Prior to 2001, Black rap was Revolutionary, anti-capitalist, antagonist toward the State, and embracing of any progressive movement seeking emancipation from the oppression of bourgeois greed. This ideology was premised upon the idea that institutional slavery had its roots within the socio-economic philosophy surrounding the perpetuation of predatory capitalism. Of course, Public Enemy was heavily influence by the Nation of Islam – including Malcolm X and others. Making money was viewed as something the slave-owners did – and representative of everything that was wrong about historic and contemporary US society – a perspective that assumed a solidarity with all poor White and non-White people (including Native American Indians and Chinese people). Following the terror-attacks of September 11th, 2001, we were all told by our respective (bourgeois) governments that we has to “feel sorry for America” – when many of us outside America not caught-up in the psychosis of introverted self-pity – thought this terrible and corrupt war-mongering regime had brought it on themselves.
From 1945 to present – the US Military has killed 30 million people around the world enforcing regime change and the perpetuation of the predatory capitalist system. On September 11th – the US lost around 2,996 – a number that is dropping all the time. Following this episode, the powers that be in the US decided that the era of Black people making anti-Statist propaganda was over – and that now record companies were instructed to shift Black angst into the direction of making-money – as no other content would be tolerated. The point of this was to prevent a working-class, pro-Socialist movement forming around the edgy music of the Black Power movement. After 911, the very Eurocentric mechanism that had developed slavery and enforced racism – i.e. predatory capitalism – was to be the very same mechanism that would offer Black people freedom from future slavery – in a utopia were money can purchase a secure (gated community) existence “free” of racism. Ironically, Like Oprah Winfrey – the first thing an enriched Black does is move out the ghetto and into a “White” gated community! Thus perpetuating the very capitalist system groups like Public Enemy sought to over-throw! Kanye West has taken an eccentric route and embraced Adolf Hitler! This is what White capitalism does to your brain!
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 