I don’t understand the reason why
You tellin’ us all that we need to unify
Rally round the flag
And beat the drums of war
Sing the same old songs
Ya know we heard ’em all before
You tellin’ me it’s unpatriotic
But I call it what I see it
When I see it’s idiotic
The tears of one mother
Are the same as any other
Drop food on the kids
While you’re murderin’ their fathers
But don’t bother to show it on CNN
Brothers and sisters don’t believe them
It’s not a war against evil
It’s really just revenge
Engaged against the poorest by the same rich men
Fight terrorists wherever they be found
But why you not bombing Tim McVeigh’s hometown?
You can say what you want propaganda television
But all bombing is terrorism

(chorus)
We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace
Whoa we may even find a solution
To hunger and disease
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace

911
Fire in the skies
Many people died
And no one even really knows why
They tellin’ lies of division and fear
We yelled and cried
No one listened for years
But like, “who put us here?”
And who’s responsible?
Well, there’s no debatin’
Cause if they ask me I say
It’s big corporations
World Trade Organization
Tri-Lateral action
International sanctions, Satan
Seems like it’ll be an endless price tag
Of wars tremendous
And most disturbingly
The death toll is so horrendous
So I send this to those
Who say they defend us
Send us into harm’s way
We should all make a remembrance that
This is bigger than terrorism
Blood is blood is blood and um
Love is true vision
Who will listen?
How many songs it takes for you to see
You can bomb the world to pieces
You can’t bomb it into peace
– Michael Franti and Spearhead, “Bomb The World (Armageddon Version)”, Everyone Deserves Music, Track 11 (2003)

As if it weren’t enough that National Guard and military troops have already been deployed to cities such as Washington DC, Chicago Illinois, Memphis Tennessee and Los Angeles California, with threats to further invade cities such as Portland Oregon, Minneapolis Minnesota and New York City (if the people have the nerve to elect the “socialist” Zohran Mamdani as mayor), US President Donald Trump and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth called a sudden, mandatory meeting of US military commanders, generals and admirals from around the world in Quantico, Virginia to “lay down the law” with their new plan to destroy perceived enemies of the US abroad without restraint and to quell insurgencies, crush dissent and implement the equivalent of martial law at home.

A recent Facebook post about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Chicago stated the following:

A shocking incident unfolded in Chicago when about 300 ICE agents descended from Blackhawk helicopters onto an apartment building, rounding up everyone living there. Many residents, according to witnesses, were pulled outside in zip ties, wearing little or no clothing, and children were among those caught up in this mass operation. With President Trump reportedly obtaining direct authority to deploy armed federal agents in Chicago, the move feels like an extension of what he has described as a war on blue states and cities, making the event feel as if it were ripped from a dystopian novel.

Across the country, these federal raids are being viewed as part of an escalating campaign to assert central power over communities that do not support the administration. The use of military tactics in domestic spaces looks less like a law enforcement effort and more like an outright attack on places that tend to vote Democratic. For many, the message is clear: cities that disagree with the current administration are being singled out for intimidation and collective punishment.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect is the deafening silence from major national media outlets. Instead of launching investigations or demanding accountability, mainstream networks have focused their energy on profit driven mergers and tax schemes to benefit their wealthy CEOS. That leaves local communities bearing the full weight of unchecked federal power and everyday people more vulnerable, as the role of the media as the public’s watchdog is abandoned.

It seems this administration is intent on securing its grip on power at the expense of their perceived enemies around the world and their invented enemies on the home front, in accordance with the Fascists’ Playbook. Purify the citizenry here through deportations of “illegals” (the definition of whom seems to be expanding) and detention of “insurgents” (anyone not sufficiently loyal to the Dear Leader) in internment camps, silence dissenters in the areas of news, analysis, commentary, entertainment and other mass media, cancel elections to ensure that the regime will never be replaced, militarize the cities to ensure against rebellion or even protest, while “taking the gloves off” the world’s deadliest military force to crush any potential resistance from outside (or possibly inside).

“Hi America, my name is Authoritarianism. Thanks for letting me into your house last November. These are my friends, Fascism and Martial Law. We’re here to keep you safe from the invaders, but also from your neighbors and yourselves, because enemies are everywhere. So just be compliant and let us handle everything.”

