Author: Nnamdi Lumumba

Yesterday’s assault by far-right white nationalist elements on the U.S. capitol while senators attempted to ratify the votes of the 2020 electoral college has reminded us all that Donald Trump’s defeat does not mean the Black community is now safe.Millions of people watched as hundreds of far-right forces stormed the capitol building in an attempt to force a coup that would allow Donald Trump to remain in power.

Despite the death of one protester and arrest of 50+ rioters, this attack happened with muted and sluggish responses from police agencies. We are painfully aware that had similar actions in Washington D.C. come from members of the Black community, that our people would have been brutally put down by that state, and hundreds would be arrested.This conflict is not a crisis of democracy as put forward by ruling class media; instead, this is a crisis in the capitalist ruling class that has busted out into rebellion in the streets.

The unity of white supremacist domination of the economic, political, and social structures of the U.S. nation is in great danger because capitalist exploitation has increased for all workers, and sectors of the white working-class have been mobilized by contending capitalist forces to demand their cut at the expense of all other workers.

The incoming Biden administration inherits the immediate task of trying to solve how to hold the union together. It has only two basic options to choose from in dealing with these unleashed far-right capitalist forces: move to suppress and defeat them by force or make economic, political, and social concessions to appease them.

The far-right shows that their perceived suppression will be met with resistance and open conflict that could split the white ruling class. Appeasement of these forces will come by implementing austerity allocating resources away from Black, Brown, and oppressed communities and into rust belt and heartlands of America.

Neither option will make it safe or comfortable for the Black community to move forward in the wake of Trump’s departure. The actions by the state to allow the far-right forces to storm the capitol lets us know that the state apparatus under the Biden administration will not be able to protect the Black community from physical or political attacks by elements of the far-right.

Black working-class people must organize for their economic & class interests. We must build the capacity to protect our interests, communities, and our very lives in lieu of the fact that the racist U.S. state continues to fail us as a people and as a class. We must be organized, and we must build independent Black political action. We must better define for potential allies what they must do to align themselves with our movement for power and true liberation.

It is not acceptable o continue to tail the liberal and so-called progressive wings of capitalist parties and activities. We cannot afford to wait for the Biden administration, the Democratic party, and especially America to conclude that Black power matters; we must do this for ourselves and with the allies we choose.