The Modern U.S. State and the 2024 Election

We are publishing a transcript of Dr. Anthony Monteiro’s opening remarks from the Saturday Free School’s November 23, 2024 session. The Free School meets every Saturday at 10:30 AM, and is streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.

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The ruling elite—especially the Democratic Party—is still trying to figure out what happened on November 5th. After so many financial and political and cultural resources had been put into the effort to elect Kamala Harris, how could she have lost? You could read the opinion pages of any major newspaper in the United States; you are hearing from all these people. I know we haven’t heard from Michelle or Barack Obama, which I want to talk about, and I don’t think we’ve heard too much from Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. These major players played a huge role in the coup d’état of Joe Biden.

Columnists and opinion writers in the newspapers, some of them Democratic Party strategists and pollsters, are trying to make sense of what happened. But more than make sense of what happened, they’re trying to figure out what comes next. And I consider what we do here to be a part of that. Our emphasis and our anchor is not the ruling elite. We look at all of this from the standpoint of the people. 

However one wishes to look at the election and what is now taking place, I think it is fair to say that the nation has entered a new era in its ideological and political history: a new moment in the history of the U.S. state and its various formations. And thus a new stage in the struggle for a new people’s democracy.

The 2024 election could be the beginning, not only a new era of the state, but of new contradictions. And a new struggle. And a new crisis. The 2024 election, if it was anything, was an election in the throes of a great political crisis. Many commentators get this confused. They think, using the words of Carville, that “It’s the economy, stupid.” Well, this was not “the economy, stupid.” This was perhaps the most political presidential election in many decades. 

I wish to make clear from the beginning that the U.S. state is not the same as the U.S. government. The U.S. state is a far more permanent set of institutions upon which the U.S. is governed. Let me put that another way: it is the U.S. state that anchors the government, and not the government that determines the state. This is very important to understand, and from people that I read and listen to on podcasts, they want to look at the election as a thing in itself, an event that is separate from the state. I want to define the state as I go along.

The history of the U.S. state: from its inception with the War of Independence, 1775 to 1789—1789 being the adoption by popular vote, at least of those people who could vote, of what became the U.S. Constitution—through the Civil War and Reconstruction to the New Deal and World War II, up and through the Civil Rights era. And finally, the redefinition of the U.S. state after 9/11, that is, the attack upon the U.S. by people alleged to be terrorists. 

In looking at the history of the U.S. state, what we see is not a static set of institutions but something that evolves and adapts to changing domestic and global conditions. For example, there have been both revolutionary moments in the development of the U.S. state and there have been reformist moments which the liberals like to point to most often. And then there have been counterrevolutionary moments, such as the overturning of Reconstruction. And a counterrevolution in the gradual undoing of civil rights, anti-poverty and anti-war, pro-worker movements of the 1960s and 1970s. 

Perhaps the final moment in the evolution and crystallization of the U.S. state, coming after the undoing of the whole civil rights, anti-poverty, and anti-war period, the crystallization of that counterrevolution came with 9/11. And for many in the state, especially the intelligence services, the military, and of course intellectuals, 9/11 was an opportunity to redefine the state and to take it from what we will call—and I’ll explain this later—a welfare state, a state concerned with the welfare of the citizens—to a completely warfare state. A state committed completely to war and domestic repression that is making dissent a criminal act, as it were.

However, for our purposes—rather than the long, over 200 year history of the U.S. state—I think we must look essentially at the modern U.S. state, and thus the 75 year history of it. This period is the period of the Cold War. And hence while the major agents of state power and political power have attempted to maintain a veneer of democratic and pro-people policies, in fact the U.S. state increasingly became committed to war. To a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union which lasted about 40 years. And to the many wars to undo and defeat anticolonial and anti-neocolonial movements in what is today known as the global South; we used to call it the Third World. It is this state, this iteration of the U.S. state, which is now threatened. 

We must define what the state is. Most people, when they want to talk about the state, defer to the government. So they don’t talk about the state; they don’t talk about that permanent set of institutions that are predisposed to military and war policies. They don’t talk about that permanent set of institutions and strategic agents, that is, strategic operators; they leave it unmentioned.

However, in this moment and in this election—won by an outsider, based on a movement where the American people, according to polls, have concluded that the economic and political systems have to be fundamentally reformed or overturned. This is bigger than people concerned with their immediate economic conditions. People—not all—but a critical mass of the American voters voted based upon their political attitudes and so on about the direction of the country and the people leading it. I guess what I’m saying is: people were deciding based upon politics, upon where the country is going. And I would interpret it—although many people would not put it this way—as being about the very nature who’s governing and running this country. 

