The American Revolution : A gateway to better future.
let’s learn something about America’s protest of Chaos, Rage, and Despair.
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
— Vladimir Lenin
Lenin said this referring to the Russian Revolution, oblivious of the fact that a century later the interconnectedness of the global society will produce such outcomes for all of us. Lenin could have hardly imagined that his words describing the Bolshevik revolution almost 100 years ago could be applied to the American Society this widely in past few weeks.
Yet, if one defines ‘revolution’ (from the Latin revolutio, “a turnaround”) as “a significant change that usually occurs in a short period of time”,
What Vladimir I. Lenin was referring to, was the tendency for a society to remain stable on the surface for long periods of time, during which various social, economic and political problems continued to fester on the inside.
Once the tensions and internal contradictions of the old social order become desperate and chaotic enough, however, people finally become open and willing to fight for real change. Decades upon decades of accumulated grievances suddenly come to the surface, sometimes in a matter of only weeks. However, as history has shown, the outcome of a revolutionary period at the “edge of chaos” can be either positive or chaotic. and it’s human nature of having a limit of tolerance and when it exceed it takes the face of violence. while talking about the movement of oppressed class one must not forget Bhagat Singh who said:
“ Jo Log Uncha Sunte Hain , Unhe Dhamake Ki Zaroorat Hoti Hai ”
(If Deaf are to hear, The sound has to be very loud.)
One of the reasons why the United States has become such a powerful and influential nation over the last couple centuries, is that it has successfully and creatively overcome all three of its major chaotic episodes (1770s, 1860s, 1930s-early ‘40s). Any of these three dark times in American history, could have doomed its society and culture forever.
Just take a hard look at America right about now, What do we see?
America is burning, but the flames only reflect a deeper fire. America is burning with rage, with fury, with disappointment, with resentment. It’s shaking with anger. It’s screaming in grief. America is burning like a trash fire on the rubble of a broken dream.
Riots across the country. Cities on fire. A hundred thousand dead and counting. A President who alternates between negligence, irresponsibility, incitement, and indifference. A political class that’s paralyzed. An intellectual class that failed at it’s first job to predict and prevent any of it. A people who are now poor, desperate, and afraid. A pervasive feeling of hopelessness, powerlessness, rage, and pessimism. A society which has plunged shockingly into a dystopian abyss.
We have to understand something about Americans, They’ve been exploited so long that they don’t know any other way. The poor white exploited the black. The middle class white exploited the poor white and the black. The rich white exploited them all. It’s a society which became Conditioned to dehumanization. When we look at it, we can see not all the currently exploiter in America are elite class, the cops, journalist, store owner and other belongs to poor and working class who have the false thought of being the special of elite class. Friedrich Engels have said about this scenario of working class in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England which sets here perfectly,
“The workers are in constant competition among themselves as are the members of the bourgeoisie among themselves. The power-loom weaver is in competition with the hand-loom weaver, the unemployed or ill-paid hand-loom weaver with him who has work or is better paid, each trying to supplant the other. But this competition of the workers among themselves is the worst side of the present state of things in its effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the proletariat in the hands of the bourgeoisie.”
~Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845
How can a society ever have public goods — things meant for all — if it’s a segregated state, an apartheid state? When a society is divided into the human and the non-human, one obvious consequence is that it can never have public goods. That’s why America never developed the things all of you take for granted — healthcare, retirement, education, dignity, income, as basic human rights, things everyone has. Black men can be shot and killed for no reason because safety itself, the integrity of the human body, is one of the public goods America never developed.
America is a dystopia. What the world fails to understand, though, is how that dystopia was a product of many things. Of racism, hate and communalism. Of the lack of public goods it caused. Of the descent into poverty that lack of public goods itself then caused. because of racism, they never thought of human rights for all, so they never built that kinds of systems, and now nobody has affordable healthcare, retirement. The reason why don’t they think about these things as basic human rights are Because they’re racist, Racism is like a — like a curse. Americans never developed a good working class society where everyone holds the equal rights, because they thought black people and brown people didn’t deserve healthcare and retirement or even safety. The result is that now a whole society doesn’t have those things affordably, and everyone is poor.
