This August will mark the second annual black August commemoration by the Akata-Tribune and the Shreveport Press, Educational and Arts Collective. According to all of the research we could do, the black August commemoration of 2025 marks the first time the tradition has been truly brought to the Shreveport-Bossier area without its politics being bastardized. Black August is about fighting state suppression, fighting for political prisoners, commemorating martyrs, and building both community and personal strength. During black August, participants educate themselves on the black historical struggle for self-determination, organizations currently in the struggle, and those incarcerated/killed in the struggle.

Black August is not a celebration; it isn’t another Black History Month, nor can it ever be. Black August is a reminder of our status as an internal colony. Our colonization began right after the American Civil War, when the black population’s overall status transitioned from chattel slavery- the inherited status as the private and personal property of a slave owner- to a subjugated national group regulated to the lowest levels of the American national economy. The struggle of the black population since 1865 has been one for self-determination within the American empire; the goal of the revolutionary black nationalist is the establishment of the Black nation as a sovereign entity. That struggle reached an inflection point in the 1960s and 70s when the Black Power movement emerged from the failures of the Civil Rights movement, leading to formations such as; the Black Panther Party for self-defence, the Black Liberation Army, the Republic of New Afrika, MOVE, RAM, and others.

The Civil Rights movement managed to integrate sections of the black middle class and upper classes into the growing American empire (now an ailing global hegemon); however, the black working class/lower class were still kept in the same conditions as under segregation/apartheid. The black power movement grew out of the shortcomings of the Civil Rights movement to address the conditions of the black majority. Integration and incrementalism was the governments response to the Civil Rights movement; suppression, cooptation (under Nixon) and death was the government’s response to the Black Power movement. One fallen soldier of the war waged in the 1970’s was Field Marshal George Jackson of the Black Panther Party, his brother Johnathan Jackson, and three other of his comrades in arms.

Ultimately, the war of the 1970s and 1980s was lost, at least for a little while. Mass incarceration, drug propagation, and community destruction gripped the black population in the 80s up to today. Starting in the 1970’s but achieving pace in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a conscious effort on the part of the Federal government to make black organizing increasingly difficult through spatial deconcentration; the shipping of large portions of the black population to the suburbs. During that time, the black upper-middle and upper class did quite well in American politics, seizing a niche within the Democratic Party and eventually seizing the presidency in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama. That period of relative tranquility for the black bourgeoisie (upper class), petit-bourgeoisie and professional class (upper middle class) is coming to an end.

The Transition Period: Destruction of the Black Misleadership Class

The Second Trump administration marks an inflection point in American politics. The white nationalist government in Washington has placed the black population under a tightening state of siege. Since September of 2025, federal troops have occupied Memphis with the intention of humiliating the city’s black population, overflowing its prisons and already strained court system. This siege crosses class boundaries, with both the black misleadership class and the black working class being impacted by the escalating Republican terror campaign.

New Orleans has also been under federal occupation, with 350 National Guard troops stationed in the majority-Black city since December 30th, coinciding with operation “Swamp Sweep,” a surge of ICE and Border Patrol agents to New Orleans to terrorize migrant communities. This terror campaign against Black Louisiana and migrant communities is done under the co-direction of the white nationalist governor Jeff Landry. Jeff Landry has been very aggressive in the destruction of black political power, as expressed in the Democratic Party. Landry and his party have pushed back the date of the primary elections when the Supreme Court overturned key portions of the Voting Rights Act, abolished the New Orleans Clerk position when black Democrat Calvin Duncan was expected to take it, and have used lawfare in his war against the black political establishment of New Orleans in the charging of Susan Hutson.

Like the black misleadership class in New Orleans, the black upper-middle class across the country has seen itself in the crosshairs of administrative purges and lawfare. Anti-discrimination measures were scrapped very early within the Trump regime, along with the criminalization of a lot of D.E.I practices. The federal government, specifically the Department of Education, has seen a marked reduction in its job force, with a 42 percent decline. Black Women in particular have accounted for 1/3rd of federal job losses in 2025. The federal government has historically been a significant tool for class mobility for the black population, but that avenue seems to be increasingly eradicated.

The goal of the Vance-Rubio-Miller-Trump regime is quite clear: the destruction of black political power (by extension, Democratic Party power) in an effort to consolidate personal power. Steven Miller, the Joseph Goebbels of the Trump regime, has openly stated his white nationalist designs on the American population with emails frequently in reference to “demographic displacement” and has been a personal champion in the destruction of the black professional class. I do not believe this black misleadership class should be saved, but their energy and resources should channeled into building alternative institution and uplifting the subjegated black nation, not simply “getting theirs”. In reaction to their destruction, the black professional and misleadership classes yearn for the Obama period, but that period was only good for a few well-to-do black professionals. We should not let the hell that we are entering into have us to forget the hell of the past 50 years. A new black politics, one that leads us out of the ailing U.S empire, is needed. We need an exodus from the regime of Pharoh, not an alternative arrangement under his rule.

What is to be done: Black August 2026

​All members of the subjugated black nation and persons of consciousness should use black August to reconnect with the struggle of the 1970s. The crisis period that we are in has roots in the victory of reactionary forces of the 1970s and the collaboration of the black-misleadership class in the sheep-dogging of the black population into a neo-colonial political arrangement. As “respectable” avenues for black political power wane, alternative institutions and political arrangements will have to be formed. Organizing outside of electoral politics, building strong communities, and building black political consciousness should be things planned during this month. Reengaging with the politics of the 70s and morphing them to fit our current material reality is the goal of the Akata-Tribune this Black August and should be the goal of all participants.

