This is an excerpt from the book Murder Incorporated, Dreaming of Empire, Book One, by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vittoria.
Philosophizing disgrace. Throughout mankind’s history, the same elite mindset that terrorizes with slavery terrorizes with war. Terrorism is terrorism: genocide, holocaust, war, slavery, poverty, denial of health care, denial of education, wanton destruction of the planet’s resources. It’s all the same witches brew: terrorize the flesh, terrorize the spirit. As the soi-disant [so called] civilized Anglo-Saxons followed the sun, venturing West with their insatiable desire to expand and take possession, war on demon savages was the operating principle of imperial conquest, ultimately a common practice that remains so to this day.
Europeans often use the fact that slavery also existed in various African states at the same time as a way to further justify their own slave trade, even beyond the warped divine notion of civilized master ruling the savage slave. In fact, to this day, there are segments of the ruling class and their errand boys who continue to perpetuate this perverted point of view. In A People’s History of the United States, Professor Howard Zinn distinguishes American slavery from African slavery of the same period. Slavery existed in the African states, and it was sometimes used by Europeans to justify their own slave trade, but as Basil Davidson points out in his book, The African Slave Trade, the slaves of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe. In other words, like most of the population of Europe. It was a harsh servitude, but they had rights which slaves brought to America did not have, and they were altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the American plantations.
Zinn goes on to note that in the Ashanti kingdom, which was located on the western coast of Africa, a slave could marry, own property, swear an oath, be a witness, and even become a beneficiary to his master. Zinn concludes, “African slavery is hardly to be praised, but it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history, the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture, the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, Black was slave.”
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Madness eats away at the soul of men who play God like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, as well as Walt Kurtz in the jungles of Indochina. The temptation to play God becomes the bad acid trip that triggers savage barbarity. In the same fashion, the cancer of American slavery also devoured the hearts and minds of the slave owner. Frederick Douglass explains how his mistress, his owner, Mrs. Auld, was summarily transformed from a kind and compassionate woman to a malevolent tyrant. “The fatal poison of irresponsible power was also in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage. That voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord, and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon,” Frederick Douglass.
You’ve been listening to an excerpt from Murder Incorporated, Book One: Dreaming of Empire by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vittoria.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