What the hell is wrong with Americans?
The answer is simple, but it’s also complicated. Americans never saw each other as human beings. Just commodities — or maybe slaves. How could a functioning society ever result from that? America’s original sin doomed it to collapse in the end. A society that dehumanizes itself will never develop human rights, public goods, a functioning social contract. Everyone will be left poor in the end. Desperation and fear will prevail as the vicious cycle of poverty takes hold — even for the chosen people. And we know what happens in that case, Fascism.
Yes, Fascism. we have heard story of Weimar Germany. where People grew poor, they grew desperate, and a demagogue came along, who blamed all their problems on a scapegoat. America today is something very much like Weimar Germany then. The hated scapegoats aren’t Jews , aren’t just Jews. But the blacks who get killed for no reason. Many Americans think they should still be slaves, basically. But what they don’t understand is A society of slaves and masters can’t be one of equals.
Racism has always been America’s virus long before COVID-19 entered the scene this year. America can’t “unfriend” racism. Its inception dates back more than 400 years ago when Africans washed onto North American shores from a fleet of slave ships. It would be until 1865 that slavery was abolished in America, but racism continues to be a stubborn stain that cannot be washed out from our fabric.
In recent days we’ve all seen, heard, and read of the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, the shooting of Breonna Taylor, the use of the police by a white woman to threaten Christian Cooper, and On the 25th of May 2020 amid the Covid-19 Pandemic, before the eyes of the world, George Floyd an African American man was executed by a white American police officer and added to the list of Black People killed my Police which is being controlled by White Supremacist. To say this was an isolated incident would be sadly misleading as since joining the Minneapolis police force in 2001 that Police officer has received 18 complaints against him.
It took 18 Black lives excluding George Floyd for the just suspension of that Police office. According to a study conducted by The Guardian in 2016, the rate of fatal shootings by the police per million people was the highest for the Native American (10.13) and Black (6.6) racial groups; white people had a rate of 2.9. A Washington Post database showed that African Americans were 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than white people.
Even after brutal act of police violence is publicly exposed — inevitably because it chanced to be caught on film — the politicians, Democratic and Republican, engage in handwringing and promises of an investigation. Almost always, these investigations fail to lead to prosecutions and convictions.
State power, Lenin noted in his The State and Revolution, is composed of “special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc. at their command.” Citing Friedrich Engels, Lenin noted that the state is fundamentally “a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms,” and that the power and violence of the state “grows stronger… in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute.”
The recent campaign “reopen the economy” forced workers to endanger their lives to pay off Wall Street. At the same time, the ruling elite plans on using mass unemployment and the bankrupting of the state to increase exploitation, slash social programs and impoverish the population.
The conflict between the financial aristocracy and the working class is the fundamental source of the brutality and violence of the state. The same conflict creates the objective foundation for a political movement that can put an end to this brutality: the independent and united movement of the entire working class to take political power into its own hands and put an end to the capitalist profit system.h
The Black Lives Matter Movement
The ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is not something just poped-up after Floyd murder, It was there in side suffering of Black People since so long. In 2013, after the acquittal of a civilian who fatally shot teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida the year before, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter began trending on social media, and a movement against systemic violence against the African American community sprung up. It achieved fame in 2014 during protests against the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown– the latter also being a case of fatal police shooting. The movement, started by three African American women, expanded across the US and invited public interest internatriots can and have led to substantial reforms in the past, indicating that they can be part of a coherent political movement. By drawing attention to some of the real despair in destitute communities, riots can push the public and leaders to initiate real reforms to fix whatever led to the violent rage.
“When you have a major event like this, the power structure has to respond,” Hunt of UCLA said. “Some very concrete, material things often come out of these events."ionally.