This is so clear and apparent at this time, when the world is closer to nuclear war than it has ever been. This is not to be taken lightly or trivialized. Last week, a decision was made by somebody to allow Ukraine to use ATACM missiles against Russia, striking deep into Russia. Well, first of all, Ukrainians don’t have the expertise to operate those missile systems, nor do they have the satellite networks to download the information that is ultimately put into the missiles and guiding them to their targets. This is all Americans. And we have not heard a word from Biden, or from Kamala Harris. Who is running the government? And who made this decision to go to the brink of nuclear war? Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, spoke to the Russian people. Sergey Lavrov, their foreign minister, a person high up in their government, has spoken on this. And each of them said, with this decision, Russia and the United States are now at war. 

Now you know, Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State of the United States, said, “Oh they’re just bluffing.” Well, why would you think they’re just bluffing? And how do you know? You haven’t spoken to any of them. But more than that, who made this decision? Who is in charge of the government? And if the elected people are not in charge, then perhaps it is the state or the deep state, who was not elected by anybody. It’s obvious that now, as was the case in the election, war and peace were on the ballot. The questions of war and peace were not given the opportunity to be heard. For example the mainstream media: CNN, MSNBC, Fox, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, who shape discourse, did not allow opportunities for people to express themselves over the questions of war with Russia, war in the Middle East, perhaps with Iran; but people were thinking about it. People were thinking about it. 

And in what many people thought would be a closer election than what happened, any small movement of people on any issue could decide everything. And probably it was Gaza and the Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza that may have determined Michigan for Trump.

I know here in Philadelphia that the Black radio talk show exists to dummy Black people down, and I know the players; it is not to elevate Black people’s engagement with the issues of the time, but to keep us as dumb and as backward as possible. In that function, they overlap with the ruling elite itself. If they are to continue to rule as they have, they need the support of Black folk. And the Black political class here in Philadelphia, around the country in Chicago, Detroit, anywhere you want to go, Atlanta—exists to give the appearance that the Democratic Party is the party of civil rights and Black people. And in establishing that, at least in the thinking of Black people, you establish that anything other than voting for Democrats is a betrayal of the Black Civil Rights Movement. 

If you cut away all the BS and you take, let us say, Reverend Al Sharpton seriously—not as an intellectual, but as a political player. Or you take Jesse Jackson in his fading years. Their function is to herd Black people into the Democratic Party without the opportunity for discourse or criticism. If you vote for Kamala Harris, that’s on you. If you like Barack Obama—beautiful. I might not; does that make me a traitor of Black people, or are you a traitor to Black people? And to decide it, let’s have a discussion. But the Black radio station exists to herd Black people into the Democratic Party—irrespective of questions of war and peace, mass incarceration, poverty and so on. 

The Democratic Party, rather than being a party of civil rights, is a major institution of white supremacy—with good PR. To make us believe, and then as they trot out the Al Sharptons and the Beyonces or Magic Johnsons or Megan Thee Stallions. What’s that got to do with a rational political discussion? It really is demeaning to Black folk and they know it. They know it, and they respond to it appropriately here in Philly. 

Indeed, we’re on the edge of nuclear war, and this is no BS. I’m not being hyperbolic or exaggerating. We are closer to nuclear war than ever in the history of nuclear weapons. In fact, there’s an admiral—a rear admiral, a person of some stature in the US military—who recently said that we have to be prepared to wage nuclear war with Russia. Does he understand what nuclear war is? It is Armageddon. It is the end of the world and its effect; its nuclear winter. And if the U.S. nuclear strikes Russia, they will respond. And the nuclear weapons of this time, there is no defense against. People say, “Well, our defense system will knock down all of the weapons.” No, they won’t. There are no defenses against these hypersonic weapons. The only answer to nuclear war is détente, disarmament and peaceful co-existence. 

But even for an admiral or for a general to speak on policy—in the absence of the president or the vice president or even the secretary of state—is to suggest that a coup, a coup of the intelligence services and the higher military officials, has taken place. How do you account for the fact that the president of the United States has said nothing about this existential question for all of you? Has said nothing. You know what a coup d’état is? Where you remove a person from office and hold them incommunicado. This seems like what is happening, and if he can’t talk—and he’s got problems, we know that—what about the vice president? You just ran for president. Where are you? Are you also being held incommunicado? The threat of nuclear war, and no high political official of the United States government—not even these idiots in the US Senate—have said in words, “Where is the president?” 

