i’m blocking you because it’s patently obvious you’re a troll. i just want to outline the problems with how this conversation has gone down so that in the future you can coalition build better (though based on your stance that oppressed people in an oppressive nation are not worth listening to because they live in an oppressive nation, i suspect you don’t believe in coalition building, but rather the failed doctrine of vanguard leftism).
this whole conversation began with you coming into this conversation with a white supremacist definition of an oppressed people’s word. myself and others asked that you re-evaluate that term and instead doubled down on your notion that your understanding of the word is intrinsically superior on account of that you are further separated from the origins of the term than anyone else. obviously the thinkers, in the context of “you don’t understand Black language” i brought up were going to be people who inherited their resistance forms from their enslaved ancestors from North America. so you shifted the goal posts to that i didn’t represent pan Africanism properly because all of the thinkers i mentioned were from North America.
obviously i understand that pan Africanism is defined by thinkers all across the Black diaspora and within the African continent. For a full view of pan Africanism, one would need to also ingest the history of the Congolese people, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Africa, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Somalia, all particular hotbeds for the European rape of Africa. You would also need to read up on Marcus Garvey and Black supremacy as well as critiques of this notion written by leaders in Africa about why retributive colonialism should not be the aim of liberation movements because an oppressed person anywhere represents oppressed people everywhere. an honest history of Patrice Lumumba is one of the best starting points i can think of as he worked tirelessly to decolonize the Congo, eventually leading to his assassination (probably at the hands of the CIA).
but you said it yourself. your aim is not to build bridges or to gain understandings or to shift the future narrative. only to cut leftist thinkers in America out because they are American. we ask not to lead, but just to be at the table when it comes to international solidarity. and i’ll fully admit i’m an imperfect ally. i work every day to hear my trans sisters, my Black brethren, and my indigenous forebears to understand how people who look like me have hurt them and prevented their ability to thrive. i look to the Taino, Mayan, Mexican, Uiygher, Igbo, Nez Perce, Ukrainian, Cambodian, Irish, Jewish, and Cherokee stories of persistence on the margins to better understand the tactics that will help a queer jewish anarcho-communist like me pass this story on so that descendents who will inherit my story can sit in the shade of trees i will never see. i have blind spots and i know this. but you being proud of your blind spots, and the fact that you refer to Black political thought through the hegemonic lens of white supremacy both in how you understand the word “woke” and how you use the word “Black” does not make you better than me. it makes you ignorant. the only difference is i admit to my ignorance and work to expand my world view. easily my biggest knowlege gap is the precolonial history of what is now the so-called United States and Canada and the African continet. this is on purpose by our opressors and i’m in active work to remedy this.
so anyway. i guess this is all a long winded way of saying i know i don’t have the full picture. that doesn’t make refusing to know what “woke” means and policing that online discussions of the term should take the white supremacist meaning good
boarding a ship in international waters is an act of war. what flag was this ship flying under?