If you are watching this show for the first time… this is a show about the urgent need for revolution—how nothing less—no elections, no charity, no social work, not “doing you” while the system that we live under, this mad and murderous system of capitalism-imperialism is quite possibly going do all of humanity in… nothing else and nothing less than an actual revolution, is going to come anywhere even near the ballpark of dealing with what humanity all over the world faces at this moment. Not even remotely close to dealing with climate change or the danger of nuclear war—dangers which accelerate with every passing week and month. 

The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, BA, wrote and then said in series of three extraordinary interviews right here on The RNL Show:

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.

The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show is about how we can prepare in this country, in this time, for a real revolution—which means nothing less than overthrowing the capitalist-imperialist system we live under that exploits people all over the world and enforces that exploitation with brutal force.

They talk about “freedom” and the “pursuit of happiness.” For whom? All over this country police dog and shoot down our people in the streets and their homes. And not so by the way, two years after the George Floyd protests these PIGS are setting a U.S. historic record this year for murdering—cold blood executing people without trial, disproportionally Black and Brown youth.

For all the talk of Russia and China being police states, which they are, no other country in the world imprisons more people per capita than the U.S. Police murder and white supremacy are but one of the outrages of this system, that oppresses women, differently gendered people, immigrants, and, as I said, threatens the very existence of humanity as the largest polluter that has led to global warming AND, as it ramps up the danger of war with China and Russia.

If you are watching this show, I assume that you care and are paying attention. But are you sounding the alarm, reaching out and struggling with, arguing with, everyone to watch this show? And you yourself—are you doing all you can to get with this revolution?

I have not yet spoken of what the U.S. does to people around the world. But we must. For if you are not seeing and breaking with what your country does to people all over the world, we, humanity will never get free.

To take just one example, go to our website revcom.us and read about what your country—the self-described greatest fucking country in history, USA—beacon to the world—has done to Venezuela over the last 15 years. Seven million people have been driven from their homes, forced to wander the hemisphere—some going north, some south, often on foot for weeks and months. As of 2019, 14 percent of all children under five suffered from acute malnutrition, and 57 percent of pregnant women were malnourished. Think this is just “unfortunate,” and not a planned, not conscious policy by your government from Obama through Trump and down to Biden? NO. The U.S. put extreme sanctions on Venezuela, measures that knowingly created enormous suffering among the people. In fact, this was punishment for Venezuela’s attempt to use its oil to wheedle and wangle within the imperialist system in a way that the U.S. didn’t like.

Listen to this from the former U.S. ambassador who served in Latin America under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump telling what the U.S. was setting out to do:

Good news, what the debate now is, and this is a legitimate debate, is the impact on the people of Venezuela.... How hard do we want to apply the screws to Venezuela?... We should do it understanding that it's gonna have an impact on millions and millions of people who are already having great difficulty finding enough to eat, getting themselves cured when they get sick, or finding clothes to put on their children before they go off to school. We don't get to do this and pretend as though it has no impact there. We have to make the hard decision. The desired outcome justifies this fairly severe punishment. [emphasis added]

Such inhuman, brutal imperialist repression is what your 500 channels on your flat screen, your cell phones, your ability to close your eyes and ears to the cries of people around the world and around the corner, all rest on. We live in an empire whose days need to be numbered, and they can be.

This is a show on a mission for revolution.

What is central to The RNL Show is that we bring to you every week the leadership for revolution in Bob Avakian, BA, a revolutionary leader who came out of the tumultuous and revolutionary movements of the 1960s and did not give up but went to work on how a real liberating revolution could be made and how that revolution could not only create a society where you would want to live, but could set us on the road to emancipating all of humanity.

There has never been a leader like this, and this fall, as I said a few minutes ago, The RNL Show conducted three extraordinary interviews with Bob Avakian.

Watching these three interviews, you experience a leader who with straight talk blows away the fog of mystification of the problems the people here and around the world face with a scientific approach to the world. He makes this scientific approach understandable to everyone. In each of the three interviews BA brings out that we are living in unique moment, a rare time when making revolution in this country has become more possible. The divisions are so sharp, that those who rule are not able to rule in ways that people have become accustomed to. Big jolts like taking away the right to abortion shock people and cause them to increasingly profoundly question the whole set-up. That is the importance of this show, and these interviews getting out far and wide to give masses of people whose lives are repeatedly being upended the road forward out the madness.

As you go through the interviews you can feel the tremendous confidence BA has that through sharp struggle with the very people who need to be a part of the revolution, they can be won to see and act in another way, even as they are caught up today in a lot of crap. BA minces no words in his criticism, but he has strategic confidence that people could break with the bullshit—whether speaking of the youth in the inner cities killing each other; or of the educated middle class caught up in a me, me, me culture—including in its destructive “woke” scrambling over and canceling each other just to get a dirty piece of the imperialist pie. 

And what has grabbed people from all walks of life as they watch BA in these interviews is his humanity and the humanity of the road and the future he is fighting for. He speaks of poetry, music that gives flight to the imagination. He speaks of awe and wonder at the beauty of nature and of the art that people create and why that is essential to life and revolution. He speaks of a movement for revolution and future society that fosters critical thinking that is not guided by revenge, but by an ethos of generosity of spirit and largeness of mind.

So, with that, let’s get into today’s show.