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In 2013, South African soldiers were deployed as part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) troops that comprised the United Nations’ Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), which defeated the M23; the other SADC nations that participated were from Tanzania and Malawi. Relations between Rwanda and South Africa have been tenuous because of Rwandan dissidents being in exile in South Africa; individuals formerly allied with the Rwandan President Paul Kagame, such as former Head of Intelligence Patrick Karegeya, who arrived in 2008, and former army Chief of Staff Kayumba Nyamwasa, who followed in 2010. Kagame has been described as a political strongman and criticised for his poor human rights record, the assassination attempt on Nyamwasa in South Africa in June 2010, didn’t help this image.

In July 2013, Karegeya and Nyamwasa were both individually interviewed by Radio France Internationale (RFI), the pair described Kagame as a brutal dictator and claimed to have evidence that connected Kagame with the shooting down of President Habyarimana and Ntaryamira’s plane in 1994. In 2007, French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere had ordered international arrest warrants be issued for Nyamwasa, along with 8 other Rwandan officials; Kagame being a head of state had immunity under French law, but Bruguiere claimed that “[he] and members of his military staff devised the operation” behind the 1994 plane crash. In 2008, a Spanish judge indicted 40 Rwandan military officers, including Nyamwasa, for genocide and again, Kagame had immunity as a head of state but these charges were for the most part rubbished. So were the French claims but in 2013, 2 former Kagame allies were now claiming he was behind the plane crash that ignited the spree of ethnic cleansing. On New Year's Day 2014, Karegeya would be found dead in his room in Sandton’s Michelangelo Towers Hotel, whether or not they actually had evidence of Kagame’s involvement, they surely paid the price; in March of the same year, Nyamwasa would experience a 3rd assassination attempt. The French would eventually dismiss the case but in the immediate aftermath of Karegeya’s assassination, South Africa responded by expelling 3 Rwandan diplomats and one from Burundi; Rwanda retaliated by expelling 6 South African diplomats.

The icy relations have somewhat thawed under the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa but are far from amicable; Ramaphosa was in Kigali for the genocide’s 30th anniversary commemoration, the obvious focus of discussion being the conflict in the eastern Congo. Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi called for the withdrawal of the UN forces of MONUSCO [Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en République démocratique du Congo (United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo)], citing their inability to protect civilians. The civilians of eastern Congo have protested against the UN peacekeepers because of their failure to keep them safe, this has led to all UN forces being phased out of the DRC by the end of 2024.The East African Community Regional Force has also been asked to leave, being replaced by the SADC Mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC); Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania, as well aselements of the DRC Armed Forces working with the Congolese Army, the Forces Armees de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC).

Despite being ranked the 33rd strongest military out of 145 countries in 2024, critics have described the South African military as overstretched, underfunded and overaged. The biggest issue facing the military being the misappropriation of funds, corruption being a feature of militaries across the world, carrying through from the apartheid regimes to the post-apartheid governments. In the recent deployments to the DRC, the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) has had to dismiss claims that soldiers had surrendered to the M23 in an article by a “Washington DC Correspondent” for the website National Security News. The article being pro-Rwandan in its reporting of the conflict, describes M23 as a “buffer” between Rwanda and the rebel forces; and claims Rwanda is the “only alternative and credible security force that is able to provide effective military assistance bilaterally against Islamist extremists to other members of the [African] Union (AU).” National Security News would respond by nitpicking the SANDF press statement’s reference to “two (2) soldiers” having surrendered, a claim not made in their article and standing by their reporting. Ramaphosa has extended the deployment of SANDF troops in the DRC, for the period of April 16 to December 20, at the estimated expenditure of R805 million. Troops have also been deployed in Mozambique at the estimated expenditure of R984 million, as well as deployment for SADC Maritime Security of the Southern African coast of the Indian Ocean, costing R35 million.

It's unusual that reporting from such an obscure news outlet would garner so much attention, leading us to ask, who is National Security News? Their “About Us” introduces us to the woman-led team of CEO Katie Frodsham, Intelligence Specialist Isabella Egerton, and Open Source Intelligence Specialist Valeryia Dockrell. These are all employees of ITC Secure, “an advisory-led cyber security services company” owned by C5 Capital, “a specialist venture capital firm that invests in cybersecurity, space, and energy security.” The founder of C5 Capital being South African-born investor André Pienaar, codenamed “Luciano” in the infamous “Spy Tapes” saga, “a private intelligence operative close to Mbeki.” The “Spy Tapes” were an elaborate ploy by fmr Pres. Jacob Zuma against charges of corruption relating to the Arms Deal, claiming there was a political agenda against him, “proven” through transcripts between prosecutors. In 2021, Zuma accused Pienaar of being a CIA agent and handler of then-head of the Scorpions, Leonard McCarthy. Later that same year, the Washington-based investor would dismiss these claims by speaking exclusively with Max Du Preez, chief editor of Afrikaans publication Vrye Weekblad; Pienaar is an investor in thepublication.

In 2003, then-National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Bulelani Ngcuka faced similar allegations while investigating then-Deputy Pres. Zuma. Shabir Shaik, Zuma’s financial advisor, had been charged with being an intermediary for the bribes between French arms manufacturer Thales and Zuma; he’d be found guilty in 2005. The then-Deputy President wasn’t charged because of a lack of evidence but there was a prima-facie case against him. Mo Shaik, brother of Shabir, and Mac Maharaj—Zuma allies—were the sources of the claim that Ngcuka was an apartheid spy, allegations found to be false during the Hefer Commission: set up to question the validity of the claims. The claim was based on an intelligence report by Mo Shaik from 1989,which he shared with Maharaj but Ngcuka’s counsel described the report as having “a flawed conclusion based on incorrect facts.”

Maharaj believed that Ngcuka was acting in abuse of his powers, but this could’ve been based on Maharaj being investigated by the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO), more famously known as the Scorpions, for his links to corruption. As NDPP, Ngcuka was head of the Scorpions, an elite investigations unit modelled on the FBI, and faced a lot of criticism and smear campaigns from the corrupt elements of his own party, the ANC, for the success of the unit. In the aforementioned Vrye Weekblad interview, Pienaar reveals he played a vital role in the founding of the Scorpions while working at Kroll, a financial and risk advisory firm. According to Pienaar, Kroll was asked by VISA to investigate credit card fraud in South Africa, he was sent and had to have a meeting with then-Pres. Mandela, and his Deputy Mbeki, to explain his assignment; it was accepted and VISA was asked to share Pienaar's report with the presidency. Pienaar’s investigation found organised crime was huge in South Africa, claiming Mandela then asked him, “a 26-year-old white Afrikaans kid,” to “find the very best and most experienced law enforcement officers, investigators, prosecutors and intelligence specialists in the world and bring them to South Africa to train”…the future Scorpions. Pienaar claims he was a London-based advisor to the Scorpions until 2004, Ngcuka had been head of the Scorpions during this entire period but Pienaar makes no mention of them during this interview.

Ngcuka has recently released a biography called Bulelani Ngcuka: The Sting in the Tale, authored by Marion Sparg, a former colleague of Ngcuka; having served as CEO of the NPA during his tenure, they’re able to give context to those turbulent years. The biography makes no mention of Pienaar, but fortunately for us he’s been conducting interviews for the release of his Scorpions-Tell-All, Mandela’s Untouchables – The Scorpions and the Fight for Justice in South Africa. In these interviews, the Washington-based investor also makes claims that Zuma and his political party, MK party, are instruments of the Kremlin; having written 2 articles on the subject in National Security News. In one of the articles, Pienaar claims Zuma has a handler in Russia's military intelligence agency, still commonly called the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie), pointing to events such as his July 7th speech in Zimbabwe at the Africa Voluntary Carbon Credits Market Forum in 2023. Representing the Belarus African Foreign Trade Association (BAFTA), of which he is a board member, Zuma announced the plan to list 2 million carbon credits on the new exchange to jumpstart the market. Carbon credits are just permission slips for companies to produce Co2 emissions, contributing to global warming, and the market has experienced significant growth. Involving a triad of Western-sanctioned nations, questions were raised around whether or not this was Russian scheming.

“From Zimbabwe, [Zuma] is whisked away by his Russian handlers on a Russian plane for ‘medical treatment’ in Moscow, now claiming he is suddenly feeling unwell again,” Pienaar writes. Zuma had been ordered to return to prison by the constitutional court in November 2022, after ruling his medical parole was “unlawful.” The former president was serving a 15 month prison sentence for contempt of court, failing to appear and testify before the Zondo commission—a public inquiry to investigate allegations of state capture, corruption, and fraud in the public sector during his tenure as president. His arrest, on the 8th of July 2021, ultimately sparked the July unrest but he’d be granted medical parole in September. According to News24 sources, Zuma flew on a commercial flight to Moscow on July 10, accompanied by six VIP Protection Unit officers: a division of the South African Police Service (SAPS) responsible for the static and in-transit protection of the president, deputy president, former presidents etc.

