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POEM: Somebody Blew Up America, Amiri Baraka, 2001
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
05 Jul 2023
POEM: Somebody Blew Up America, Amiri Baraka, 2001

 A poem from the late Amiri Baraka questions the myths of U.S. exceptionalism that engulfed the nation after 9/11 attacks, contextualizing them with a history of the West’s centuries-long violent rampage on the rest of the world.

Amiri Baraka wrote the poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” during the terrible weeks following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. The poem attacked the historical mythologies and the political ideologies absorbed and accepted without question by most citizens of the United States.  By incessantly asking the simple but devastating question “who?” - who blew up America, who committed genocide, who enslaved Africans, who killed African leaders, who unleashed deadly violence around the world, and so on - Baraka shifted the discussion, insisting on U.S. citizens recognizing the attacks as blowback to U.S. and western global violence. It was a rare and brave counter to the war-mongering and the imperial chest-thumping, to the rabid jingoism and the racist patriotism, unleashed during that helter-skelter period.

This anti-nationalist long poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” and Baraka’s withering “who?” are perhaps even more relevant today. We reprint the poem below. Please read it – and always ask the question, “who?”

 

Somebody Blew Up America

Amiri Baraka

Somebody Blew Up America

 

They say it's some terrorist,

some barbaric

A Rab,

in Afghanistan

It wasn't our American terrorists

It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads

Or the them that blows up nigger

Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row

It wasn't Trent Lott

Or David Duke or Giuliani

Or Schundler, Helms retiring

 

It wasn't

The gonorrhea in costume

The white sheet diseases

That have murdered black people

Terrorized reason and sanity

Most of humanity, as they pleases

 

They say (who say?)

Who do the saying

Who is them paying

Who tell the lies

Who in disguise

Who had the slaves

Who got the bux out the Bucks

 

Who got fat from plantations

Who genocided Indians

Tried to waste the Black nation

 

Who live on Wall Street

The first plantation

Who cut your nuts off

Who rape your ma

Who lynched your pa

 

Who got the tar, who got the feathers

Who had the match, who set the fires

Who killed and hired

Who say they God & still be the Devil

Who the biggest only

Who the most goodest

Who do Jesus resemble

 

Who created everything

Who the smartest

Who the greatest

Who the richest

Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest

 

Who define art

Who define science

 

Who made the bombs

Who made the guns

 

Who bought the slaves, who sold them

 

Who called you them names

Who say Dahmer wasn't insane

 

Who? Who? Who?

 

Who stole Puerto Rico

Who stole the Indies, the Philippines, Manhattan

Australia & The Hebrides

Who forced opium on the Chinese

 

Who own them buildings

Who got the money

Who think you funny

Who locked you up

Who own the papers

 

Who owned the slave ship

Who run the army

 

Who the fake president

Who the ruler

Who the banker

 

Who? Who? Who?

 

Who own the mine

Who twist your mind

Who got bread

Who need peace

Who you think need war

 

Who own the oil

Who do no toil

Who own the soil

Who is not a nigger

Who is so great ain't nobody bigger

 

Who own this city

 

Who own the air

Who own the water

 

Who own your crib

Who rob and steal and cheat and murder

and make lies the truth

Who call you uncouth

 

Who live in the biggest house

Who do the biggest crime

Who go on vacation anytime

 

Who killed the most niggers

Who killed the most Jews

Who killed the most Italians

Who killed the most Irish

Who killed the most Africans

Who killed the most Japanese

Who killed the most Latinos

 

Who? Who? Who?

 

Who own the ocean

 

Who own the airplanes

Who own the malls

Who own television

Who own radio

 

Who own what ain't even known to be owned

Who own the owners that ain't the real owners

 

Who own the suburbs

Who suck the cities

Who make the laws

 

Who made Bush president

Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying

Who talk about democracy and be lying

 

Who the Beast in Revelations

Who 666

Who know who decide

Jesus get crucified

 

Who the Devil on the real side

Who got rich from Armenian genocide

 

Who the biggest terrorist

Who change the bible

Who killed the most people

Who do the most evil

Who don't worry about survival

 

Who have the colonies

Who stole the most land

Who rule the world

Who say they good but only do evil

Who the biggest executioner

 

Who? Who? Who?

 

Who own the oil

Who want more oil

Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie

 

Who? Who? Who?

 

Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan

Who pay the CIA,

Who knew the bomb was gonna blow

Who know why the terrorists

Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego

 

Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion

And cracking they sides at the notion

Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere

 

Who make the credit cards

Who get the biggest tax cut

Who walked out of the Conference

Against Racism

Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother

Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?

Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?

 

Who invaded Grenada

Who made money from apartheid

Who keep the Irish a colony

Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later

 

Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,

the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,

Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,

 

Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane,

Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone,

Little Bobby

 

Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,

Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton

 

Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,

Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,

Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel

Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed

 

Who put a price on Lenin's head

 

Who put the Jews in ovens,

and who helped them do it

Who said "America First"

and ok'd the yellow stars

 

Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt

Who murdered the Rosenbergs

And all the good people iced,

tortured, assassinated, vanished

 

Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,

Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,

Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,

 

Who cut off people's hands in the Congo

Who invented Aids

Who put the germs

In the Indians' blankets

Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"

 

Who blew up the Maine

& started the Spanish American War

Who got Sharon back in Power

Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,

Chiang kai Shek

 

Who decided Affirmative Action had to go

Reconstruction, The New Deal,

The New Frontier, The Great Society,

 

Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for

Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth

Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza

Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro

Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus

Subsidere

 

Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,

Who poison Robeson,

who try to put DuBois in Jail

Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs,

Garvey,

The Scottsboro Boys,

The Hollywood Ten

 

Who set the Reichstag Fire

 

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed

Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers

To stay home that day

Why did Sharon stay away?

 

Who? Who? Who?

 

Explosion of Owl the newspaper say

The devil face cd be seen

 

Who make money from war

Who make dough from fear and lies

Who want the world like it is

Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national

oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.

 

Who is the ruler of Hell?

Who is the most powerful

 

Who you know ever

Seen God?

 

But everybody seen

The Devil

 

Like an Owl exploding

In your life in your brain in your self

Like an Owl who know the devil

All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl

Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise

In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog

 

Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell

Who and Who and WHO who who

Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

American Exceptionalism
US Imperialism
US Racism
Capitalism

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