This country, built on the labor of enslaved Africans and the genocidal conquest of indigenous land, is an affront to humanity. Those original sins of the United States best explain our current conditions. The US behaves parasitically and predatorily, just like the predators and parasites that founded it. The malconditions of the New Afrikan (black American) people are the result of our internal colonization that occurred after enslavement; the creation of black codes/Jim Crow, and now the creation of this black misleadership class/professional managerial class who represent the worst of our people. This system of internal colonization must be destroyed; for our sake as a people but also for all of humanity. The black freedom movement will be the grave digger of the settler-colonial state and the American empire.

The struggle of the black freedom movement is the struggle for black self-determination. The struggle for black self-determination is the struggle for black sovereignty and the building up of a black nation state. Anyone who remotely views themselves as “pro-black” and in support of black liberation must come to terms with this truth. All of the reforms the black political struggle has won have come either at “bargain rates,” to quote Martin Luther King on the failures of the Civil Rights movement. With the Trump regime, we are seeing the destruction of that bargain between the black bourgeoisie and the federal government that emerged from the Civil Rights movement. The black political class is failing in every category and has now given the black internal colony two choices: destruction or sovereignty.

These “victories” won by the black bourgeoisie are currently being taken away with relative ease. Our failure to understand that these reforms are not black freedom but the attempt by a colonial elite to better manage the insurgent black colony will doom the black population to an eternity in hellfire. These reforms are only placed under a particular set of international and internal conditions. Integration was won because the white capitalist class wanted better access to the black consumer market, and chattel slavery was abolished because of strategic necessity by the Northern capitalist class. Black sovereignty over the states of the Republic of New Afrika will come when the white techno-oligarch/FIRE Sector class sees it as a strategic necessity imposed by the insurgent black colony. It is our job as the Black revolutionaries to force this decision.

Of course, all of these major changes in racial-class relationships were marked with serious pressure from the insurgent black colony. During slavery, enslaved New Africans poisoned/killed their masters, burned down the plantations, and joined the enemies of the settler state, namely the indigenous and in some cases the Spanish. Post-slavery, during the Civil Rights struggle, much of the “gains” of integration could not have been accomplished without the urban rebellions and the resistance of black Southern workers to their particular conditions of colonization. The emergence of the black nation state will occur under serious internal and external pressure. Pressure from the contradictions within the Euro-American ruling elite, the failures of great power competition, and (most importantly) the increasing consciousness and resulting action of the New African people will force the birth of our sovereign nation.

The black population’s alienation is due to black Shreveport being an internal colony. The black colony is occupied by agents of white financial capital, who have their petit-bourgeois agents in Bossier, Ellerbe, Broadmoor, and the exurbs that surround Shreveport. The agents of white finance/monopoly capital push policies that choke the life out of the internal colony, leading it into a multi-decade state of decay, promote gentrification and the destruction of historical neighborhoods. One simply needs to look at the I49 connector project that will demolish what is left of the historic neighborhood of Allendale.

Shreveport, as it is currently oriented, is a post-industrial city of little importance to the overall American economy. Shreveport is currently meaningless and simply serves as an appendage of the Barksdale military base and as a dumping ground for data centers. Shreveport is treated as one post-industrial city out of the hundreds of those scattered across the United States. To save Shreveport from inevitably becoming a wasteland, populated only by endless misery and pain (it is 80% there now), the black masses must take their place as Shreveport’s true rulers.

The Black Nationalist Vision of Shreveport

The vision of Shreveport presented by the Akata-Tribune is of New Afrikan nationalism. New Afrika is the theoretical country of the so-called “black American”. New Africa comprises the occupied states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. They host the so-called black belt, an area of intense cotton cultivation historically, and are currently the poorest states in the United States.

To be a black nationalist means you support sovereign/independent black development. The black population should be under control of its own land, institutions, and relations with other people. New Afrikan black nationalism is the ultimate expression of being “pro-black” as being black is in contradiction with being American. You cannot be pro-American and want black America to remain in Babylon while claiming to be pro-black. To be pro-black is to seek the separation of black America from Americanism and support the formation of a new national identity, i.e., New Afrikan nationalism. The permanent position of the Black population in the United States is against the American empire.

Cultural Autonomy

Shreveport would be the major border city of the New African State, with its capital in Jackson, Mississippi. Black culture is instead of being an obvious subculture in locations where the black population dominates demographically. Instead of having streets, courthouses, and neighborhoods named after known Klansmen and Confederate generals, streets would be named after cultural heroes like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Assata Shakur. Actual heroes who resisted national/class oppression would be placed in the highest level of public visualization instead of the most backward crackerzoid creatures that we have now.

The culture of the black population would also move toward. The culture of a people is determined by their economic conditions and their political situation. By taking control of ourselves, by determining our own economic development, and by taking political power, we will see the culture of black Shreveport become much more confident. Now, it is one of social chaos, of degeneracy and violence within the working class and the lumpenproletariat (underclass), and a traitorous cowardice in the black middle class (petit-bourgeoisie) of which the latter is the worst of it. Sovereign economic, social, and cultural development means control over the direction of black culture into a more positive and cohesive direction. Currently, black culture is largely under the control of white capital owners. These owners direct their control through multi-national corporations like Universal Music Group or through various film industries in Hollywood.

The black church, which has historically taken a positive role in black cultural development, is now one of the arch centers of backward thinking. The black church promotes cowardice, weakness, and subservience to white power and needs to be radically reimagined. Black pastors, especially at the larger institutions, are some of the most degenerate elements in our community. They engage in decadent consumption at the expense of the more superstitious elements of our people (specifically the elderly) while doing little to support politics that will actually keep their communities together.