And if, effectively, a coup has been carried out—what does this say about after these 60 days are up? Will Trump be allowed to take office? And under what circumstances? We are somewhere we have never been. The president of Russia said that the U.S. and Russia are, effectively, at war. Throughout the whole Cold War, no president or high official of the United States or of Russia—then the Soviet Union—has made such a statement. Never has it been said by a Russian leader that we are at war with the United States and that this brings us to the brink of nuclear war. And again, where is the president? Who speaks for the nation? Where is the vice president? 

This, therefore, raises the question of the State. When the government and the highest officials of the government are incommunicado—out of view, not seen or heard from—is a small cabal of military and intelligence and maybe political operatives running the country? As a secret cabal? Think about it. Where’s the president? Where’s the vice president? A decision about war and peace and nuclear war, and ain’t nobody said nothing.

Now let me define what I mean by “the State”. It is a complex arrangement of institutions—both military and intelligence, corporate institutions—that operate based upon a consensus, but not always in agreement. But it also includes universities, especially the elite ones. Part of the dissatisfaction that you all have with your education is not because you all just have bad attitudes; it is because the universities have been taken over by elements loyal to the state, and that either you go along with the ideological agenda of the University—hence, the State—or you’re going to have a hard time. And so, they can make changes to the window dressing of the University: they can give you Black studies, they can give you gender studies, they can give you queer studies, they can give you all any kinds of studies without getting to the essence of the political and ideological questions of the world in which you have to live. 

In other words, you, in the University, are rendered intellectually and ideologically impotent. And of course it happens from a young age; 18 years old, you don’t know anything. You’re excited, you go to a university, and you expect that the professors and the administrators have your best interests at heart—and nothing could be further from the truth. It was graphically seen last Spring when the student encampments took place. A great event in the history of protest and dissent in the United States. 

Let us not forget: the Civil Rights Movement had—a sensible part of it—students from historically Black colleges and institutions. I dare say you would not get that today from most Black colleges. And I went to one, and the one I went to I aint at all happy with. With the dummying down of the curriculum, with the abdication of responsibility on the part of administrators, with professors who would do better to get a job of cleaning the bathroom down at the convention center. They’re intellectually barren, and too often Black colleges and institutions devote more time and energy to the marching bands—and I love marching bands, by the way. But if that is the identity of the University, it’s not a university—it’s a part of the entertainment industry of the country.

But if that’s the case at Black colleges, it’s more the case at elite universities. The way the University of Pennsylvania came down on the student encampment. The way they shut down, in the Fall, a student protest where they were naming names of people killed in Lebanon by Israeli bombs. The takeover of universities by Zionists and pro-genocidaires tells us all we need to know about what’s going on at these universities. And to be the president of an elite University you literally have to bow down to Zionists. They decide who’s going to be the president of Harvard or the University of Pennsylvania. They decide. How is that? I thought, at a university, the criteria of leadership is your position on education. On ideas. But a rich Zionist will decide it, and thus decide the way students will be treated—including Jewish students who oppose Zionists and genocide. 

Universities are an integral part of the state and play the major part in the ideological function of the state. That is to say, it is not enough that people know that there is this powerful set of institutions that could come down on you and lock you up and indict you, etc. That’s not the way it works. That’s part of it, but it must have the tools of mass communication to convince people that in spite of what you think and what you say, this is all democracy. The Democratic Party has the upper hand in the control and management of the state. Not as a party, but as a mechanism to develop what I call strategic agents or strategic operatives of the state. For example, we’re now looking at Trump trying to put together his Cabinet and in many ways it looks ridiculous, some of the appointments. I think unless you understand something about this, which I will get to in a minute. But no matter who he appoints, or who any President appoints as a Secretary of This or the Secretary of That, they don’t run nothing. It’s the permanent state, the permanent people that run these institutions—be it the state department, the defense department and then the networks around that. 

