The following is part two of two part series of a transcribed speech which was made by Chairman of the Black is Back Coalition, Omali Yeshitela at the National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination Preparatory conference. The conference was held by the Black in Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparation’s on August 17 and 18, 2016.
Here, Chairman Omali takes gives us political analysis of neocolonialism, representations of neocolonialism during the sixties and today.
Neocolonialism: the indirect foreign domination of a nation or people through control of the economy and social system. Within neocolonialism, members of the dominated nation or people are used as administrators of white power.
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So when they killed that twenty-three-year-old boy in Milwaukee last night, it wasn’t some mistake, any more than it was when that white man killed that child in Huntsville, Alabama.
Why did that white man kill the child? Why is there a George Zimmerman? Why do we have the Ku Klux Klan and all those other entities?
Because that is the way this whole entity was created. Because in England and France and European places where you had a movement from feudal control.
Feudalism was a mode of production too, you know? And where you had the kings, they had their troops that controlled the people. These people living under feudalism in England came to this land, this territory, seeking their fortunes and became very rich in the process of doing that.
There was no established State then. Who was the State? The British were the State in these territories, and the white people here fought the British to take the damn territory from that group of thieves, for themselves.
So there was no State like there was in France, like there was in Holland and other places. So you had these white people who developed and stole this land, first taking it from the Indigenous people.
This was not the government. These were ordinary white people they sent out. They actually gave white people land. “If you could take this land and hold this land, it’s yours.”
What were they called during this time? White settlers. The British did the same thing, by the way, in Rhodesia. They actually paid ordinary white people there to help kill the Indigenous people in Africa. They just gave them land!
And so the white people themselves became extensions of the insipient State as it was emerging. The Texan Rangers, for example, were initially just a group of white people. Did you know that?!
The Texas Rangers were not a government entity. They started off as a group of white people, who were killing Mexicans and killing the Indigenous people and taking their land. That’s the Texas Rangers! They later became a government entity.
But the point is that white people here and in places like South Africa, and in places like Israel, became instruments of State power initially and formally that’s what you look at, how the State consolidated itself.
So you have a history of vigilantism––the Ku Klux Klan, and other kinds of organizations whose primary responsibility is to maintain the status quo––to control the niggers! And to control the Indians and to control the Mexicans and all those whose lands and resources have been stolen from them.
There was no “police”––the white people were the police! The white people were the police in the south up until 1966.
I can tell you actually how it happened. When we overthrew that whole non-violent stuff and white people came out to attack these demonstrations, they said, it ain’t happening this way if Africans start kicking their butts, and it became unreliable.
White people became unreliable because they were only bold in killing us when we either didn’t have the confidence and organization to fight back, or when we were under some philosophy of not fighting back.
Now when you see this whole movement emerge, it was saying “black power” and saying that we ain’t going to jail like this no more then white people became more unreliable because people found out that they could run in the other direction. You understand? [laughter]
They became unreliable so they had to organize specialized teams of cops and military. That’s why in 1972 you see the SWAT team come about as a consequence of this confrontation they had in Los Angeles, California with the Black Panther Party.
You begin to see them develop more and more. It used to be that a cop would come to your house to do this and that. They don’t come to your house by themselves anymore. They come in teams now!
They have organized this system of oppression because they cannot rely on ordinary white people, generally speaking, to do it. But when white people do it––and most often, white people get away with it, because they’re extentions of the State, not because, “Ooh, look at bad George Zimmerman.”
George Zimmerman lives in the United States of America on stolen Indian land with resources created by stolen black labor. And the State facilitates that––the prison system, the courts, the police, the military––the military that goes all around the world and continue to steal people’s resources because the economy depends on it, relies on it.
There’s no foreign policy accident, “Ooh, this is a bad foreign policy guy” or “Trump is a bad…” I’ve heard so-called progressives who are upset with Trump, because he’s, “upsetting our allies,” quote-unquote, because he wants to remove of NATO, he doesn’t want to fund them.
What are they talking about?! These are the guys that are supposed to be progressives! These are the guys who are supposed to be on our side!
Neocolonialism then and now
Neocolonialism is a problem The only reason I started off on this rant was because neocolonialism comes in a lot of different faces.
When Jesse Jackson was carrying water for Clinton, becoming the U.S. ambassador or unofficial ambassador to Africa, that was neocolonialism.
Every time somebody is killed in our community, Al Sharpton would take them on a fruitless demonstration with thousands of people and exhaust them with ridiculous chants and then militantly get down on their knees and pray for a better day, that was neocolonialism at work.
Neocolonialism takes the shape that it is, that is required at the moment! And so, neocolonialism comes youthful and dynamic today. Al Sharpton is gone! He’s a split shell! Jesse Jackson is a split shell! Now it’s a youthful neocolonialism, a dynamic neocolonialism that we see in these streets.
I was in Ferguson! You should’ve seen the money that came into Ferguson––Soros’ money! I was there! [call out of “Yeah!”] I saw it! All of a sudden, Negroes had huge buildings that they were operating out of. They sent organizers, and these neocolonial forces who are connected to the SCIU, labor unions which are nothing but an arm of the Democratic party. That’s why these Negroes could not put out a demand!
Here, this Negro, supposed to be a militant Black Lives Matter guy, and Hillary Clinton says, “Well, what do you want? What’s your demands?” And they say, “Well, we don’t have any demands!” [pause] “We just wanna know what’s in your heart!”
