ORLANDO, FL––The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) condemns U.S. imperialism for creating the conditions that led to the Orlando mass shooting of 50 people by 29-year-old Afghan Omar Mateen.
We profoundly sympathize with the families of the many young, predominately Indigenous (Latino) and African (black) people who were victims of the shooting, as well as the survivors who endured this ordeal.
We say this in the context of recognizing what the U.S. does to Muslim and Arab people every single day.
Omar Mateen’s attack on the Pulse nightclub was a response to U.S. bombing of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, according to statements made by Mateen himself.
The hysterical cries of “Islamist terrorist” and “religious fanaticism” are meant to cover over the fact that U.S. military occupation and genocidal war against the Muslim and Arab world is instigating blowback, as seen in Brussels, Paris, and now Florida.
Many of those who died during this attack were Indigenous and African. African and Indigenous same-gender-loving (gay) people must direct our anger at imperialism for killing oppressed peoples all over the world.
It is imperialism that makes it unsafe to even spend time in a nightclub without potentially ending up in the crosshairs of retaliation.
The same white nationalist government that embargoes Cuba, deports Mexicans, holds Puerto Rico as a colony, and uses police to shoot down African people every single day will now shed false tears over the deaths of Indigenous people and Africans, in order to pull the masses of oppressed people into a deeper unity with the status quo of imperialist war against Arabs and other peoples.
We would not even be having this discussion if the U.S. was not terrorizing the planet, stealing oil from the Middle East, supporting the Jewish State’s genocidal occupation of Palestine, spilling the blood of Afghan people, bombing Pakistani weddings with drone strikes, torturing Arab men in detention cells, and propping up brutal puppet dictators throughout the Middle East.
Imperialism is responsible for the deaths of those 50 people. Imperialist white power is the enemy!
Omar Mateen: “America is bombing Iraq”
Omar Mateen was the son of Afghan immigrants who had to leave their country because the United States has been bombing it for over fifteen years.
Many reports from those who knew Mateen, including his ex-wife, have said that he spent many nights in the Pulse nightclub. He also maintained several dating profiles on gay websites.
According to witnesses, Mateen told the hostages that he “had no problem with the blacks” and that he was carrying out this attack because of “America’s bombing of Iraq.”
One witness, an African woman, said that Mateen asked if any of the people hiding in the bathroom were black. When the Africans responded, Mateen said, “I don’t have a problem with you. The blacks have been through enough suffering. This is about my country.”
The Orlando shooting, and other recent shootings throughout the U.S. and Europe by Muslim people are echoes of U.S.-instigated chaos in Syria and Iraq where hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered or displaced from their homeland as refugees.
Over the course of the past fifty years, the U.S. has overthrown democratic governments in Egypt, Libya, Iran and Afghanistan.
In the 1970s, the CIA created the modern “Jihad” through funding and training the Mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan to overthrow the progressive government and pave the way for the emergence of so-called Islamic fundamentalists.
“The worst mass shooting in U.S. history”
Obama’s claim that the Orlando shooting represented “the worst mass shooting in U.S. history” is a cover-up of the lurid, bloody history of white terrorist mass killings of African and Indigenous people stretching back to the origins of this country.
The United States was born from the enslavement of African people and the genocide against the Native people of this land.
A snapshot of U.S. history reveals a constant succession of mass shootings and white terrorism against African and Indigenous people with death tolls far surpassing fifty:
· Thibdoaux, Louisiana in 1887: 300 Africans were shot and killed by white attackers.
· Wounded Knee in 1890: 300 Indigenous people were shot and killed by a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment.
· Wilmington, North Carolina in 1989: 60 Africans were murdered by a white mob, in addition to destroying homes and businesses.
· Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921: A mob of whites backed by the U.S. military shot and burned over 300 African people.
· Detroit, Michigan in 1967: White nationalists and police shot and killed 33 African people.
The social fabric of the United States is drenched in the blood of African and Indigenous people slaughtered by this government and white people for centuries.
White reaction fueled by the ignorance of convenience
The white media is searching for explanations for Orlando running the gamut from homophobia to mental illness, because whites have been able to enjoy the luxury of “not knowing” what their government is doing in their name to oppressed peoples all over the world.
It is what Chairman Omali Yeshitela calls “the ignorance of convenience” that makes it possible for white people to feel shock when the war that their government wages on billions of people is returned in the direction of America’s cafes, shopping malls and nightclubs.
Solutions sought within this social system built on stolen resources and land of the African, Arab and oppressed peoples of the world can only result in greater violence returned into the belly of the beast.
This is the crisis of imperialism. Our intention is not to solve the crisis but to deepen it.
We denounce the U.S. government as the most dangerous terrorist organization on the planet.
We unite in solidarity with the struggles of the oppressed Muslim and Arab peoples to reclaim control of their resources and self-determination over their lives and destinies.
There can be no genuine peace on this earth as long as imperialism is allowed to exist.
The African Revolution is fighting to overturn the basis of the entire resource-sucking, baby-slaughtering, genocidal, parasitic capitalist system that is the enemy of all human beings.
However, we are clear that our objective has to be the struggle against imperialism, against colonialism and the brutal ubiquitous State power it has created that spans the globe.
Our Party is also clear that individual acts of terror or even organizational indiscriminate terrorism cannot serve us well.
We must be in revolutionary organization and our actions must be informed by recognition that the entire colonialist-capitalist system must be overthrown.
We are convinced of the necessity that, while recognizing we are our own liberators, we must win the greatest solidarity for our struggle that is possible from all those who, objectively, share the same general interest in ending oppression and exploitation.
This cannot be done if the masses are more afraid of the revolution than they are of the oppressors. This is one of the great problems with terrorism.
Indiscriminate terrorism as a primary form of struggle is also problematic because it requires complete separation from the masses of the people; it can only be carried out in great secrecy, denying the revolution an opportunity to win participation from the oppressed in the overthrow of our oppression.
While the U.S. and all of Europe have discovered a love affair with homosexuals, it must be recognized that the reason there is a Pulse and the many other social venues established for same gender-loving individuals to gather is because of the great history of oppression and terror waged within the U.S. by individuals and government decree against homosexuals.
Now, when the masses of the world are consciously engaging the U.S. and European white power in struggle to reconquer our lands, resources and sovereignty, there is a growing effort to unite the European or “white” nation against the rest of us by eliminating or subduing internal contradictions.
This push to unite the white nation is the basis for why the U.S. government has legalized gay marriage and allowed women and homosexuals to openly participate in the military and other arenas of white colonial oppressive power.
We should not be confused. Imperialism is the enemy regardless of the disguise it wears at any particular time. Living in the empire places everyone at risk.
For Africans, Mexicans and a host of other colonial subjects we live at risk daily––risk of police violence, arrest or even death by the hands of the State.
We are also at risk from all the enemies of imperialism daring to bring the war “home” to the imperialists.
Imperialism is the enemy!
African liberation will free the entire world.
Uhuru!
