This week we continue further highlighting Bob Avakian’s article THE NATION OF ISLAM: NOT A FORCE FOR—A FORCE AGAINST—EMANCIPATION, We Need a Real Revolution.

With a detailed examination of the doctrine and the practice of the Nation of Islam (NOI), Bob Avakian (BA) shows that while Louis Farrakhan and the NOI “pose as angry and powerful opponents of white supremacy… the truth is that … their doctrine and program actually contribute to maintaining white supremacy and other horrific oppression, including male supremacy and the patriarchal oppression of women, all of which is built into the system of capitalism-imperialism that we are now forced to live under.” In stark contrast, BA puts forth that “The way the full emancipation of Black people will finally be achieved is through the assertion of the fundamental humanity of Black people—which, in its highest expression, means becoming part of the revolution to do away with all exploitation, all oppression, all inequality, all degradation of any part of humanity: a communist revolution.”

There is a tremendous—and often fierce—struggle to be had with different sections of the people on wrong and harmful ways of thinking and approaches to the world, as part of making revolution and organizing forces into the revolution. These approaches stand as obstacles to a scientific grasp of the world, to revolution and to the emancipation of all of humanity—and this article from BA is the latest in a comprehensive series of articles that identify and excavate various wrong approaches and sharply put forth in contrast what is urgently needed right now. 

In this context, another set of articles from recent weeks that is of tremendous and timely relevance is Bob Avakian on Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds” and I’m So Sick of This Whole “Identity Politics” and “Woke” Thing. REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION—NOT PETTY REFORM AND REVENGE: On Movements, Principles, Methods, Means and Ends. These articles cut through the current controversy around wokeness to get to the heart of the matter—why and how these modes of thinking (and acting) leave the system completely intact, including its systems of oppression and exploitation, its culture and institutions, while among other harmful aspects, targeting and “canceling” individuals in predatory fashion.   

This week we cover trials with enormous stakes for the future. These are the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who admits to slaying two unarmed protesters against police brutality with his semi-automatic AR-15 rifle; and the trial of three white men in Glynn County, Georgia, for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man whom they “suspected” of burglary and whom they claim they murdered in “self-defense” when he attempted to wrestle one of their weapons away from them when they went after him. These trials are part of a huge battle going on right now over whether armed fascists will be able to dominate the public squares of this country and whether they will be able to murder Black people, or people of any nationality who they deem “dangerous,” with impunity. Go here for multiple articles covering different angles on the Rittenhouse killings—including one by Bob Avakian from last summer—and here for an analysis of key issues in the trial of Arbery’s killers.

In addition, in a contribution from a member of the National Revolution Tour, we briefly cover the civil trial in Charlottesville, VA, centered on the orgy of white-supremacist anti-Semitic violence in August 2017, ultimately resulting in the death of Heather Heyer. Then-President Trump insisted on calling these Nazis “very fine people.”

At the same time, these battles—crucial as they are in their own right—are part of a far bigger fight for the future. In A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution, this point is made:

These days there is lot of talk about another civil war, especially from fascists, in government and the broader society, who think they could just carry out a one-sided slaughter of those they hate, including Black people and other people of color, “illegal immigrants,” “uppity women” and those who don’t conform to “traditional” sexual and gender relations and “norms.”  This situation needs to be radically changed, to where there are masses of people prepared to defeat these fascists and to do so as part of getting rid of this whole system, which has bred these fascists, along with all the other horrors it continually perpetrates.

What we need is “repolarization for revolution”— making real revolution an active and increasingly powerful force of first thousands, and then millions, of people organized to work for and win more and more people to this revolution—radically changing the “terrain” on which the revolution will be fought.

(In light of all this, also take a look at this review of a PBS series The Abolitionists on the work of the abolitionists before the U.S. Civil War, from a member of the National Get Organized For An ACTUAL Revolution Tour.)

The UN-sponsored international conference on the climate recently concluded. We have covered this in great depth for several weeks, and we urge our readers to not only read and spread these articles, but especially to do so in the wake of the conference. This conference—whose crowning achievement seems to have been a decision to hold another conference next year, where they promise to… make even better promises—would be a bad joke, were the stakes for humanity not so incredibly high. On the one hand, it is a matter of what kind of world the generations to come will inherit… assuming there are such generations. But it also has everything to do with the needless and horrifying suffering of billions right now! Go here for our coverage this week, and here, here, and here for the real human terms of this suffering, for WHY this economic and political system—capitalism-imperialism—cannot help but continue to make this worse so long as it keeps the world in its grip, and here for how humanity could tackle this problem in a revolutionary socialist society.

In this issue, we are also featuring two correspondences from members of the National Tour who are systematically grappling with the science of communism, of a scientific approach to society and its transformation as concentrated in Marx’s breakthrough and further with the development of the science of communism, including and especially with Bob Avakian’s advance of the new communism. We encourage others, inspired by these, to do the same, and write us, for the kind of critical, scientific and radical ferment needed as part of building the movement for revolution and organizing forces.

Finally, we cover the recent “drama” between the fascists and the liberals over whether the Biden administration would or would not compensate—and how much would the compensation amount to—refugee families seeking asylum in the United States whose children (including infants) were ripped from them, kept in traumatizing conditions, and in many cases were “lost track of” for months and even longer. More about the nature of this country… and the future of this country… was revealed than any of the actors in this all-too-real-life drama intended.

For other new articles, go here.