How many of you remembered what happened to the 25th and 35th President of The United States of America?
History says presidents who have been on collision course
with a cohesive state apparatus and the national establishments have ended up
being killed.
1. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated for endorsing
a ban on slavery ahead of its historical moment. He banned slavery to free
labor so that it could engage in emerging factories and industries in the US.
Land owners, being the rulers then and in control of the state assassinated
Abraham to preserve the status quo. Lincoln fought against a cohesive US State
apparatus and national political establishment just like Trump.
2. Donald Trump rode on a racist platform and a rejection of
the entire status quo. He has promised to dismantle the architecture of the US
establishment, worse, still rework the world political order in a manner that
upsets the American bourgeois and the international economic regime.
3. Circumstances surrounding John F Kennedy’s assassination
is further proof of where Trump is headed. Kennedy embraced the Civil Right s
movement pitting himself against the entire racist establishment. Under him the
propertied were headed to reviewing black people salaries over and above
political freedoms. He, the individual, clashed with the establishment. They
expunged the ‘virus’ to preserve their body politic. They shot him dead
4. Ronald Reagan (1980-88) was shot but recovered. Like
trump his background was gambling and riches without clear political
definition. His ultra-capitalist inclination with a militaristic international
relations policy clearly earned him a bullet.
5. Patrice Lumumba’s Congo (1960) provides an African
classic in this regard. The masses supported Lumumba a socialist revolutionary,
but the emerging graduates of colonial education and the privileged
collaborators allied with the colonial state assassinated him. To this day, the
colonial state matches on after Lumumba’s remains were liquefied in sulfuric
acid.
6. Captain Thomas Sankara (1983-86) of Burkina Faso. It was
reported in the media that when Sankara took power on a socialist revolutionary
platform “Mercedes Benzes disappeared.” A new thrifty regime had set in. He
even refused to attend an OAU meeting and deployed the money towards digging
boreholes for his people. The political mafia of Burkina Faso commandeered a
counter coup, killing him and his eleven ministers.
7. President Silvano Allende of Chile (1971) walked the same
path. He pushed for reforms that sought to satisfy the dreams of the
downtrodden of Chile after a grassroots political movement that gave him a win
against the establishment. Intact and united as a ruling class, they killed him
when he attempted to dismantle the instruments of the state.
8. Where success has been registered, deposed leaders of the
establishment under attack have been exterminated as a measure to achieve
political stability. Former President Jerry Rawlings takeover provides a
perfect illustration. Rawlings lined up all the political representatives of
the system and the state apparatus shot them. That is what earned him 20 years
reign in power. I doubt if Trump has such an option.
9. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda (1994) provides another
paradigm in power takeover. The RPF, which he led, engaged the entire
establishment with a view to provide a shift in ideological leadership of
Rwanda. The movement did not ascend to the helm of the establishment as it then
was, like Donald Trump has done. Instead they decided to crash the state
physically and create a new state apparatus directly under their command.
Deaths occurred on the other side of the divide. Hundreds of the former high
ranking officials of the pre-Kagame Rwanda are scattered all over the world,
living in the valleys of the shadow of death, still being hunted down.
10. Trump’s situation is even worse because his agenda does
not only pit him against his local establishment; he also seeks to re-order the
world in accordance with his myopic whims. He promised to lift restrictions on
nuclear proliferation and cancel climate change agreements. These should remind
us of the fascistic duo of the last century and how they died: Adolf Hitler of
Germany and Mussolini of Italy. There are only two options presenting
themselves in the Trump situation: He will be killed or he will be killed.
Written By Wafula Buke
