#intercommunalism

[moribondslut]

WHY BLACK MARXISM? WHY NOW?

[Cedric J. Robinson] found in the culture, in the anthem "Nkosi Sikelel' ¡Afrika" sung across the continent, a liberatory vision of "people building, sweating, and toiling for a new world." He met people determined to be free, willing to take on a settler regime backed by Western capitalist nations, by any means necessary. In this brief essay, we can see Cedric coming to terms with the Black Radical Tradition:

The African, unable to operate openly, resorted to the only weapons he has been allowed to keep; his mind and his hands. He burns down missions and farms in the country areas because he is not strong enough yet to face the guns in the cities and townships; where meetings are banned or closely watched, he sings spirituals as the American slaves did a hundred years ago, to tell his people that they will be free again, soon. He has sent delegations repeatedly to the U.N. to plead for his life. He has not been rejected but he has not been effectively helped either, but still he tries.

[Robinson] situates the revolt in Zimbabwe within a global context that links the Third World to the plight of Black America. "Africa understands, Asia understands, you and I and the millions of blacks in the U.S., Brazil, and the West Indies understand, not because we are black or brown but because we have lived it and are living it now." In a letter to his aunt Lillian and uncle Bill Kea, he is even more explicit about how Southern Africa clarified and bolstered his identification with radical nationalism. "Americans are afraid of nationalism," he mused, "so Negroes are admonished not to use terms such as Black folk. But as a recalcitrant nationalist... it was one of my greatest thrills to come to this place, to see my people and, in Nairobi, see them function as complete and responsible human beings. The smallest thing is significant to those who are hungry." — Robin D.G. Kelley's new foreword to the revised and updated third edition of Cedric J. Robinson's Black Marxism (1983, 2020)

[embodiedfutures]

introductory excerpts on intercommunalism:

Introduction

Intercommunalism is an ideology which was adopted by the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party after its turn away from revolutionary nationalism in 1970. According to Huey P. Newton the development of intercommunalism was necessary "because nations have been transformed into communities of the world."[1] Intercommunalists believe that most forms of nationalism are obsolescent, because international corporations and technologically advanced imperialist states have reduced most nations down to a series of discrete communities which exist to supply an imperial center, a situation called reactionary intercommunalism. They also believe this situation can be transformed into revolutionary intercommunalism and eventually communism if communities are able to link "liberated zones" together into a united front against imperialism.[2] Intercommunalism is a lesser-known aspect of the Panthers' legacy as much of its development occurred at the height of the party's suppression and reorientation towards survival programs.[3][4][5]

Reactionary Intercommunalism

Newton believed that imperialism had developed into a stage of reactionary intercommunalism. Reactionary intercommunalism is typified by the development of a tiny community of elites with a monopoly on technology and state power within a single hegemonic empire (currently the United States).[15][5]

This 'ruling circle' is different from the Bourgeoisie, which the Panthers treated as a much broader phenomenon. Newton said that "[t]here are very few controllers even in the white middle class. They can barely keep their heads above water, they are paying all the bills, living hand-to-mouth, and they have the extra expense of refusing to live like Black people." The Black bourgeoisie in particular is a "fantasy bourgeoisie" which could be rallied to a revolutionary cause through sufficient education.[12]

The ruling circle's monopoly on technology and education is important to maintaining reactionary intercommunalism, as it prevents the rest of the world's communities from fulfilling their material needs independently of the center, leaving them dependent on the Empire for advancement.[15] The ruling circle uses 'peaceful co-optation' more often than military invasion to reinforce its aims.[5]

Reactionary intercommunalism allows for no independent national sovereignty, as the dominance of the global hegemon means that all nations bend to the 'weight' of its interests.[4] Instead nations have been reduced down to constituent communities, or "a small unit with a comprehensive collection of institutions that exist to serve a small group of people." Each of these communities "want to determine their own destinies," but can only do so by joining into a revolutionary bloc. All of the communities have no superstructure apart from global capitalism, and while they have different economic conditions they are all 'under siege' by the same forces.[15][4][5][10][9]

Newton believed that if allowed to continue, reactionary intercommunalism would bring more and more of the world's population into the lumpenproletariat, including white workers. However he did not think that this would end racism, in fact he thought white workers would increasingly blame their exploitation on minorities, especially the increasingly proletarianised third world.[5]