While the likes of the NPA (let alone health and education) have faced budget cuts, the controversial Protection unit, known for their reckless driving and above-the-law behaviour, have had increases in their budget for years; an issue Ramaphosa said he’d supposedly look into in 2018. The disbanding of the Scorpions, by the subjects of their investigations, led to the creation of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), commonly known as the Hawks. As a unit of the NPA, the Scorpions were at least independent in name, whereas the Hawks are a division of the SAPS, reporting to the Minister of Police, thus being influenced by the executive branch. The Scorpions were able to fund themselves utilising a branch of the NPA known as the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) and the Prevention of Organised Crime Act (POCA); in the dissolution of the Scorpions, proceeds are either paid to victims of crimes or into the Criminal Assets Recovery Account to be distributed to the prosecution and police. Within the SAPS budget, the estimated allocation for Detective Services, the department that includes the Hawks, is R2,2 billion for the 2024/25 fiscal year, the Protection Units department is estimated at R3,93 billion. Along with underfunding investigations into corruption, the appointment of corrupt prosecutors has for years also enabled State Capture.

The Zuma regime also left a stain on the State Security Agency (SSA), the department responsible for intelligence operations; the former president utilised the agency’s resources as a critical tool for State Capture. The recent General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill was meant to fix these issues of malfeasance but falls short, in ways such as the bill still allows for the vetting of persons who have access to critical infrastructure but doesn’t explicitly excuse SABC journalists from the vetting provisions. Along with the bill's failure to address the theft and mismanagement of the secret slush funds, “national security” and “national security threat” remain vague and open to abusive interpretations while being core concepts of the agency’s functions. There’ve been recommendations for the Hawks to be established as a Chapter 9 institution—separate from government and independent from political parties or other interest groups, designed to protect and support democracy—as well as the Inspector-General of Intelligence (IGI), the entity that monitors and reviews the operations of the intelligence services.

In one of the interviews discussing the article, Pienaar describes their amusement at Zuma and fmr Deputy Pres. “Rama-PO-za” seeking medical treatment in Russia, referencing Cold War conspiracies about this being a cover story for meeting with Russian intelligence. Aside from it actually being fmr Deputy Pres. David Mabuza seeking medical treatment in Russia, it becomes fair to assume that as the son of a pastor during apartheid, Pienaar clearly experienced a significant amount of brain rot from the anti-communism campaign of Rooi Gevaar (Red Peril). However, there are conspiratorial merits in the origin of Zuma’s reliance on the Russian healthcare system; the Sunday Times reported that in June 2014, Zuma was hospitalised, 2 months later during a trip to the US he found out he’d been poisoned. In an unexpected trip to Russia in August, the diagnosis was apparently confirmed by Russian doctors. It was alleged that one of Zuma’s wives, Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma was involved in the plot; she moved out of the Nkandla homestead in January 2015. In 2017, Zuma would for the first time publicly speak about the alleged attempts on his life, claiming he was poisoned and almost died because of the decision to join BRICS. There are no reports oF such security breaches and there was no evidence for the NPA to prosecute anyone.

Pienaar claims that the reasoning behind Zuma’s Moscow trip, and the extension of this trip, was “Putin’s Africa Russia Summit on 22-23 July…where Putin and [the head of Gru] Veryanov [brokered] a deal between Ramaphosa and Zuma that will keep Zuma out of prison.” The second Russia-Africa Summit was actually held 27-28 July in St. Petersburg and a media statement by the presidency was released to announce that Ramaphosa had arrived in the Russian port city on the 26th. “The GRU has a secret mission for Zuma that requires him to be out of prison,” writes Pienaar, “the launch of its first wholly-owned political subsidiary, MK, as a political party in South Africa.” Zuma returned to South Africa on the 2nd of August and was granted a remission of his sentence on the 11th. Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola claimed Zuma was among 9,488 prisoners serving sentences of less than 2 years for non-violent crimes that benefited from the process approved by President Cyril Ramaphosa. There have been questions surrounding the funding of the MK Party, it was understood that the party was registered on 7th of September by Jabulani Khumalo and on the 16th of December, Zuma placed his support behind the party. Internet rumours speculated Iqbal Survé, owner of Independent Media, was the funder but he denied those claims; the controversial businessman has had his own issues with the banks.

It’s interesting the angle Pienaar takes in describing the alliance between Putin and Zuma in his other article for National Security News, writing “it was easy for Putin and Zuma to find each other—they are both Russian trained intelligence officers, who have each become heads of state.” Going further by quoting an alleged Russian intelligence officer that claims “unlike the erudite and British educated Mbeki, Zuma resembles the thugs we know in our neighbourhood.” It’s true that Mbeki was afforded the privileges of being well-learned within formal education, having attended highschool at the acclaimed Lovedale Missionary Institute in the town of Qonce in the Eastern Cape, then furthering their studies in exile at Sussex University in Brighton; completing his Masters in Economics in May 1968. Whereas Zuma, having lost their father at a young age, spent his childhood herding his grandfather's cattle in KwaNxamalala, a village in the rural district of Nkandla, in Zululand. Unable to attend school, he taught himself to read by looking at the work of children who were receiving an education; he and his friends would organise night school by candlelight. In his teens, Zuma moved between Zululand and the suburbs of Durban searching for work; his widowed mother was employed as a domestic worker in Cato Manor. His elder brother was also in Durban, a trade unionist and member of the ANC, which had a significant influence on the teen; Zuma joined the ANC at 17 in 1959.

The resistance organisation would be banned the next year, along with the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), following the Sharpeville Massacre on the 21st of March, 1960. The PAC, an ANC breakaway organisation founded by Africanists in 1959—led by its President Robert Sobukwe, had planned a nationwide non-violent protest against pass laws. Protestors left their pass books at home and handed themselves over to their nearest police station. In Sharpville, a township near Vereeniging in Gauteng, a crowd of about 4,000 residents had descended on the police station in peaceful protest, at 13:40 in the afternoon the police opened fire—a defining moment in the shift from nonviolence to armed struggle. The banning of the organisations meant they were forced underground, and it was during this period that their respective military wings were established. The ANC formed uMkhonto weSizwe [Spear of the Nation (MK)] and the PAC formed Poqo (“pure”, “we stand alone” or “Black alone”), later known as the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). Zuma was recruited into MK in 1962, participating in sabotage actions in Natal and in 1963, it was planned that 45 recruits, including Zuma, would journey to Zambia for military training. The plan was uncovered by security police and in June the group was arrested near Zeerust, in the Western Transvaal (now North West Province), heading for Botswana.

On the 12th of August, Zuma, age 21, was found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the government and sentenced to 10 years on Robben Island. This would be an important period in terms of Zuma’s political education, being provided with teachers from members of the Rivonia trialists, such as Govan Mbeki (father of Thabo), along with other political leaders. Released in 1973, Zuma’s return to Natal would find them responsible for reestablishing the ANC’s underground; in December 1975, the raiding of many members led to his escape into Swaziland. These circumstances brought the first meeting between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, the former was being tasked with running ANC operations out of the landlocked nation. This came after Mbeki had spent 9 months at the Lenin Institute in Moscow to study ideological leadership training beginning in February 1969, as one of 3 South Africans enrolled that year, along with 400 other students. During his military training he was amongst a group of about 25 South Africans for a course in advanced guerrilla warfare.

This speaks to a point made by Mbeki’s fellow Lovedale alumni and member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), the late Chris Hani—assassinated in front of his home in Dawn Park, Boksburg on the 10th of April 1993. The remarks are found in a scathing 1969 memorandum to the ANC leadership, signed by 6 other MK members, in the aftermath of the disastrous Wankie Campaign. In a paragraph that mentions Mbeki by name, the memorandum speaks to the nepotism of the organisation, pointing out the “sending of virtually all the sons of the leaders to universities in Europe [as] a sign that these people are being groomed for leadership positions after the MK cadres have overthrown the fascists.” Insisting that there is a value ordained on those vs the rank and file members of the armed wing as “leadership uses its position to promote their kith and kin and put them in positions where they will not be in any physical confrontation with the enemy.” While, conspicuously, slipping out of South Africa for Tanzania within a group of PAC and ANC youth that included Mbeki, Vincent Mahali felt Mbeki was given special treatment as Govan’s son. While the rest of the ANC group would be going to university in the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries, Mbeki spent very little time in Tanzania before departing for Britain through his pre-existing scholarship. Mahali described that the leaders in Dar es Salaam were “[having] their usual three meals a day and none of them even considered that [the students] existed;” complaining how Mbeki avoided the “months and even years of deprivation…that most of us ‘commoners’ would have to go through.”

