The electoral system alone doesn't bring about change that benefits the people. People-centered political formations must be part of any political process.
While the public endured months of campaign jostling by the capitalist Republican and Democratic party candidates in this U.S. midterm election, there are some self-styled revolutionaries and Pan-Africanists who peddle the propaganda of the bourgeoisie. Their message is a call for Black people to turnout to “save U.S. democracy” or else face certain doom at the hands of the Republican Party led by the ominous orange menace, Donald Trump. The concept of “fascism” is often bandied around with no regard for it as a historically constant condition for African descendants and Indigenous people.
As always for the U.S. oligarchy, at stake is which wing of the duopoly will dominate the legislative branches of government. The Republicans need five seats to take control of the house and only one to control the senate.
This bizarre brand of “Pan-Africanism” and “revolutionary” politics accuses any other political stance of dismissing differences between the two parties, or advocating that Black people should disregard electoral politics. There is also the tried and true guilt and vote shaming that points out we stand on the shoulders of those who made ultimate sacrifices for Black people to have the right to vote. Abstaining from the process is seen as flagrant disrespect of our elders and ancestors.
This pseudo-Pan-Africanism grossly misrepresents the positions of genuine revolutionary Pan-Africanism and side-steps several critical points which, in the opinion of this author, arguably rises to the level of criminality. What ultimately is a Black bourgeois disposition says that Black people should vote against our interests by keeping the capitalist, setter colonialist Democratic party in power. It must be clear under no uncertain terms that stakes are high and the U.S. is propelling humanity in a race to the bottom, and this is so regardless of which wing of the duopoly leads the oligarchy.
Revolutionary Pan-Africanism is clear that the U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful. This was also the conclusion of a 2014 study from Princeton and Northwestern universities which concluded that the electoral process only works for the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.
If electoral politics is ever to play a role in overturning this condition it cannot be reduced to individual acts by people herded into polling booths to pull levers for personalities instead of people(s) centered platforms. This is not a call for Black and non-white working class people to ignore or abstain from the U.S. electoral process. On the contrary, an alternative must be built, and building it must include a mass political education campaign that exposes and discredits both enemy parties, while electorally promoting a vote for a revolutionary alternative. But voting for either wing of the duopoly only prevents the emergence of alternatives.
With control over major media and the use of sophisticated messaging, the U.S. working class is propagandized by the rulers to obsess over certain issues while being blind to others that would be fundamentally in their interests. NBC News exit polls reported that voters prioritize abortion and inflation with crime trailing behind, followed by gun policy, and then immigration, but solutions are diametrically opposed to the interests of the U.S. oligarchy.
The rulers have been priming the electorate for months to dictate what election issues should be in order to determine how they vote. They have decided that war, the human right to healthcare, education, food, or employment need not concern anyone. Certainly nothing is discussed that recognizes how those issues deemed worthy of consideration could be resolved by establishing a people(s) centered human rights framework. It is against the interests of the oligarchy for people to realize how abortion rights intersect with the human right to health care, which also intersects with the human right to education, food, and employment, which intersect with crime and other concerns.
A cursory look at the races for a congressional seat in Virginia and for the gubernatorial race in Maryland demonstrates the political shifts to the right that have taken place over several decades. They also demonstrate the hollowness in the claim by the bourgeois pseudo Pan-Africanists that the Republican party alone represents fascism. Both Virginia candidates, incumbent Abigail Spanberger (D) and Yesli Vega (R) have run on the credential of being former police officers in a country that leads the world in extrajudicial police killings. Spanberger brags of her former position in the CIA, an agency that facilitates the overthrow and assassination of African leaders.
Wes Moore who will be the first Black governor of Maryland, touts his military service that includes serving as second lieutenant of Military Intelligence in the Army Reserve, a deployment in the failed U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, and his work as an investment banker. These are the types of credentials the people are supposed to believe represent a turn away from fascism, while simultaneously representing the bi-partisan fashioning of Black people as the face of crime.
What is criminal are the pseudo Pan-Africanists preaching that it is in the interest of Black people to keep the neoliberal Democratic party in control of the legislature so they can preside over austerity, federal increases in funding police in the name of George Floyd, bait and switch Build Back Bullshit that prefers throwing billions of dollars at proxy wars like in Ukraine and expanding U.S. militarism across the planet, including a debilitating militarism across Africa, the homeland of the Black people whose interests they claim to represent. How can any leftist worth the label justify voting for the expansion of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the 1033 program that militarized police departments, and the blatant violation of the human right to self-determination of the Haitian people, to name just a few problematic policies that impact Black people?
A step beyond what Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro declares, the Democratic Party should not only be punished at the polls for betraying their constituency – especially Black people – but it must be deposed at the polls. Voting to keep this party in power is only complicity in prolonging the power of the people’s enemies. To suggest that Black people should be wary of what will happen if Republicans take over implies that what happens while the Democratic party dominates is always beneficial.
For Black and Indigenous people the US has never been a democracy and George Jackson astutely taught in the 1970s that fascism is already here. Exclamations that “U.S. democracy is under threat” are only a reflection of capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal interests. Today we are witnessing the desperate flailings of a U.S. settler state in crisis.
For U.S. electoral politics to be of any benefit to humanity a formidable revolutionary politic must be built based on the people’s interest and be determined by the people themselves. As already stated, building this movement requires a mass organization and political education that exposes and discredits both enemy parties, not supporting them.
Netfa Freeman is an organizer in Pan-African Community Action (PACA) and on the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. Netfa is also co-host/producer of the WPFW radio show and podcast Voices With Vision.
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