“The hatred of Tsarism was directed particularly against the Jews. On the one hand, the Jews provided a particularly high percentage (compared to the total of the Jewish population) of leaders of the revolutionary movement. In passing, it should be said to their credit that to-day the Jews provide a relatively high percentage of representatives of internationalism compared with other nations. On the other hand, Tsarism knew perfectly well how to play up to the most despicable prejudices of the most ignorant strata of the population against the Jews, in order to organise, if not to lead directly, the pogroms—those atrocious massacres of peaceful Jews, their wives and children, which have roused such disgust throughout the whole civilised world. Of course I have in mind the disgust of the truly democratic elements of the civilised world, and those are exclusively the Socialist workers, the proletarians.” —V.I. Lenin From a Lecture on the 1905 Revolution
Old, poisonous ideas
fester like rotten meat…
Gut roiling, headache,
rubbery knees—I’m nauseous tonight.
Just the night before, I’d asked,
“Where’s this month’s mass murder?”
If he marches into a mosque,
slithers in a synagogue,
bursts into a Baptist church
slaughtering worshippers;
If he ‘lights up’ families’
cars at ‘checkpoints;’
If he massacres medics
bent over prone silhouettes
from a chopper; If he
slaughters shoppers at a
mall or garlic festival; If he
massacres music lovers from
a high rise hotel window; If he
mows down dancers at a
club; If he decorates a family’s
walls crimson—ransacks rooms;
If he pulverizes patients,
nurses, doctors, buried
beneath rebar and concrete dust;
If he snipes marchers
and journalists from his
belly like a snake in the sand;
If he charcoalizes children
playing in a field
leaving trails of tears
diluted with warm blood—
9x out of 10 I win
Betting he’s a white boy.
Not the usual suspect, this time—
Questions bubble in my belly:
Pawns? Patsies? Military-pharmaceutical
Psychotropic fingerprints?
Timing?
As cataracts of capitalism
fall from children’s eyes—
a New World’s visible
through oily water,
melting ice, flaming forests,
parched farmland sown with
savage superstitions, prejudices:
The Führer came first
for the communists, Jews;
Socialists, Jews; trade unionists, Jews.
The Führer stole from The Czar—
The Czar from The Inquisition:
Division’s the math Minorities—
The1%—survive/thrive on…
© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
BAR’s poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com .
COMMENTS?
Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport
Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com
A 1969 interview with a founder of Detroit’s League of Revolutionary Black Workers reminds us of the radical genius and hope of Black labor.
Rwanda and Uganda are again plundering the Congo. As always they do so with the backing of the U.S. Ann Garrison interviews Maurice Carney, Executive Director of Friends of the Congo.
a few flock notes for jaimie breezy branch “The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery” —Paul Robeson
Black Agenda Report Book Forum editor Roberto Sirvent interviews community organizer Kalonji Changa.
This week’s featured author is Debra Thompson. Thompson is the Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies and Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University.…
