This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—Number Ninety-Four.

As I have shown throughout these messages, all the hell that Black people have been put through, from the beginning of this country and right down to today—just like the hell that billions are put through, all over the world—is rooted in the system of capitalism-imperialism, which both ruling class parties in this country (Democrats and Republicans) represent and work to enforce.

The dominant relations and putrid culture of this system has had its effects on the very being and the felt sentiments of masses of people, in many different ways. In my last message (number 93) I focused particularly on the effects of this in terms of social relations and cultural expressions among Black people. Here, I am going to speak to how this relates to the dominant political process, which reinforces the oppressive rule of this system.

Speaking specifically of Black people, for generations now there has been misplaced allegiance to the Democratic Party—which, in reality, is an instrument of the very system that has, since the beginning, brutally, murderously oppressed Black people (as well as millions—indeed literally billions— of other people in this country and throughout the world).

This allegiance to the Democratic Party stems in large part from the fact that it has been Democratic Party administrations that have made concessions to the struggle for civil rights— while, especially since the 1960s, the Republican Party has increasingly been marked by opposition to civil rights. (This has gone along with significant changes within these ruling class parties: Through the course of the 1960s, the “Dixie-crats”—overt white supremacist, southern segregationists—moved from the Democratic Party into the Republican Party, in line with the Republicans’ “southern strategy,” appealing to southern white racists, while the Democratic Party more assumed the posture of “friend of Black people and civil rights.”)

The allegiance to the Democratic Party has remained strong particularly among Black women—while, among some Black men, there has been more disaffection with the Democrats (for reasons I will touch on in a minute). But the overall fact remains that, despite its dishonest appeals to Black people (and others suffering discrimination and oppression under this system) the Democratic Party—as a political instrument of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is responsible for horrific crimes against humanity and war crimes—all of which is built into this system. (In a number of these messages, beginning with numbers 2 and 3, as well articles of mine and other works at revcom.us, there is extensive exposure and analysis of how the Democratic Party, as well as the Republican Party, has been a perpetrator and enforcer of the most horrific—in fact genocidal—oppression, plunder and destruction of people, in Palestine, Vietnam, Congo, Haiti—all over the world—as well as vicious oppression of Black people and others within this country itself.)

As for why there has been a trend of defection from the Democrats and attraction to the Republicans—and Trump in particular—among some Black men, this is for a combination of reasons. This involves a sense of betrayal at the hands of the Democrats, and blaming the Democrats (rather than the system as a whole, which is actually responsible) for the increased difficulty in the situation of many Black men, in particular the huge loss of opportunity for better-paying jobs, and in many cases no prospect of any decent job at all (with many actually locked out of the formal economy). At the same time, it has to be said that this is too often combined with male supremacist patriarchal poison—including disaffection, or even disgust, with the Democratic Party for its stance (or pretense) of supporting equality for women and LGBT people. The open misogyny (hatred of women) of Donald Trump, and his pose as some kind of “bad man” (despite the fact that he has from the beginning led a pampered existence), appeals to backward-thinking men of all “races,” including some Black men.

Among some, this has been accompanied by the rationalization that, yes Trump is a racist, but so are all these other politicians, and at least Trump is out in the open about it, so it is supposedly easier to deal with that. This is like arguing that it is better to be shot in the head than slowly poisoned to death. How about not being murdered either way?!—and instead actually getting free of all this! Among other things, what this way of thinking reveals is being trapped within the limits and confines of this system which has for centuries, and continues today, to viciously, murderously oppress Black people, along with so many others, here and all over the world.

As I have said before, one of the maddening and heartbreaking things today is to hear some Black people, who have suffered so terribly under this system, joining (consciously or objectively) with Trump in his racist rants against and attacks on immigrants. And, 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.

For Trump, as a representative and driving force of fascism in this country today, the racist attack on immigrants plays the same awful role and is aimed at the same kind of terrible effect as the attacks on Jews by Hitler and the Nazi fascists in Germany in the 1930s. This attack on immigrants is part of a whole wave of fascism in countries around the world today—a result of the heightening and intensifying contradictions of this death-bound system of capitalism-imperialism—a system giving extreme and highly destructive expression to its basic contradictions, threatening to drag humanity down with it.

As for fascism, Black people have been subjected to this kind of thing before—in the whole long, terrible experience of enforced segregation, massive terror and repeated massacres of Black people, particularly (though not only) in the southern U.S., for nearly one hundred years after the Civil War. (It is no accident that the horrendous treatment of Black people in the U.S. was a “model” for Hitler and the German Nazi fascists in their genocidal actions, against Jews in particular, in the period leading into and during World War 2, in the 1930s and `40s.)

Certainly as much as any people on earth, the fundamental interests of Black people do not lie with this fascism—or any form of this system which has, for so long, oppressed and terrorized them in the most unspeakable ways.

And for Black people seeking a means out of this madness by enlisting, in a serious and disciplined way, in a truly uplifting cause, the answer is most definitely not to become part of the military which acts to enforce this monstrous system with massive death and destruction of people all over the world. In opposition to that, the way forward, out of this whole nightmare, is to become part of the ranks of the revolution—of the Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity—growing into thousands, and then millions—working for a revolution based on the new communism: a whole new framework for human emancipation, which has resulted from decades of work I have carried out, summing up the positive and negative lessons of previous communist revolutions, and drawing from a broad range of human experience—a revolution with the orientation and vision, and the leadership and strategic approach to sweep away this system of capitalism-imperialism and open the way to the emancipation of Black people and all people exploited, oppressed, dehumanized and degraded under this system.

This is especially crucial now—when, as I have shown in these messages (in particular numbers 8 through 11), this is a rare time when this revolution, to overthrow and abolish this whole monstrous system, is not only urgently necessary but is possible.

It is with this understanding that there is, and there must be, a profound fight for the soul of Black people—to fully emerge not as a defeated but as a revolutionary people— giving expression in the most powerful way to this crucial truth:

Among Black people in their masses there continues to be “the sometimes openly expressed, sometimes expressed in partial ways, sometimes expressed in wrong ways, but deeply, deeply felt desire to be rid of these long centuries of oppression of Black people.” And once more:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.