The black church is the primary vehicle of black petit-bougougie coon*ish power to keep the black population subjugated to white capital. The Black church’s political representatives are within the Democratic party, whose class is the professional managerial/small business owning class of the black population. These people will sometimes use vague black nationalist rhetoric, but act the same toward the white petit-bourgeoisie. Take Mourning Star Baptist Church and pastor Jackson’s support for data centers as an example. He supports the policies and politics of white tech oligarchs and parrots the claims by these devils while also claiming to be pro-black.

Political-Economic Development

Even though the black population dominates Shreveport demographically, we do not dominate the economy or the politics of Shreveport. Shreveport’s political economy is dominated by the smaller white population concentrated in Ellerbe, Broadmoor, and the Spring Lake Area. These areas are dominated by the increasingly right-wing white nationalist Republican Party. The Republican Party’s main interest is the suppression of the restless subjugated black Nation (in conjunction with the coonish parts of the black Democratic Party) and serving the interests of the white capitalist oligarch class. The main actors of this white nationalist party are the white petit-bourgeois (small business owner), the worst of creatures. They are the creatures who push the most backward policies about police, city expansion, affordable housing (being against it), and confederate/Klu Klux Klan idol worship. The white petit-bougougie is an outsized grouping of the white population and explains why the white population in the Deep South is so backward.

Under the Republic of New Afrika, the strongest and most numerous section of the black population, the black proletariat (working class) is the vanguard (leaders) of the black nation and the black national-liberation movement. Unlike the white petit bourgeois, the working class, and the black bourgeoisie (upper class), the vast 60 to 70 percent of the black population has no party. The black working class is the bastard child of the American political system. Our dual enemies, the white nationalist Republican Party and the traitorous black elements in the Democratic Party in the South, have their primary goal of our subjugation as a subnation within the broader territorial American empire. It is the historical duty of the most advanced elements of the black nation to seek its total liberation.

Under the Republic of New Afrika, the black population of Shreveport would be in control of itself and the direction of the city. The black population, with the black working class leading it, is in control of economic planning and will prioritize itself and the development of the vast majority of the population. Issues like Urban sprawl, lack of public transport, affordable housing, and community safety will be handled by the black working class, leading the black population toward a successful future.

The Southern slave owner initially had little concerns about the ability of the slave system to be maintained. Both sides of the Civil War assumed a quick victory, a short skirmish and a political settlement. Much evidence can be brought up for this initial sentiment given problems within the Union camp and the lack of widespread abolitionism support among average Northerners.

The Northern capitalist, who toward the end of the antebellum period and even into the Civil War resisted the idea of ending slavery by conflict at all. Some parts of the northern bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie were pro-South and pro-slavery until the end of the Civil War and even during Reconstruction. Dubois quotes Frederick Douglass in saying that “the Civil War began in the interest of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to move slavery outside of the Union while the North was fighting to keep slavery within the Union.” This hostility from the pro-slavery camps of the North somewhat delayed the eventual “General Strike” of the enslaved African away from the plantation system. The Southern slave owners used this Northern Anti-black racism as propaganda somewhat effectively during the Civil War to keep many enslaved Africans on the plantation system. This propaganda would fail as most enslaved Africans knew clearly what was in their best interest, defecting toward the Union lines.

The General Strike

The general strike of the enslaved Africans would come soon as Northern armies began to penetrate deep into Confederate territory. As Union armies moved south, many of the enslaved would leave the plantation system toward freedom in Union camps. During the beginning of the campaign, the official policy was to return enslaved Africans or turn them back from Union lines. As the war escalated into a “real” war, logistical and political constraints on the Union forced a rethinking of this policy, initially at the military level then the political. Major-General Fremont in Missouri issued his 1861 emancipation proclamation, placing the state of Missouri under martial law and declaring all enslaved Africans free, an action that Abraham Lincoln initially distanced himself from.

This proclamation by Fermont was not due to moral reasons but political-strategic necessity to neutralize the pro-slavery camp in Missouri. Policies similar to the 1861 emancipation proclamation would be enacted as Union Generals penetrated Confederate territory. The resulting large numbers of escaped enslaved Africans forced a policy change within the government from the bottom up. The flood of escape Africans to Union lines exposes a sharp contradiction within the Union camp; the industrial proletariat of the North was unwilling to engage in the war of survival for the American “Republic”. The American Republic was unwilling to formally state that the Civil War was for the abolition of Slavery yet, the Union armies became increasingly dependent on formerly enslaved Africans to win the conflict. The end result was the abolition of slavery due to the actions of the enslaved and the strategic importance of abolishing slavery.

​The Union Generals and Change in Social Relations

Dubois cites the experiences of multiple Union generals in his analysis of the change of social relations during the conflict. General Butler came into control of New Orleans in 1862, initially with orders to repel escaped enslaved Africans and return them to the plantation economy. Because the enslaved African was striking against the condition of labor (being chattel slavery), these attempts failed, along with attempts at compulsory work under a military-slave regime. Eventually, through collaboration with New Orleans’ increasingly powerful black petit-bourgeoisie, General Butler and his successor, the then General and future president Grant, transitioned the formerly enslaved African from chattel slave to agricultural-proletariat against the wishes of the Lincoln administration.

