Reviewed by Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite
The Rain 4:2 (Summer-Autumn 2006): 5
“... if your are not committed to your soldiers and prisoners then you ultimately fail” – samia halaby defend palestine, ny, and al jisser group – “voices of resistance to u.s./israeli war in palestine, lebanon & iraq” – workers world party
brr
lest we forget, the black revolutionary spirit and armed resistance was a brief period only thirty years ago. sam greenlee’s 1968 novel, the spook who sat by the door, like history, has no period nor end—merely an ellipsis and evolution. it is still a relevant piece of literature no less than gk chesterton’s the man who was thursday. not dated in its concepts nor acts of underground resistance and written during the revolutionary period of amerikkka’s black radical movement and the first french riots (seconded now to the clichy sous bois uprising) the spook who sat by the door proves itself as a call to arms as well as an indictment of the bourgeois afro amerikkkan dream of assimilation and affirmative action.
situationism was a tool to the french student revolutionaries and art cultural uprising which had risen in france in the form of institutional attack. it used a methodology of a theatre of cruelty—the performance artist as martyrdom brigade. it was a collapsing of systems from the inside by appropriating and appearing to conform to the targeted mainstream organization which saw no end to its do or die banality and oppression of the peoples. greenlee, while deconstructing the spy genre, presents us with a manifesto of north amerikkkan black (re)evolution of the soledadist situationism gonna crazy.
reggae’s rude to rebel, punk rock to a homemade track by pussy galore—art terrorism was composed of the peoples’ army inspired by the radicalism of august spies (of the haymarket martyrs), marcus garvey, elijah mohammad, amerikkkan gangster gothic, malik shabazz, soledad brothers, huey p newton, chairman fred hampton, baader meinhoff, the weathermen, the plo and the ira. such acts of (dis) engaging the oppressive forces of imperialism have existed in many forms and made popular within the communist struggle for the freedome of the proletariat come the amerikkkan communist movement and all the martyrs within its struggle.
the theatre of cruelty
from agatha christie’s they do it with mirrors, burroughs’ wild boys to donald goines’ black gangster there have been novels which explored the transformation or deterritorialisation of the poverty-stricken criminal class of youth into the radical working unit which covert or overtly take down systems of elitism and oppression. greenlee uses stereotype as a tool of straight satire to discuss the insanity of race, class and culture of amerikkkka. the setting of the plot to the spook who sat by the door is found in one senitor gilbert hennington’s re-election bid, after a think tank session, to use affirmative action as a mad tool to integrate the cia, because: “this question of the negro vote could be serious. i never thought i’d be in trouble with those people. we have to come up with something which will remind them i’m the best friend they have in washington, and soon.”
a collection of “firsts” (those who are “first” to integrate into the amerikkkan machine) “they were black bourgeoisie to a man, black nepotism personified”—are chosen and quickly eliminated, until all that is left of the “tokens” is the brother dan freeman who contains a level of deception so deep it builds a wall of insanity which confronts the machine he is on a ride with. one plan of freeman is to use the machine (better known by audre lorde as “master’s tools”). It is one not unlike what we have seen with the rap/hip hop world. one made of an almost impenetrable collective of working units, like the latin kings, which make the neocons plan for the “reshaping the middle east” look like a sandbox presentation designed with crayon—the set is tight, like freeman’s dream—and thus impenetrable. however, with the duping game—using master’s tools—comes deception and false allegiances; in an attempt to co-opt the movement in order to keep it from radicalizing—as is the current fear of csis with the youth in kkkanada; as is the fear of freeman who runs from bourgeoisie black culture like it was swine.
freeman is flipping the switch to engage gangs in radical operations, by using his skills lessoned in the cia training, to take down amerikkka’s institutions. unlike donald goines’ black gangster, where a movement is achieved by using the emerging armed black radicalism of the 1970s as a front to engage youth gangs in covert criminal activity, freeman changes the game by using inner city and racist makeup as urban camouflage—be it a janitor, the harmless negro, porter or junkie—to school a black baader meinhoff to infiltrate, engage and take down the system. it is to engage a form of black survivalism, or what manning marple intones, in reference to malik shabazz (aka malcolm x), as “a life of reinvention” in an insane amerikkka.
“it was not difficult to conform to the image whites desired, since they did most of the work. they saw in most negroes exactly what they most wanted to see; one need only impressionistically support the stereotype. whites were fools and one had constantly to fight in order not to underestimate their power and danger, because a powerful and dangerous fool is not to be underestimated.” however, a world run by fools with power creates a model of insanity. the insanity played to is what exhausts the black man until, when comes the time for our strength to show, we have little left due to expending it on combating the types of the system which makes us dance in defense to their ignorance—this becomes the flaw in or makes it the martyr mission.
