Happy Halloween from the Most Violent Ruling Class in Human History

by Danny Haiphong

“The US ruling class is at war with exploited peoples everywhere.”

The hysteria around the Ebola virus and ISIS has rebooted the fear that so torments the American psyche. Washington and the corporate media have done a masterful job hiding the truth behind both matters. US imperialism is indeed responsible for these debacles, neither of which has to exist at all. Ebola can be treated medically and the end of neo-colonialism in Africa would go a long way toward this end. ISIS's stream of arms, funds, and intelligence assets come directly from the Gulf monarchies, Turkey, Israel, and the United States itself. With Halloween approaching, it is more apparent than ever that the horror stories emanating from the corporate media will not stop until there is a mass understanding of the source of the overall nightmare: the US ruling class.

In George Jackson's seminal text and manifesto, Blood in my Eye, the revolutionary author rightfully explains that the US "is a huge nation dominated by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the history of the world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot understand that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world." Jackson wrote this behind prison walls after the US anti-war movement had conducted mass protests against the US invasion of Vietnam. The Black Panther Party helped lead the anti-imperialist social movement that taught thousands of Americans what the US war machine was all about. Draft cards were burned, universities were shut down, and millions took to the streets. However, after the Vietnamese struggled to independence and the US government ended the draft, US imperialism made changes to the nature of war in ways that the American left has yet to recover from.

“US intelligence increasingly became a training ground for willing mercenaries to earn Western cash by creating bloody social strife in all corners of the world.”

The US changed the nature of imperialism by expanding the tool of proxy war to compliment its interventionist policy of plunder. US intelligence increasingly became a training ground for willing mercenaries to earn Western cash by creating bloody social strife in all corners of the world. Wall Street’s purchase of Washington gave space for the capitalist ruling class to consolidate the media and erect the largest imperialist propaganda machine known to man. As a result, anti-imperialist consciousness in the US has eroded even while the violence the ruling class inflicts all over the world has exponentially increased since the end of the Vietnam War.

George Jackson's words have never been more real in the flesh in the 21st century. US imperialism's continued War on Terror has left millions dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama Administration is what Cornel West calls the drone presidency. It has killed thousands of people in the Middle East and Africa with unmanned, million dollar gadgets. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives in the Administration's three-year imperialist-backed proxy war waged on Syria and Libya. In Ukraine, the US ruling class has fully backed a coup-regime responsible for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians who refuse to allow their country to become a vassal state for the West.

The truth of the matter is that the US ruling class is at war with exploited peoples everywhere. On the African continent, the US ruling class has solidified neo-colonialism in the region by taking control of nearly every country's military through AFRICOM. The result has been a coup in Mali, the destabilization of Libya, and the continued genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by way of Rwanda and Uganda's murderous US-backed proxies. The death toll is conservatively estimated at six million since the war on the Congo began in 1996.

Imperialism's horrific, blood-soaked track record is not purely a matter of international affairs. Its white supremacist foundation ensures that most of the victims are Black and brown in the US and globally. Within its own borders, imperialism is at war with Black America, indigenous America, and whoever it deems to be politically expendable non-white populations. The US ruling class has allowed thousands to die while attempting to cross the US-Mexico border from Central America. Of course, the US ruling class cannot afford to mention that its policy of plunder and militarization in the region lies at the root of the migrant crisis.

Furthermore, the US ruling class's first victims, Indigenous America and Black America, have been consigned to a life of social death. Black America fills the cells of the prison state and the daily obituary columns at the hands of US law enforcement. Indigenous America remains imprisoned on its own land. Indigenous communities struggle to maintain nationhood under a white supremacist occupation that has locked them into "reservations" of poverty, alcoholism, and hopelessness.

“Within its own borders, imperialism is at war with Black America, indigenous America, and whoever it deems to be politically expendable non-white populations.”

American colonialism never formally ended, but the legacy of the hundreds of millions murdered from the original colonial genocide remains a side issue for much of the American left. Colonialism, and its root of capitalism, has transformed into an imperialist nightmare. In this nightmare, the ruling class commits continued genocide on the vast majority of Black and brown people, yet supports a class of Black faces in high places to place a buffer between itself and the wrath of people's justice. The Obamas and Holders of imperialism have been especially useful in this regard.

So for this Halloween, don't fear Ebola or ISIS or any other fixation of the corporate media. The US ruling class is by far the most violent force history has ever known. It endangers the planet and murders oppressed people every day it is allowed to hold power. Whether it is through the exploitation of labor and land or the violent police state it imposes on exploited subjects, the objectives of the US ruling class are clear. Capitalist profit and geopolitical dominance are the primary aims.

Assata Shakur said that one has to be acutely aware of their enslavement to truly fight for liberation. The scariest part about this Halloween is the sober reality that while the US ruling class possesses a system in crisis, left forces in the belly of the beast remain unprepared to seize the time. We must organize and work hard to raise the consciousness of the people. If we fail in this historic task, we will be forced to live half-lives under the gun of the murderous ruling class and its imperialist system for many more Halloweens to come.

Danny Haiphong is an organizer and case manager in the Boston area. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com.

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