General Grant was in control of the Grand Junction region in Mississippi beginning in November 1862. After being swarmed with black refugees and as the war continued, Grant increasingly needed to employ them in the military camps as cooks, surgeons, assistants, and in building fortifications, as the manpower situation worsened. To manage the increasing swarms of black refugees and provide wages for the newly proletarianized black working class, Grant formed the Department of Negro Affairs, a precursor to the Freedmen’s Bureau.

A rapid change of social relations occurred where the formerly enslaved African became increasingly in control over the management of themselves and of their community. For a brief period of time, a “socialistic” means of organizing property relations was established as the federal government consolidated land abandoned by plantation owners, fixed wages to match government pay, and built institutions not built by the slavocratic class (like schools and hospitals) for the enslaved and poor whites. During federal occupation, a black petit bourgeoisie rapidly emerged as tradesmen and independent cultivators increased during wartime. In the David’s Bend region of Mississippi in , many of the formerly enslaved began to occupy areas of local office/administration, such as sheriff or Judge. The formerly enslaved, not of possession of themselves or their children, soon became in possession of wages, land and political office within the span of a year or two.

The experience of General Sherman is of special importance as his Sea Island Circular (Special Field Order No. 15) of January 1865 marks the beginning of the reparations struggle. He redistributed the abandoned rice fields on the eastern seaboard of South Carolina and Florida along the St. John’s River to thousands of formerly enslaved Africans. Five hundred and forty-nine thousand (Black Reconstruction, the numbers from Wikipedia are different, saying four hundred thousand) acres of land were confiscated from the planter class and made available for the formerly enslaved during the conflict. Special Field Order No. 15 was viewed as necessary to jumpstart the economy under federal occupation. Like other areas of occupation, the formerly enslaved refuse to work under the conditions they previously escaped from, making land reform the only viable option toward wartime reconstitution in occupied areas.

These rapid changes in social relations were the result of federal occupation and the space it gave to the newly freed African. Dubois stressed that the federal occupation of the South would be logistically, politically, and militarily impossible without the general strike of the enslaved African moving away from the plantation. The involvement of two hundred thousand highly motivated black soldiers in arms on the Union side, and hundreds of thousands more in logistical support in the camps, the involvement of many (such as the great Harriet Tubman) in espionage, sabotage, and insurgency, made winning the Civil War militarily feasible for the Union side. There was a severe opposition by white workers to joining the conflict, and the resulting bloody draft riots (anti-black massacres in New York) were indicators of this sentiment. The recruitment of black soldiers, spies, and logistical personnel was of political importance just as much as for military importance. It was ultimately the enslaved black workers who freed themselves and made abolition the central issue of the Civil War.

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Much of the slave-owning class that ruled the South sent their children to Europe to be educated. Among the free population, there existed few public schools, and illiteracy was widespread among the white non-planter white working class. The system of slavery not only destroyed the souls and social development of the enslaved but also was very socially destructive to the society that practiced it. The south was a cesspool of degeneracy, much reflected by it’s ruling elite. Much of the societal superstructure that existed during slavery continued into the post-chattel slavery, capitalist South. Many of the ruling capitalists and landowners, though many did not have any direct links to the old planter class, attempted to model themselves after that class during Reconstruction and after.

The planter class had no interest in industrial development, and this showed in the low level of development in the South before and during the Civil War. The South was dependent heavily on European imports of firearms during the war as little investment was made in a domestic arms industry or the logistics necessary for it. Much of the economic interest of the planter class clashed with the developed industrial bourgeoisie in the North, with the South favoring free trade for cheaper manufactured goods. Compare this to the North’s emphasis on protectionism for the newly established industries and the formation of an industrial policy steering development of rail, educational institutions and other pieces of infrastructure. As development in the North and South diverged, so too did the politics of the ruling classes.

As the slave system developed, the racial ideology of the planter class began to harden. Ideas like the mark of Cain were used as biblical justification of slavery, and many mythologies about the African continent were developed to morally/” scientifically” justify it. Much of these ideas continued well after chattel slavery ended, with such ideas being the justification of black codes and Jim crow.

​The political power of the planter class rested on slavery, as the enslaved African population provided both exorbitant amounts of wealth to help finance campaigns and provided a pool for representative power that couldn’t demand anything for their supposed representation The power of the planter class was best exemplified in the 3/5ths compromise, when enslaved Africans were counted as 3/5ths of a human when determining seats for the House of representatives. This representation provided the planter class with outsized power within the Federal government. Before the Civil War, the slavocracy in the South had seventeen out of twenty-eight Supreme Court judges, twenty-one out of thirty-three House speakers, eighty out of one hundred and thirty-four foreign ministers, and eleven out of sixteen presidents.

One point that Dubois make indirectly in chapter three is that colonialism was the replacement of the slave trade and the slave system. He compared antebellum dependency on slavery to the simi-slave status of people of Africa and Asia (the coolie system). The capitalist system financed the slavocrats, and Northern industry depended deeply on the slavocracy, but their interest began to diverge, leading to the Civil War. Even after the Civil War, Capitalism still needed a slave system to import very cheep inputs, but outside of the national economy. The pursuit of colonies in Africa, India, and Asia, along with American domination of Latin America, provided the raw imports to the growing international capitalism that the former slave system in the South did, but without it being in direct economic contradiction with the national economies of the colonizing countries (at least for a while).

Dubois also notes the contradiction within the planter class. Specifically, the border states, where slave breeding was common, were in contradiction with the rest of the slave-holding South. They did not want the slave trade reopened like the elite in the deep South, but also didn’t want slavery abolished. These Southern slaveholders had a political back and forth before the Civil War, pursuing interests both for and against the industrial bourgeoisie and the deep South planter class, but ultimately sided with the industrial bourgeoisie as it was apparent that the Slavocracy in the South would come to an end.

