It may surprise you to know that there’s another book coming out. A work of history inspired by the late Howard Zinn. A work written and co-authored by myself, Mumia Abu-Jamal and my co-author Stephen Vittoria, a documentarian. The full title may inform you of its spirit: Murder Incorporated; Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny, is a searing critique of the American empire, a diagnosis of a corrupt pathology. Our work strives to set the record straight, to educate, to enlighten and enliven, and, yes, even entertain the people against the corruptions of empire; corruptions that stretch from Columbus’ first steps on Hispaniola through yesterday’s murderous drone attack. It’s written for the young as an alternative history to what they’ve been mistaught in school. It’s written in the spirit of Zinn, but we put a little spice in our work, and we worked for years to bring it to you. We hope you’ll see it soon: Murder Incorporated.
This is from Lamenting the Corruptions of Empire. Doris Lessing, British novelist, poet and playwright, said, “When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable, and it just disappeared like all the other empires.” And Roman emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius said, “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.” One of the persistent cycles of history is that of empires ruling the majority of the world’s population.
The word itself ’empire.’ and the underlying foundational concept is derivative from the Latin, defining power and authority. But when a ruling entity is designated an empire by the intelligentsia in charge of such definitions, there are some basic rules adhered to, and criteria that must be met, by the candidate in question. A ruling government is classified an empire if the entity dominates and holds sway over significant land masses populated in large numbers, especially if this population is culturally and ethnically divergent from the imperial power. As well, a sovereign must rule the empire, or the ruling regime must be an oligarchy.
Much of the population living throughout present day Massachusetts Commonwealth live in fear and loathing of what they term ‘the evil empire’. No, it’s not an historical reference to the old Soviet Union, but rather a derogatory slam on the baseball club that hails from the big ball orchard in the southern Bronx, otherwise known as the New York Yankees, the national past times’ true oligarchic franchise. Now this tendency by the good folks of Red Sox Nation is instructive in two ways. First of all, ‘evil’ — even as hyperbole is being completely misused by the Beantown Bashers, because what the Yanks are being accused of actually sits at the heart of what makes mom and apple pie tick. The men in pinstripes are not ‘evil’ by American standards, but instead are just really good at capitalism, wasting billions of dollars fielding ball players that don’t win as much as their financial power would indicate.
It’s also clear that ‘evil’ connotation flies in the face of America’s inherent embrace of capitalism. In fact, the vast majority of Americans are willing to finance, and many are willing to bear arms and slaughter people they don’t know, to help the U.S. government protect America’s corporate masters and their associated business interests and various takeovers. So, in both words and in deeds, these folks actually realize that unbridled capitalism, as practiced by the New York Yankees Incorporated, is a wicked and evil system. It proves once again that the elixir of blind nationalism, supplemented by an educational system selling myths and fables, had the masses bamboozled. They’re walking, talking contradictions. Secondly, the choice of the word empire is equally disturbing because it’s clearly used as a pejorative to describe something they despise: the ‘evil’ Yankees empire. Yet with every iota of red, white, and blue blood pulsing through their veins, they believe in and support the largest, most violent empire to ever rule the third planet from the sun. In fact, it is the first empire to create a doomsday scenario that threatens the very existence of the human species.
American dissident Noam Chomsky, in his recent master work, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, traces the two choices facing the world’s population. He writes, “One can discern two trajectories in current history. One aiming towards hegemony, acting rationally within a lunatic doctrinal framework as it threatens survival. The other, dedicated to the belief that another world is possible.” This is empire, American style. Adhere to American exceptionalism and U.S. global dominance, or face the firing squad. It’s pretty clear cut. There was also one additional distinctive occurrence, or characteristic, common to all empires throughout history. Each and every one of them disappeared. And what’s left behind? Crumbling ruins and stained monuments depicting rulers who turned to dust.
