Above: a truck the FBI used in its raid on Uhuru
As the psyop machine’s methods for managing political social media circles has developed, the synthetic elements within the modern U.S. “left” have come to embrace a particular lie, one which has harmed solidarity efforts. This is the lie that anybody who builds coalitions outside the exclusive and arbitrary parameters which these circles have created is part of a “red-brown alliance,” and is therefore advancing a fascist effort to infiltrate the socialist movement.
An indication that red-brown accusations often aren’t based within truth is the story of the Uhuru organization. Because even though Uhuru is among the most credible communist projects in the country, doing crucial work towards rebuilding the Black community, it’s come to be seen as untouchable by the left’s opportunists. During a moment when we need everybody to be speaking against the DOJ’s persecution of the Uhuru org, the primary actors on the left have either ignored the org or consciously acted against its interests. And a prime rationale behind this decision not to practice revolutionary solidarity is that the org supposedly represents a “red-brown” force.
Whether explicitly or implicitly, this is the narrative that these cynical elements are using to isolate the org during its time of greatest need. It’s nothing besides an excuse for these elements to function in an opportunistic fashion, wherein they treat orgs like Uhuru as threats towards their monopoly over activism spaces. These actors are refusing to give the Uhuru case exposure because their interests in this game are best helped by letting that case remain obscure.
Within the outlook on movement-building that they seek to cultivate, Uhuru and all other forces which share its mass-focused outlook are by definition associated with the “red-brown” bogeyman. This is because the left opportunists function according to the belief that the masses are fundamentally reactionary. And if the masses are so inherently untrustworthy, then the only ones who can be associated with are the few which these insular circles consider to be acceptable.
When we hear the purveyors of this elitist perspective condemn Uhuru for allying with anti-imperialists who aren’t popular within the conventional “left” spaces, that’s the true reason behind their hostility: a fundamental suspicion towards any serious effort at winning the broad masses of people. The DOJ didn’t truly indict Chairman Omali because he aligned with Russia; his real crime was to succeed at bringing members of the Black working class into a project for liberation. Likewise, the real reason why the predominant parts of the left haven’t been here for Uhuru is that the org has worked to get out of the movement and into the masses. Which is something that these political forces see as threatening, as their interests are not in the proletariat’s victory but in the continuation of the movementist cycle.
This is the cycle where certain organizations can take on a role as managers of popular dissent, leading the people’s movements in a way which won’t bring any serious danger towards our ruling institutions. As long as these orgs are the only sources of leadership visible to the people, their monopoly is safe. Should anybody try to build an alternative, though, their project becomes imperiled.
It’s a shallow set of priorities that Uhuru’s betrayers have been operating on, and the narrative they’ve used to justify this betrayal is one of petty scandal-mongering. It’s not surprising, though, because the more the class conflict escalates the better we find out who the struggle’s true friends are. In that way, the left’s betrayal of Uhuru has been beneficial, as now we have clarity about which actors are going to help the anti-imperialist movement while the crackdown continues. We shouldn’t mourn the loss of “allies” who were never truly our allies in the first place. The things we should focus on are gaining allyship for our cause from those who are compatible with it; and preparing our cadres to be able to keep up their operations when the crackdown has reached its point of greatest intensity.
The extent to which the left has failed to act in solidarity with this crackdown’s targets shows how urgent the threat is. It’s enabling the national security state to speed up its assault on our freedoms, creating a sense of impunity among the intelligence officials who are leading this effort. If all major socialist orgs were regularly talking about Uhuru, and the PSL were acting consistent with its stated support for Uhuru, then the national security state would not feel this sense of empowerment. Its efforts to criminalize dissent rely on the complicity of the orgs that are supposed to be resisting our capitalist dictatorship. Because these orgs have failed to fill this role during such a crucial moment, the security state is finding itself free from substantial mass scrutiny. It feels comfortable with accelerating the transition into liberal totalitarianism.
It’s turning into a repeat of the history that made Indonesia’s extermination campaign against anti-imperialists possible. As Joseph Hansen concluded in his introduction to the 1966 book The Catastrophe in Indonesia, the communist movement’s leadership failed to take the threat of an anti-communist military coup seriously enough, so when the coup happened, the people were left without adequate means for resisting the state’s violence. Wrote Hansen about the warnings that this leadership gave prior to the catastrophe: “These warnings, voiced on the very eve of the country’s counterrevolutionary coup, then already in full preparation, came without any previous or accompanying measures for broad mass mobilizations, without preparation for a general strike, without preparation for arming the masses, without concrete warnings about the impending army coup. The warnings could only heighten the determination of the counterrevolutionaries to strike immediately. They could not create adequate means to prevent or to reply to the counterrevolution.”
Under our conditions, the equivalent of Indonesia’s coup won’t look like a takeover by the military. It won’t need to, because this coup has already happened; the coup’s architects are only waiting to start fully using the powers they’ve gained for waging war against the USA’s own people. Our anti-revolutionary coup has looked like an insidious takeover of our institutions by the intelligence agencies, which have always had undemocratic powers but have recently become more influential than ever.
During the new cold war, they’ve used the new technology of social media to carry out unprecedented online censorship against anti-imperialists, and to develop algorithmic tools for manipulating public sentiments. This is how they’ve orchestrated the Russiagate psyop so that Trump’s White House could be pressured into escalating tensions with Russia, suppressed reporting on the Biden family’s corrupt Ukraine ties in anticipation of the 2020 election, censored the voices that oppose the Ukraine war, and kept the Uhuru indictments obscure enough that a mass backlash towards them has so far been avoided. Which has made there be a lack of pressure for the major “socialist” orgs to act in solidarity with Uhuru, further solidifying the narrative dominance of these agencies.
So long as they succeed at suppressing any authentic organizational source of mass resistance against the security state, the agencies won’t need to get the majority of the people in support of the coming purge against dissent. They’ll only need to convince the liberal minority who exist within the social media propaganda bubble, then make this propaganda the only side of the story which gets widely platformed. Then, they hope, they’ll be able to get away with classifying anyone who opposes liberalism as an enemy combatant. Because if the majority are silenced, then the state can assail this majority without getting challenged. We must not let this happen. We must expand our means for waging the information war, and for mobilizing the people against their government.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
