by Comrade Saint
Amerikkka has a long-standing grip on imperialist propaganda, but in spite of the long-running protests, colonizers have taken it to new heights with the recent Netflix show “Teenage Bounty Hunters.” The show is a not-so-subtle attempt at spreading ‘copaganda’ by dressing it up in the pretty and dainty gaze of cishet white woman girl power.
In the united snakes, bounty hunters have direct origins to slave catchers. Although ‘slave catcher’ is a uniquely amerikkkan job, bounty hunters continue to this day through the exploitative system of bail bondsmen where poor and working class colonized people (“people of color”) put their lives and money on the line when they’re imprisoned by the colonial system.
No matter how you slice it, the truth is clear, the titles of ‘bounty hunter’ and ‘slave catcher’ are so intertwined that even the wikipedia page for ‘bounty hunters’ directs you to the page titled “slave catchers” pre civil war. Colonized people have begun to rise up and understand the true origin of the police.
The message of this show, though subtle, is clear, and has been in propaganda since the beginning: white colonizers need the police to continue their system. This is the same justification for white nationalists to continue the imperialist goal of keeping colonized people part of a system that constantly exploits us and our labor.
Netflix works hard to suspend disbelief of the show by putting the typical blond and brunette stick-thin white girls in a position that tries to eliminate the class contradiction of being colonizers. They’ve made the girls relatable by putting them in a financial bind where they’ve broken their father’s truck and need to repair it fast. The intense conflict causes the watcher to forget that 63% of people in amerikkka can’t actually afford a car repair, or even a car.
The show glosses over how easy the girls manage to find an opportunity for work and smoothly ignores the fact that the easiest option they can find is to become a slave-catching pig. One thing the show does get correct is how easy it is to become a tool of imperialism and colonialism.
The show packages this message in a cute and quirky box to remind white women that they, too, can spread terror to colonized people. Though Netflix is careful to include a melanin-diverse crowed of ‘criminals’ for our ‘heroines’ to catch they might as well just say the slave patrollers oath:
I [patroller’s name], do swear, that I will as searcher for guns, swords, and other weapons among the slaves in my district, faithfully, and as privately as I can, discharge the trust reposed in me as the law directs, to the best of my power. So help me, God.
-Slave Patroller’s Oath, North Carolina, 1828.
The true nature of the oppressor is to briefly acknowledge their ills to Africans though trauma porn in movies like 12 years a Slave, or the newer Harriet. This allows modern-day colonizers to empathize with the suffering of poor and colonized people, but only view it as a thing of the past instead of something ongoing that they actively uphold.
This show really hits amerikkkas ever-evolving propaganda right on the head. The fugitive slave act of 1850 was an underhanded way of explaining the growing white nationalist militia that has reared its ugly and pasty head in Minneapolis and other areas of the imperial core where colonized people are in abundance.
The show does actually include a few African colonized people — like Method Man — because neocolonial approval of African people makes it seem like colonialism is okay, of course!
But even when African and other colonized people get these roles, they are still only acting as submissive sellouts who uphold white power and colonialism.
Teenage Bounty Hunters is nothing much except for propaganda that upholds colonialism and the modern-day slavery in the colonial prison system. Instead of watching this show, make sure people know that this kind of media is propaganda that is meant to continue colonial oppression.
All makes the contradiction of colonialism incredibly clear, and it shows that poor and working class colonized people need to take back our self-determination.
For this, Black Hammer Organization is building Hammer City, which will be a place for colonized people to live with no rent, no Coronavirus, and most importantly: no cops.
Land back!
