“If [Killer] Mike was to start his own country, which is always on the table, he would hire him (Bernie Sanders) as a consultant on how to set the institution up — cause he f*cks with the OG the long way.”

-El P, speaking for Killer Mike, Episode 1 of Trigger Warning with Killer Mike

“For Gramsci the rule of the bourgeoisie and the role and nature of the state was far more complex than orthodox and Leninist Marxists suggested. Control was exercised as much through ideas (ideology) as through force, and this gave a key role to intellectuals in what Gramsci called a “war of position,” a battle of ideas in which revolutionary forces must engage with bourgeois intellectuals. The function of intellectuals in capitalism is to organize beliefs and persuade the masses to embrace and accept the leadership and views of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary intellectuals must disrupt and subvert this process of hegemony, thus making the sphere of ideology a battlefield, an arena of struggle. In the advanced capitalist countries the war of position must precede the overthrow of the state through a frontal assault (the “war of maneuver”). 

– Historical Dictionary of Marxism

New Afrika: A Communist Goal Since the 1930s

In a single word Killer Mike’s new series on Netflix, Trigger Warning, is brilliant.

It manages to address a number of serious social, political and economic issues in a way that is both irreverently funny, humane and deeply insightful. I hope that Netflix provides Killer Mike another season to explore such issues.

To understand why Trigger Warning could be associated with Venezuelan efforts to cause political polarization and conflict within the United States one must be informed about two things.

First, the historic political connection between Atlanta and Caracas.

Second, an understanding of “21st Century socialism” as political theory and practice of Hugo Chavez, the PSUV and their allies the FARC.

After I explain these and their linkages, I will show real-life examples of Trigger Warning’s politics in action; postulate that the inclusion of Juggalos in the series has to do with the Democratic Socialists of America attempt at entryism via the Struggalo Circus and the connection of black liberation movements in America.

Killer Mike and The Georgia-Venezuela Radical Access

The comprehensive version of the story is still being researched and written by myself.

If this interests you, I encourage you to follow Facebook page — it’s coming up over the next several months.

The short version is this:

Following an unsuccessful military uprising in 2002, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, aides, assistants, specialists and the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information converged to cogitate as to how to stay in power and effect a longer-term plan to enact what they saw as their Bolivarian mission.

Towards this end, they decided to make a media front for their intelligence services apparatus, TeleSUR – the name alluded to their motto “Our North is the South” and idea of transmitting The Global South as well as The Southern Question by Antonio Gramsci.

They did this in part to support a “long march through the institutions” in the United States, Latin America and Europe.

Their perspective, like that of the Comintern in the 1930s-1950s – was that the politically, socially and economically underdeveloped racially charged South would be more open to their messaging. Plus it was of crucial importance in the Civil Rights Era. Thus the potential to attract activists there, especially those that might be part of activist families made the South the designated the location where efforts would be directed in order to help create a shift in the political orientation of Americans.

Building off of the successes of the World Social Forum first held in Porte Alegre by the Brazilian Workers Party in 2001, a National Planning Committee (NPC) was formed to help develop a movement of movements in the United States that would lead, it was hoped, to Socialism in the United States.

To facilitate people’s involvement they relied upon inchoate and established political activist networks; new media organizations and individual workers; academic networks and programs — such NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, where George Ciccariello-Maher (GCM) now teaches. On this last point, it’s worth noting that part of Hemi’s mission is to “offers an anti-colonial model for engagement between ‘north’ and ‘south’ by promoting multi-sited, multilingual collaborations” — which is almost the same as that of TeleSUR. It’s also worth asking here if GCM returned the $20,000 homebuying gift from Drexel to buy a house considering that it was Venezuela’s media partner Russia that used coordinated inauthentic behavior to make things so bad for him that he could not continue to teach there).