The ideological consensus of the U.S. state is a liberal consensus—by which I’m saying, don’t think that the word “liberal” means just or pro-people or kind. Liberalism, again, is an ideology that goes back about 300 years, is actually the banner under which the bourgeois revolutions of Europe were carried out. So you can be a “conservative” and still be a liberal. Liberalism is an ideology first and foremost of the state. It is connected to political theorizing. And we went through a lot of this last week and I think it kind of clarifies some things. The liberal consensus is a consensus view of elites that the system of capitalism and American hegemony whereby 1 percent of the American people have more wealth than the lower 99 percent. That the situation that we described as a dark and tragic landscape for the majority of American people, especially Black folk, that “this is democracy” and hence, normal—and “we can all make it if we try hard enough.”

Look at Magic Johnson or look at Beyonce, you know. You want to see how to make it, you know, try to become a Megan Thee Stallion. You can lift yourself up by your bootstraps. Maybe buy your farm, you know, be a stripper, you know what I’m saying. Prostitute yourself out, belittle yourself, you know, be an agent of female spectacle, you know what I’m saying? “You can make it too—just get a butt implant.” This is what they’re saying to tens of millions of young girls. I’m telling you—I know, I’m a parent, I’m a grandparent, and I know the struggle to raise children in this environment. Can I protect my daughters from all of these images? Why does my granddaughter have to be exposed to even Beyonce, as far as I’m concerned. Why are women sexualized, while you get the same women saying I’m fighting for the right to make a choice about my own body? Well yeah, you are, but what about all of this? But I’ll come back to that. 

But this is all a part of the ideological and cultural function of the state. I just want to talk about the two forms of state power that we have known over the last 75 years, and these are broad categories. First is what we call the “welfare state.” This goes back to the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt. It was seeing the state as a mechanism of the redistribution of social and economic—of wealth, income, education. That the state cannot leave it up to the market, cannot leave it up to individuals, cannot leave it up to philanthropy of the rich or the church. That the state, through the government, must redistribute wealth and income from the rich to the working class and poor. It must redistribute the possibilities for education, and other social benefits: rows, housing. The state must become, in this construal, a mechanism for doing away with poverty and homelessness and hunger, especially among children. The welfare state comes as close as it can to what we call the state of the whole people. That would govern based upon a social contract with the people, a kind of fulfillment of the general will of the people.

On the opposite side—here I’m talking primarily about the United States—the welfare state which was put in place and many people hoped after World War II would continue to develop. I know my parents did—they really did. And hence my father’s lifelong loyalty, uncritical loyalty to the Democratic Party. Because for them, the Democratic Party was Franklin Roosevelt. Just like the Congress Party in India is the party of Gandhi, or of the freedom struggle. Or the Communist Party in China is the party of the liberation of China from dynastic rule, from imperial—you know I’m saying. You can be as mad or as glad at Mao Zedong as you want to be. But he represented the era of freedom, of the freedom struggle. And so it was with Franklin Roosevelt. All of these Social Security—they didn’t do Medicare back then—but Social Security, minimum wage, the right of workers to organize—that is all the New Deal. And the poor look with gratitude upon that and were hoping all of my life, growing up, even though I couldn’t explain and I thought, “Why y’all going to continue”—you know whatever, whatever I would say. For them it was like we can never abandon the party of Franklin Roosevelt. And that’s the way people, ordinary people are: loyal. 

But then the Cold War begins and that is where the United States—just to define what the Cold War was and is—was a struggle over whether or not the formerly colonized people of Africa and Asia would be free. And the fight or standoff with the Soviet Union is that the Soviet Union tended to be on the side of the freedom of colonial peoples. The United States was on the side of finding a way to reconstitute the old European colonial powers and system in a neocolonial way. And hence the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the support of Israel and in its many wars and the suppression of the Palestinians. That the U.S state became the main ally of fascist regimes around the country and coup d’etats—for instance, in Chile. The murder of the first president of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. The coup against Kwame Nkrumah. Of course, the Korean War, which was a genocidal war against the Korean people. And then the war in Vietnam, where more bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese people than all of the bombs dropped in World War II. 

That is the warfare state. It was built up over the years, over decades. It included not just the military, it included, again, the intelligence services—most notably, the Central Intelligence Agency, which went around the world and overthrew governments and assassinated leaders elected by the people of those countries and guaranteed there ain’t going to be no government in Nigeria that is not beholden to U.S. finance and U.S. corporate interests. That any government that comes to power in Nigeria, you know one thing about it—it is corrupt. Whereby the leaders of the government get rich while the people continue in deep poverty. 

