By Chief Lay and Chief Mase

Libya, one of the 54 nations of Africa carved up by colonizers, has been subject to brutal neocolonialism by the white power NATO colonizers who attack all progress towards the unity of African poor and working people in getting their Land Back.

In 2011 after a decades long campaign of terror using crippling economic sanctions, media attacks, pinkwashing, and funding of counter revolutionaries, NATO colonizers once again took over the nation. On October 20, 2011, neocolonial mercenaries publicly tortured and lynched Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the pan-African anticolonial revolutionary.

Hillary Clinton, secretary of state under Barack Obama, laughed when she heard the news of this anticolonial revolutionary’s death.

This european stranglehold against the Libyan people led to the immediate looting of the fruits of their land. The colonizers and sellouts immediately chose to brutalize the Libyan people and created a slave market economy. 

Libya was previously a popular destination for migrant workers, but since the overthrow of the Libyan government, migrants stuck in Libya living in overcrowded housing and forced into systemic sexual torture and brutal toiling.

The neocolonial imperialist economic system equates freedom with chaos, rape, and slavery for poor and working class colonized people.

What was Libya like under Gaddafi?

As an African nation, many systems of power were used to govern the poor and working class people of Libya, and few have given them such liberation, equality, and freedom as the system that flourished under the Revolutionary Command Council led by Colonel Gaddafi.

Libya has an ancient history of class struggle among the great colonizing empires of their time. From the greeks, the romans, and the ottoman empire, to the british, the italians, and most recently the uk, u.s., and france (NATO), this land has had a lot of languages spoken by it’s ruling class.

As materialists we must see the situation for what it is. Foreign empires have long used Libya’s geography at the expense of the working poor who carry out their orders of colonialism. 

After a two-fold fight for national independence from the Italians and then from an exploitative neocolonial kingdom, Muammar Gaddafi was able to lead the people of Libya into liberation.

What happens to a nation looted and colonized for centuries?

An anticolonial brewing of unity of action, a unity of people, and a desire for humanity.

From 1911 to 1951, Libya was colonized by Italy and other europeans. After large oil reserves were discovered in 1959, the masses of Libyan people started agitating for wealth redistribution.

In 1961, Muammar Gaddafi led a guerilla army against the king, and the massies rallied around the revolution and ensured its success. Within four years he summed up the ideas in his Green Book which led Libya to build a system which served the needs of the masses.

The Green Book, based off of Mao’s Little Red Book, outlined the desire for Unity, Socialism, Freedom for the people of Libya. 

“Economic activity in the new socialist society is a productive one aimed at the satisfaction of material needs. It is not an unproductive activity, nor one which seeks profit for surplus savings beyond the satisfaction of such needs. This, according to the new socialist basis, is unacceptable.” 

The people were energized by their dictatorship over their land and they utilized the market for oil to boost campaigns of school, hospital, and house building which were denied for centuries.

Revolutionary anti-colonialism has always won in Libya. In 1970, the Libyan people, under Gaddafi, expelled all Italian colonizers from their African land.

For 42 years the dictatorship of the colonized people was known by their cultural revolution in all areas.

Pan-African anti-colonialism is a winning ideology

Liberation can only occur alongside the return of the dictatorship of the colonized masses in Africa and across the entire world. A united, liberated, and strong Africa was the end goal of revolutionaries from Gaddafi, Lumumba, and Garvey.

“The colonialists care nothing for Africa for her own sake. They are attracted by African riches and their actions are guided by the desire to preserve their interests in Africa against the wishes of the African people. For the colonialists all means are good if they help them to possess these riches.”

Patrice Lumumba in a speech at the All-African Conference, August, 1960.

“When Europe was inhabited by a race of cannibals, a race of savages, naked men, heathens and pagans, Africa was peopled with a race of cultured black men, who were masters in art, science and literature; men who were cultured and refined; men, who, it was said, were like the gods. Even the great poets of old sang in beautiful sonnets of the delight it afforded the gods to be in companionship with the Ethiopians. Why, then, should we lose hope? Black men, you were once great; you shall be great again. Lose not courage, lose not faith, go forward. The thing to do is to get organized.”

– Marcus Garvey

Africa is for the Africans, period! And this is something colonialism, aka white power, can never accept.

Don’t forget that colonialism is the root issue of it all

After decades of revolutionary anti-colonialism, including expelling all Italian colonizers, Gaddafi’s government worked toward cementing the nation’s successes by pursuing nuclear weapons to defend against the colonizers. Toward Gaddafi’s later years, however, the government adopted a softer stance toward the colonizers, and tried to work together.

In 2003, Libya agreed to dismantle its nuclear program. It also worked with its former colonizer, Italy, to stop illegal immigration into Italy, and it normalized relations with the u.s.a.

In return, the colonizers lifted economic sanctions… for a short while, before they bombed the defenseless country and had Gaddafi lynched in 2011. The country has been at war ever since, and while there are ongoing peace talks, nothing is certain and without revolutionary leadership, the prospects for the colonized Libyan masses seem uncertain.

No matter the wealth stolen from your nation, once the land is in collective ownership of the organized colonized masses, no colonizer can succeed against them. We must follow this science by becoming organized ourselves, and never forget for an instant that colonialism requires nothing less than our complete death and exploitation.

The colonized working class are the only people able to truly free ourselves from this brutal system of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism imposed on us. We learn from the revolutionaries who came before, and we continue the science of revolutionary anti-colonialism.

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Feature image photo credit: bobrayner