Revolutionary Intercommunalism

Intercommunalists believe that Revolutionary Intercommunalism will come about when communities are able to break the technological monopoly of the center. Through technology, communities would be able to solve material contradictions and "develop a culture which is essentially human." Even though the Panthers disavowed the nation-state as a viable form of revolutionary political struggle, they continued to support state socialist countries such as China, North Vietnam and North Korea against American Imperialism. Indeed, they were considered the vanguard of revolutionary intercommunalism through liberating territories and establishing provisional governments ahead of the global turn towards revolutionary intercommunalism.[16] However such states could still be co-opted into reactionary intercommunalism through the introduction of western markets.[5]

While the party no longer believed in Black nationalism, they continued to believe that Black Americans would play a special role within the struggle for revolutionary intercommunalism. Due to the Atlantic slave trade, Newton believed that Black Americans were the "first real internationalists" due to their mixed cultural origin and wide dispersal among a range of communities. Since he believed Black Americans constituted a significant force for revolution within the United States, and the destruction of the United States seemed to be a prerequisite for world revolution, the Panthers continued to view Black Americans as "the vanguard of the world revolution."[17]

Criticism

Intercommunalism was strongly opposed by some Black Panthers, especially those invested in the Party's strategy of forming internationalist alliances with foreign states. Cleaver denounced the Oakland chapter as the 'right wing' of the party for their rejection of guerrilla warfare. Assata Shakur was also critical of the theory's rejection of nationalism, saying that "The problem [with intercommunalism] was that someone had forgotten to tell these oppressed communities they were no longer nations." Others, like Mumia Abu-Jamal thought that intercommunalism was a terrible rhetorical strategy, as few understood the theory and many disliked Newton's public speaking. The differences over intercommunalism were also exacerbated by FBI wire-tapping and fake letters sent between the Oakland and Algiers sections of the party.[9]

[our-queer-experience]

you do not need to know someones agab

you do not need to know someone’s genitalia

you do not need to know if someone is pre or post op

you do not need to treat gender and sex as opposite and irrefutable categories that determine anything about a person

you are not owed anything about a stranger’s body unless you are a doctor or in a situation where knowing what’s in someone’s pants is immediately relevant, like in a sexual context. it’s not appropriate to ask and you do. not. need. to. know.

[intersexcat-tboy]

Quick, forget intersectionality!

I think not. I'm not going to just forget something a lot of people consider a world view shifter. What follows wasn't even a viable comparison anyways 😭

[giritina]

I just read maia crimews great article on the BRG tiktoks and felt vindicated to see the dog whistles called out for what they are. There are tons and tons of angles to analyze this from but I wanted to talk about the anti schizospectrum ableism. I get these videos on tiktok a lot and they're the biggest example I can think of of the aestheticized ~schizoposter~

I just want to highlight to people who might be thoughtlessly using the word schizo because it's becoming sort of memetic lately that this is the kind of person who started that meme.

People on 4chan and in alt right circles know that schizo is a slur and use it as such. But now they realize applying it to the self is a great way to normalize this edgelord shit while ostensibly being sort of "anti-ableist" or pseudo leftist via the framing of it as reclamation. People start out being minorly edgy, thinking they're joking about universal stereotypes people apply to the mentally ill, but it's a useful dog whistle for a reason.

I want to emphasize that you can't reclaim words that don't apply to you. Schizospectrum symptoms are real and that slur applies to real, specific people. The "schizo", a delusional, paranoid person, is not a trope formed from thin air. Learn about us and be our allies in the fight for disability justice and you'll be better for it. It'll be easier to spot this kind of shitty rhetoric even when it's disguised as harmless memes.

[chainmail-butch]

This means that I think the best way for communism to be practiced in the US is through the eviction of the police, the creation of citizen militias, and through Marxist control of local governing bodies.

A strong community is a well-educated community that protects its weakest members and denies the American military its recruits.

Revolutionary communities must support other revolutionary communities both domestically and abroad in order for any of us to succeed.

Vote blue and sharpen your knives.