Am I the only one that saw that?! [call out of “No!”] [laughs] Hillary said, “What’s in my heart?!” [laughs]
First of all, Hillary is a biological phenomenon because I’m sure that when she’s autopsied somebody is going to find an empty space right there where her heart’s supposed to be. But that’s a different question, you understand?
So Hillary gives them a quick lesson, and says that you can’t base your demands and struggles on me. You gotta say what your policy demands are. What do you want from us? And that became an embarrassment [for the Black Lives movement.]
And at the same time that they were being embarrassed, I’m kicking their asses for hijacking the movement of those young people who rose up. The damn young people, right there on Canfield Drive were more advanced than these stooges who came up with these hashtags and shit like that.
There was no hashtag, “Black Lives Matter” that came off of those streets at Canfield [applause] that took me to Ferguson. It was not Black Lives Matter. It was because those people rose up and they said, “Kill the police!” “Kill the police!” That’s exactly what they said. [applause] And don’t act like that’s strange because that was a popular chant in the 1960s, they just said it different: “Off the pigs!” You understand?
That’s what the people were saying there, and then these Negroes come, these militant, hip kids, with hashtags, and connections to monies from Soros and the Ford Foundation and training from labor unions and what-have-you that’s a part of the Democratic Party.
Now if you got president Barack Hussein Obama speaking up for Black Lives Matter, you know damn well that it cannot possibly be for you. [call outs of “Yes!” and “Right!”]
And that’s what he’s defending because he’s smart enough to know to let these militant sellouts work.
Militant sellout-ism is the only kind that works! That old time sellout-ism doesn’t work today. So make it computer literate, make it brand experts, make it hiphop sellout-ism. [calls out of “Yeah!”] And that’s exactly what they have done.
And that’s one of the struggles we’re involved in. And we’ve been struggling with them for a while now. When I say with them, I’m talking about, we’ve been struggling with this whole attempt to muddy the waters. [call out of “Yeah.”]
“Hands up, don’t shoot, please”
We’re today at a situation where people were running around with “Feel the Bern.” They weren’t all out for Hillary in the beginning, they were for Bernie Sanders. Now you got people all out for Hillary. I mean, what kind of damn slogans are those?
In 1963, you had Malcolm X talking about the difference in the black revolution and the Negro revolution, in 1963! We had, later on, Malcolm X speaking about elections, saying, “It’s the ballot or the bullet.” And then we had, in 1966, a demand for black power!
This is African people addressing our own situation. Those slogans sound more like what these Africans in Canfield Drive had to say than “Feel the Bern.” [laughter]
Or “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, please.”
“Hands up, don’t shoot, I pray.”
“Hands up, don’t shoot, I hope.”
“Hands up don’t shoot, straight.” [laughter] I mean, it’s a whole ridiculous situation.
So we fight against that, tooth and nail, and people say, “Well y’all just nitpicking, because they’re just learning.” Learning my ass. Go learn on somebody else’s time.
We’ve endured too much bloodshed [call out of “Yes!”] and it doesn’t make sense. [applause] It just doesn’t make sense. [applause]
Why stay alive if you’re not going to learn the lessons of the past! Right?! [continued applause] Why stay here?! [applause]
It’s our responsibility to overturn our relationship with white power
This is why we engage in the struggle and this is why I spend so much time, on yesterday, going through the history of this coalition. We’ve been struggling over these demands, and look at what we said even in our founding documents. And now, you find this, in Soros and the Ford Foundation website.
They’ve rebranded themselves now because we messed with them on that whole “Black Lives Matter” thing. We say, “Black Power Matters!”
“Black Lives Matter?” Who are you saying that to? “Black Lives Matter.” Okay…and?
It’s really important for us to be able to contextualize this. I spend time talking like this because frankly, the coalition is comprised of a number of different organizations and institutions and we all bring our political views and understandings into this process.
When we are at our best, we make it clear on whether we’re speaking for the coalition, you know, as a Coalition, but I am here, in this Coalition, as Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party.
There is nothing that the Democrats or Republicans can do––absolutely nothing. They can have a Negro man as presidential candidate, a negro woman as a presidential candidate; they can have a white man, a white woman; they can have Mexicans; they can go to these cold places and you know, get people from these other territories, and ethnic and national, sources and make them president of the United States. I don’t give a damn!
I’m jealous of this whole question of power. We’ve experienced too many centuries of someone having power over our lives to be able to say that just ‘cause they call themselves a Democrat or a Republican, they can have the power.
I say that we have to come to the conclusion that nobody else will ever govern us again. [applause] That’s our responsibility. [applause] And it is an abdication of our responsibility as human beings to say, “Okay, we’ll live with this and let somebody else govern us. Let’s see if this person is going to treat us right, now.”
I mean they’re writing articles saying that it would take two hundred and twenty-eight years for the average black family to accumulate the wealth that an average white family has…two hundred and twenty-eight years! I don’t even know how somebody could write that. [pause] You see, this is your prediction for never having a future! And I say, that’s unacceptable!
I don’t give a damn what the constitution says; I don’t care what Obama says; I don’t care what the democrats or republicans say; I don’t care what the U.S. army, CIA, FBI say; I don’t give a damn what any of them say. I have a responsibility in my lifetime [applause] to overturn this relationship that we have with white power. [applause]
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