Butch Lee - Night-Vision: Illuminating War & Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain

Table of Contents

Night-Vision: Illuminating War and Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain

Butch Lee and Red Rover

First published in 1993 by Cooperative Distribution Service and Vagabond Press

This electronic edition copyright Kersplebedeb 2016

ISBN 978-1-894946-83-4

This edition is being released electronically in November 2016; a new revised edition of Night-Vision, with new material, is expected to be published in print and electronically in 2017.

Kersplebedeb Publishing
CP 63560
CCCP Van Horne
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3W 3H8

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http:// www.leftwingbooks.net

Our predicament at the present time throws up new questions. Neo-colonial man is asking a different set of questions than the old colonial man. Sometimes if a person gets trapped in a previous moment of history, you find it hard to carry on a conversation with him or her because they are still out to defend something that youre not against, but youre not with because it is no longer the relevant thing. Why should we get caught up in making tremendous tirades against the missionaries or saying the Europeans were terrible fellows, look at how these fellows exploited us? Why should we continually speak in this grand singularthe African is this and the European is the other? That was a formulation that was necessary at a particular point in time, when we were still within the whole identity crisis, when we were trying to evolve a peoplehood. But the moment we move beyond that, neo-colonial man cant talk about the Vietnamese in the singular or the African or the Guyanese, etc. We must look at real life. In real life, Guyanese live in certain different ways, have contradictions among themselves, have a relationship with the rest of the world. We must try to deal with the resolution of those contradictions. And that is also the case in Africa.

WALTER RODNEY

CHAPTER ONE: DE-TOXING

Todays revolutionary need is to detox ourselves from the old, stereotyped political formulas from 20 or 30 years ago. Without which we cannot deal with neo-colonialism. A while ago i was watching a Malcolm X Day program, and the main speaker ended by militantly reciting Malcolm Xs famous phrase: The Ballot or the Bullet! Havent you caught the same thing? X, most fresh of all thinkers, is being turned into the equivalent of Lenin or Maos corpse on ceremonial display. For when X threw down that slogan a generation ago, it was then timely and on point. Black people were struggling for Freedom against colonial conditions and most had neither the ballot nor the bullet. The militant question was which would be picked up.

Now, the Black Nation is struggling for its life against neo-colonial conditions and New Afrikan people have lots of ballots and lots of bullets. Everywhere you have Afrikan city governments, Afrikan officials and Afrikan executives, Afrikan soldiers, Afrikan shooters and Afrikan posses. You might say that the Black Nation is dying from too much ballots and bullets. But not radical enough truth, perhaps.

Under colonialism the oppressed were largely kept disarmed. Now its all reversed. Imperialism as a neo-colonial system races not to disarm (which is hopeless in this age) but to arm the oppressed in its own way, whether its posses or paratroopers. Children included, naturally. Feminists say women should get self-defense. Does that threaten imperialism? Then why is S&W making the Ladysmith, a .38 snubnose specially sized for women? Is the government of white men doing anything to stop women from owning handguns (the ranks of white women whove done so are over 15 million and climbing)? Be real.

In the Ivory Coast and Somalia, men and boys in rags and bare feet have AK-47s and grenades. In New York and Los Angeles, kids too young for learners permits got Raven 25s or a deuce-deuce. Or maybe even a TEC-9. Whats the firepower of the old black liberation army compared to the Crips in Compton or to the Jamaican posses just in Flatbush? Get the uzi! is successful slang because it plays off reality we all know. More than a few New Afrikan children say personally they got to be more afraid of Black people than white people. So how useful is the liberal-left habit on playing low to the crowd with old anti-colonial rhetoric?

It used to be that dissing the white man was a crime or close to it, dangerous for sure. Life threatening if a Black man or woman did it. Now its so tame that Fox or ABC gives it to us as a sitcom. Theres even some college courses on how to dis the white man. He may not like it, but who cares (imperialism doesnt care, thats for sure). Even white women are doing it now as a substitute for doing anything real. Its like running in place. As Rodney, the Guyanese revolutionary scholar, pointed out, its counterproductive to solving the neo-colonial situation. Revs still cling to the old ideas and ways, in part because we dont want to admit how ignorant we are now. This runs deeper, though. Anti-colonial politics are the culmination of 400 years of our struggle. They are the product of the best minds we had, of destroying old societies, of oppressed peoples changing the world in uprisings, pushing further and further. These old views are already fully developed, well-honed. More than that, the old anti-colonial politics are developed in the most profound sense, in having been widely diffused and taken hold of by the oppressed. Put to use already. So when revs talk that old talk, walk that old walk, its not only familiar but reassuring and to a certain degree popular.

We all take for granted now the anti-colonial consciousness and changes. Its become the normal, whats our due. A few years ago, Nelson Mandela was the most famous terrorist P. O.W. in the world. In 1990, when he made his triumphant visit here, he was not only greeted by massive crowds of well-wishers but schools and churches throughout the Black Nation held special programs to honor him. City governments and the u.s. Congress itself had to organize welcomes for him. Like it or not, white men had to smile and applaud him. And last year By Any Means Necessary T-shirts with Malcolms picture on them were more common on many streets than Budweiser T-shirts, and you cant take it to mean anything extreme or radical. The old anti-colonial awareness has already been generalized widely, absorbed by people & society itself into daily life. Lets break that down.

When a tiny klan faction bused from North Carolina to the u.s. capitol for a rally on Labor Day weekend 1990, it took over 2,000 cops in riot gear to hold the angry crowds back. The d.c. New Afrikan community was outraged that any klan dared to march in their city, which is 70% Black, on their territory. Efi Berry, then-wife of the then-mayor, Marion Berry, came out and brought her ten year-old son, too, Im overwhelmed, she said, that in the year 1990 we still have to deal with this Although the white left organization All-Peoples Congress (aka Workers World Party) officially called the protest, put up the posters and set up the banners on the sidewalk at 15th & Constitution (where the kkk was supposed to start marching) they were never in control of the struggle.

Spontaneously, young brothers and sisters just took it over by making the action. Pushing past police and infiltrating around police lines, occupying the intersection to block the street. When a white man with a bullhorn from the International Committee Against Racism (aka Progressive Labor Party) got lured out into the street, Afrikan people got that bullhorn from him and started rallying and leading the crowd. After word spread that the klan wasnt going to show, that the cops had already cancelled their march permit and bused them direct to the Capitol building steps, the really angry crowd of 3,0005,000 (two-thirds New Afrikan) just went right through the police lines.

It became a chaotic footrace down Constitution, as demonstrators and police in a mixed crowd ran until near the u.s. labor department building at Louisiana Avenue, where police reinforcements finally held. Out of sight, unimportant really, forty-four sorry whites of the christian knights of the kkk posed for reporters. Then got out of town, quick as possible. Its the kkklowns who are doing the running now.