The protest have helped some white people to see a bit of what many black and brown people know: White America has long had its knee on black people’s necks. I am sure that some who just read that sentence are saying, “Not all of white America.” But that’s the problem. It’s hard for people of color to feel that white America is with us and not against us. White America has not demonstrated the collective resolve to repent, rebuke, and reorient itself against racial injustice.
What’s likely unique about the current movement is the stratified makeup of the protestors; they have white people in the streets with black people who are in the streets with brown people, they have Asian people and people from every color and creed coming together, every sexual orientation, all to protest the radical injustices which have been a part of our lives since literally all of us have been born.
Protest & Violence:
To protest is an essential right of the Constitution. It is also part of a healthy democracy. I would like to start writing something about the on-going BlackLiveMatter protest with the words “Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you are protesting America”. White men arming themselves as self-appointed militias is seen as ‘American’ see:
but black people walking on the street holding placards and shouting for their rights is being labeled as “Anti-American” activity. When tensions in Charlotte, North Carolina, over the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott quickly boiled over into violence, looting, and riots, many people on social media had the same reaction: Why are people destroying their own communities in such senseless violence?
But they misses the point. This sentiment, underplays the real anger behind riots and urban uprisings. “People participate in this type of event for a real reason, It’s not just people taking advantage. It’s not just anger and frustration at the immediate or proximate cause. It’s always some underlying issues.”
Actually, These aren’t just protests, it reflects a feeling that runs deep now, that cuts to the bone. A grim dissatisfaction with American life. A resentment at the degradation that Americans have to endure. A hopelessness that anything can ever really change now for the better. They are signals of a kind of embittered rage at the dystopia America has become. They are cries against the legendary cruelty and brutality that American life is made of now. And most of all, they are protesting against exploitation and injustice, which has become the defining experience of American life, for too many. As lenin said:
Convert the imperialist war into civil war. We fully regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by the oppressed class against the oppressing class, slaves against slave-owners, serfs against land-owners, and wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as legitimate, progressive and necessary. If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be “just” “defensive” wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathise with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory “great” powers.
~ lenin, Social and War (1915)
Here the controversy of the protest clashes with the concept of violence, loot and destruction, and for the people who were silent on the murder of Blacks are now criticizing the protests just because there are few video of control-less mass of angry protesters entering into stores looting and destructing but there didn’t referencing the video where People have gathered all the looted goods from Target and made it available in one place for protesters to get necessities and aid.
or the videos where Protesters taking care of each other during the ongoing pandemic by making improvised hand sanitizer dispensers and distributing it.
“Everywhere you look, someone’s handing out bottles of water, fruit snacks, bananas, and granola bars. Lots of “excuse me’s” and “thank you’s.”
The main point where the conservatives, trump supporters and racists are defying the movement as the small businesses and shop are being destroyed but they don’t know that fact that a Movement of oppressed class are build on people’s solidarity and unity. The fact is, Many Minnesota business owners are surprisingly okay with the ongoing protests they see in the streets. Some transformed their bookstore into a safe space and some are using tattoo parlor to inspire protesters. Even one of them said “We can rebuild, but a person’s life can’t be brought back once it’s been taken from them by force.” One Minneapolis restaurant owner even said, “Let my building burn. Justice needs to be served and those officers need to be put in jail.” for details, see the below article.
what the criticizers of BLM movement don’t understand is, It’s just a property, but you can’t fix a broken family, destroyed by the unexpected and sudden death of an innocent kinsperson. And this is what conservatives consistently miss. They seem to be woefully inadequate at grasping the fact that people who don’t look like them are actually dying, that death is final, and that it’s a problem that’s not only ubiquitous but stretches all the way back to the foundations of the nations. Conservatives tend to think that property is more important and valuable than people and not living under the perpetual fear of a police state that might kill you at any moment.
They seem to be making the constant mistake that if the protests, the riots, and all the anger stopped, everything can just go back to normal and we can all just go shopping again. But when your version of “normal” is being hunted down and executed in the streets for minor offenses, traffic violations, or sometimes even nothing at all, there is nothing “normal” about that “normal”.