Almost immediately after the ruling, the Laundry regime pushed back the primary elections from May 16th to June in an effort to move forward with a plan to annihilate black political power and secure Republican control over Congress. The Laundry regime’s consolidation coincides with the broader push by the Republicans to gerrymander the 2026 and 2028 elections, securing political power to complete their “dark enlightenment“ agenda. The Republican offensive coincides with the Democratic Party’s weakness. The supposed opposition party seems hellbent on capitulation. Even though most of the American tech oligarchs have thrown their support fully behind the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, especially at the local level, seems fully willing to look after their interests. Must we remember the Data center was approved by every Democratic party city councilman and their brain-dead lackeys? The Southern Democratic Party has proven itself to be the greatest threat to the Southern black population, arguably a greater enemy than the openly white nationalist Republican Party. Their weakness allows the white nationalist in the Republican party to have their way with the vulnerable black population, implementing every backward crackerzoid policy their neanderthal barbarian brains could conjure.​

The victory of the white nationalist right wing in their destruction of the gains of the Civil Rights movement is a sign of a very worrying trend that the progressive opposition needs to pay attention to. As the contradictions within the American political system continue to grow, the space for legitimate political engagement will proportionally continue to be eroded as one side of the American ruling elite attempts to bludgeon the other. The domestic war between the two ruling-class parties is riding up the escalation ladder, and the subjugated black nation is caught in the middle. The New Afrikan nation (so-called African American) is both the object of ridicule, a tool for political power, and the thing greatly feared in this increasingly fast-paced civil conflict.

​The Trends: Lawfare and the Domestic Escalation Ladder:

The Republican Party, now a cult of personality around Donald Trump (the rapist, scam artist, and pedophile), is ramping up lawfare against its political enemies within the United States. Locally, that lawfare can be seen recently in the indictment of the New Orleans Sheriff over the escaped inmates last year, the destruction of the Orleans Parish criminal clerk position by the Republican ran legislature, and the suing of the Caddo Commission last year for giving a welcoming letter to Bernie Sanders, the most popular Democratic party politician to date. Lawfare is the misuse of the legal system to target political enemies. Lawfare has been used extensively to go after black/left-wing revolutionaries who challenge state power for decades in the United States. Since the election of Donald Trump and the resulting Mueller investigation, lawfare has been frequently used by one faction of the ruling elite against the other, putting America in a soft civil war. This civil war, once largely contained within the courts, is moving fast toward the street level. It is impacting the rights and security of large parts of the American population, and most especially the subjugated black nation.

Memphis, Tennessee, is a majority-black city that is currently under military occupation. Ever since October 2025, the fascistic Trump regime, in league with its regional lackeys in the Tennessee state government, has placed policing in Memphis under the control of the Department of War. The result: overcrowding of an already strained court system and the continued denigration of the subjected black nation by a fantastical white nationalist government. Like the Democratic Party in Shreveport, the Democratic Party in Memphis has largely capitulated, focusing more on maintaining power rather than fighting for its base or putting up any significant resistance outside of meaningless lawsuits and weak, overly peaceful “protests”.​

Politics nationally and in Louisiana are becoming increasingly polarized and based on identity. Even though both the Democratic and Republican parties agree on being servants of finance and monopoly capital, they differ strongly on ethnic and cultural issues. This bifurcation has resulted in escalating uses of cohesive tools by one side against the other, with the Republicans being much more effective than the Democrats. The lawfare being waged on Louisiana’s black population will soon expand to actual warfare as the attempts to secure Republican rule require more coercive mechanisms. The events of Minneapolis were a testing ground for something larger to come across multiple Democratic Party strongholds. The resistance to this coercion will come from the grassroots, not from a degenerate Democratic party machine.

​Democratic Party Weakness

The Louisiana Democratic Party has been weak and cowardly at best in the face of a fascistic Republican onslaught. They have failed to field candidates in the 2023 gubernatorial elections to contest many Republican seats, they offer no real political project able to mobilize their black voter base, and there is no yearning to be a real opposition party. As we see in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Democratic Party works in collaboration with the Republican Party on issues pertaining to Capital. They vote for data centers, the largest capital owners in this country so far, and are even willing to compromise with Republicans on cultural issues. As we have seen with previous cultural issues like the Confederate monuments, abortion, or school curriculum, the black Democratic Party is more than willing to capitulate. The interest of the regional Democratic party is to maintain power within its small world besieged by white Republican power. The building up of the black nation, pushing for pro-working-class policies (i.e., socialism) or even being competent stewards/managers of their majority black cities, is not in the interest of the local Democrats.​

The Future

The weakness of the Democratic Party elite will be the undoing of the black population. Weak leadership will bring in tough times as Republicans do as they please. These tough times will force the emergence of a new political leadership for the black population that will challenge the established leadership. We already see this leadership developing in the increasingly insurgent activist class in Shreveport and the formation of alternative political organizations across the country. This insurgent leadership will be in direct conflict with the new economic elites that have taken over the country, being the tech oligarchy and the techno-feudal system they want to implement. We can observe, with their embrace of Donald Trump-style fascism, that the ruling elite will increasingly use ethnic division and white supremacist ideology as a tool to corral the increasingly precarious white working class against the subjugated black, indigenous, and Chicano nations. This emerging leadership needs to understand that the old techniques of the civil rights movement will not work. A march here and a boycott there will only do so much against multi-trillion-dollar companies with nearly infinite resources and state backing. Tactics that have been feared by liberals because of their whitewashed understanding of the civil rights movement will need to be used. People will be killed, lives destroyed, and communities upended regardless of action or inaction.

