Useful Idiots
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
‘I was sure they were going to kill me’ – African Socialist Leader On FBI Raid
0:00
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -52:26
-52:26

‘I was sure they were going to kill me’ – African Socialist Leader On FBI Raid

Click here for the full episode, including the extended interview where Chairman Yeshitela describes the full raid, the dark history of American colonization, and how he and the APSP are making real change — not “malign influence” — in cities all around the country.

“It’s the US’s attempt to crush the Black liberation movement.”

On July 29th, members of the African People’s Socialist Party were raided by the FBI. At the St. Louis home of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela, armed agents threw flash grenades, drones swooped in to spy, and snipers trained lasers on their targets’ chests — all while the FBI taped over the ‘smart doorbells’ of neighbors to avoid being filmed. Anyone have 1984 bingo yet?

And the purpose of the raid? To bust the Russians for, in the FBI’s eyes, secretly running the African People’s Socialist Party. The raid came in conjunction with an indictment that day of Russian national Aleksandr Ionov for an alleged “malign influence campaign” against the United States.

“There’s this insidious assumption in the mind of most white people globally that African people are too stupid to know what our own interests are, that somebody else must’ve come and told us that we are mistreated in the United States,” Chairman Yeshitela tells us. “So if Black people are saying something is happening to us, it’s not because it’s happening, it’s because Russia is talking through us. That is what they constructed.”

Now, Yeshitela and his team of activists are under intense legal threat from the US government. They’re trying to raise awareness, but very few in the media are covering it.

Every American knew about the Trump raid that happened weeks later, and calls to defund the FBI were solely in defense of the former president. No one talked about the Black activists threatened and raided.

“Generally speaking,” the Chairman explains, “Americans are the most backwards people in the world in terms of living right in the heart of the most oppressive system while being the most ignorant about what it is that this government does.”

Subscribe for the full interview, where Chairman Yeshitela describes the full raid, the dark history of American colonization, and how he and the APSP are making real change — not “malign influence” — in cities all around the country.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

For more information on the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru, visit https://apspuhuru.org/

Upcoming events to support the movement:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inpdum-2022-convention-defending-the-black-community-tickets-388189955607

14th annual Black People’s March on the White House is happening November 5 and 6. Info will be posted at https://blackisbackcoalition.org/

Thumbnail photo courtesy of https://www.theburningspear.com/

Discussion about this podcast

Useful Idiots
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
Useful Idiots is an informative and irreverent politics podcast with journalist Aaron Maté and podcaster/writer Katie Halper. Episodes feature on-the-road coverage of the 2020 campaign and exclusive interviews, with humor, commentary and dissection of the politics news of the week. Join Katie and Aaron as they examine important stories that have slipped through the cracks and what the media got wrong – and laugh about whatever is left to laugh about.