REVOLUTION 2

When has the USA been a "great country"?

[Audio transcript]

BOB AVAKIAN—REVOLUTION

Number Two

This is Bob Avakian (BA) back again—going deeper into why we need a revolution.

Let’s start with this big question: When has the USA been a “great country?”

The answer: NEVER.

Some people may not like my saying this—they feel stung by this truth. So, let’s look at the reality.

This “Republic” to which we are supposed to pledge allegiance was founded on slavery and genocidal robbery: keeping millions of Black people in chains for generations... killing off huge numbers of Native Americans and stealing their land... waging a war that ripped off half of Mexico, greatly expanding slavery.

So, was this a great country all during that time—when millions of people were enslaved—owned by bloodsuckers who constantly whipped the slaves to make them work harder under horrific conditions, slave-owners who raped masses of enslaved women? Was this country great then?!

Was it great when, for generations after slavery was formally ended, Black people as a whole were segregated, discriminated against, and continually terrorized, with repeated massacres of Black people and thousands of Black people lynched? Was it great when, all during that time, LGBT people were “illegal,” when women were legally treated as inferior to men—and men could legally rape their wives? Was it a great country then?!

Or is it great, now, when people are everyday denied basic rights? When the police kill a thousand people every year, especially people of color, and in the 60 years since Civil Rights Acts were passed, segregation and discrimination has remained as bad, or worse, as it ever was, and thousands of Black people have been killed by police—even greater numbers than all those who were lynched during all the years of Ku Klux Klan terror after the Civil War!

Has this country ever been great, when, right from the beginning and down to today, the whole thing has literally been built on the broken bodies, the blood and bones, of millions and now billions of people, worldwide—cruelly exploited, used and abused, by this system—with all this backed up by murder on a massive scale carried out by the police and the armed forces of this country?

No, this country has never been great. It has always been a horror for masses of people.

And, if you don’t know all this is true, then you don’t know what you need to know—and the biggest reason you don’t know it is because the powers-that-be don’t want you to know it, and instead they want you caught up believing the lie that, as they constantly tell you, this is the greatest country in the world and their system is the greatest system that could ever be.

Next, I’ll be coming back with more about the whole rotten system that rules in this country and dominates the world—the system of capitalism-imperialism—and the revolution we need to sweep this system off the face of the earth.