Electoralism will not save us from this nightmare! Those who pretend that elections and “getting out the vote” are the end-all solutions are leading the black population to its collective destruction. Political power comes from a gun barrel, and so is the ability to safeguard a nation. The hard work of building alternative institutions, including armed ones, needs to be done. The current political-economic system is coming to an end. 50 years of neo-liberalism, mindless consumerism, and culture war nonsense is reaching its inevitable conclusion. Tech oligarchs are leading the world toward neo-feudalism, mass starvation, narrow nationalism, and resource scarcity. The world is becoming darker, more chaotic, and less safe, even for those who are the so-called “garden” of the collective West. Only hardened people can survive this transition period and maybe see a better future.

The United States has a long history of violating the territorial sovereignty of other countries and pushing for their dismemberment. The best-known recent example is the breakup of Yugoslavia, where the US helped split up the prosperous socialist country through economic coercion, diplomatic backing of separatists, and military force. That Balkanization concluded after the NATO bombing campaign targeting Yugoslavia in 1999.

1999 would not be the end of American support for the fracturing of other countries. Just shortly after, the US played an indispensable role in the de facto-balkanization of Iraq. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan gained significant autonomy from the new US puppet government in Baghdad in the 2005 constitution. These events follow the 1991 Gulf War, where the US implemented a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan, thus beginning the American-Israelification of Northern Iraq. The recent war of aggression between the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran shows the importance of Northern Iraq in maintaining a balance of power in Iraq for Israeli-American interests against Iran.

Under the Biden-Kamala regime, many ideas were floated about the potential balkanization of Russia in its seemingly (to the stupid) defeat in the Ukraine war. The idea held by many of the transatlantic elites was that the cost of the war and Russia’s economic isolation would force the collapse of the Russian Federation, or at least the ousting of the Putin-led government. The 2022 congressional report titled “Decolonizing Russia: A moral and Strategic Imperative” is typical of the western weaponization of decolonial and seemingly “anti-imperial” language and ideas for its own imperial agenda. Many so-called leftists in the West are very quick to accept these pro-Western empire talking points.

The Trump Regime

With the rise of the second Trump administration, we see an uglier, more overt form of balkanization and violation of the territorial integrity of other nations, even those considered “allied” states. Trump has frequently flaunted the idea of seizing Greenland, voiced support for Albertanian succession in Canada, and is actively attempting to Balkanize and destroy the almost 3000 year old civilization that is Iran. The Trump regime is actively attempting to strangle and de facto annex Cuba by starving the island of energy, and it seems to have similar plans for the rest of South America. The maniac has even proposed that Venezuela become the 51st state.

Trump’s handlers in Israel have also been supportive of balkanization efforts in Somalia, establishing a neo-colonial puppet state of Somaliland in the North East. The Israelis have also been supportive of South Sudan’s secession from Sudan, the creation of fascist Christian militias in Lebanon called Lebanese forces, Kurdish separatism in Syria (along with the US), and the now-defunct Southern Transition Council in Southern Yemen. Now they are actively attempting (and failing thankfully) to incite insurgency in the Kurdish areas of Iran. Israel is also successfully cutting off Druze-dominated areas of Syria with the seeming support of the Julani regime, who is a former ISIS and al Qaeda leader.

Bring it Home

What the Empire does abroad will eventually come home. Ever since the war on terror and these insane conflicts in West Asia began after September 11th, we have seen many aspects of the war blow back on the American population. September 11th brought us the hyper-expansion of the surveillance state, increased militarization of US security forces, and increased fiscal stress of the state. As the US exported instability to North Africa and West Asia, the United States itself began to become increasingly unstable, culminating in the rise of Donald Trump and his 10-year-long death grip on US politics.

The Trump administration has supercharged many of the worst aspects of American imperial blowback. Many of the internal contradictions that have been elevated since the 2008 financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama are reaching a climax. The contradiction between the suburban/rural and the urban, racial/subnational contradictions, intra and inter-class contradictions, and the contradiction between democracy and oligarchy have reached new heights. Empire originally attempts to soften these external contradictions through the plundering of the labor and resources of other nations, but eventually destroys the nations it springs from. These contradictions are only expected to get worse as the American Empire dies in its war with Iran. With the destruction of the American Empire comes potentially the destruction of the American nation-state.

Destruction of the Empire/The Destruction of the Nation State

It has become apparent to the world that the United States, its ruling elite, and even its people are rogue elements. The American empire is run on myths; myths that its military is unbeatable, financial derivatives and intellectual labor mean more than resources, and it is indispensable to the world system. The war in Ukraine and the war with Iran are proving all three of those statements to be untrue. The Russians and Iranians have shown that resources and commodities are still the bedrock of the modern nation state and are much more important to the international economy than the ability to move numbers on a spreadsheet. The Russian ability to survive and thrive under 4 years of international sanctions, while the Eurozone suffers from strategic decline, has heavily damaged the myth of American financial superiority. The Iranian ability to levy oil sanctions through their bombing of oil refineries (in response to American–Israeli aggression) and control the Strait of Hormuz has annihilated its American military and economic coercive superiority. The Iranians have more power now relative to the US in terms of negotiations and coercion than they ever have in the 47 years of the Islamic Republic.