Zuma would only undergo military training in the Soviet Union in 1978, with his time in exile coming to be associated with the ANC’s notorious internal security services, commonly known as Mbokodo (a stone used for crushing and grinding). The exile atmosphere lent itself to paranoia in the repression of dissenters as they became to be viewed as saboteurs or spies. The arrival of many young people, following the Soweto Uprisings, en masse into the armed struggle had a significant impact on this. Many had been influenced by the Black Consciousness Movement and the ANC leadership felt this brought a security risk. The longer armed struggle lasted—or as some felt, was avoided—the more urgent the need for scapegoats became, whether real or imagined. This culminated in Mbokodo’s numerous human rights violations in military and prison camps—most notably Quadro—these abuses were also found in APLA camps in exile.

The quote, “unlike the erudite and British educated Mbeki, Zuma resembles the thugs we know in our neighbourhood,” is an interesting use of words, particularly the word “thugs,” since that word, particularly in the US, has become a racialised code word. The connotations of the word have developed over the years from the 14th century variations of the Hindi word “thug” or “thuggee” being recorded as meaning thief, swindler, or assassin.

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Lexicographer Kory Stamper notes that by the 1930’s, in the US, the word “thug” meant a gangster but in the 1960’s and 70’s, civil rights protestors began to be branded with the label, as well as those a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement—usually one and the same. The racial revolts of the 60’s—more commonly known as the race “riots”—which spread across the urban and rural U.S were caused by the racial inequalities that the civil rights movement protested against.

The revolts began with the Harlem race “riot” in 1964, when a Black 15-year-old was killed by a white off-duty cop; escalating year by year into the “Long, Hot Summer” of 1967. In the first 9 months of the year, 164 racial revolts had taken place across the country, a violently clear message addressing the plight of African-Americans. The revolutionary spirit had inspired the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense the year prior in Oakland, California; an organisation built to protect their communities from the invading police forces, known as “pigs” to members of the “counterculture movement.” The Panthers analysed the situation in the country and understood that racial segregation and discrimination had left African-Americans in the Black Colony within the wider Mother Country, known as “Babylon.” Using the biblical city as a metaphor for the US, following in the traditions of Rastafarians for whom Babylon represents western imperialism. James Baldwin would come to a similar conclusion in their 1966 essay A Report from Occupied Territory, writing “Occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in that New World which the Europeans conquered, and it is axiomatic, in occupied territory, that any act of resistance, even though it be executed by a child, be answered at once, and with the full weight of the occupying forces.” The experiences of African-Americans as second-class citizens found kinship in the struggles faced in places like the bantustans and townships of Apartheid South Africa; and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, this extended to the Palestinian territories and enclaves in the apartheid state of Israel.

Malcolm X had been an ally of the Palestinian cause since the 1950’s, advocating for Afro-Arab unity and making trips to Gaza to form relationships in resistance. His last being in September 1964, before he was assassinated on the 21st of September 1965 in Manhattan; Malcolm had by then left the Black nationalist Nation of Islam (NOI) and embraced Sunni Islam, adopting the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. During that final trip to the Middle East, Shabazz had a written piece published in the Egyptian Gazette, a leading English language newspaper in Egypt. In Zionist Logic, Shabazz writes “The modern 20th century weapon of neo-imperialism is…dollarism: the ability to come posing as a friend and benefactor, bearing gifts and all other forms of economic aid and offers of technical assistance.” The piece points to the “ever-scheming European imperialists wisely [placing] Israel where she could geographically divide the Arab world, [infiltrating] and [sowing] the seed of dissension among African leaders and also [dividing] the Africans against the Asians.”

Towards the end of the piece, Shabazz questions, “Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the "religious" claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago? Only a thousand years ago the Moors lived in Spain. Would this give the Moors of today the legal and moral right to invade the Iberian Peninsula, drive out its Spanish citizens, and then set up a new Moroccan nation...where Spain used to be, as the European Zionists have done to our Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine?”

For the African-Americans, did the Europeans have the legal or moral right to kidnap their ancestors from Africa and enslave them to build on the graves of those native to North America, who have been raped and pillaged by European settlers, in the creation of the settler colonies: the United States and Canada, dispossessing the land known to the indigenous as Turtle Island. The report by the Kerner Commission—created in July 1967 to dissect the causes of the urban “riots” and to recommend solutions—agreed with the analysis by these African-American voices, claiming “[the U.S] is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

Also erupting from within the Bay Area, alongside the Black Power movement, was the rise of radical student politics emanating from the campus of UC Berkeley, beginning the decade making a mockery of the McCarthyism (anti-communist paranoia) of the 1950’s. The campus would host Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the 17th of May 1967, in the wake of the growing anti-war movement, calling the students “the conscience of the academic community and our nation.” King had led his first anti-war protest in Chicago in March and delivered his influential “Beyond Vietnam” speech in April in New York; protests continued across the country through the month, including in San Francisco. Juxtaposed, in many ways, across the Bay Bridge was the flood of thousands of youths, with likely nowhere to stay, into the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood. Intrigued by its residents' rejection of materialism and their experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and alternative religions, the youths hoped to experience this community's idealised view of enlightenment.

In 1967, the media-defined “hippie” identity of the neighbourhood was finding its peak in what became known as the Summer of Love. Worries about the media attention surrounding the community go back to 1965 when the de-facto community centre, The Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, began issuing leaflets about the “Unicorn Philosophy: It is nothing new. We have a private revolution going on. A revolution of individuality and diversity that can only be private. Upon becoming a group movement, such a revolution ends up with imitators rather than participants…It is essentially a striving for realization of one's relationship to life and other people…” For the most part these newcomers were white and from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds, they might’ve been frustrated by the conformity of the so-called “American Dream” but the majority that now fell under the “hippie” umbrella were, if not pacifists, apolitical. The Diggers, a radical community-action group, provided significant support through this period of influx via their initiatives such as the Free Store: a store where everything is free. Later in the year, on New Years Eve, the Youth International Party, or better known as Yippie, was founded. In describing the difference between “hippie” anD Yippie to Chairman of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale, co-founder of Yippie Jerry Rubin positions the group as the political aspect of the “hippie” movement, “[hippies] mostly prefer to be stoned but most of them want peace, and they want an end to this stuff.”

On the 4th of April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee standing amongst his entourage on the balcony of the motel he was residing in. King was in Memphis supporting the Black sanitation workers strike which had begun on the 12th of February; the workers had attempted strikes to improve their conditions in the past but received little support. The breaking point for workers came when 2 Black sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were seeking shelter from the rain in the back of their truck's compactor when it malfunctioned, crushing them to death. The mayor was antagonistic towards the strike, rejecting the City Council-approved deal and using the police to repress the workers, which helped gain the support of civil rights organisations and the community. Reverend James Lawson, leader of the strike committee, felt his good friend Dr. King would be able to help further the workers’ efforts; King had recently launched his Poor People’s Campaign, a multiracial nationwide campaign aimed at addressing broadly economic inequalities with non-violent direct action.

King arrived in Memphis on the 18th of March and delivered a speech to a crowd of more than 15,000, promising to return to lead a huge march. The march took place on the 28th but quickly turned violent with the police presence, giving opportunists a chance to loot; a 16-year-old was killed by the police in the chaos. The blame for the violence was pointed at a Memphis-based Black Power group known as the Invaders; founded by College graduates, Charles Cabbage and Coby Smith; and Vietnam veteran, John Smith in 1967.

Created out of anger for the plight of African-Americans but galvanised by the political climate, the group became the student component of a larger city-wide effort known as The Black Organizing Project; attempting to establish reading programs, writing seminars, breakfast programs and health examination programs. The group denied the claims of causing violence, to prove their value to the cause, the group had spent the lead up to the march trying to recruit 5,000+ young marchers; co-founder Smith cites the source of the violence to a scuffle he witnessed between a police officer and a young Black man. King had a productive meeting with 3 members of the Invaders a few days after the march, working out an agreement for them to serve as marshals at the next march on the 5th of April.