The recent assassination of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk provoked calls for a “war on the left” before the identity of the shooter was even determined, and such calls have persisted even as the shooter was revealed to be another White right-winger and alleged follower of ultra-right-wing pundit Nick Fuentes who felt Kirk’s politics, as cruel as they were, did not go far enough. As a result, the “war on woke” continues despite the internecine violence on the right and the preponderance of mass shooters, terrorists and murderers over the years who have been determined to emanate from right-wing enclaves. Thus, Trump and Hegseth have been mobilizing military and paramilitary units to crack down almost exclusively on cities run by Black mayors or that have largely Black populations under the guise of “cleaning up crime”, despite the clear evidence that crime in these cities has decreased tremendously over the last several years, not because of over-policing or military intervention but because of investment in community and anti-violence efforts in communities and neighborhoods.

An increasing number of analysts, activists and “regular citizens” are becoming convinced that fascism and martial law are not coming; they are already here. In the interest of not exposing these activists to the potential retaliation of the emerging police state, we will not post their comments here, but if you are connected to Pan Afrikan organizations and concerned citizens, you probably already know some of them.

Check out social media for a few minutes and you will run across one or another Facebook or TikTok post describing last Tuesday’s meeting at Quantico as a call for martial law, and emphasizing that Black people in particular need to prepare for the time when the military invades your town or city, allegedly to support ICE raids but ultimately stopping, detaining and sometimes imprisoning citizens of the United States who happen to speak too much Spanish, “look Haitian” or “look Hispanic”, or have gone on record as members of the “woke (radical) left”.

Those who attempt to intervene on behalf of those who are wrongly accosted and “disappeared” also risk abuse at the hands of often-masked and heavily armed right wing militias and military personnel who have suddenly been tasked with policing duties for which they have not been qualified, trained or prepared and which they have nonetheless been empowered to carry out with impunity.

But this crisis is not just recognized by Pan Afrikanists, Black Nationalists and leftists for the xenophobic purge that it threatens to become. There are a number of White activists and commentators that have been sounding the alarm from the beginning and are increasing in frequency and intensity, especially since Trump has reiterated his “enemy from within” comments and held his meeting with US military commanders from around the world to reinforce that sentiment, made even clearer by Hegseth’s comments decrying the “stupid … politically correct and overbearing” rules of engagement (known to the rest of us as the Geneva Conventions and the Conventions Against Genocide) and calling on military commanders present to dispose of such inconvenient rules and “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill” enemies on foreign soil as well as “quell civil disturbances” in US cities, attacking American civilians on American soil who have dared to speak out against Trump’s authoritarian aims which he is apparently willing to institute war on the streets to enforce. While these White critics may expose themselves to right-wing retaliation in time, they are somewhat insulated from the worst abuses (at least for now) by the fact of their Whiteness. Still, their commitment to sound the alarm for their followers and the larger White community are appreciated, as that is what Tim Wise, one of the most politically-aware public speakers, has done, and it is also what Ancestor Malcolm X stated in his autobiography that he would advise White activists that consider themselves allies of the Black Struggle to do.

A Facebook post from “Stuart H2O” speaks specifically about Trump and Hegseth’s meeting with the military commanders: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CSSCaye3p/

Robert Arnold, who also goes under the heading “Defiance 13”, provides regular video commentaries about US abuses at home and abroad, with particular emphasis on American racism, xenphobia and authoritarianism. His piece on the Trump-Hegseth meeting, titled “The Silence of Generals”, can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Cw6UBrX6N/

The race is on. Many of us ignored the time for vigilance and thus have squandered much of the breathing room we thought we had. The time for building the resistance has come. People in the Pan Afrikan community are finally seeing the urgent need for organizing and building unity. White “mainstream” commentators are increasingly aware of the unhinged nature of their political leaders. And members of the grassroots Black community, watching the rants by right-wing pundits like Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes railing against everything from affirmative action to anti-discrimination to historical Black leaders to simple empathy as they fan the flames for the very violence that will also consume them, are listening and watching as their so-called leaders “rally round the flag and beat the drums of war.”