Their conservative normal or we can say the normal of privileged class and the “normal” of black people or working class all over the world are vastly different lived experiences. One is living in a world of casual consumption, liberty, and often luxury, while the other is living in a world beset on all sides by racists and state-sponsored systemic racism alike.
Riots can and have led to substantial reforms in the past, indicating that they can be part of a coherent political movement. By drawing attention to some of the real despair in destitute communities, riots can push the public and leaders to initiate real reforms to fix whatever led to the violent rage.
“When you have a major event like this, the power structure has to respond,” Hunt of UCLA said. “Some very concrete, material things often come out of these events.”
The 1960s unrest, for example, led to the Kerner Commission, which reviewed the cause of the uprisings and pushed reforms in local police departments. The changes to police ended up taking various forms: more active hiring of minority police officers, civilian review boards of cases in which police use force, and residency requirements that force officers to live in the communities they police.
Or in Los Angeles, the 1992 riots led the Los Angeles Police Department to implement reforms that put more emphasis on community policing and diversity.
Now, I’m not endorsing riots, the destruction of private property, and more wholesale, just like that, neither I’m not here to condone the protests and riots, I am here to say that I empathize with communities who’ve lost their voice and the many more who’ve never been afforded the luxury of having one. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.,
“Riots are the language of the unheard.”
Peaceful protests had been tried within the last decade by Colin Kaepernick and between outrage and mockery, privileged class still weren’t listening. Kaepernick’s message is now clear as day:
They see violence occurred by unorganized mass protest but they become blink in the case of police brutality. Per The New York Times published videos showed police officers in recent nights using batons, tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on protesters, bystanders and journalists, often without warning or seemingly unprovoked. The footage, which has been shared widely online, highlighted the very complaints about police behavior that have drawn protests in at least 75 cities across the United States.
People are flipping out (rightfully so) because of both racism and police brutality. And now police officers are responding to this anger with more unnecessary brutality.
Police officers are assaulting people for exercising their basic constitutional right: freedom of speech. The freedom to voice upset and displeasure with the way things are going. Police are harming people for voicing their upset, and are, in effect, trying to silence them. This will only serve at further enflaming distrust over law enforcement, which is already shaky at best. see A Black 20-year-old student called Justin Howell who was protesting against racist police violence in Austin, Texas is in critical condition with a fractured skull and brain damage after being shot in the head with a “less-lethal” projectile by the police after which they shot at the medics trying to help him.
Also, America has a President who is happy to invoke a loaded, racist threat by tweeting, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” later on twitter took off that tweet for glorifying violence.
And, while the answer to every political question cannot be Donald Trump, the fact is that the country is led by a demagogue whose political impulses are autocratic, whose rhetoric is deliberately divisive.
In 1973, Gil Scott-Heron wrote:
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,”
Indicting white apathy. He described how some Americans delighted in the mundane and trivial that flashed on the television screen while injustice demanded a revolution. Now people are watching their screens, seeing the violent acts as well as the protests in response, but then going back to business as usual.
The real question arises here is what can we do with a group of people who refuse to play nice? What do you say to someone who isn’t listening? How do you compel someone who doesn’t care? Or must we just use sheer political force to subdue these political elements of our nation who’d be perfectly fine allowing innocent Black men to be hunted and killed on the streets? Must we beat them at the ballot box in a way so big that it finally drives them into submission? I think so. We certainly cannot allow people to be in charge who are willing to overlook basic facts about reality, especially facts that get people killed in mass, all because it helps their political ambitions and perhaps stops them from experiencing the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.
So yes, do what you must do, what you feel is right, people know their communities better, let the working class uprise on the ashes of elite and oppressor class but at the end of the day, there must not be an overwhelming victory of Trump in November. Let’s not forget about that action because so long as Trump is operating in the white house, so little progress can be made. But as America hold a strong history of racism even after having a black president, What actually America needs right now in this very moment is