King returned to Memphis on the 3rd in preparation for the march, addressing several thousand supporters who had come out despite the pouring rain that night, he gave one of his most famous speeches. King aligned the struggles of African-Americans as a global struggle against imperialism, saying “Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee—the cry is always the same: We want to be free.” Towards the end of the speech King lets the crowd know, “We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.” Speaking to their own mortality, he tells the crowd “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

The Invaders met with King again the next day, however this time the meeting included his entourage, causing friction as attention became divided; a few hours later King was shot and killed. At this point, white America had long turned its back on King, illustrated by a 1966 Gallup poll which rated public perception of the civil rights leader as 63% negative. Which is exactly why his image had to first be sanitised into an empty, soulless, white-washed caricature of “peace,” to be able to be for use by many seeking personal gain within US hegemonic capitalism. Becoming, as journalist Jamil Smith describes, “some kind of racial Santa Claus,” not unlike the image that Nelson Mandela, it can be argued, crafted of himself on his reconciliatory path towards the “Rainbow Nation;” the former president remained on the US terrorist watch list until 2008. “It is precisely because their lives have remained comfortable that many whites could make a cuddly patron of Mandela without confronting the revolutionary part of his legacy,” writes professor Herman Wasserman. For the many African-Americans that loved the man for the radical that he was, King’s death came as a huge blow; revolts erupted across the US, known as the Holy Week Uprisings.

The streak of revolts in the 60’s coincided with the sprouting of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams in police departments across the US, the first established in the aftermath of the 1965 LA Watts “riots;” Author and journalist Radley Balko points to LAPD inspector Daryl Gates and how the events that had unfolded “seemed [to him] like a type of guerilla warfare on the part of the people participating in the uprising. And he thought that Los Angeles was going to need a sort of military response…” However, Gates wasn’t the “inventor” of SWAT, but was in a position of seniority in its creation, either way, cities across the US responded similarly as these paramilitary SWAT teams became somewhat common in the 70’s.

In Vietnam, the actual US military was fighting an unconventional war it wasn’t prepared for; like the MK soldiers in exile, US troops smoked marijuana to “escape from the social conditions of the war,” says author and professor Jeremy Kuzmarov. That was all stopped by military command after a high-profile article revealed the common use of the drug and caused public panic in 1968; the unintended consequence became the increased use of heroin, particularly for its accessibility and being odourless to detection. The US military itself had already been pumping soldiers with amphetamines and steroids for battle, while also prescribing sedatives and neuroleptics to prevent soldiers from having mental breakdowns. However, this was short sighted as the psychological anguish was being delayed rather than treated, soldiers would return from war suffering from PTSD and possibly heroin addiction.

While the Vietnam War waged on, the CIA led a secret war in Laos, fought by the US backed-ethnic Hmong against the communist Pathet Lao and funded by the illegal trade of opium; utilising Air America planes for distribution of the drug—an airline covertly owned and operated by the CIA. The CIA in Vietnam also coordinated the Phoenix Program, a counterinsurgency against the communist Viet Cong in South Vietnam, between 1967 - 1972; gathering intelligence for the targeted detention, torture and killing of suspected Viet Cong. This occurred alongside a CIA led counterinsurgency program in Guatemala that featured bombing, kidnapping, torture, and murder of “communists and terrorists;” following the CIA led assisination of the Guatamalan head of state and the subsequent coup in 1954. This developed a long relationship of the US, in Latin America, teaching local intelligence and police agencies how to create death squads to target “political activists.” This developed through institutions like the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), where graduates would later commit torture, rape, assassination, forced disappearance, massacres, and forced displacement of communities.

Following the coups of the 70’s, those graduates were put to use by the right-wing military dictatorships of the southern cone of South America, who collaborated on a covert global campaign of violent repression—against those perceived to be enemies of the state—known as Operation Condor, which the US sanctioned, facilitated, and encouraged; from 1975 - 1983. This formed part of a global anti-communist campaign initiated by the U.S, in Western Europe, the U.S created and backed a NATO-led “stay-behind” program, which consisted of a network of local right-wing paramilitaries to carry out a campaign of assassinations, destabilisation, and general political violence in their home countries; from 1952 - 1990, when it was exposed. Its existence having been brought to the public by the Italian Prime Minister, the entire program would become synonymously known as Operation Gladio, the codename for the Italian unit. These operations are continuously mentioned as being necessary in the fight against communism but it is very clear, this violence was carried out in the name of exploitation aka capitalism.

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On the 8th of March 1971, “The Fight of the Century” was taking place in Madison Square Garden in New York City between undefeated heavyweight champions Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraizer. Fraizer held the title but Ali hadn’t lost it by defeat, he was stripped of his belt and had his boxing licence suspended. This followed his refusal to register for the military draft in 1967, claiming exemption as a minister of the religion of Islam; Ali had yet to convert to Sunni Islam (later holding an appreciation for Sufism) and was still a member of the Nation of Islam.

Founded in 1930, by 1964 the NOI had over 300,000 members and distributed 500,000 copies a week of its newspaper, Muhammad Speaks; the most widely circulated,Black-operated newspaper in the U.S. in the late 1960’s. Combining community-oriented investigative journalism and Black nationalist views on racial upliftment, the paper earned a reputation as a viable news source among community leaders such as mayors, city councilpersons and grassroots organisers. The NOI preached maintaining one’s health through proper diet, self-discipline and economic self-sufficiency. As anti-integrationists, the NOI insisted that African-Americans have control over their own businesses, schools and community organisations; this message was expressed through the NOI’s slogan of “Do-For-Self.” According to the politico-religious movement, this could only be achieved through Islam—the African-American community needed unshackling from the so-called Judeo-Christian establishment that had enslaved their ancestors, continued to mistreat them, and the NOI claimed to provide a path of salvation in what they described as the “hells of North America.”

The imagery of this terminology is further pushed by the now-heavily-memed NOI mythology of Yakub, a Black scientist responsible for creating the white “race”—commonly referred to by the organisation as the white devil; Yakub’s consistent association to the Biblical Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel, falls in line with the rife antisemitism of the NOI. The conflation in the doctrine of the organisation continues with the Quranic Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, leader of the NOI, as the latter takes the position of Messenger of Allah (rasul Allah). According to former Editor-in-Chief of Muhammad Speaks, John Woodford—an atheist raised Christian—within the racialised landscape of the modern US, NOI followers felt “if the followers of the Arab Muhammad could accept their spiritual leader as the Messenger of Allah, they could accept their [African-American] leader as a successor to that role and title with just as much right and logic as Muslims in the Middle East had asserted for themselves.” A similar line of thinking can be assumed to exist in Southern Africa among followers of the Nazareth Baptist Church (lbandla lamaNazaretha)—more popularly known as kwaShembe—or the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) or its splinter church, the International Pentecost Church (IPC); whose foundations are built on the colonial import of Christianity, within the segregated system their leaders found themselves in, but expanded upon from a perspective of traditional African spirituality.

It’s no surprise that Ali’s exemption was denied and he was charged with 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine, along with being required to surrender his passport. Only 25, Ali was approaching the years we associate with an athlete's peak, not only losing out on competing at the highest level but also potential millions of dollars. Known for their warm and upbeat disposition, there were little moments that revealed the pain of this loss. In April 1968, Ali appeared on his iconic Esquire cover, taking on the role of St. Sebastian—the patron saint of archers, those who desire a saintly death, and most relevantly, athletes. The legend of ol’ Bash is that he was a captain in the Roman emperor's army who was discovered to be a Christian and had converted many soldiers, leading to the order for him to be killed by arrows. Ali appreciated the symbolism but photographer Carl Fischer had had to urgently call the boxer's manager, Herbert Muhammad (son of Elijah), to receive consent to be portrayed as the Christian martyr. In a Rolling Stone interview after Ali’s death in 2016, George Lois—one of the influences behind Mad Men’s Don Draper—gave insight, as then-Esquire art director, of “the Greatest” on set. He claims Ali “took his right hand out from behind his back and pointed at each of the arrows. And then he’d say the names of the people in this world that were out to get him. He’d point to one arrow: ‘Lyndon Johnson.’ The next one: ‘General [William] Westmoreland [who led the Vietnam operation].’ Then: ‘Robert McNamara.’ Each of the arrows [was] a person in the government that had hurt him.”

In the accompanying profile—titled The Passion of Muhammad, written by Leonard Shecter — while driving around Chicago with the writer, Ali reveals that a delegation of well-known Black athletes had come to persuade him to change his stance on military service. In giving a summary of what he told them, Ali says, “I love my people. The little Negroes, they catching hell. They hungry. They raggedy. They getting beat up, shot, killed, just for asking for justice. They can't eat no good food. They can't get a job. They got no future. They was nothing but slaves and they the most hated people. They fought in all the wars, but they live in the worst houses, eat the worst food and pay the highest rent, the highest light bill, the highest gas bill. Now I'm the one's catching hell, too. I could make millions if I led my people the wrong way, to something I know is wrong. So now I have to make a decision. Step into a billion dollars or step into poverty. Step into a billion dollars and denounce my people or step into poverty and teach them the truth. Damn the money. Damn the heavyweight championship. Damn the white people. Damn everything. I will die before I sell out my people for the white man's money.”

