[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAs9AVKkG5w&w=425&h=349]
"You said don't go to war unless I got my money behind me Aight, I got my money right here, now I want war" -Tupac Shakur
When we discuss populist movements, it’s always important to take history into account.
The American political system may be broken but even if it was “fixed”, it wouldn’t be to favor the poor or people of color.
In order to control the system it will take a real revolution, which means war by any means necessary. Going to war with the US government will cost money, considering the power of the Federal Reserve and the military industrial complex alone.
Even small revolutionary changes will take serious funding.
Let’s look at the Citizens United decision as a case study. The ruling allows people and corporations, who are now considered people, to anonymously donate as much money as they please to political campaigns.
Many on the left have been outspoken about how this will negatively influence elections by giving an unfair advantage to the wealthiest institutions.
However, if history teaches us anything, the best way to fight is to use our enemies’ weapons against them.
For example, when the Black Panther Party wanted to protest against the “Mulford Act”, which would’ve banned public displays of firearms and presumably stopped the Panther police patrols, they sent 30 members to the California Legislature carrying weapons. Although there were little encroachments on whites who flaunted their Second Amendment rights, this public display of blacks doing the same pushed the California Legislature to pass the act, which the media deemed “the Panther Bill.”
While the protest didn’t achieve all of its aims, it did give police patrols more ammo in court by taking away cops’ justifications for violence. Without a defendant’s gun to point to, police who attacked anyone watching them lost sympathy and public support.
In the case of Citizens United, it allows us to take anonymous foreign money and disrupt the political system. The time is ripe for a true revolutionary party, considering the US is not short on enemies.
How eager would a Hugo Chavez or Raul Castro be to fund people that could achieve their aims from within the US system. If enough revolutionary politicians were elected, the US government wouldn’t be able to repeal Citizens United fast enough.
Using controversial money to achieve a movement’s aims is nothing new. The US armed and trained the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in order to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 80s. To say these groups have taken advantage is an understatement.
Going back further in anti-Russian spending, the Federal Reserve funded Lenin and Trotsky’s Communist revolution. They were able to overtake the Czar and control Russia after getting their money right.
It will be no different if we want to make fundamental changes in the US and shift the balance of power. We have to use all resources possible because an all out battle with the military industrial complex is suicide and political change that doesn’t break the power of the big bankers who’ve controlled the money since the Federal Reserve’s inception is only cosmetic.
The oppressive institution’s strength is also its weakness. Consider these words from late Panther Jonathan Jackson:
“What, for example, would the city pigs do if they are confronted by a .38 snubbed revolver in the hand of a brother who’s fired that .38 perhaps 10 times in his life? Then take the same situation but give the brother a flamethrower (stolen from the military), give the brother an armored van from inside which he could use said flamethrower, give him also two comrades in arms, one equipped with an M60 machine gun, the other an anti-tank rocket launcher. Pigs are punks. Give me 10 cells armed as I’ve just mentioned and we could start to enforce some of the demands of the people.”
We may be up against over $700 billion of military weapons but the enemy is in even worse of a predicament when those weapons are turned back on him. It only gets worse when the people take hold of the trillions used to govern and control us.
The people always have the upper hand once they realize how much power they really have.