Banning Brotherhood

“The Other Side of the Tracks”  A Socially Speaking commentary by Perry Redd

The news coming out of Africa has been amazingly American lately.  I’d say, “their news is our news,” and I wonder why?  I understood Afghanistan and Iraq’s daily affairs prevailing on our television screens since we invaded and occupied them, but why northern Africa?

Is it maybe because we’re seeing the fruition of the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld list that former General Wesley Clarke spilled the beans about in 2007: “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”  The United States is on a mission.  But what I know is that before you get the country, you’ve got to get the people.

We saw that with the first European settlers in what we know now as America.  The land was the overarching objective, but first, they had to get the natives.  We saw that with America’s successful effort to break up the resistance movement in the 1960’s.  Yes, I’m talking about COINTELPRO.  The COunter INTELligence PROgram was a series of covert, and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.  Sounds like the US has its fingerprints all over this.

For my readers who don’t know, America’s FBI used discrediting targets through psychological warfare, smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and planted false reports in the media; they harassed; wrongfully imprisoned and committed illegal violence, including assassination against those who held opposing views against it.  I’ll talk a bit about the Black Panther brotherhood a little later.

Whenever “brothers” got together, the United States made certain to outlaw their existence.  Legislation is a mother!  So here we see Egypt, who receives substantial military aid each year from the United States, acting peculiarly like the United States!  Does anyone see this, or is it just me?  An Egyptian court ordered a ban on activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and froze its finances.

Nevermind they won the first democratic elections Egypt has seen in decades.  Nevermind the will of the people put the Brotherhood in a position of leadership. The Egyptian military conducted a coup of the Brotherhood, then commenced to killing and imprisoning them.  Sound familiar?  This move is the latest in an anti-Muslim Brotherhood crackdown that began when the military ousted President Mohamed Morsy, who was backed by the Brotherhood, in early July.

You’ll argue with me and say that Egypt’s deal is about religion.  Sure the Muslim Brotherhood are indeed muslims, but this about the same class subjection that the United States wrestles with…to this very day.  Our classes are racial, economic or ethnic, but subjection is subjection.  There’s nothing democratic about that.  Moreover, if the US has it’s grubby hands in it (see Secretary of State John Kerry), it’s supposed to be steeped in democracy.  It isn’t.

Of course, we’re hypocritical—again.  Successful foreign policy has to contain a degree of hypocrisy to be successful, right?  Only in the book of America.

So the grand question is, will we stand by and allow this extermination of another “brotherhood”…in our names?  Our tax dollars are supporting the Egyptian military and their illegal deeds. Egypt’s Ministry of Social Solidarity said earlier this month that it was considering punishing the group, accusing it of violating a law regulating non-governmental groups. The law prohibits such groups from operating as political organizations and forming militias.  Sounds a heck of a lot like American history.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a black revolutionary socialist organization active in America which began in 1966. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. When Black Americans formed social groups (The Black Panthers), built political power (see Wilmington, North Caroilina, 1898) or organized for socio-political means (The Communist Party and the Black Panthers), the subjugator prohibited these groups from operating…one way or another.

Just like the Black Panthers, The Muslim Brotherhood has a political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, and the current government has accused the Brotherhood of inciting violence.  So this accusation absolves them from all guilt for the murders they’ve committed.  We think back to the murder of Fred Hampton.  Hampton was the young, Black deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He was assassinated while sleeping in his apartment during a raid by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after being accused of what?  Inciting violence!  Sound familiar?

What I know is that these darker-skinned Egyptians are experiencing—yet again—a replay of US history, and we’re standing by watching another banning of brotherhood.