Lynch Law: The Root of US Imperialism | Global Research

Lynch Law: The Root of US Imperialism | Global Research

The political and economic foundation of the United States is built
on the corpses of legal lynching, or “lynch law”. Without the genocide
and enslavement of Black and indigenous peoples, the US capitalist
class could not have amassed its profits, wealth, or power.  Following
the passage of the 13th Amendment that supposedly ended Black chattel
slavery at the close of the Civil War, the US capitalist class moved
quickly to reorganize the capitalist economy so newly “freed” Blacks
would remain enslaved. Convict-leasing, sharecropping, and legalized
segregation ensured Black exploitation and white power. These brutal
forms of exploitation were kept intact by white terrorism in the form of
lynching.

Thousands of Black people were lynched by white supremacists from the
end of the Civil War until 1968.  Ho Chi Minh, the first revolutionary
president of socialist Vietnam, worked in the US in the mid-1920s and
examined the horrors of lynching.  He described the gruesome details of
white vigilantes torturing and killing Black people with impunity. 
Local law enforcement officials protected white lynch mobs like the KKK
and Black Legion and often participated in lynching alongside their
white counterparts. ‘Uncle Ho’ states in his work Lyching (1924)
that “the principle culprits [of lynching] were never troubled, for the
simple reason that they were always incited . . . then protected by the
politicians, financiers, and authorities . . . “ It wasn’t until Black
people organized themselves to defend and arm their communities that
white mobs were forced to curtail their racist murder sprees.