Those next 3 years were spent appealing the federal offence, while Ali enhanced his skills as an orator to provide a source of income speaking on the college circuit. As former New York Times journalist—who covered Ali for 52 years of his life—Robert Lipsyte explains, his speeches “changed radically from the boring dogma of [the NOI] to a really informed understanding,” continuously developing from his conversations with college students after his speeches, garnering him support as an anti-Vietnam War icon. Ali became the symbol of the “counterculture movement,” the term encompassing the various political and anti-establishment protests and revolts of the era; such as those for the civil rights of racialised peoples, the anti-war and anti-nuclear movement or the women's rights movement—however, for years the objectives of the movement had been focused on well-to-do white women. On the 28th and 29th of May 1851, the Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Akron, this was during a time white women were organising and protesting for the right to vote. Mrs.Frances D. Gage opened proceedings as convention president, their address went as follows; “Are not the natural wants and emotions of humanity common too, and shared equally by both sexes? Does man hunger and thirst, suffer cold and heat more than woman? Does he love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sorrow more than woman? Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying to his senses than to hers. To all these interrogatories every one will answer: No!”

The following day, a formerly enslaved Black woman and abolitionist by the name of Sojourner Truth addressed the convention; despite protests among attendees who felt she’d draw attention away from voting rights to emancipation. An attempt to convey Truth’s message in full was published in The Anti-Slavery Bugle on the 21st of June, Truth’s speech reads:

“May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint and man a quart—why cant she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much,—for we cant take more than our pint’ll hold. The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they wont be so much trouble. I cant read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept—and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part? But the women are coming up blessed by God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.”

The most famous version of her speech was published in the New York Independent 12 years after the fact, this version reads:

“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full? Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them. Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.”

Written by convention president Gage, a false southern slave dialect had been attributed to Truth, who spoke with a Dutch accent, having learnt English after being sold by their Dutch enslaver. Marius Robinson had written the Bugle speech; a good friend of Truth’s, they went through the transcription and she gave approval for publication. Despite this, the refrain “Ain’t I a woman” became an important descriptor of the double oppression that Black women had experienced; plagued by sexism and racism, it could not be separated and had to be acknowledged.

The history of slavery in the U.S. had an institutionalised-like pattern of rape (Sojourner herself a victim), for which activist Angela Davis describes in her book Women, Race and Class, “as a weapon of domination, a weapon of repression, whose covert goal was to extinguish slave women’s will to resist, and in the process, to demoralise their men.” The abolition of slavery didn’t end this institutionalised violence against Black women, the post-Civil War period introduced its new form amongst white supremacist organisations, turning to gang rapes of Black women. In 1944, 24-year-old Recy Taylor was a victim of this violence in her small town in Alabama, having been abducted by 6 white men; Taylor and her father reported the assault to the local sheriff. one of the men would confess to the rape, naming the others that been involved but no arrests would follow.

News of the incident reached the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) office in Montgomery, Alabama, to find out why there’d been no arrests, the office sent their best investigator: 31-year-old Rosa Parks. After the sheriff chased Parks out of the town, she launched the Committee for Equal Justice on their return to Montgomery; the committee was focused on helping Black women reclaim their bodies against the widespread sexual violence at the hands of white supremacists. Black activists across the country signed onto the committee, providing publicity to the heinous crime on a national scale. Reported in the Chicago Defender, the lawyer representing the rapists in the case had offered $600 to Willie Guy Taylor to silence his wife, quoted saying “[N-word-er] — ain’t $600 enough for raping your wife.” A grand jury would refuse to indict the men, causing outrage as letters protesting the decision flooded the Alabama governor's office. After he ordered another investigation into the assault, in February 1945, a second grand jury refused to indict and the men were never prosecuted.

10 years later, while visiting family in Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmitt Till is dragged from his bed and out of his uncle’s home by 2 white men. He was beaten to disfigurement, then shot and thrown into a river; weighed down by a cotton-gin fan tied to his neck by barbed wire. Till he had been accused of flirting with the wife of one of the men, she said Till had come onto her while she worked as a clerk at their grocery store; years later, at the age of 72, she admitted this was a lie. The men were found not-guilty but 4 months later admitted to the murder in a magazine, they were paid $4,000 to glorify the killing. Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open casket funeral, exposing the overt violence of the Jim Crow South in a country that was built on its acceptance of racism. In their book, Black Women in White America, women’s historian Gerda Lerner writes, under the subtitle Black Women Attack The Lynching System, “The myth of the black rapist of white women is the twin of the myth of the bad black woman—both designed to apologize for and facilitate the continued exploitation of black men and women.”

However, in the late 60’s, an united front became harder to maintain as Black women activists felt unheard in the larger Black organisations; especially during a period in which the vocalisation of a triple oppression was being made. Gay and trans people have existed for as long as they’ve been persecuted: Forever; in some societies they were accepted, but in many—like the U.S.—were forced into the shadows and labelled “perverted.” Mid-1800’s correspondence between Addie Brown, a Black domestic worker, and Rebecca Primus, a Black school teacher, gives evidence that African-American women, like white women, have long shared in these lively, loving, erotic “friendships;” amidst heterosexual dominance. Following the Civil War and Reconstruction era, US ideals on sexuality and gender took on the Victorian era doctrine of “separate spheres,” believing men and women were different and meant for different things; claiming men belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the private sphere. Meaning men were meant to participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to run households and raise families. How this affected queer Black women is illustrated in a 1913 study of an all-girl institution that experienced same-sex acts of intimacy, in which a relationship between a Black girl and a white girl is problematically described. The Black girl, already racially categorised, is sexually categorised as “the man” of the relationship. As James Martin explains, in their journal article A Different Kind of Closet: Queer Censorship in U.S. LGBTQ+ Movements since World War II, “In reassigning the African American girl’s gender identity, white America is redefining black queerness and assuming that she must take the role of the ‘man’ in the relationship because of her skin color;” which recalls the refrain “Ain’t I a woman?”

As the U.S. banned alcohol in January 1920, this ultimately made a criminal out of everyone that drank, resulting in a general disregard for the law; the profitability of the alcohol black market gave rise to organised crime, as well as secret bars and clubs known as “speakeasies.” These hidden spaces brought together a diverse range of people and flourished in the New York City neighbourhood of Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance describes a period when the neighbourhood became, not only a Black cultural mecca but, the epicentre of U.S. culture and defined “what’s cool” for people around the world. Harlem had become a popular destination during the “Great Migration”, of Black families from the U.S. South to the North and West, from 1910.

In describing this golden age, from the early 1920’s until the mid 1930’s, in African-American culture—which manifested in literature, music, stage performance and art—literary critic and professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out the Harlem Renaissance was “surely as gay as it was Black, not that it was exclusively either of these.” The birth of drag balls came in Harlem in 1869, and they developed as a safe space for queer men to meet, but their mainstream. visibility came in the 1920’s, during the so-called “Pansy Craze” and the accompanying “Sapphic Craze.” The stock market crash of 1929, which ushered in the Great Depression (1929-1939), and repeal of the alcohol ban, in 1933, reintroduced the ideology of “separate spheres” as the U.S. returned to its conservative default.

However, the start of WWII would find the ideology once again being challenged; the mass deployment of men to the war front required many women to leave their homes and join the workforce. Black women had always worked and needed to work because of the economic disadvantage caused by slavery and racial discrimination. In fact, in the 1960’s, the idea of a Black “matriarchy” being the cause of the social ills and cycle of poverty that afflicted Black America had become a popular theory. The white women that did work usually did so in the clerical and service sectors and this is where many found employment during wartime. Before WWII created employment opportunities for women in heavy industry and wartime production, as well as other industries, Black women typically worked as domestic workers or sharecroppers. Those new opportunities had to be fought for because employers regularly refused to hire Black women; it took an Executive Order, banning racial discrimination in the defence industry, for Black women to be hired.

Once hired, Black workers found themselves within the wider “separate sphere” project of segregation; using separate cafeterias and restrooms; entering work through separate doors and living in separate, often inferior housing. Black workers were usually assigned more menial jobs, denied the chance for advancement and paid less than their white counterparts; women in general were paid less than men, highlighting the double jeopardy faced by Black women. For some white women newly entered in the workforce, the experience liberated them from the idea of a “successful” woman being a married woman; in conflict with the cultivation of the nuclear family being the all-American ideal. There was a feeling amongst men that women's participation in physically demanding and skilled labour was encroachment on a “man’s job;” which led some to respond with resistance and harassment towards their women colleagues. An insecurity about their masculinity already existed amongst these men of the homefront because they had not been selected in the draft, were disqualified or exempted from service for any number of reasons; having to live in the shadow of the WWII soldier: the ideal American man manifest.

