by A. L. Gober Jr.
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The most important task for American Freedmen is to transform ourselves from a conquered people into a conquering people. This calls for a posture of learning and experimentation with the goal of securing vital control and influence over critical resources and infrastructure on which American Freedmen depend.
The internal contradictions of White America make another civil war inevitable, between the same two factions of Whites: the Assimilationist-Liberals and the Nationalist-Supremacists.
We should plan for both possibilities:
We should not plan for nor attempt to militarily engage or overthrow the Federal power, as long as it remains loyal to its own Constitution (as amended) and has American Freedmen within its ranks of civil servants, law enforcement and military personnel. This is why reformism is so important - it represents our stake in the idealized racial democracy the USA professes to be (but is not, in practice).
We should, however, prepare ourselves to one day become self-governing, because if it does one day come to pass that the United States dissolves, whether by peaceful or violent means, we will need to govern ourselves. If we fail to do this, someone else will govern us, and we would thus remain conquered.
We will inevitably be forced to face white supremacist militias and armies, as a matter of survival. We should thus form a central intelligence organization to coordinate efforts during peacetime and wartime. During peacetime this will take the form of institutions like think tanks, nonprofits and lobbying efforts. During wartime this will serve as the nucleus and backbone of an armed force to defend ourselves from white-supremacist paramilitaries. The principles, structure and membership of this organization are not to be public knowledge.
For as long as the United States remains intact, democratic and republican (i.e. not either fascist or communist), we should remain committed to reformist means of changing the material conditions of American Freedmen using the Federal, State and local institutions, and the dynamics of capitalist markets. Many of them are there for the taking, we only need to develop enough organizational capacity to take advantage of grant programs, lobbying and government inefficiencies.
Christian religion has given us many positive traits:
One of its most poisonous effects on us, which will need to be addressed and combated ruthlessly by our institutions, is the messiah complex - the idea that we are just waiting on a Christ-like “savior” to deliver us from the hellish conditions we’ve endured - a direct reference to the Second Coming of Christ and a clear rehash of the Judaic eschatology around “Moshiach”. Muslims also believe in Christ’s return, but propose an earthly leader to precede him: the “Mahdi”.
All of this underscores the need for our movement to be secular, because sectarian divisions between Christians, Atheists and Muslims prevented the 1960s Black Power movement from advancing in both theory and practice.
Our movement does not prefer any one religion, nor does it intend to disparage religion as a whole. One’s spiritual leanings are a personal, family, or community matter, to be discussed in religious houses of worship or religious schools. However, the toxic influence of messianic beliefs has done enough damage to warrant a thorough analysis and rejection of them as a stumbling block toward our ethnic goals. It is only from this perspective that we should critique and curtail the influence of religion on our political, social and economic strategies.
The Messiah Complex is our manifestation of what is known in the secular world as “Great Man Theory”, which itself is an outgrowth of the Judeo-Christian Messiah complex in European history. It posits that all history is driven forward by the deeds of so-called “Great Men”, like Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln, Bismarck, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Ataturk, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and so on. Black Nationalists have their own versions of “Great Men”: Garvey, L’Ouverture, Williams, Newton, Seale, Davis, X, Amin, Qaddafi, Lumumba. Integrationists, of course, look up to (but don’t understand) Dubois, Tubman, King, Washington (Booker T.), Evers, Woodson, Obama, and so on.
The problem with all of this is that our ethnic problems cannot be solved by a single leader. The scale and scope of what needs to be done, requires a different approach. On top of that, the Great Man / Messiah theory doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. Historical movements and revolutions have been successful largely because of the efforts of networks of dissident elites who break away from the mainstream elites’ economic and political agenda, usually due to some incompatibility between them on market access/control or outright opposing socio-economic interests.
Washington could not have done anything without the moral and financial backing of entire sections of the white American planter class. Similarly, Lincoln represented not some higher ideal of justice per se, but rather the entire Northern capitalist class which was eager to drain the South of resources and manpower. Even the Communists needed financial support from elites: Lenin was given safe passage through Germany, by none other than the German government itself, into Russia with millions of dollars worth of gold bars on a “sealed” train. Empowering a man like him with resources, they correctly predicted, would take Russia out of World War One.