In 2007 the United States Social Forum convened its first national meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Inspired by the 2006 Worlds Social Forum in Caracas, the NPC “organizers followed the Caracas model in merging the discursive and performative dimensions of public space.” The location “was specifically chosen as a site for the USSF to highlight the history of struggle against racism and white supremacy… Organizers specifically targeted groups involved in “movement-building,” by which they meant community organizing among grassroots communities of color… and oppressed communities. As a USSF document explains, “There is a strategic need to unite the struggles of oppressed communities and peoples within the United States (particularly black, Latino, Asian/Pacific- Islander and indigenous communities) to the struggles of oppressed nations in the Third World.” This model privileges community organizing, popular education, and leadership development. It also reflects an anti-imperialist, nationalist frame that views oppressed communities in the U.S. as “internal colonies. (Juris 363)”.

Following the close of events, black activists aligned with various socialist and communist currents held a follow-up meeting in North Carolina.

There’s little public information about this, but it’s known that amongst those in attendance was Ajamu Barak, the 2016 Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party. I recently had the chance to ask him about this in a live appearance – but was ignored.

Also notable in this period and place is how several months after this event in Georgia, Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was nominated by the Green Party to be the presidential candidate of 2008. McKinney, who was endorsed by the Workers World Party and Cindy Sheehan, later completed a Ph.D. on issues related to Hugo Chavez’s leadership, also worked for TeleSUR.

With this groundwork laid, it became possible to start slowly building towards the American variation of Venezuela’s Constituent Assemblies — People’s Movement Assemblies, which seems to be aligned with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s New Green Deal, and People’s Forums such as that one that George Ciccariello-Maher will soon be speaking at. The Poor People’s Campaign is resurrected and new schools are formed — from adolescent girls groups like the Radical Monarchs to pseudo-educational institutions like University of the Poor, who has a quote from Antonio Gramsci on their landing page.

Maybe you think this is all a coincidence..? Well, wait until the end and then give me your thoughts.

What is 21st Century Socialism?

21st Century Socialism is driven by five “motors” — the Enabling Law, Constitutional Reform, Popular Education, Reconfiguration of State Power, and an explosion of Communal Power.

“People’s Institutions” are created via encuentros (encounters between activists and potential assets), forums and councils. Actors connected to it claim they are the real government, then begin to attack it. This dual power system of governance is intended to lead to the overthrow of the existent political power structure and provide the foundation for the establishment of a new political order.

It is this conflict between these two bodies which, in part, informs the current conflict in Venezuela and it is this that President Donald Trump was referring to in Miami recently when denouncing socialism.

There are a wealth of books about how the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUC) in Venezuela; the Movement for Social (MAS) in Ecuador; and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Colombia have used such tactics— but you can more or less get the basics just from watching Trigger Warning.

Trigger Warning and 21st Century Socialism

The last episode of season 1 of Trigger Warning opens up with Killer Mike telling the story of Fela Kuti, the same musician that the expelled-from-the-U.S. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” holds up in a Twitter post a few days after I first posted this article.

This could just be random coincidence or affinity – but given that Chucho’s activism in the United States aligns with Mike’s this seems unlikely.

After Mike’s citation of Fela as a frame and inspiration for his idea, the show continues. For those that have already watched Trigger Warning, rather than detail each of the five motors – I decided just to share screenshots that illustrate the series the policies leading to 21st Century Socialism.

Enabling Law

Constitutional Reform

Popular Education

While the elections and after party give the appearance that this iteration of New Afrika is liberatory – another way of looking it is that all these people have just signed up to live in a company town. The flag literally has a corporate logos on it and the money that citizens now use is scrip.

What Trigger Warning Looks Like as Non-Fiction

Properly holding up the reality to the art-mirror that is Killer Mike’s New Africa, we can see that in addition to the movements and parties mentioned about – there are a growing number of examples of New Afrika’s in America.

Black Sovereign Nation is one working variation of this.

Cooperation Jackson, who has extensive ties with People’s Institutions in Venezuela and promotes their activity and philosophy through Venezuela associated news outlets like Jacobin, TheRealNews, Transition Network, LibertarianCommunist, is also a working variant of his idea.

