LETTER TO ACTIVISTS WHO SOAKED THE HOMES OF BROOKLYN MUSEUM BIGS WITH FAKE BLOOD
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIQUE
Home of Brooklyn Musuem director Anne Pasternak after a visit by anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian activists, who issued a communique explaining their actions. Photo credit: activists via X.
The activists who soaked the homes of four Brooklyn Museum big-wigs with fake blood are taking the pro-Palestinian protest movement to the next level. To mark the day and explain why, they did what revolutionaries do: they issued a bold communique.
"The Brooklyn Museum ... is a nexus of Zionism, Imperialism, and settler-colonialism," their statement, reportedly emailed to a left-leaning social media propagandist, said. The four multi-million dollar homes they vandalized were "targeted" because their owners were responsible for the museum's "fascist response to protesters."
The four museum officials, Director Anne Pasternak along with board members Barbara Vogelstein, Neil Simpkins and Kimberly Panciek Trueblood, are also "directly implicated in the genocide in Gaza," the activists' communique alleged.
When it came to revolutionary rhetoric, the message didn't disappoint.
'UNITY, LIBERATION, REVENGE': OUR REVENGE WILL BE THE UNITY OF THE MASSES AND WORKERS FIGHTING FOR AN END TO THE EMPIRE. OUR REVENGE WILL BE LIBERATION FROM TURTLE ISLAND TO PALESTINE.
Not exactly the ringing polemic of Karl Marx's "Workers of the world, Unite!," but not bad for a first try either.
Almost every public official in New York from Gov. Kathy Hochul on down condemned the action as "anti-semetic." These same public officials, including Gov. Hochul, receive campaign donations from pro-Israel groups.
Tribes and nation-states have always manipulated information in their contests with other groups. Propaganda has always been an integral part of warfare. It's no accident history's best political leaders were usually not just skilled fighters on the battlefield, but effective public speakers as well.
Before the Revolution in 1776, soon-to-be-Americans formed "Committees of Correspondence." Samuel Adams helped form the first in Boston 1772. Their role, Adams wrote, was “to state the rights of the colonists and of this province in particular, as men, as Christians, and as subjects: to communicate and publish the same to the several towns in this province and to the world.”
The committee produced the Boston Pamphlet. The revolutionary document stated the general rights of the rebels, listed 12 specific grievances or violations of their stated rights by Britain and ended with "A Letter of Correspondence to the Other Towns" which sought "A free Communication of your Sentiments to this Town of our common Danger."
While the communique recognized "the general Voice of this Province" might differ, the Boston Committee of Correspondence was
sure your Wisdom, your Regard to Yourselves and the rising Generation, cannot suffer you to doze or set supinely indifferent on the brink of Destruction, while the Iron Hand of Oppression is daily tearing the choicest Fruit from the fair Tree of Liberty, planted by our worthy Predecessors at the Expense of their Treasure, and abundantly water’d with their Blood.
Towns throughout not just New England but 11 of the 13 colonies responded by forming their own Committees of Correspondence. The committees established secret lines of communication and organized resistance to British military occupation. They published their own propaganda and shared intelligence on British activities.
When the War for Independence broke out in 1775, the committees became the de facto American government-in-waiting.
Political cartooning was always a source of visual propaganda. American journalist George Creel modernized it for 20th Century technology during World War I. Creel masterminded the U.S. Government's pro-war propaganda campaign with 100s of posters.
Political satire inspired by the Weatherman Underground. East Village Other, 1971.
Leftist guerilla movements embraced the clandestine communique.
“The urban guerrilla must never fail to install a clandestine press," Carlos Marighella wrote in Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, "in order to produce small clandestine newspapers, pamphlets, flyers and stamps for propaganda and agitation against the dictatorship."
Kwame Nkrumah's Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare didn't just include the timeless "15 Rules of Discipline" for revolutionaries, it broke propaganda down into two categories—one aimed at enemy forces, the other aimed at the populace whose support was needed to win—and included a checklist of points the propagandist should hit.
Unlike others, Nkrumah stressed the importance of truthful, factually accurate propaganda—especially if it exposes the revolutionaries' own mistakes.
"Truth must always be told. It is a proof of strength, and even the hardest truth has a positive aspect which can be used," he wrote. "Our propagandists must leave no problem untackled, no mistake unexposed."
While 21 Black Panthers were on trial for allegedly plotting a mass-bombing campaign in New York, the Weatherman fire-bombed the Bronx home of the presiding judge, John M. Murtagh , in the early morning hours of Feb. 21, 1971. They even scrawled “Free the Panther 21” and “Vietcong Have Won” in large red letters on the sidewalk in front.
Three months later, the Weatherman issued a belated "Declaration of War" they titled "Communique #1."
"Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Viet Cong," the communique declared. "Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way."
"Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice," they added.
They bombed NYPD headquarters 19 days later, and issued Communique #2 to take credit.
"The pigs in this country are our enemies," they said. "The pigs try to look invulnerable, but we keep finding their weaknesses."
The Panther 21 thanked the Weatherman with a communique of their own, a love letter, published in the Jan. 21, 1971 edition of the East Village Other.
"We ... take this opportunity to greet you with a spirit of revolutionary love and solidarity—the spirit that revolutionaries feel for each other—that spirit that our enemies cannot understand and nor deal with," the Panthers wrote.
The lengthy mini-manifesto stated points of philosophical agreement between the two groups and ended with a call to team-up.
"We need allies—we have a powerful enemy who cannot be defeated without an allied effort," the Panthers wrote. "Let's ALL try to pick targets with more care and planning."
Of the Panther 21, only 13 stood trial. They were acquitted by a jury of six whites, five blacks and a Puerto Rican on May 13, 1971.
Black Liberation Army Communique #1, May 19, 1971.
Six days later, at least one of the Panther 21 defendants sought revenge on the prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan.
Dhoruba bin Wahad and an accomplice pulled up to Hogan's Riverside Drive apartment building and taunted the two cops standing guard there into chasing them. When they pulled over, the driver ducked and bin-Wahad—in the passenger seat—opened fire on NYPD officers Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti with a .45 caliber M3 submachine gun.
Curry was shot in the face, chest and leg. Binetti was shot eight times. Both lived.
“He fired at us," Binetti testified a year later at bin-Wahad's trial, "and I remember my partner getting hit and I got hit and there was the sound of rapid fire, just getting hit with bullets, and then blacked out.”
A man matching bin-Wahad's description walked into the New York Times’ old Times Square headquarters two days later. He hand-delivered a license plate from the car used in the ambush along with the BLA's first communique, typo in original.
"We send them in order to exhibit the potential power of oppressed people to acquire REVOLUTIONARY JUSTICE," BLA "Communique #1" stated. "The armd goons of this fascist government will again meet the guns of oppressed third world peoples as long as they occupy our community and murder our brothers and sisters in the name of AMERICAN LAW AND ORDER."
It was signed: “JUSTICE.”