The military banned queer people from being drafted using “medical or psychological testing” to assess sexuality but these screenings were very brief and relied on stereotypes like how the person walked and talked; 4,000 - 5,000 men were denied entry this way. This doesn’t mean queer men didn’t make it into the military, there are countless stories of queer men and women finding one another while serving in WWII and forming discrete communities. The “macho” masculine image of the WWII soldiers gave room for the popularity of male drag shows; as James Martin writes, in their aforementioned journal article, “Men were given the liberty to demonstrate their masculinity in a feminine way, where they could maintain their perceived heterosexual image in a comedic light – because, surely, it was too ridiculous for two men to become sexually attracted to each other.” The homefront was also experiencing something of a coming out, as men and women moved to new cities and had new experiences, none more so than those that made their way to or through the Bay Area, where San Francisco earned the moniker “Sodom by the Sea.”

As more young queer people found each other and became more visible, the U.S. public was once again disturbed by the “perverts.” In 2020, Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell released a labour of love that had been more than 20 years in the making, the book LOVING: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, offers us a look into 300, of the couples 3,000, photographs amassed. It feels apt that it ends in the 1950’s because of the witchhunt for gays that was to follow. McCarthyism had taken hold of the U.S., as the “Red Scare” drove a campaign to eliminate enemies of “American values,” it began with communists but soon queer people would find themselves under the spotlight. The “Lavender Scare” refers to the moral panic the US public had about queer people in government, which ultimately led to the signing of an Executive Order which deemed queer people a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail and were considered—backed by no evidence—to have weak moral characters requiring their systematic removal from any government job. Queer people were being severely repressed and found very little space to exist in society without masking their true identity; the burgeoning gay publications, magazines, and penpal clubs offered a chance to feel seen. The US Post Office played their role in persecuting the community by screening mail for any pro-gay content, categorising it as “obscene” the queer communities explosive fightback would begin in 1969.

The Stonewall Inn opened as a gay bar in 1967, forming part of a network of Mafia-controlled illegal gay clubs and bars in Greenwich Village in New York City. In 1966, the New York State Liquor Authority overturned their ban on establishments serving alcohol to known or suspected queer people but same-sex relations were still illegal. The Stonewall was cheap to enter and one of the last gay clubs in the village where customers could dance, drawing a young clientele that included runaways, homeless youths and drag queens, who were bitterly received at other gay clubs and bars. Although gay clubs were regularly raided, it was usually for show because staff would’ve usually been tipped off by corrupt cops—who were subsequently paid off—giving them a chance to warn patrons to stop any open displays of affection, slow dancing, or use of drugs.

On the 24th of June 1969, the Stonewall was raided but this time without warning, it had been organised by the NYPD's First Division, rather than the local Sixth Precinct. The club opened back up after a few days and on Friday, 27th of June, the police returned with the intention to shut down the club for good, roughing up and manhandling the people in the establishment. Rather than just disperse, the queer patrons were tired of the constant harassment and discrimination, demanding those that had been arrested to be released; it unfolded into a full blown uprising as the police barricaded themselves in the Stonewall for protection. According to gay rights activist Arcus Flynn, inmates of the Women’s House of Detention set fire to their meagre possessions and threw them out the windows in solidarity with the uprising outside, shouting “Gay Rights! Gay Rights!”

The illegality of being queer meant many queer women found themselves imprisoned there; their prevalence would be mentioned by activists Angela Davis and Afeni Shakur, who both spent time in the prison. In the early hours of the morning, the fire department and a riot squad were able to rescue those inside the Stonewall and disperse the crowd; but protests continued for the next five days, sometimes involving thousands of people, chanting “Gay Power!”

In July, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed, a gay rights organisation demanding liberation in the spirit of the national-liberation and anti-capitalist struggles around the world.

The organisation was made up of a diverse group of queer and over time served as an incubator of the new gay and lesbian mass political movement. Larger than life individuals such as Black drag queen and transgender woman Marsha P. Johnson were a part of this growing movement; she founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970, an organisation dedicated to sheltering young transgender individuals who were shunned by their families. Other groups born from the GLF are the Third World Gay Revolution and the Salsa Soul Sisters, groups for queer people of colour, vocalising a triple oppression of their race, sexuality and class. Between Christmas and New Years, 1969, the G.L.F helped organise 24-hour-a-day protests at the Women’s House of Detention; Afeni Shakur, a prisoner at the time, is said to have “[begun] relating to the gay sisters in jail beginning to understand their oppression, their anger and the strength in them and in all gay people.”

In 1970, Shakur attended a GLF workshop at the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention, organised by the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, and recounted that experience. The goal of the convention was to draft a new version of the constitution that articulated a united vision of a just and free society, inviting organisations from the Black Power movement, Asian-American movement, Chicano movement, Native American movement, Anti-war movement, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation movements. Shakur helped formulate a list of demands to bring to the floor of the convention, and believed that Huey P. Newton’s speech on gay and feminist liberation would be the beginning of the end for homophobia and misogyny within the Black Power movement.

However, in the 70’s, former members of the Black Panthers and other nationalist and anti-racist movements would go on to create their own Black feminist organisations led by Black lesbian feminists; such as the socialist Combahee River Collective, founded in 1974. In their landmark statement, the group coined the term “identity politics,” explaining, “We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression. In the case of Black women this is a… revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.” The term was never meant not to be exclusionary but inclusionary of the various oppressions that are experienced by an individual based on their identity, so they as they put it, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

This was a call for solidarity amongst all the oppressed which recognised the ways in which a group is oppressed; the way in which white feminists fought for abortion rights but completely ignored the plight of the many racialised women that had forcibly been sterilised in the 20th century, showed the lack of this sort of solidarity. Being that the group consisted of Black lesbians such as Barbera Smith and Audre Lorde, the plight of Black queer people was brought to the fore, giving greater credence to their boundary crossing view of solidarity. The revolutionary queer New Afrikan Anarchist and Black Liberation Army soldier, Kuwasi Balagoon also provides an image of what this looks like from a Black man, someone who rejected white supremacy’s construction of Black masculinity, expressing theirs through the love of people. Balagoon died of AIDS in 1986 while incarcerated, the Reagan administration considered the lives of queer people disposable and their lack of response to the epidemic proved that.

The path taken by these revolutionaries laid the blueprint for Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 paper, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique ofAntidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics; and their 1991 follow-up, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women ofColor. In these papers, Crenshaw researched, developed and coined the term “intersectionality,” which described how systems of oppression overlap to create distinct experiences for people with multiple identity categories; and how focusing on a single form of oppression perpetuated discrimination, because everyone is part of multiple social categories, which include gender, social class, sexuality, (dis)ability and racialisation.

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Returning to the late 60’s, despite Ali serving as the symbol of the “counterculture,” he was never a revolutionary that could reflect and articulate the wide ranging struggles that were being brought to the fore. While covering Ali’s training in Miami, Robert Lipsyte recounted being there when Ali found out he’d now become eligible to serve in Vietnam in 1966; the draft board had lowered requirements to increase the supply of soldiers.

Lipsyte claims Ali’s first response was, “Why me?” Going on a rant about why the draft board didn’t call up “some poor boys,” considering of how many guns and bombs his taxes paid for; “I buy a lot of bullets, at least three jet bombers a year, and pay the salary of 50,000 fighting men with the money they take from me after my fights,” he said. However, Ali’s most quoted statement to reporters that day was “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong,” which ultimately led to his undoing and certified his place as an enemy of the U.S. establishment.

During his exile from the ring, Ali developed a friendship with the man who now wore the heavyweight belt, Joe Fraizer; on at least 2 occasions, Frazier helped Ali financially and also asked for his help to retain his boxing licence. In 1970, Ali would return to the ring in Atlanta, on account of Georgia’s lack of boxing authority, making light of his competitors; this built up the possibility of an Ali-Fraizer fight. In December, the boxers signed for a record $2.5 million each to fight, considering the magnitude of this fight, it barely required promotion; but that didn’t stop Ali from trying.