For many, the term empire evokes recollections of ancient Rome, probably the most recognized and longest lasting empire in human history. For well over 1,000 years, and through various manifestations, the Roman Empire has impacted Western culture like no other entity in history. European language and culture, jurisprudence, architecture, as well as religious foundations are deeply rooted in Roman legacy. Of course, the Roman Empire was also an orgy of slavery, religious persecution, and brutal, bloody, deadly games of sport, animals ripping each other apart, ripping humans apart, and humans as gladiators, ripping each other apart. Rome was characterized by ruthless emperors whose behavior defined madness. Men who ordered political and social suicides, and if the victim eshewed their responsibility, they would then be murdered anyway. Death was everywhere, as evidenced by emperors issuing general public decrees for the killing of a rival, complete with reward and bounty.
As with our planet’s most recent empire, death and destruction was an essential component of the imperial machinery. The groom’s still waiting at the altar. Rome’s authority and dominion over millions lasted more than a millennia, and as the empire expanded dramatically throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond, the sovereignty and political structure of this colossal entity changed drastically. The relative stability and vast prosperity of Pax Romana was trampled by massive colonial expansion, stretching the limits of Roman power during the third and fourth century, anno Domini, or Common Era, if you prefer. Responding to this classic overextension of empire, Emperor Diocletian designed a split in power between the Eastern and Western worlds of the empire, transferring authority over the Greco partition to Byzantium, later known as Constantinople, and now Istanbul.
This moment in time also witnessed the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, incorporated into Rome’s imperial rule by political necessity and Constantine’s thirst for power. The once illegal faith of Christianity was officially decriminalized by the Edict of Milan in 313, which read in part, “Let this be so, in order that the divine grace which we have experienced in such manifold ways may always remain loyal to us and continue to bless us in all we undertake for the welfare of the Empire.” Behold, the wedding of empire and Christianity.
This force, triggered by Emperor Constantine the Great in the first decades of the fourth century, roared through the past 17 centuries like a runaway freight train. Constantinian Christianity, the marriage of elite power and wealth, with the sacrificial blood of Christ, was a marriage of political expediency. A marriage that for almost two millennia exemplified ruthless pragmatism and the drive for imperial supremacy. In fact, at the time, Rome was so desperate for power that they simply could not tolerate the prophetic teachings of Jesus Christ and his mushrooming horde of followers. “When the growth of the religion couldn’t be stopped,” writes Dr. Cornel West, “the Roman Empire co-opted it. When Constantine saw the light and fell to his knees at the feet of his savior, a terrible co-joining of church and state was institutionalized, from which the religion and many of its victims, especially Jews, have suffered ever since.”
West goes on to frame this unholy alliance of church and state, one that has never looked back. He writes, “Constantine proceeded to use the cloak of Christianity for his own purposes of maintaining power.” West concludes by drawing a straight line to the American experience. This same religious schizophrenia has been a constant feature of American Christianity. Constantinian Christian leaders sell their precious souls for a mess of imperial pottage based on the false belief that they are simply being true to the flag and the cross. The very notion that the prophetic legacy of the grand victim of the Roman Empire, Jesus Christ, requires critique of, and resistance to, American imperial power hardly occurs to them. This is the essence of prophetic Christianity; a chorus apart speaking from the shadows of Constantinian Christianity, which today continues to co-opt the liberating ethos of compassion in favor of political control and social dominion. But the prophetic and social compassion necessary to stand up to the empire, has been historically trampled by the oppressive weight and thrust of empire itself.
Dr. West, one of those prophetic voices fighting in the trenches, has instinctively pushed against this 1,700 year old force of empire. He understands its destructive path and warns of those who sit comfortably at the table of imperial elites and downplay social justice. West indicts those that highlight individual piety and then have very little to say about the ways in which the structures and institutions in our society actually scar and wound vast populations. You’ve been listening to an excerpt from Murder Incorporated coming soon to a bookstore near you by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Steve Vittoria. Thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
