This is a case of multiple orchards full of bad apples, aka law enforcement organizations, that were planted centuries ago and continue to carry out the SICK’s political strategy of race terror and white supremacy in the name of capitalism. We all know if it was one of us kneeling on a KKKop’s neck until he was dead, we’d be arraigned on first degree murder charges within 48 hours!
Yet, Attorney General Ellison hemmed and hawed for days about a “thorough investigation” of the obvious before undercharging Derek Chauvin with third degree murder May 29, which carries up to 25 years imprisonment, despite the 18 previous complaints against him. All the while, Chauvin was negotiating a plea deal with the feds, which eventually fell through.
Only when people stayed in the streets demanding justice did Attorney General Ellison charge Chauvin with second degree murder, and his fellow KKKops as aiders and abettors, which carries up to 40 years imprisonment. Even then, he repeatedly emphasized how hard it is to get a jury to convict a “police officer.”
Such a statement is called foreshadowing and is his way to surreptitiously prepare the public for some sort of deal that lets these KKKops walk with a couple of years or less for what is clearly an intentional, premeditated murder – murder of the first degree – which carries life in prison without the possibility of parole in Minnesota.
Derek Chauvin was not in danger from George Floyd, nor would he have felt threatened by him or felt under any sort of pressure during the eight-plus minutes he knelt on the neck of a prone and hand-cuffed George Floyd, who was begging for his life.
What was Derek Chauvin thinking during those eight long minutes? His to-go order from Dunkin’ Donuts? His dry-cleaning? The weather? No! This KKKop was thinking, “I’m going to kill this fuckin’ nigger!” Premeditated first degree murder!
I think it was in “The Prince,” Nicolo Machiavelli’s infamous political masterwork, where he wrote: “Occasionally, words must serve to veil facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one becomes aware of it; or if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.”
Attorney General Ellison is certainly attempting to veil the fact that this is a rock-solid first-degree murder case, even going Machiavelli one better by preemptively introducing his excuse for failing to get a conviction. In essence, he’s “tell[ing] us we don’t see what we see, then indict but don’t convict,” as Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland, said of Bland’s murder.
If history has taught us anything, it is that “the government is not here for us,” to quote the grieving mother of Tamir Rice, Samaria Rice. She’s right. The government is here for the SICK and their neo-Confederate army, the KKKops!
The SICK’s current dilemma is how to maintain this neo-Confederate army that helps them maintain the status quo and protects their ill-gotten loot, i.e., property and capital, in the face of massive street protests demanding these KKKops be brought to justice. On the one hand, it is essential to the SICK’s continued dominance and control that these KKKops believe their masters will protect them, so they remain loyal.
On the other hand, the SICK must find a way to appease the people in the streets, who are sick to their guts of this thinly veiled neo-Confederate occupation army, and are now tearing down the monuments to the Confederate traitors erected primarily during the Ku Klux Klan’s resurgence in the 20th century. These monuments would never have been erected in the first place if the Confederate leadership had been duly tried and executed as planned until the coup d’état engendered by President Lincoln’s assassination and replacement by Confederate apologist and Vice President Andrew Johnson.
As the SICK scramble to save their neo-Confederate army of KKKops, you can see the fear in their faces and hear it in their voices as they desperately try to sidetrack the people in the streets with reforms and electoral politics as usual, with various politicians, mayors, police chiefs, etc. taking a knee and coppin’ a plea on national TV. It’s the same old “okey-doke” so many have fallen for in the past, despite the warnings from people ranging from Emma Goldman to Mark Twain, who said, “If voting could change anything, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
When you look around you, the people you see are your community and they are who you need to keep you and yours safe and protected, not the KKKops!
So, don’t be fooled by long-time segregationist and “handsy” misogynist Joe Biden’s crocodile tears over George Floyd, because “[p]olitical language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectful,” as George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language.” Listen, instead, to another George – George Jackson, who, before the KKKops killed him on Aug. 21, 1971, wrote in “Blood in My Eye”: “The essence of USA totalitarian socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of mass participatory society. We must rip away the mask!”
Listen to Eric Garner’s mother, Gwendolyn Carr, when she cried out, “They are killing us on the regular.” After all, it is the job of the KKKops to control and, if necessary, kill us on behalf of the SICK, who currently run the world. George Jackson put it this way: “Anyone who can pass the civil service examination today can kill me tomorrow. Anyone who passed the civil service examination yesterday can kill me today with complete impunity.”
Don’t believe it? Just ask those two rookie Minneapolis KKKops, Thomas Lane and Jay Alexander King. They’ll probably tell you their training officer, Derek Chauvin, told them they could get away with anything, especially when it comes to oppressing Black people on the streets. With this being the case, how can we be surprised when these KKKops go way beyond the pale and become serial killers like Joseph James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, who over 40 years was responsible for at least 12 murders and 50 rapes!
All KKKops act with impunity because they have what is called “qualified immunity,” which means the law is rarely, if ever, enforced against them. We see this in the streets, courts, jails and prisons across America. Anyone who has dealt face-to-face with KKKops knows they are bullies, therefore inveterate cowards, and it is never a good idea to give power and a weapon to a coward – especially a gun. Hell, when we were kids, whether in the city or the suburbs of Detroit, we feared the police and ran for cover whenever we saw them in the neighborhood.
You would think after four centuries of having our asses handed to us by the SICK’s divide and control strategy we would know enough “to fight racism with solidarity,” as Fred Hampton tried to teach us in 1969 before the KKKops murdered him. We must use our unity and community to disarm, disband and prosecute all the KKKops in the SICK’s neo-Confederate army to the fullest extent of the law, with no statute of limitations, for all the crimes they’ve been accused of and gotten away with over their lifetimes – and get rid of them for good. As the celebrated Roman orator Cicero once said, “But surely a thousand deaths are better than the inability to live in one’s own community without an armed guard” (“The Second Philippic of Antony,” Cicero: Selected Works, trans. Michael Grant (1960)).
I’ve heard people say, “We need the police. Who are we going to call when someone is kicking down the door of our home at midnight?” To them I say: It has been the experience in my community that when someone is kicking down the doors of our homes, it is more than likely the police. Even if you were being robbed, and it wasn’t the police, it is highly unlikely the KKKops would get there in time to prevent it. In fact, they rarely stop any crime from being committed.
At best, they’ll arrest whoever the alleged victim points out as the perpetrator, and they certainly won’t try to actually solve a crime. For example, your home is broken into and property is taken. You call the police, they show up and write a report, but they sure as hell ain’t dusting for fingerprints, or doing any of these TV crime scene forensics, including getting your property back. Unless, of course, your name is Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. The SICK, who employ these KKKops. Not you. Not us.
When you’re out in the streets fighting to bring these KKKops to justice, look around you. The people you see are your community and they are who you need to keep you and yours safe and protected, not the KKKops! It is long past time for us to rid ourselves of this neo-Confederate occupation army of KKKops. Once that is done, we can set about ridding ourselves of the parasitic corporate filth that puts profits before people, having come full circle back to finish what we started together, Blacks and whites, in the early 17th century at Jamestown!
For further reading, see “Know Your Enemy: The New COINTELPRO and the Slippery Slope of Identity Politics” and “The ‘Howl’ of Justice” at www.freerandgould.com.
Send our brother some love and light: Rand W. Gould, C-187131, Central Michigan Correctional Facility, 320 N. Hubbard St., St. Louis, MI 48880-1926.