Ali’s “promotion” consisted of humiliating a man, who considered him a friend. Ali’s position as the symbol of the “counterculture,” meant Frazier became an unwilling “Great White Hope” by default; but the former heavyweight champion worked hard to canonise Frazier as an errand boy for the white establishment. Ali called Fraizer an “Uncle Tom,” the enslaved title character of abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which Uncle Tom refuses to reveal where 2 enslaved women—who had been sexually abused by their master—are hiding, and is beaten to death. Arguably the first bestseller, professor of African-American studies Patricia Turner explains that the impact of the abolitionist message was distorted by minstrel shows which turned Uncle Tom into an old man, “whose English is poor and will sell out any Black man to satisfy white people.” Ali claimed, “98% of my people are for me. They identify with my struggle.. If I win, they win. I lose, they lose. Anybody Black who thinks Frazier can whoop me is an Uncle Tom.” Ali made it harder for Black people to identify on his side by his taunts of Frazier being “too dumb” and “too ugly” to be champion, going as far as to call Frazier “the gorilla;” using every racial stereotype to isolate the fighter.

Photographer John Shearer captured the fighters in the runup to the fight and he felt that Ali underestimated Frazier, “because you can see that Ali had a belly. And this is not all that long before the fight. He just wasn’t in the kind of shape he needed to be in to battle a warrior like Joe Frazier.” Shearer emphasised the discipline Frazier displayed in his training, but also captured Joe Frazier, the R&B act, with his backup singers, The Knockouts; a LIFE magazine article noting “he sings with strength and sincerity.” However, on the night of the fight, Frazier had vengeance on his mind, years later recounting, “This guy was a buddy. I remember looking at him and thinkin', What's wrong with this guy? Has he gone crazy? He called me an Uncle Tom. For a guy who did as much for him as I did, that was cruel. I grew up like the black man—he didn't. I cooked the liquor. I cut the wood. I worked the farm. I lived in the ghetto. Yes, I tommed; when he asked me to help him get a licence, I tommed for him. For him! He betrayed my friendship. He called me stupid. He said I was so ugly that my mother ran and hid when she gave birth to me. I was shocked. I sat down and said to myself, I'm gonna kill him. O.K.? Simple as that. I'm gonna kill him!”

The grand spectacle that became “The Fight”—occupying most of the U.S.’ radios—provided cover for a cab driver, a daycare provider, and 2 professors to break into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, grabbing every file they could carry, hoping they’d found documents that might prove the bureau was illegally spying on and harassing anti-war protesters. The group—known as Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI—immediately found evidence of agents being encouraged to “enhance the paranoia” amongst activists and the surveillance of organisations formed to protect the demands of Black students. Little by little the group sent out documents to newspapers, who began publishing from the 24th of March; the FBI would survive the initial uproar.

On the 17th of June, U.S. President Richard Nixon would present to congress a dire situation in terms of drug abuse in the United States, insisting on further measures being taken in his declaration of a “War on Drugs.” The year prior in October, Nixon had signed into law the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, which included the Controlled Substances Act: creating a classification system of five “schedules,” rating drugs based on their potential for abuse, their applications in medicine, and their likelihood of producing dependence. The “army” of this war would be the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), an agency of the U.S. Justice Department established by the Nixon administration in 1973, responsible for enforcing the country's laws around the trafficking in controlled substances; working with other law enforcement agencies to achieve this. The use of no-knock warrants, which allow police to force their way into a home or business without warning and unannounced, trace their roots back to the Nixon administration; the police tactic led to the killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020.

While waiting in a Senate Judiciary Committee office to pick up some documents, in 1972, former NBC reporter Carl Stern passed the time by flipping through the papers released from the FBI burglary. One of the documents had the term “COINTELPRO” handwritten, no one could tell him what it meant so in 1973, he filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. He received just four pages but one of them revealed there were at least 7 COINTELPROs (counterintelligence programs) targeting groups such as the Communist Party, the “New Left,” “White Hate Groups,” “Black Extremists” and the Socialist Workers Party. Stern filed another lawsuit seeking more documents, and in 1974 received 50,000 pages. Beginning in 1956, COINTELPRO was established to neutralise the U.S. communist base, once they were decimated, in the 60’s the attention of the program turned to the vast movements of social change, especially dialling into Black organisations. It’s hard to distinguish between the counterinsurgency programs ran by the U.S. in foreign lands and the domestic COINTELPRO, as all types of surveillance, infiltration, intimidation, coercion, false criminal charges and assassinations befell the activists. The assisination of Chairman of the Black Panther Party, 21-year-old, Fred Hampton in 1969 being assisted by an FBI informant follows a pattern of Black leaders that had been killed, jailed or defamed; by 1968, 80% of COINTELPRO efforts in Black movements were focused on the Black Panther Party.

The militarisation of U.S. police departments proper followed the election of Ronald Reagan as president of the US in 1981, an early “victory” being Congress passing the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act. The act, pushed by Reagan, encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, intelligence, research, weaponry, and other equipment; completely blurring the lines between the military and the police—a significant feature of Apartheid South Africa and the apartheid occupation of Palestine. Reagan followed this by making the “War on Drugs” official by declaring drugs a threat to U.S. national security, through his National Security Decision Directive, and provided for yet more cooperation between local, state, and federal law enforcement. Alongside the draconian laws of the settler-colony police state, Nancy Reagan—the First Lady—attempted to justify the “War on Drugs” by establishing a child-focused anti-drug campaign in 1982.

Credit for the “Just Say No” slogan is often given to the former First Lady but it was actually created in collaboration by the Ad Council—an organisation created by a group of advertising and industry executives in 1942 to provide propaganda for the war effort. Post-World War, it switched its aims to “public service,” pioneering the “public service announcement” (PSA); providing Cold War propaganda on the supposed virtues of capitalism and the “evils” of communism and socialism. Following in the footsteps of “Just Say No,” Daryl Gates—now-LAPD chief of police—introduced the teen substance abuse prevention program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) in 1983; the program is probably now more recognised for its merchandise, which drug users ironically embraced. D.A.R.E. recruits uniformed police officers to go into schools and warn students about the dangers of drug use, while also encouraging a drug-free life. The problem with these programs is that they’re based on spreading fear rather than information.

In 1984, Congress amended a federal drug law to allow federal law enforcement agencies to retain and use any and all proceeds from asset forfeitures, and to allow state local police agencies to retain up to 80 percent of the assets' value; à la Antoine Fuqua’s 2001 crime film, Training Day. These various elements led to the boom of SWAT teams across the U.S. for the specific purpose of drug raids. On the 17th of June 1986, the Boston Celtics drafted University of Maryland small forward Len Bias with the 2nd pick; 2 days later he died of a drug overdose in a University dormitory with a few teammates. In the midst of the media hysteria around crack cocaine, Bias’ death added further fuel to the fire—despite being a powder cocaine overdose—and contributed to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, signed by Reagan on the 27th of October. This introduced the 100:1 federal sentencing disparity, under which distribution of just 5 grams of crack carries the same 5-year mandatory minimum sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine, while 5,000 grams of powder cocaine and 50 grams of crack both led to 10 years imprisonment.

The U.S. government doubled down on its stance on crack cocaine by passing the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which imposed a 5-year mandatory minimum and 20-year maximum sentence for simple possession of 5 grams or more of the drug; simple possession of any amount of powder cocaine or any other drug remained at no more than one year in prison. These laws weren’t based on science but rather on myths built around the crystalized form of the drug being instantly and far more addictive, causing violent behaviour and it was thought that crack destroyed the maternal instincts of mothers, as well as posing unique developmental dangers to the fetus—leading to the coining of the term “crack babies.” These were eugenicist descriptions by a racist and paternalistic society continuing an age-old tradition of claiming the savage is out of control.

On the 3rd of November 1986, Lebanese publication Ash-Shiraa exposed the sale of arms by the U.S. to Iran, a country under arms embargo and holding U.S. citizens hostage; this would become known as the Iran-Contra Affair. It was revealed that a portion of the funds were diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels of Nicauragua, opening up the elaborate scheming led by CIA director Colby and Vice-president George HW Bush; a CIA agent from the age of 18. Nicaragua was another battleground for the US’s “anti-communist” campaign, and after being barred by senate from funding the Contras, back channels were created to supply the Contras with arms and infrastructure. In 1988, PBS’ investigative documentary program Frontline premiered Guns, Drugs and the CIA, showcasing how the current secret war reflected that of the past in Laos, except this time the country was Nicarauga, the communists were the Sandinistas and the US backed–Contras were partly funded by the cocaine trade. The cocaine money came from collaboration with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who utilised the planes supplied by the U.S. to smuggle cocaine for the Colombian Medellín Cartel, from the Central American country into the U.S.; once again the U.S. government found themselves complicit in drug trade.

