Things Turn Into their Opposites: On Putting Politics In Command in Engaging With Revolutionary Elders Turned Reformists

“Not all skinfolk are kinfolk” is a common saying in Black revolutionary circles. It’s well known that there are those within our communities that are propped up by the forces of white supremacy capital and used to beguile our people, derail and muddle up the New Afrikan revolutionary project, and string us along/distract us from the real revolutionary tasks before us. These running dogs are tricky. They are masters at talking out of both sides of their mouths and talking to both master and slave. Not surprising, that’s what they’re paid for. DeRay McKeeson, Shaun King and others of that type never had any revolutionary credentials to speak of and are rightfully rejected, mocked and scorned by the masses. These japes, cretins, frauds, and money hungry morons are not the subject of this article — they are rightly seen as being plants, possible informants, reactionaries and wholesale counterrevolutionaries.

But what of our elders? Those who have credentials, who have walked the walk, those who were major players in the struggles of the ’60s and ’70s, have been parties to major court cases, suffered from state repression, or a variety of other things? It is possible to respect our elders who have turned into their opposite while refusing to let them off the hook for their current engagements and selling out to the system. A former Panther who once faced down the system with gun in hand but currently spends the majority of their time dragging our people to the polls is a sad one indeed, a sick cat that’s lost its coat. Bobby Seale running around the country encouraging people to vote for their oppressors is not Bobby Seale who was bound and gagged for going word for word and blow for blow with pig judge Hoffman during the Chicago trial. There are many people who have veered off the revolutionary path, those who we read about and watch at their best and strive to be like. It’s essential to remember that dialectics dictates that things are never the same, they are always changing and transforming. This same process will happen to us if we are not careful and swallow sugar coated reformist/electoral bullets. It’s essential to steel ourselves with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist study to ensure that our ideological base does not corrode or rot. It is essential to consistently engage in checkups and criticism/self-criticism to ensure that we do not veer down the electoral/reformist path. Those in our organizations who veer down that path and do not come back to that of revolution should be separated from our midst lest they influence others and set up a rightist pole to rot the entire foundation of the organization. Our revolutionary icons of yesterday transformed into reformists and social democrats not because they wanted to, but because they weren’t ideologically rooted, neglected or mangled the criticism/self-criticism process, and external factors in the form of constant police murders and attacks on their contemporaries convinced them (again, the wages of failure to root yourself solidly in and firmly grasp revolutionary theory and apply it) that electoral politics and reformism were the way to go. Study the biographies of former Panthers such as David Hilliard and Elaine Brown to uncover the roots of reformist thinking and revisionism and what happened when they were allowed to become hegemonic. Respect your elders, but learn from their mistakes.