Formed in May 2017 and based in New York City, the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) is a contingent of the Marxist/anarchist Antifa movement which has made many headlines this year with its violent, bloody attacks against conservatives from coast to coast. RAM’s self-described “revolutionary anarchists” are committed to waging “armed” warfare against American “fascism” ― the term that RAM employs as a synonym for conservatism. Rooted in what it calls “the context of the abolitionist struggle against slavery” ― and “dedicated to freeing people from bondage and building resistance in the United States” ― RAM contends not only that America was “built on slavery and genocide,” but also that “modern slavery and mass brutality” against black people “persist unchecked” to this day.
Because “the Civil War was never resolved,” RAM elaborates, “the system of slavery transitioned into the prison industrial complex” where blacks are inarcerated in disproportionately high numbers. On the premise that the United States government has conspired “with white supremacist organizations” to “ensure that the relations of slavery [remain] entrenched in U.S. political, social, and economic life,” RAM claims that “the [slave] ships” of yesteryear have been replaced by the “correctional buses” that transport African Americans en masse to prison cells across the country; that “the [slave] auction blocks [of the 1800s] are now the courtrooms” in American cities; and that black people today “are indelibly marked with prison numbers that remain etched on their records till they die.”
“The abolitionist struggle,” says RAM, must be extended and directed against “the state and capitalism,” which are supposedly the leading modern-day “perpetrators of oppression.” Openly advocating violence against “fascists” and police officers ― the latter of whom RAM views as government-sanctioned enablers of fascism ― the Movement indoctrinates its members and allies by means of workshops bearing titles like “Introduction to Anarchism” and “Our Enemies in Blue.”
RAM states that “as fascist movements are expanding and the state becomes increasingly authoritarian,” various “[A]ntifa groups” should join other likeminded “revolutionaries” in creating an “Underground Railroad network” to rescue “those facing detention, incarceration, deportation, or white supremacist violence.” In its quest to “free people from [the] bondage” of “the modern-day slave system,” RAM “seeks to destroy the prison” as an institution in the United States.
By RAM’s telling, “the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise of a black man [Barack Obama] to the height of [America’s] political machine,” triggered a “white supremacist” backlash that took the form of a “fascist movement” emblematized by “the ascendance of Donald Trump” to the presidency in 2017.
Central to RAM’s long-term objective is the forcible theft and redistribution of property. “To begin the revolutionary process,” RAM explains, “goods, land, and tools must be expropriated, or taken away from those who withhold them,” and then must be “shared with those who lack them.”
RAM draws inspiration from the legacy of the Black Panther Party ― a violent revolutionary organization whose members engaged in widespread criminality and murder during the 1960s ― which purportedly offered “a solid political vision in such an intelligible and inspiring manner that they became … a model for revolutionary movements” all over the world.
Among RAM’s most visible individual heroes are a pair of Marxist cop-killers and former Black Panther Party members: (a) Mumia Abu Jamal, whom RAM characterizes as a shining symbol of “Philadelphia’s rich revolutionary tradition,” and (b) Russell Shoats, who characterized himself as “a runaway slave” when he escaped in 1977 from the prison where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
RAM also greatly admires the Marxist revolutionaries Angela Davis, who in 1970 provided the gun that was used by one of her Black Panther comrades to blow off the head of a California judge, and Assata Shakur, who in 1973 fired two fatal gunshots into the head of a New Jersey state trooper.
RAM’s ultimate political objective is to “burn down the American plantation once and for all” ― meaning all of the nation’s institutions, traditions, and values ― and to “build,” in their stead, “a new world” that is free from “the oppressive power of white supremacy, patriarchy, the State, and capital.”
Today, RAM is calling for its supporters to stage “Deface Columbus Day” demonstrations across the United States in early October. Most notably, those supporters are urged to “‘decorate’ their neighborhoods” with the hashtags “#Fu**ColumbusDay” and “#DestroyColonialism.”
RAM is by no means unique as a mouthpiece of leftist propaganda. Indeed, it is just the latest manifestation of the left’s bitter, undying hatred for America and its civil society. Like Antifa, RAM is pure fascism and pure racism dressed up as a crusade for “social justice” ― a term that has been so thoroughly bastardized, that it no longer means anything.
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