And frankly, no part of the world has suffered the way Africa has in this neocolonial reconstitution of the former colonial world. We could just name the great leaders who were killed, and great leaders were produced: the Marien Ngouabis, the Patrice Lumumbas, the Kwame Nkrumahs, and on and on. Modibo Keita, Sékou Touré—some of the great figures of the anti-colonial struggle—assassinated, overthrown by the CIA. And, put in their place corrupt, immoral bums who robbed the countries blind. You’ve got a rich country like Nigeria with all that oil—well, why are the people still so poor? Because y’all done robbed them blind, and in return you can send your son and daughter to Harvard University. 54 African countries don’t make no sense. Too many countries. But it’s the divide and conquer policy of neocolonialism. 

Franklin Roosevelt’s concept of the state and of government was to redistribute social and economic and political values from their concentration among a small elite capitalist class more generally to the people. Unlike the regimes of the governments from, let us say, after the assassination of John Kennedy. The assassination of John Kennedy had everything to do with his stated aim to cut the CIA up into a thousand pieces and cast it into the ocean. And that is why they will never tell the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy, and that goes for Martin Luther King. The same reason that Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois were imprisoned and harassed is the same reason for Martin Luther King being assassinated. When he said—and I think we get it very confused, this idea that civil rights in 2024 is the same as in 1964—in 1964 the fight was for legal equality. In 1967, with King, the fight was now for economic rights. 

When you see these “civil rights” leaders [today]—they’re frauds and hustlers, really—talking about, “I’m a civil rights leader.” What about poverty? “Why, I ain’t got to that yet.” What you mean he ain’t got that? What about war and peace? “Well, we more concerned with what’s going on here.” That’s my man on WURD. 

Civil rights is inseparable from the struggle for peace. It is inseparable from the struggle against the military industrial complex. You cannot be a civil rights leader and always be cavorting with these corporate and political figures more than you have anything to do with the ordinary, grassroots person. They are not civil rights leaders, and the Democratic Party has not inherited the mantle of civil rights. I recently did an interview with Margaret Kimberley and I tried to establish that the 2024 election was an election in and of crisis. That the day after the election is as important as the day of the election. That the struggle for who would win the election of 2024 continues and will continue. Because at the end of the day, on the agenda, although not on the ballot, was the question of the nature of the U.S.state. If Franklin Roosevelt’s State was the redistributive state, the Donald Trump State is the state of revenge and retribution. 

Now, I don’t think anybody should get it twisted. If you are an ordinary working man or woman, an ordinary poor person, or young person, you should not feel threatened by this conflict over the nature of the state and who will hold power in the state. The warfare state had to be broken up. The state that emerged after 9/11—and I don’t know if people realize that a whole architecture of laws under the Patriot Act, this whole thing of a National Intelligence Department, this thing that Edward Snowden revealed and had to flee the country—that all of us are under surveillance. You think it’s just the radicals? Everybody is under surveillance. The shutting down of thought, the control of the universities where whole generations might know queer theory, but they don’t know the history of the country. You might know Bell Hooks, but you don’t know James Baldwin. I think Bell would have said it, I know Toni Morrison would say it. 

And it’s sad that great figures of our not-so-distant past, such as the great Angela Davis, have now been defeated on the battlefield of struggle. You cannot imagine her courage and heroism back in the days. The two most recognizable names in the world at that time were Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis. She carried a lot of water for all of us, but she has been defeated. This is not the same Angela. I feel that it’s not so much her betrayal of her own values and beliefs, but I think it’s a betrayal of the young generation who needs Angela. Who needs what she knows.

And she’s not capable of doing it these days. I can understand—the battlefield of struggle ain’t an easy place to be, and maybe she had to make choices. I don’t agree with them, but I’m not her. I never had to carry all that weight like she carried. 

When young people look to find a left and revolutionary alternative—to liberal and bourgeois thought and to their professors, who do more to eff with them than to educate them—they can’t look to Angela. Many of them have attempted to return to the fundamentals of Marxism, Leninism. And have, more recently, been betrayed by Bernie Sanders who they thought would kick off a wide socialist movement. And then he turned out to be just another Democratic Party politician and hack. They have then said we must now adopt communist ideology. But what they do is to adopt it in its most narrow and dogmatic sense. That’s another tragedy to see. And I know that what they’re saying and what they’re thinking ain’t going to take them where they want to go. 