The American ruling elite have been exposed to be agents of Moloch who consume children for their own pleasure and purposefully spread chaos and oppression across the planet. Gone forever is the myth that America is the democratic policeman, and now rises the idea that America truly is the great Satan. Domestically, the ruling elite of the United States has never been more illegitimate. Though the ideas on why the US elites are illegitimate are diverse; some believe that the American government is an agent of a foreign power (Israel), some say it is a collection of pedophiles and their protectors, others say it is a dictatorship of one class of people over another. Many more ideas exist, and they might all be right. What is true is that the American ruling elite, both the Trump-led counter-elite and the trans-Atlantic elite of the Democratic party, are increasingly viewed as illegitimate as they are in increasing conflict with each other. The decadence, sheer hubris, and brutality of the Trump-led counter-elites and the weakness and complacency of the Democratic Party transatlantic elites threaten to undo the 250-year-old country.

Post-Nation State

Both the American Empire and the American Nation State, as it is currently constituted, are coming to the end. The United States will be forced to retreat from West Asia and eventually all of Eurasia. The United States will begin to violently succumb to its internal contradictions within the system as the economic situation declines. Trump has already signaled that he wants to pivot to confront his domestic enemies even as his war with Iran continues to go badly. When the collapse of the nation state comes, new systems need to be organized to accompany the new sub-national identities and political entities. The death of the old system will spawn new chaos, but there will become a necessity to re-accommodate all of the internal contradictions within the former American nation-state. In future articles, I will post some concepts (both realistic and idealistic) on what the post-nation-state system in the current United States will look like.

As evidence of the December 18th city council vote, the support for the national tech plutocracy is bipartisan. Neither party is interested in increasing the quality of life of the working class, and neither party is interested in the implementation of true power for Shreveport’s black working class. The Republican Party is in open opposition to the black majority, while the black Democratic Party elite is focused on attempting to align the interests of a black petit-bourgeoisie with the national capitalist oligarchic class. The Democratic party are simply managers for the white nationalist government in Baton Rouge; we should not mistake it for a true opposition organization, that would be deadly. Anyone of conscience who has experience with the local and state-wide party will attest to this analysis. The “progressive” elements of the party are heavily marginalized and are seen as the primary enemies by the so-called moderates.

The current attempts of the left opposition to seize control of the Democratic party machinery will not work. The national Democratic Party is squarely beholden to the interests of the oligarchic/corporate donor class. As we see with the current left opposition in national politics, these people have been forced to the margins on almost every important issue, even if their positions are very popular with the Democratic Party base. Even simple two percent taxes on wealth or a public option are seen as anathema to the Democratic party elite. The national Democratic party would rather not exist as an organization than be beholden to any interest that challenges the vested interest of the American oligarchic class/corporate class. We on the left should push for the dismantling of the Democratic party altogether, which would be the best thing for any vestige of American democracy and opposition to Republican-led fascism.​

The problems of the National Democratic Party are 10-fold for the regional party. The Shreveport Democratic Party is firmly to the right of the national party. The only real dividing line is race, as the regional Democratic party elite here is primarily black, while the Republican elite is solely white. The main locus of power for the Black Democratic Party is the black petit-bourgeoisie, the black credentialed class, and the increasingly degenerate Black Protestant Church. The Democratic Party elite has become increasingly alienated from the interests of the black working class majority. There is no real attempt to organize or mobilize this section of the population, but seemingly a deliberate attempt at demobilization. No major black Democratic party figure has put forward a platform that will mobilize the black population and is in their interest. There is no call for universal child care, black historical education in schools, or any other policy that aligns with the interests of an overwhelmingly poor/working-class subjugated nation. The black Democratic Party is solely focused on integrating the black bourgeoisie and elements of the petite bourgeoisie into a collapsing oligarchic system. These people are the enemies of the left opposition and of their own black working-class constituents. They will ally with the white nationalist Republican party if the left even remotely seems close to power, as we have seen in national politics.

What Should Be Done

The Shreveport Left Opposition should focus on building alternative institutions and working to dismantle the two-party system. Mobilizing and organizing the working classes in Shreveport and building a class and (among the black working class) national consciousness should be the priority. That building can only happen through education, public mobilizations, and open confrontation of the growing left-opposition with the regional pleutocratic state. Those mobilizations should always have a dialectical relationship with organizations. You mobilize to increase your mobilizations, which should always aid in the ability toward organization. New organizational structures should have the added effect of larger and faster mobilizations at times of crisis, elections, and ultimately revolution.

There is an obvious void in Northern Louisiana regarding the left. The significance of North Louisiana in the reactionary camp should not be underestimated. Shreveport was the last capital of the Louisiana State Confederacy and the HQ of the trans-Mississippi department of the Confederate Army. Caddo Parish and Bossier Parish were the epicenter of massive reconstruction and post-reconstruction violence, with 120 corpses reported pulled out of the Red River after one “Nigger Hunt” in 1868 alone (Read Black Reconstruction by W.E.B Dubois). This reactionary culture continued well into the civil rights movement, as it was a center of white reaction to the civil rights movement of the Southern Democratic Party. With the national dominance of the MAGA movement and one of its stewards being the Chief Regional Cracker Mike Johnson, the goal of the regional left to take power has never been more urgent.