I just got a hundred new followers which means I gotta post all my radical commie thoughts and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Anyway, I'm an intercommunalist and I believe that all communist action in the untied states should have the end goal of complete independence from the federal center.

[embodiedfutures]

BFP just had a wonderful meeting and we talked about so many things! if you wanna be involved in conversations like these and help us start IN-PERSON, GLOBAL LIBERATION SCHOOLS, beginning with Washington, DC, New Orleans, LA, and Sydney, NSW, Australia (yep, that’s the big news we’ve been hiding), join our discord server (link in bio)! any and all ages/walks of life are welcome, but our main focus is on middle school through university-aged youth, esp youth of color!

i’m so excited to work with y’all :D

image description below

[ID: Screenshot of Reaux’s text message in Discord: “thank you everyone for coming, y'all were super engaged even tho it was a **3 HOUR MEETING!** the meeting recording will be uploaded within the next hour! as a VERY simplified recap we discussed:

- how chapters will function procedurally

- translocal organizing

- the Black Panther Party's oakland community school

- reactionary vs revolutionary intercommunalism

- dialectical materialism

- ALL 4 CHAPTERS of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

- Stop Cop City updates and what that means for us”

/End ID.]

[viciouslyrobotic]

Its not trans fems we need to be taking issue with, its patriarchy and polarizing ourselves only serves that. Trans radfeminism is already a polarized ideology and we do not need to feed into it to have our criticisms of those perpetuating transandrophobia.

Its also been primarily folk like fite-club (fellow trans mascs) going abt being egregiously transmisogynistic and transandrophobic, too, and it should NOT escape our purview that trans fems like starryjoy, velvetvexations and intersex trans fems like impunkster-syndrome have been called fakers or straight up cis/trans men pretending to be trans women for speaking up and supporting us including the trans fem HARASSED INTO SHOWING ID for fighting alongside us. Intersex folk in general have ALSO been getting thrown under the bus and ran over repeatedly by the discourse on all sides and we shouldn't be doing that!

It not only trans mascs that are continuously sticking up for us against trans radfeminism! And they are getting hurt with us because this ideology hurts ALL of us bc trans radfeminism relies on transmisogyny, exorsexism, intersexism and transandrophobia to sustain itself. Please don't lose sight of that.

Also fite-club if u see this purchase some glass cleaner or better yet a mirror bc not a single one of us is a reflection for you.

[our-queer-experience]

less “stop trans infighting lets all just make out” posts and more “lets reconsider our differences and come at the fight for our rights from a place that takes into account both our shared and differing experiences so we can work on real issues affecting us instead of deciding which kind of trans people is evil” posts

[starryroe]

I'll be fully honest rn, sometimes I get kinda scared of pointing out transmisogynistic and/or exclusionary behavior within some accounts that post in the transandrophobia tag, but it is mostly because I am terrified of my posts about it going out of target audience and people telling me "see!!they're turning on you now!!!" when every single transmasc I've ever shown these things to has agreed that yeah, they look pretty bad

anyways if your focus on defeating transandrophobia is on how there's some really mean trans women and you only ever talk about that (when the transandrophobic Tumblr community is full of self hating transmascs and there still being cis people yk) OR if you talk about such things as "every non-transmasc hates transmascs" / "trans men don't need trans women" (actual things I've seen in the tag) then I don't trust you and I never will

[ratmans-notebooks]

you guys HAVE to figure out how to be normal about aroallos yes even if you are on the ace/aro spectrum yourselves !

[tmasc-confessions]

The hatred of trans men being into kink pisses me off.

"Trans men can't be into being subs &/or pet play! It makes me dysphoric and uncomfortable!"

"Trans men can't be into being doms &/or forcemasc! It makes me uncomfortable!"

Who literally asked, God. It's called blocking and moving the FUCK on. Sometimes I like things in the bedroom one week and other things the next, should I have to cater to your fweewings? No, just block me and move on with your life.

This is super important!!! And also the last ask I will post on this specific subject for now because it’s a good final point to make and the topic is getting a little excessive!!

[embodiedfutures]

“We see then that the United States controls other countries thousands of miles away and uses their resources to benefit the ruling circle in America. The same situation holds for the many communities of the oppressed within the United States. Therefore the evidence shows very clearly that the United States is not a nation for its boundaries are extended into every territory of the world. The United States is an empire.”