This is what we say in the Free School: how can you be so in love with Marx and Lenin, and don’t know Du Bois and Baldwin or care about them? This is your country. The path of revolutionary development in China or Russia or Germany or anywhere else is to be celebrated. But even if you are an expert on the Russian Revolution and don’t know your own country, you just that ignorant and barren in terms of making change. If you don’t know Martin Luther King, if you think he was just a mild assimilationist, if you don’t know the Black church, if you got some issues with any effort of Black folk to resist and to survive—be it through Islam, through Christianity, through jazz, blues, whatever we have done. If that is a triviality to you, you have no idea of what it will take to bring about the kind of fundamental change that you claim you’re interested in.

My last point. I was listening to Gerald Horne, whom we’ve spoken about quite a bit in Free School. He’s the author of the idea that the entirety of American history has been a counterrevolution. He is also a key thinker, maybe the key person in the 1619 project, and he’s written so many books that he can’t even keep up with them. His logic is that American history is a counterrevolutionary history, that in fact the nation is settler colony and that, as he put it, the 2024 election was a counterrevolution—one of a succession of counterrevolutions in the United States. He persists in his view. One of the worst things is when you think you know it all. You don’t need to consult nobody because don’t nobody know as much as you do. You have everything to teach and nothing to learn from anybody. I know Gerald so well and I admire—I don’t admire it all, the scholarship, I don’t think it’s that good—I admire his work ethic, I’ll put it that way. What I don’t admire—you got to talk to somebody. You don’t know what you talking about. Yeah, you can write a book, but that don’t mean you understand political developments. See, a cat can be a historian, but that don’t mean you are a sociologist. You might be economists, but that don’t mean you can study human behavior. 

I say that to say that this concept on the Left and among a lot of Black leftists, especially young ones—they’re proceeding from assumptions about the world that are no longer applicable. Their worldview, their epistemologies do not fit this moment in history. They are thinking through worldviews that inhibit their ability to scientifically understand what is happening. For example, Gerald, in an analysis that only 10 percent of Black women voted for Trump and only 20 percent of Black men—well, wait a minute. Come on to Philadelphia—sociology is different than running off of the mouth—come to Philadelphia and you realize that Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, a Black woman—so-called Black woman—running for President in a majority Black city or plurality Black city. And 60,000 to 70,000 fewer Black people or fewer Philadelphians voted than in 2020—than voted for a white man. That ain’t nothing to celebrate. What it says—and I’m gonna go to the Black man before I end, because as a Black man I am tired of fingers being pointed at my face, but people don’t have nothing to do with the way I live and the way my neighbors live. I’m speaking specifically of Barack Obama—a dilettante at best, a dilettante, a perpetrator of a fraud. Don’t you ever point any finger at a Black man who barely got a job making minimum wages and you got four, five different houses all over. The mansions all over the country, and you going to tell me something? 

Black people, we have our own way of talking and articulating. And the lower down you get on the socio-economic level, the less we talk like white folk. My man, he called up and he told the host of a show, “you need to check yo self.” See whenever you hear that “yo,” that’s Black. You need to check yo self. Told the host that ‘cause the host hanging up on people. “My name is Dave, I’m from North Philly. You need to check yo self.” I say the same thing to Barack and Michelle Obama—you need to check yo self. Check yo self. If he came around, I say: don’t you ever in your life think about the meaning of poor Black man, telling him that either he vote for Kamala Harris or he’s a misogynist and a transphobic and all that—bullshit. Brother said I ain’t voting for nobody because ain’t nobody doing nothing for me. He has that right. These elites, just because you hang out with rich white people, you think you free? Well, you probably are—but we ain’t. 

I say all of that to say this: what will the U.S State become in this period? I think the best way to understand what is happening in these last two to two and a half weeks, is Trump has sent a message that I’m going after the State. When he put Tulsi Gabbard as a head of the Department of National Intelligence—that department is composed of 18 intelligence agencies. It comes out of 9/11. Tulsi Gabbard don’t know nothing about intelligence, like that. But that is a sign—“I want to break this up.” When you put Matt Gaetz—he’s out now, they got another woman coming in—they don’t have to know. It’s kind of ironic because it looks like the Communist State, what they call the Stalinistic. The top-down. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State? That don’t mean nothing, because he can’t do nothing. 

But the key will be the domestic struggle over the state. Over the most powerful institutions. This struggle gets you killed. The knives are out. The knives are out. We are entering a new era: what it will look like, what the role of the people will be—we do not exactly know. We do know that this will be a struggle for democracy, and the people will be a part of it, if not the decisive part. Hopefully Black people will be able to free themselves from the Black misleadership class and really play our historic role.