​Abolitionism and the Union Movement

The white worker in the North despised free black labor due to perceived competition and the racial prejudice that hardened during slavery’s development. Before and during the Civil War, many free blacks in the North were killed in large-scale violent confrontations with white workers. These conflicts became more bloody during the Civil War with the 1863 New York draft riots, where free black workers were hunted down and lynched in the hundreds by predominantly Irish immigrant mobs. The white worker in the North also feared the expansion of slave labor because it put downward pressure on the wages they could bargain for. The union movement in the North, because of the same ideological pre-dispositions toward the black race, did not develop a concrete position on slavery. Some were somewhat in opposition, some ignored the slavery issue altogether, and others, even many influenced by Karl Marx, viewed abolitionism as purely an industrial-bourgeoisie movement.

Dubois goes into more detail regarding Western Europe in Chapter 5: The Coming of the Lord, but to summarize, the workers of Western Europe, specifically England and France, were significantly more supportive of the abolitionist struggle in the United States compared to the American white working class. W.E.B. Dubois mentioned the position of the Chartist movement in England, its support for abolition, and the increasing influence of Karl Marx on the English union movement, and its support of abolitionism. ​

The abolitionist movement was always small in the North but became increasingly influential as the contradictions within the American national economy developed. The abolitionist movement developed in conjunction with the developing labor movement in America, but also in conflict with labor, primarily over how far the country should go in abolishing slavery. There was a wide view among the more “centrist” members of the labor movement that black workers had to be removed altogether from the country before the labor movement could truly develop. Abraham Lincoln was a big proponent of the idea that the black worker, freed from slavery, had no place in the US. He strongly favored migration to Liberia or even Mexico, but those migration plans never materialized due to the strong demand for labor within the United States and the impracticality of forcefully removing millions of people over large distances.

Conditions of Poor Whites

The conditions for poor whites in the South were described as feudal by Dubois. The majority of whites in the antebellum South owned no slaves, but large sections of what can be considered a white “middle class” directly drew their living from the slave economy. Outside of the slavocrats and their functionaries, the economic and social conditions of the vast majority of whites was abysmal. Illiteracy was widespread as the slavocracy had no interest in the development of a public education system (something developed out of the labor struggle), public utilities or infrastructure. Much of the progress toward public utilities and education would come during the reconstruction period.

The slavocrats, like feudal lords, had no interest in the development of a national economy like the Northern bourgeoisie. In later chapters, Dubois discusses changes in the tax structure during Reconstruction where, in the case of South Carolina, professionals and the merchant class were taxed 5 times the rate of taxes compared to land-owners (page 405). More will be discussed in Chapter 3, but the slavocracy purposefully pursued policies detrimental to the development of an industrial bourgeoisie. This divergence of interest between the industrial bourgeoisie and the slavocratic planter class was one of the reasons for the Civil War.

​On Colonialism

Dubois will expand on this point later in the book, but he states in the last few paragraphs that the subjugation of the black workers to the demands of a neo-slavocratic Southern white bourgeoisie laid the groundwork for colonialism in Africa and Asia.

The state of the chattel slave differed significantly from the state of the free white worker. Psychologically, the enslaved Africans were made to feel completely isolated from anything outside of the immediate plantation system. The slave master and the plantation were the entire world of the enslaved, with information from outside being very controlled, literacy purposefully kept to a minimum, and an almost paternal sense of inferiority indoctrinated into the minds of every enslaved African. The plantation system was a private, racialized police state where poor whites (whose only real form of employment was as agents of the plantation economy) would function as overseas, slave patrolmen and other functionaries of the slavocracy.

Materially, the slave owner had an interest in keeping their “property” alive, so the enslaved were generally guaranteed a bare minimum level of sustenance on most large plantations. Dubois calculated the cost of sustenance of the enslaved African of the time, and it was $10. Making enslaved Africans the “lowest paid workers” of that time period.

Due to the demographic balance within the South and the strength of the slavocracy, the number of slave revolts was relatively small compared to the Caribbean (where enslaved peoples comprised the overwhelming population of most islands). From the beginning of the slave trade in North America to the end of the Civil War, the number of slave revolts, both actual and planned, was around 250 to 311. Compared to the ones of the Caribbean (most successful being the Maroons wars of Jamaica and the Haitian Revolution) of which were much larger and more numerous, occurring in the hundreds to low thousands. Some of the slave revolts mentioned by Dubois were the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, the Vesey Conspiracy of 1822, and the rebellions of the Amestaid and Creole slave ships of 1839 and 1841.

Dubois did not go into detail about the Amestaid rebellion, but I believe it is an interesting example of how the international slave trade continued even though it was deemed illegal in the U.S. The Amestaid was a Portuguese slave ship transporting kidnapped Mende people of modern-day Sierra Leone. A rebellion broke out where the Mende people took over the ship but were captured by the U.S navy. Since the slave trade in the US had been abolished in 1808, the docking of the illegal ship in U.S ports caused controversy. It resulted in a major legal battle known as the Supreme Court of the United States vs. The Amistad. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Mende people and reaffirmed the right of the kidnapped Africans to use any means necessary to secure their freedom.

Dubois points to a very important contradiction within the slave system in chapter one. There was an inherent need to expand the slave economy by the slavocrats. More land was needed to be cultivated in order to feed the demands of Northern/European industry, and more enslaved people were needed for cultivation and financial speculation. Due to the close contact of the enslaved Africans with their master, racial intermingling was quite common, where mulatto children were produced. Many such children were sold into slavery by more desperate and /or sociopathic slaveowners, but many formed the increasingly significant Creole/freeman class of the South. This was a group of people whose status was increasingly curtailed as the country moved toward war. In many states of the South, voting rights were curtailed for free blacks as the slavocracy consolidated around the “Cotton Kingdom”. In Louisiana and Mississippi specifically, the free black population could theoretically vote up until 1812 and 1817, respectively.