Newton’s theory of intercommunalism seeks to provide an explanation for the dominating and ultimately determining political force of American capitalist empire on the world stage, the corresponding decline of the political influence of nation-states, and the deterioration of nationalism as a potentially liberatory political ideology. He refers to this condition and phase of capitalism as reactionary intercommunalism. According to Newton in 1970, nation-states can no longer meaningfully be said to exist. Instead, global capital has, through U.S. empire in particular, reduced the world to a collection of communities that lack control over their local conditions of life and which can at most only become autonomous “liberated territories” within that larger empire. These communities can, however, by seizing the material structures that allow for production, technology, and information media, fight to build an interconnected and “cooperative framework” among themselves in a global dynamic that he calls revolutionary intercommunalism.25 In the words of Elaine Brown, chairwoman of the BPP from 1974 to 1977, Newton’s notion of reactionary intercommunalism is an early conceptualization of what is today “casually euphemized by the capitalist class as ‘globalization.’”26 The theory of intercommunalism as a whole is an attempt to both describe how revolutionary change might be expected to unfold going forward given these conditions of global empire but also to prescribe how one might go about playing an agential role in such a project. Dialectical materialism is Newton’s preferred method for understanding how one might come to derive what that role is, given that it is not static and pre-established, but must be assessed from an analysis of material conditions as they develop. “The concept of intercommunalism not only accurately describes and defines the situation, it also implies our obligation to unify and share with these dispersed communities the wealth which has been stolen from them and centralized here in the United States.”27 During the particular turning point in the history of the Black Panther Party when he developed the theory, Newton was also deeply concerned with how Black people in particular might attain liberation without relying upon a state that purports to represent them as a people or nation. According to Newton, any efforts by Black people to gain national sovereignty or independence while global capitalism still exists could only lead to alternate forms of subjugation under American empire.

—

🚨 want more materials like these? this resource was shared through BFP’s discord server! everyday, dozens of links and files are requested and offered by youth around the world! and every sunday, these youth get together for virtual teach-ins. if you’re interested in learning more, join us! link in our bio! 🚨

[castingpods]

We all know that Hera has a panic disorder, it’s a major plot point and the impetus for Memoria, one of the best episodes of the show.

However, I think Hera could also be argued to be coded as physically disabled. From a medical perspective, her “body” doesn’t look like other people’s, nor does it function in the same way. She cannot mobilize herself, a fact which keeps her from being able to independently live in an earth society, and which creates a sense of isolation and difference from others. She experiences more frequent and more urgent “medical” problems than most other people, due to her body breaking down around her, to her own frustration and anxiety.

From a more social perspective, Hera faces microagressions and discrimination from her friends in a way that mirrors ableism very well. People simultaneously infantilize her by talking about her like she isn’t there and making assumptions about what she can or can’t do, and expect her to be able to function like everyone else without any accommodations, or her accommodations and comfortability are treated as an afterthought if acknowledged at all. An example of this off the top of my head is when Eiffel calls for a show of hands vote and Hera calls him out on the fact that she is excluded by the nature of that request. This isn’t even to mention all the microagressions that Hera faces from the crew but, let’s be honest, primarily Eiffel. Additionally Hera has what is effectively medical trauma from being experimented on while she was in development

I think it is important to acknowledge as well that even after Maxwell “diagnoses” and treats the problems, Hera is not cured. Her condition becomes more stable, yes, however she will never be a “normal” human who can live in an earth society independently due to her differences. She will always be disabled, much like many real life disabled people.

Also I love her

[starryroe]

don't wanna talk about it this moment I might later but please if you believe that making up a term to mean "trans woman who is normal about trans men" would *actually* help anything at all and not simply make this into a discourse that has no sense to exist because trans women being normal about trans men are the norm

then please seriously reconsider.

like have we not learned anything from pro/anti discourse, where people now suddenly make themselves part of a "team" into something that does not have teams ("you should be allowed to write whatever you want without being harassed") and now everyone's like "ew everyone's a weirdo in here"

I'm genuinely really upset about this, because I had told this person not to do this, and also because it seems like many people on this website love discourse much more than they love actually having discussions about oppression.