The increased prison population reveals the target of sentencing laws: by 1992, 89.7% of all those in state prison on drug possession charges were African-American or Latino and by 1995, 32% of Black men ages 20-29 were in prison, jail, on parole or probation; between 1989 and 1991, Black women had the highest increase in correctional supervision, rising by 78%. The rise in incarceration rates led to an overpopulation of prisons and capitalism responded in its grotesque opportunism; in 1984, the company CoreCivic opened the first private prison. By 1999 there were 14 private prison corporations operating in the U.S., incarcerating 122,871 inmates; because these are for-profit-prisons, a number of cost cutting measures are taken to increase revenue for shareholders, such as rejecting inmates who have severe medical conditions because they are more expensive to house. Looking back at a visit by the D.A.R.E. program to their elementary school, journalist Michael McGrath describes the officers as “simplistic and vague, grouping everything from alcohol to angel dust into one toxic cloud that loomed over our society.”

For the children who’ve lost family members to the “War on Drugs,” these programs are antagonists to the trauma they’ve experienced, presenting their loved ones “as a tawdry assortment of losers and bums;” denying victimhood to those affected by the “War on Drugs” and othering drug-use as a “consequence of collective personal failure in affected communities rather than a public health crisis for millions of Americans.” This is the carceral system’s expertise, ostracising individuals which it deems undesirable from the rest of society; which then has a knock on effect on their loved ones. In an interview on “The Intergenerational Impact of Carceral Punishment,” California community organisers Marcelo Lopez and Alejandra Gutierrez describe this as being “system impacted.” Gutierrez says it is a “broad term that refers to the oppressive impact of many systems and institutions, including poverty.” Lopez explains “there are many different ways people are impacted…the consequences of incarceration are not linear. It’s a branch, and after it touches one person it is going to affect many more as it grows.”

In 1994, while writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition, Dan Baum sought out an interview with Nixon's domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman. Baum began by asking earnest questions, which Ehrlichman promptly waved away, saying “You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black people, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the anti-opium laws that were aimed at Chinese immigrants in the 1870’s or the anti-cannabis laws introduced in the Midwest and Southwest targeted Mexican-Americans and migrants in the 1910’s and 20’s. The quote would be released to the public in 2016, after Ehrlichman had passed, which caused his children to question its belated release but altogether deny their father would say such a thing; his colleagues attributed the statement to his sarcastic humour. And white America laughed along.

From the early days of the U.S. print media sensationalising the violence by enslaved Black men, stoking fears of the “feral brute,” the criminalisation of racialised peoples had evolved where necessary to continue this classification. The introduction of 24-hour news, in 1980, was accompanied by the consistent documentation of police raids on working-class racialised communities, the large numbers of drug arrests in these communities, and the brutalising manner in which they were undertaken, felt justified by the majority of the viewing public. In 1989, Fox launched the show Cops, in which viewers joined real police officers in a sort of ride along as they “did their jobs.” The show was a huge success and provided the police with a positive image, but continued the theme of white officer and Black criminal as the show overrepresented crime committed by racialised peoples, parading them on screens as “thugs.” In the mid 1990’s, following the success of Gangsta rap—pioneered by N.W.A—there was an attempt by rappers to embrace and reclaim the word “thug;” in some ways it can be compared to the reclamation and transformation of the N-word with an “er” as a slur to the N-word with a soft “a” as term of endearment.

Professor Tricia Rose writes, in their book The Hip Hop Wars, “The Thug both represents a product of discriminatory conditions, and embodies behaviours that injure the very communities from which it comes.” The rappers of this era served as a symbol of the violence in the Black Colony’s of the US (aka the ghettos), giving reports on the violence handed to their decaying communities—based on their racial criminalisation—and the violence which they themselves exert to survive under the circumstances. Professor Michael Jeffries writes, in their book Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop, “Trouble is transformed from a source of trauma to a badge of honour that earns thugs the right to be vulnerable, spiritual, and loving, as they simultaneously distance themselves from ‘weak’ men who exhibit the same qualities. Tracing this process begins with confronting nihilism.” Continuing, they write, “Nihilism in rap is therapeutic for poor young people of colour who swim in the postindustrial urban stream of social isolation and self-destruction. The art gives this population a voice, serving as affirmation that they are not alone as they confront their social death on a daily basis. For these reasons, nihilism should be seen as a force ripe with possibility, as those who claim it have nothing left to lose.”

The most prominent and influential “thug” rapper was Tupac Shakur (son of Afeni), the rapper tattooing the phrase “THUG LIFE” across their midsection. Tupac explained that the phrase was an acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants F**** Everybody, meaning what you feed us as seeds, grows and blows up in your face.” From a family of Black Panthers, the rapper continued in the tradition of revolutionary language, for him “THUG LIFE” was a new Black Power, having an understanding that just by virtue of his so-called “race,” he was criminalised and hated. He vocalised this during his speech at the 1993 Indiana Black Expo, saying, “‘Cause these white folks see us as thugs, I don’t care what y’all think. I don’t care if you think you a lawyer, If you a man, If you an African-American. If you whatever the f*** you think you are. We thugs and [N-word’s] to these mother********;” ending their speech saying, “So all I'm saying the closer is that we got to be united under whatever, whatever, don’t let shit hold us apart. I don’t care if you from Cali, New York or whatever you are a Blood, a Crip or a thug or a student or a scholar whatever. Don't let shit hold us back no more. We got to unite by any means necessary and we got to fight!”

In identifying himself with the “thugs” of the U.S., Shakur was identifying himself with the lumpenproletariat—a marxist term referring to the lower class, unorganised masses with revolutionary potential, eg. prostitutes, gangsters, petty criminals, chronic unemployed or unemployables. Tupac was attempting to politicise the depoliticised lumpenproletariat—a goal that had been set out by the Black Panthers—but at a time when alternative politics had severely been defanged. “THUG LIFE” carried on the objectives of the Panthers, and Shakur received mentorship from members of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, but used the vernacular of hip-hop to reach the masses. Tupac travelled across the U.S. meeting with gang leaders on this mission to organise them for revolutionary action and reduce the violence within the community. A philosophy was developed by Shakur, his mentors and gang leaders for the “thugs” to live by, known as the “Code of THUG LIFE”—designed to politicise gang members and ready them for armed rebellion to oppose racist and economic oppression. This activism gives us an understanding why the U.S. government surveilled the rapper and has been associated with his murder in 1996; he died at age 25.

The commerciality of the “thug” image led to the watering down of Tupac’s message but this was accompanied by the overall commercialisation of hip-hop. Today the majority of the genre can be described as a marketing arm for capitalism, in some cases, there is a clear disdain directed at the black peasantry as the artist creates separation (see: ICYTWAT - Pray4him), embracing their new found status amongst the elite through the infamous phrase of “Black Excellence.” In 1968, Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class—a documentary film written by William Branch and shot, directed and edited by William Greaves—explored the limitations and the precariousness of the economic standing of the burgeoning Black white-collar class; filmed against the backdrop of the racial revolts and assisination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Atlanta is an American city where a visible Black capitalist class continued to develop and, as a piece on Hood Communist explains, a “wakandaism is applied” to the city; the Black bourgeoisie is shown as an example of upward mobility being possible. However, Black capitalism is capitalism, meaning it requires the labour of the working class and is in conflict with the goal of Black Liberation: freedom for ALL Black people. This hasn’t stopped members of the Black elite from taking on aesthetics of Black Liberation, the likes of Jay Z co-opting Black Liberation as “Black Excellence.” In 2022, Jay Z claimed victimhood in a Twitter Spaces, using the NOI term “tricknology” to describe people's categorisation of him as a capitalist—a word he claimed had just been “invented” to persecute the emergent Black elite. YouTube Video Essayist F.D Signifier released The REAL Faces of Black Conservatism, diving into The Distraction, associated with the likes of Louis Farrakhan (leader of the NOI), Dr. Umar Johnson and other non-substantive “radicals;” The Double Agent, associated with the now disgraced Bill Cosby and those that peddle the lie that the lack of respectability politics amongst African-Americans being their downfall; and The Black Capitalist, associated with none other than Jay Z and the black bourgeoisie (and black petite bourgeoisie) that offer white subsidiarity within capitalism as salvation.

The word “thug” still has its place within hip-hop’s lexicon, however U.S. mainstream media’s use of the word began to feel even more like a slur; in 2017, NFL player Richard Sherman felt the word had become an “accepted way of calling somebody the N-word.” Political writerJamelle Bouie agreed And it’s hard not to when considering the words spoken about teenager Trayvon Martin following his murder in 2012. Right-wing political commentator Geraldo Rivera (who? Goraldo from Back at the Barnyard) would blame the teenager wearing a hoodie For his killing at the hands of George Zimmerman; when facing backlash for the comments, Rivera doubled down, saying, “you dress like a thug, people are going to treat you like a thug…I stand by that.”