“ ‘tell me, mr. freeman, do you like working for the agency?’ the senator had found that calling negroes ‘mr.’ often had a magical effect on the relationship. ‘yes sir.’ freeman used ‘sir’ with whites as often as possible. he found that it had a magical effect on the relationship.”
we have seen greenlee’s works in the practical show and prove mode when a group of kids led by a crack dealer and pimp (eazy e of n.w.a.) fed up with destroying his own people deterritorializes the crack game and made it a rap business = out of oppression comes the transformative effects of sankofa—the underground scene which faces down capitalism by messaging the music via resistance on the street corner, prince buster’s “voice of he people” jamaican sound system or kids selling cds on sky trains and subways of independent creative beats, riddim and proletariat poetry delivered by and for the fighters in poverty—art of the oppressed and frontal attack of the insanity of amerikkkanadian industry and landscape.
getting caught up
“blacks are still people suffering political oppression, economic exploitation and social degradation because of the white supremacist polices of the united states government and its economic institutions. the only difference between then and now is black people knew then who their enemy was.” – brother salim adofo “what to black people is the 4th of july?”
the hon min elijah muhammad wrote a book which might be referred to as prophetic, if not prophecy, entitled a message to the blackman in america. in it, as does greenlee explore, he points to the fact that there are two amerikkkas. that the black man in his obsession to conform or engage amerikkka, using master’s tools—duping people—can be energy draining—as is the farce of democracy.
the hon min louis farrakahn has implemented a freeman plan of action with his voice, later resounded by public enemy, to approach and refocus the energies of gangs in l.a. into a comradeship of soldiers set on defending culture, race, class and community (as was and is the goal of the black panthers, muqtada al sadr’s mahdi army and the hizbullah)—from crips and bloods to the latin kings. freeman teaches his urban black ghetto soldiers armed resistance and intelligence—the duping of the system. in doing so he teaches the soldiers the effects of the ayn rand’s shrug from atlas’ shoulders.
“the enemy joins the gangs, like he did most of the black organizations, and places snitches around our leaders. they pretend like they are a crip or a blood, but really they are agents of the government of the united states of america. they give you an ak-47, a mac 10, and other weapons that are rejects, and cannot shoot straight, so when you try to kill your brother, a baby or somebody else innocent is killed instead as a result of your foolishness.” – hon min louis farrakhan, “special message to street organizations”
the skillz come from the action of not engaging b.u.t. from (dis) engaging the system that is the insanity of amerikkkanada. is this not what happened when the i.r.a, baader-meinhof (red army faction raf ), black liberation army (b.l.a.) to the weathermen and today’s hamas and hizbullah responded to the insanity of the imperialist system? for the resistance comes closer to what junious ricardo stanton writes of in his essays “it’s time to try something different” and “coming to grips with amerikkka’s insanity”:
“insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the same people expecting things to turn out differently. by that reckoning, we are truly insane. we have been attempting to converty euroamerikkkans since we arrived on these shores. we have tried moralizing them despite their obvious immorality, we have attempted (just as abuse and incest victims do) to defend our tormentors in the false hope they will cease abusing or lighten their maltreatment. it has not worked ... so how do we save ourselves? we must first admit we are at war, admit who our enemies are and act accordingly.”
“ ... cause it’s war honky.”
“they had checked weapons and explosives in three large suitcases in the checkroom at union station. three went to the checkroom wearing the red caps of station’s porters and checked out the suitcases. freeman watched it all through the plate-glass window of the coffee shop across the big station floor, they got the suitcases with no trouble, passed the coffee shop without looking at freeman and went up stairs to the street above. it was a short distance from the train station to city hall, their destination.”
the idea of getting caught up in the insanity of the cold war and post cold war iron curtain drama of fear, disassociation, paranoia and deception—“masters’ tools ... will never dismantle the master’s house”—for the soldier/resistance fighter who chooses the mission to engage the system via infiltration/the big dupe must do so knowing that martyrdom is the only solution/or exit plan when the inevitable powers who should not be step to the fore to consume them = conformity or complete loss of focus then assimilation into the machine. freeman reaffirms this when exhausted declares: “you want it both ways to be a supercop and have the spades dig you too.” in this statement he lights a cigarette—a symbol of suicidal cool—leans back and demonstrates that a shrug can shake the world and with that we as black peoples and affiliations, inshallah, can all become atlas and shut em down.