And there are several more group just like this – which is probably why in part that the FBI made the Black Identity Extremism classification. That Teen Vogue, one of Antifa/Venezuela’s news outlets, has an article decrying the term makes me think that this is the case – because these and groups like them are, in essence, an inchoate FARC.

And speaking of FARC, it’s worth pointing out another connection between Trigger Warning and Venezuela’s allies:

FARC recently released their own line of beers.

They, like Crip-a-Cola and Blood Pop, lean into the violent mystique.

Trigger Warning & White Allies

Another thing notable about Trigger Warning was Killer Mike’s solidarity with the Juggalos and choice to make them the only white people that were invited to New Afrika.

Given the racial attitudes of the other white musicians that were featured, it’s unsurprising. However I’d postulate that this creative decision was made not because there simply weren’t any non-racist white musicians to be found. Instead, I think it was because of the recent press in alternative news outlets about the Struggalo Circus. The Struggalo Circus was a short-lived front group made up of members of the Democratic Socialists of America – the face of the United Socialist Party of America (PSUA). Based upon their own social media outlets they were only formed to engage in an entryist project to recruit Juggalos to their party at a March in Washington to protest the decision by the FBI to name them a game. Which makes one wonder why those press outlets ran stories about them in the first place…

Trigger Warning & Venezuela’s Projected Vision

In writing this report it is not my intent to suggest that Killer Mike was approached and coached by some Venezuelan Intelligence Agent, or that he is their puppet, muppet, Hobbit or anything other than himself.

Yet given rapper, poet, actor and political activist Saul Williams recorded the anti-Iraq-war poem/song Not In Our Name on behalf of a Revolutionary Communist Party front group; that Rebel Diaz and Immortal Technique have performed at multiple Venezuelan intelligence services supported events such, as the United States Social Forum and Poor People’s Movement, the Maoist-rapper Boots Riley’s agitprop film Sorry to Bother You! (which is also brilliant) was funded by Chinese-capital; that China makes rap songs to promote Karl Marx; and many other possible examples – it seems highly unlikely that he would not have popped up on their radar.

Neither is it my purpose to delegitimize Killer Mike’s poignant criticisms. Mike’s smart as heck and the things that he’s talking about matters. Which is why I took the time to unwind the mind of an artist whose works I enjoy: to help provide a mirror showing the world that’s in his/Netflix’s work of art. And with this knowledge about the connection between Venezuela and Atlanta – specifically how the former sought to influence the later in order to help develop and enact multi-generational political and cultural change project that has vast geopolitical goals, it also becomes possible to pose what I think to be are some interesting questions:

First, to Killer Mike: I know you don’t mess with Mexican weed, but when you were trappin’ was your connect Venezuelan? Given the connection between the Venezuelan government and drug trafficking cartels, this seems like a smart way to raise money for intelligence projects in the United States without leaving a paper trail. It’d straight blow my mind if Trap music was in part funded by Venezuela’s Cartel Del Soles…

Second, to Senator Bernie Sanders: If consulting on Mike’s New Africa, would you concur with him that the process depicted is “what is to be done?”

Third, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes: Considering the Green New Deal is basically a practical re-formulation of the principles described in the Ecosocialist International into the American context — what’s your take on all this? Also, when I go to New York City to present the final version of this research will you be my date?

Fourth, to the reader: What are your thoughts? Do you think it’s all coincidence, or is Killer Mike’s Trigger Warning and example of Venezuelan Propaganda? What sorts of conversations and actions have you taken after watching it? Are you ready to move to a farm with a group of people?

Sources

Brittain, James J. Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

Brown-Vincent, Layla Dalal Zanele Sekou. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Pan-African Consciousness Raising and Organizing in the United States and Venezuela. 2016. Duke.

Juris, Jeffrey S. Spaces of Intentionality: Race, Class and Horizontality at the United States Social Forum (2008) Mobilization: An International Journal 13(4): 353–371

Rose Brewer, Katz-Fishman, Walda and Scott, Jerome.USSF 3 Evaluation and Documentation (4.10.16)

Walker, David & Gray, Daniel. Historical Dictionary of Marxism (2007) The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland