The landslide victory and re-election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president on Nov. 5, 2024, has once again thrown the Democratic Party, white liberals, and the African petty bourgeoisie into a frenzy.
The embarrassing loss of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party occurred despite their weaponization of the State to attempt to imprison their political opponent, their obvious domination of major media, and the millions of dollars dumped into their “vote or doom” campaign.
More than this, key issues such as Palestine and the Uhuru 3 free speech trial exposed their inability to convince the masses that they were the “lesser evil.”
Trump made no attempts to conceal his white nationalist agenda for office. Rather, it was his commitment to those principles that won him the popular vote—over 77 million.
He falsely promised the colonizers the reinstatement of the world they knew before: one where white people could set their sights on murder, rape, and theft for a better life without consequence.
He promised unlimited access to the world’s resources and the reemergence of the U.S. as a superpower—a promise he’s incapable of keeping whether he believes it possible or not (and it’s safe to say he does truly believe it’s possible).
However, what his pile of executive orders attacking the long, hard-fought-for democratic rights of African people, massive detainment and deportations of Mexican/Indigenous peoples as well as Africans from Ayiti (Haiti), his brute-force diplomacy, his talk of territorial annexation (what some leftists call fascism), and his general buffoonery reveal is the long-standing practice and necessity of the colonial exploitation of African and colonized people—from which the U.S. and Europe owe their existence.
Trump united masses of white people around the fantasy that he could revive a dying imperialism. He achieved a base of support built on the colonizer’s existentialist fear of being replaced—which is exactly what’s happening with the eruption of anti-colonial struggle occurring everywhere on the planet.
The APSP is replacing this world social system built on genocide, sustained through parasitism, with one where African and colonized people across the globe are free.
Colonialism, Not Fascism
White leftists have incorrectly regarded Trump’s presidency as the onset of fascism in the U.S.
What has been termed fascism is simply the consequence of the colonial mode of production imploding on the colonizer population.
Things are at the point where white people at large begin feeling the pressure of exploitation and State repression—based on class, gender, and sexuality—where the once-guaranteed futures of white Americans become completely unpredictable.
This, for the colonizer, is when it becomes a problem worth dealing with and amplifying.
This fascism they speak of is the colonialism that African and Indigenous people inside of this country have been struggling against since the very beginning.
It is crucial to note that the struggle of African people for liberation is a struggle that the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) assumed since our 1972 founding.
The Party has been at times the sole force critiquing, exposing, and resisting this very same colonial exploitation that is now being termed fascism.
Some might confuse the seemingly “quiet” presidencies of Joe Biden and Barack Obama as moments of peace and prosperity.
But it was under Obama and Biden that the deportations of Indigenous/Mexican people reached record heights.
It was also under Obama that the U.S. dropped more bombs throughout Africa and the Middle East than any other president.
It was also under a Democratic president that economic disparities between Africans and white people worsened, especially after the 2008 recession.
More recently, it was Biden who oversaw the annihilation of scores of Palestinians.
It was our Party that had the wherewithal to assert that the 2008 selection of Barack Hussein Obama as U.S. president was a mirage of progress; a distraction and a classic tactic of neocolonialism—the vestment of white power in a black face.
In the same vein, the election of Trump is not a new moment of fear and uncertainty; it is simply a symptom of an unraveling system that Chairman Omali Yeshitela called the “uneasy equilibrium.”
The uneasy equilibrium presents itself at the point where the global economy and social system—built on African colonial enslavement and exploitation—experiences severe crises.
Whether it be through the initial colonial attack on Africa, the ensuing enslavement, peonage, or political imprisonment of African people; whether it be through housing disparities, unemployment and underemployment, or State violence, this equilibrium becomes uneasy because African and colonized people continue to resist.
We Don’t Despair!
Regardless of who is chosen as the head to represent the interests of U.S. imperialism and colonial domination, our Party’s trajectory remains the same.
Our position has always been that colonialism—the colonial mode of production—which is responsible for the global conditions of death and destruction of our people, must be destroyed.
We do not need a president to speak as crassly as Trump to understand that whether it be a Democrat or a Republican in office, the interests of the colonial State will always be antagonistic to those of African people and colonized peoples of the world.
The history of counterinsurgency, the assassination of our leaders, and the destruction and expropriation of our resources has shown us that, repeatedly.
Breaking from this history requires breaking from a political system that never had room for African people to begin with; a political system whose founding documents and tracts enshrined and codified the enslavement of African people and theft of Indigenous land while simultaneously declaring that all men are equal—the same one that bestowed false notions of universal agency and humanity to a very particular group of people we now call “white.”
The Future is Bright
We say we are preparing to govern, getting ready for liberation in our lifetime because we understand that the power to build the kind of world we want to live in and leave to our children comes from the agency of our own labor.
This is why the very first point of the 14-Point Working Platform of the APSP states, “We want peace, dignity, and the right to build a prosperous life through our own labor and in our own interests.”
This is why, through the vision of the Black Power Blueprint, the Uhuru Movement continues to build concrete institutions of dual and contending power.
This is a project that is dedicated to transforming the material conditions of African people wherever we are located through endeavors like the One Africa! One Nation! (OAON!) Farmers Market in St. Louis, the OAON! Flea Market in Philly, the African Independence Workforce Program, Uhuru wa Kulea African Women’s Health Center, Uhuru House community centers, Burning Spear Media and Publications, and much more.
Trump or not, this work doesn’t stop!
Build to Win
Make no mistake, Trump’s second term is a profound defeat for the colonial ruling class. It represents the bubbling over, the exposing of this primary contradiction in style and rhetoric that is attributed to an earlier time in U.S. history.
It is unconcealed white nationalism as opposed to the “gentle” imperialism that we are often guilted into voting for.
This time around, white power has nowhere to hide.
We must understand that what remains is the same system we have been waging our struggle against since the colonial attack on Africa.
The repressions and forms of exploitation may change faces and forms, but it is our responsibility to continuously see through this distorting force and wage our struggle as we always have.
We are our own liberators!
Liberation in our lifetime!
Join the African People’s Socialist Party!
