…This role [of the intellectual] has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by government or corporations, and whose raison d’etre is to represent all those people that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.

Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures

In fascist Amerikkka, the “patriots” of Empire are readying for the “kill.” Among the patriots are the King’s armies of functionaries (collaborators), fine tuning “the trick.” Unity among the Patriots!

“The trick,” Hannah Arendt writes, was Himmler’s idea - not a new idea in the world, but one suitable for the occasion, involving inverting the instinctive reactions of the killers (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics)). Don’t think about the hired guns from the 630 corporate capitalist contractors in Iraq (Jeremy Scahill) to institutional to political to civic gunners apt at learning “the trick.” They, in turn, are not to think about the “horrible things” done to others, but instead, focus all their energy on mastering their duty and considering the weight of the task upon their shoulders.

Institutionalizing the role of the functionary among the oppressed is the business of an Empire that foresees the possibility of its own demise. Amerikkka needs its reliable scapegoats in his hour of the sacrificial crisis.

The sacrificial crisis, Rene Girard explains in Violence and the Sacred, is a crisis of “distinction,” of difference between “impure violence” and “purifying violence” affecting the political, social, economic, and cultural order. It is not just a matter of who speaks Spanish and who speaks English, but a matter of who dares to unveil the distinction between the “purifying” violence of the Empire (high incarceration rates, detention camps, torture, indifference to human suffering and dying, and pre-emptive war) and the so-called “impure” violence (resistance) of the oppressed - (terrorists, resisters, extremists, fundamentalists). It’s important to note that this system of violence oscillates between one form of violence and another. “Peace” is merely the prevalence of “purifying” violence. Consequently, violence is the “box” we live within.

“Language itself is put in jeopardy,” as the collapse of difference makes it increasingly difficult to identify “liberators” and recognize what is and is not “torture,” for example. Girard observes: “in this situation no one and nothing is spared; coherent thinking collapses and rational activities are abandoned. All associative forms are dissolved or become antagonistic; all values, spiritual or material, perish.”

All attention is focused on this particular flare up of the crisis and bringing it to an end. Some of us are capable of recognizing that the “cure,” like the “enemy,” is within. This is the knowledge we bare in the face of an effective process that depends of depriving the public of this knowledge, knowledge, Girard writes, with which the public “never come to terms.”

So we have the institutionalization of functionaries (an old tactic in a new era) for which the dying and suffering masses can’t be its concern. As collaborators in the business of solving the problem of the sacrificial crisis, they have situated themselves within the mighty regime of Pax Americana.

Jockeying for salvation within the capitalist system, the functionaries echo “unity” and “denounce” and “reject” - and wagging tail and licking tongue is perfect harmony with the agenda! The asymmetry isn’t accidental as the light of the regime shines on the functionaries and depends on them to carry out their duties for the state.

Under the banner of “one America,” the task of the functionaries is to expose the political fringe, the dissenters, particularly the Black Left. When the time comes, the functionaries will be all too happy to dispose of the “anti-patriotic.” But for now, present self and friends as “special cases” and prepare lists of the “extremists,” the “militants,” the “renegades.” “The trick” is to teach these functionaries, the ass-lickers, “the trick” of sniffing and barking at that most “horrible thing” within on command. This, they are assured, will garner them the pleasure of sharing power to detention and to witness the glorious “mushroom cloud” over some “enemy” territory.

Black Americans have out-maneuvered such functionaries, agent provocateurs, overseers in the past. That was when we had no-nonsense warriors who denounced and rejected compromise, not the people. Their voices and deeds trampled collaborators, and Harriet Tubman hired herself as a hired gun! Paul Robeson’s voice, rising from the depths of the Earth, cried out - I will stand! I will be Black and I will stand, here, among my people and the oppressed of the world. Malcolm, Huey, Fannie Lou, and King didn’t suffer from “defective memory” or become absorbed in the “watchwords” (i.e. slogans, Arendt) of functionaries. De-coding the Master or any imperialist elected regime was the preferred skill, but now, deconstructing the words of dissenters within is profitable for functionaries jostling position between the tasks of gatekeeper and of spokesperson - for themselves, their interests in maintaining their connection to the “good society.”

The most important task of the functionaries, however, is that of carrying out the dirty deeds for the Empire. After all, this business of the sacrificial crisis is not about careers and livelihoods. For the lower-level functionaries, perhaps they have decided to house and clothe themselves and their family in the luxury afforded them. But for the groomed, premiere functionaries, it is a matter of life or death - of the Empire. 

Sen. Barrack Obama and his Joshua Generation trains, carting hundreds of thousands to “make history,” have, in fact, already done so. At once a member of the society and outside that society, he is the empowered, the well groomed, the well versed, and the primary functionary who recently gave the “Word”: “Thou shall not resist!” “Resisters will be annihilated!” Where in the history of the Black struggle in America have we heard this Word? Obama’s denouncement and rejection of Rev. Wright’s Word - Amerikkka, you are too arrogant, echoes the message of our slain leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and those prophets who came before him. The imperialists have called for the overseers, the collaborators, the functionaries - chiefs, politicians, civic leaders, and public intellectuals - to rise, and once again walk hand in hand and work collectively with their Masters.

Obama’s denouncement is a pivotal moment in the Black Left’s struggle against imperialism. Listen to the distortion of reality within the language used by the functionaries and the imperialist’s media mouthpieces. Houston, we have “generational difference!” We have some afflicted with “generational difference” syndrome - a problem reparable with a little tweaking here and there, a little co-opting of the language of prophetic tradition, a little co-opting of their minds so as to assure their willingness to kneel before the altar of “change.” “Generational difference” is code for the sacrificial crisis within the Black community! We relinquished the right to nourish our youth with the spirit of their Ancestors and empower them with the knowledge of struggle. We’ve handed them over to the institutional functionaries for bragging rights and trinkets! These youth have aligned themselves with the sons and daughters of the imperialist so we are unable to recognize them. This isn’t unity; it is communal suicide!

Every action has consequences, and we, who know how this system works, know how the mechanism of violence works, are caving in to the madness in order to ride the Joshua trains with our youth. The imperialists have created the idea of a “generational difference,” as with any sacrificial crisis, however, we, Black Americans, are being betrayed from within. The Amerikkka’s imperialist functionaries echo the “watchwords” and followers hysterically cry “freedom” from the traditions of struggle, angry elders, and “militants” from back-in-the-day. While the “less prominent” will disappear from the voting rolls, the city functionaries are thinning out the Black populations. Obedient functionaries are rounding up anyone who dares remember yesterday’s political, economic, and social issues. “Generational difference,” in other words, is the go-ahead to annihilate the Ancestors, the elders, the very principles of our Black struggle. Such reckless capitulation to an equally reckless capitalist regime will bring on the collapse of Black America with the collapse of Amerikkka to follow.  

Think this is a singular nightmare, if you dare! Think this operation of state violence and repression is mere myth - that this violence and repression has never happened or isn’t happening in the world now. Think Amerikkka is “outside the box” - at your risk!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.