This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number Ninety.

As I have said, straight up, from the beginning, in my message Number One:

I’ll tell you who I am: I am someone who is heart and soul, hardcore serious about a revolution where people can get all the way free—someone with a scientific understanding of the need, and the possibility, for this revolution. As serious as this is, I don’t have time, and we don’t have time, for any of this pitiful, going-nowhere-good garbage about who has the right to say this or that. Everyone has the right, and the responsibility, to learn the truth, and to speak the truth, especially about truly life and death matters, dealing with the whole situation and the whole future of humanity—and everyone has the right and the responsibility to act on that truth.

And, particularly in my message number 73, my telling people the truth (when some people don’t want to hear it) has created a kind of sh*t storm of controversy and uproar—and a whole off-key chorus of ridiculous and outrageous attacks. This message 73 begins with this deliberately provocative, and profoundly important, title “Black people hating on immigrants. Nonsense, and worse, from people who should know better”—and follows this up with this statement: “One of the most maddening and heartbreaking things these days is to hear Black people, who have suffered so terribly under this system, hating on immigrants.”

This message goes on to recall the experience of Black people in their mass migration to the North of this country, beginning after World War 1, and how they have been viciously attacked by racist white people. And then I get right to the heart of the matter: “So I have a question for any Black people today who are caught up in this hating on immigrants: Do you really want to be like the rabid white racists?”

This racism against immigrants, among too many Black people, is all the more maddening and heartbreaking because there is a whole history of Black people playing a crucial role in inspiring and uniting people, of many different races and nationalities, in the fight against injustice. This was especially true in the 1960s. On a personal note, as I get into in the interview with me on the YouTube RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, this positive role of Black people—and in particular the Black Panther Party in its revolutionary days—was an important factor in motivating me to become a revolutionary, and a communist. (This positive influence of the Black Panther Party in my development is also emphasized in Bob Avakian For The Liberation Of Black People And The Emancipation Of All Humanity, which is available at revcom.us, as a video as well as an article.)

One of the very positive features of the Black Panther Party, which I personally experienced, was the openness, and eagerness, of its leaders and basic members, to struggle over big questions having to do with really changing the world in an emancipating way—as opposed to insisting that certain people had “no right to speak” about those big questions.

Now, I cannot help noting the howling irony that some people have accused me of racism because I have strongly struggled with those Black people who are being racist toward immigrants!! Yes, it is a crying shame that—certainly not all, but too many—Black people have gotten caught up in this hating on immigrants, which they need to get up off. More than a few have even been drawn to supporting the open, aggressive racist, and all-around fascist, Donald Trump. And these people are accusing me of racism!—and insisting that I supposedly have no right to speak on this, because I am white. (As someone observed in a conversation recently, this amounts to the ridiculous notion: Who are you, BA, to tell those Black people that they can’t be fascists?!)

Nonsense—and worse.

So, I have some hard news for people pushing this garbage: I am going to keep on speaking the truth—including truths that make some people very uncomfortable—because that is a big part of my responsibility as someone doing what I am doing: working every day, with everything I have, to provide leadership for the revolution that is profoundly and urgently needed—to bring about, at long last, the emancipation of people who have in fact suffered so terribly for so long under this system, and all people everywhere who are suffering so terribly under this system of capitalism-imperialism.

Coming Soon: A Profound Fight for the Soul of Black People: A Defeated People—Or, A Revolutionary People?