The Jester in Jail: Gazi Kodzo has Been Arrested
Augustus Claudius Romain, “Gazi Kodzo,” has been arrested after a standoff at the headquarters of his Black Hammer cult. It is obvious, of course, that what is said and done by the state and its enforcement arm, the pigs, cannot always be trusted; with this said, charges of false imprisonment and kidnapping only confirm what was already known and charges of rape are, to me, unfortunately, not surprising- when a dangerous individual attains disproportionate control over the personal lives of others, it is often the next step that this power is exploited in sexual ways. The frequent occurrence of such phenomena in churches demonstrates this.
While we can’t know this will be the end for the BH cult (we can only hope), now seems a good time to speak on it retrospectively, a bit. This is the first point which must be made: Black Hammer was from its inception, and remains, in whatever form it has now after Gazi’s arrest, a rightwing organization; regardless of what its advocates and the bourgeois press, in their fumbled discussion of this cult, say, this has always been clear: their national chauvinism and refusal to prioritize class issues (declaring all whites automatically not proletarians or revolutionary, an absurd view), their routine demonization and belittling of victims of Nazi genocide, and their persistent campaign of slander against Marx make clear their true nature as rightwing actors. The “socialism” of Kodzo is the “socialism” of Hitler’s “national socialists,” or Limonov and Dugin’s, or Sihanouk’s sangkum “socialism.” The cult has adopted communist symbols for press purposes, just as shallowly as it has also claimed to be a church, and utilized absurd Joker makeup in a pretense of Yoruba spirituality, and made false promises of a new Edenic commune for its members in order to steal their wages, but its essence is brown, not red. This is true now and it was always true, long before it was laid bare in the public eye by associations with the Proud Boys and other fascists.
Therefore, we cannot let the narrative that mainstream media will no doubt try to spin out of this, that it demonstrates the danger of the radical “left” or radicalism on “both sides,” go unchallenged: Gazi Kodzo is/was a petit-bourgeois or bourgeois and a rightwing actor. His cult bears no relation whatever to the communist movement, except as an enemy.
This is our next key point: what Augustus Romain has been doing, has been manipulating his followers for, is a fundamentally capitalistic enterprise. His objective has always been, and remains, to accrue in the first place financial capital and in the second place clout and influence, or “social capital.” This is obvious, really, in that his organization has achieved nothing on the ground (beyond handing out some covid masks, which is nice, I guess, although not nearly outweighing the harm they’ve done by supporting antivaxxerism), but has managed to accrue a huge amount of attention and clout for Gazi via internet nonsense provocateur-ing, and to make him a huge amount of stolen money via the hoax of fundraising for his totally phony promise of the “Hammer City” commune. This is pure grifting, parasitism of working class individuals led astray from the genuine movement for freedom and into the clutches of a conniving individual seeking to suck away their wages, what little they are left after they have already been robbed by their bosses, for his own profit- this is capitalistic behaviour, plain and simple.
Lastly, we must address the ideological dimensions of all of this a bit more. I have suggested before, and think more confidently of all the time, a thesis about the historical materialist, applied dialectical materialist, narrative of history: as human society has developed by class struggle through different economic systems, by way of revolution, the ideological dimensions of the pivotal revolutions have, at each historical step, become more refined. Revolutions against ancient slave society to establish feudalism, in the few solidly documented cases we have (the collapse of Rome is the best-documented example we have; others, such as the succession between slave-economic and feudal dynasties in China, are known but not so well documented), have been largely without clear philosophic creeds- there is no evidence the early, mostly Germanic, European feudal kingdoms had any philosophical conception of themselves as the gravediggers of an old order and architects of a new, even though they emerged from the class struggle of enslaved northern European tribes and other slaves revolting against the ruling class of slavers in Rome; indeed, many went on to claim erroneously they were the heirs and continuators of the Roman empire. The revolutionary efforts against feudalism did have ideological dimensions- in Europe, first forms of peasant-revolt schismatic Christianity and later early bourgeois mercantilism and liberalism- but they were vague. But the proletarian revolution, in order to succeed, is guided by a scientific philosophy of liberation, and this is Marxism. We can see that this is the case because every attempt at it not guided by Marxism has been either well-intentioned but doomed (e.g. the Anarchist experiments in Catalonia) or an empty and deliberate opportunist grift (e.g. Kodzo/Romain and his “city”). Therefore, the lesson is that all phony misdirections from the workers’ cause, all erroneous “leaders” like Gazi out to start their own cults, must be defeated. The only weapon for the revolutionary Left to take up is Marxism in its up-to-date form as synthesized under the mighty tutelage of Mao and Gonzalo: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with Maoism as the third and highest stage of ideological development and with the lessons of special universal validity and significance of Peru’s revolutionary guiding thought, Gonzalo Thought- what some may call simply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and others Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought. All other ideological programmes are to be questioned and challenged from the standpoint of MLMism, the scientific ideology of the liberation of the exploited toiling masses of the world!
I may or may not update this post as Romain’s trial goes on.
Update March ’23: Romain’s trial remains postponed. It doesn’t seem clear why; I must say that even as I denounce Augustus Romain Jr. as the despicable opportunist, probable rapist, and fascist dupe that he is, I cannot condone the bourgeois state’s open flouting of its supposed “guarantee” of the right to a speedy trial for all those accused. Romain really should be on trial by now.
In other news, BHO- now the BHP, the Black Hammer Party (a farcical name; it has no mass base to call itself a party)- is nominally still active, though they seem to be doing little beside raising Romain’s defense budget. They have also recently announced a coalition with another fascist group, the “Patriotic Socialist Front.” I doubt anything will come of this.
