This statement was originally given in 2011, on the eve of the US and NATO orchestrated invasion of Libya, by Imole Oyelami Mosi Secka on behalf of the Pan African Improvement Organisation based in Ghana. We are reprinting it because the analysis provided within is still extremely important for Africans resisting imperialism around the world to understand. We failed Libya. We can not fail all of Africa. Shut down AFRICOM. . . .
Opinion Pieces
Individualism & the Attack on African Identity
African identity is much more than glamorizing our past. For proponents of Pan-Africanism it’s 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 Western Left’s Collaboration with the Western Bourgeoisie
As the Western left has become more aligned with their imperialist bourgeoisie in the destabilization of the Global South, the radical Black tradition provides a clear approach to “turn imperialist wars into wars against imperialism.” Changes in historical conditions can elevate a secondary contradiction to a primary, and antagonistic contradiction, in an instant. The rightist collaboration with the Pan-European colonial/capitalist project on the part of the social-imperialist left in the United States and Europe did not occur instantly but has been evolving for decades. The contradictory nature of that relationship has sharpened as a result of the current crisis of . . .
African Athletes, U.S. Patriotism & White Supremacy
During the 2020 Olympic games (which due to the pandemic, are being carried out in the summer of 2021) gymnast Simone Biles suddenly withdrew from competition for the U.S. team. Biles, who has been so dominant in her performance over the last several years that she has earned the title GOAT, has been so outstanding that many judges have admitted being confused about how to properly evaluate other gymnasts in comparison to her incredible capabilities. Biles, apparently feeling pressure to justify her decision to withdraw, took the painful step of revealing publicly that she has struggled with depression and needed . . .
Reparations: Why Paying Them in Cash is Throwing Good Money After Bad
African Americans won’t turn the tide by going on a shopping spree, or leaving it to whites to decide what we can and cannot teach our children, where we work, and for how much, whether we are free or imprisoned, or whether we live or die. We need power over our own communities just as the white working class needs it over theirs. . . .
On Joining the Military and Marching to the Left
You cannot easily decouple individuals, especially colonized individuals, from the forces that pushed them into economically incentivized conscription. A dialectical idealist in Marxist clothing will—in a bid to censure anti-imperialist veterans—sound like a libertarian in their condemnations. They will say things like, “there is always a choice” and “there are plenty of jobs in the marketplace.” When it comes to economically incentivized conscription, some so-called Marxists possess more faith in the free market’s ability to provide other forms of employment than Milton Friedman in his heyday. While dialectical materialists, a.k.a. Marxists, never excuse participating in an imperialist institution, they certainly understand the forces that drive people into its employ. . . .
On Afghanistan: Joe Biden is the Imperialist in Chief
First of all I hate that nationalistic jingoism “homeland,” but that’s what y’all’s president said yesterday in his speech about the inevitable unfolding chaos in Afghanistan, and the man was belligerent in saying the quiet part about US imperialism in Afghanistan out loud. He might as well have stood at the podium and said, “We went into Afghanistan for payback against the terrorists we helped create when we used the Afghan people to fight the Soviet Union in the 80s, and that’s all we cared about. We did that and to hell with them people and their country!” . . .
Finding Black Liberation in the Politics of Being Left Alone
Days after a 21-year old white gunman walked into two Atlanta massage parlors and fatally shot eight people –six of them Asian –the writer Zaid Jilani appeared on the internet news program, Rising to aver: “There is not a white supremacist wave of terrorism or hate crimes or anything like that.” That is, in fact, exactly what is happening according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who told Congress in February that domestic terrorism investigations have doubled over the past four years to nearly 2,000, while the number of arrests of white supremacists over that same span has nearly tripled. Those . . .