|
Mumia and Stephen tried to tell us.
If you want to understand the vulgarity of our contemporary moment, the crackdown on anti-ICE protestors and the kidnapping of Venezuelan president, all you have to do is study the past.
“Like all empires, the harsh and violent forms of control that have been used on the “wretched of the earth,” have migrated back to the homeland in a time of decay to keep the population in check. The tyranny we have imposed on others is now being imposed on us."
-Abu-Jamal & Vittoria, Dreaming of Empire Book One
Published over the course of three years from 2018 to 2021, the ambitious and graphic Murder Inc. trilogy authored by Mumia Abu-Jamal and filmmaker Stephen Vittoria provides a sweeping radical reinterpretation of U.S. history. They prove that the United States was not merely involved in isolated foreign interventions, but systematically operated as a global enforcer for corporate capitalism—functioning like a state-run crime syndicate serving elite economic interests.
Listen to Mumia's recent commentary about Murder Inc.
|
What does the trilogy do?
Reframes U.S. History as Structural Violence
Murder Inc. situates U.S. foreign policy within a long arc of imperial expansion. Militarism is not as aberration, but as structural: a core feature of a capitalist world system.
Centers the Victims of Empire
The trilogy foregrounds people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia who experienced coups, sanctions, debt traps, and military interventions.
Links Racism and Empire
A central line is the argument is that white supremacy at home and imperial domination abroad are mutually reinforcing. The policing of Black and Brown communities inside the U.S. mirrors counterinsurgency strategies used overseas.
Exposes the Corporate-State Nexus
The “Inc.” in Murder Inc. underscores the alliance between multinational corporations, intelligence agencies, and the military. The trilogy situates wars as profitable enterprises—benefiting defense contractors, oil companies, financiers, and private security firms—rather than as humanitarian missions.
Watch this book trailer about the series
|
|
Why are these lessons so important today?
They provide the roadmap to interpret and predict our world.
They help us understand that militarism is a bipartisan handshake
and to "Follow the Money." Who profits, who pays?
Surveillance and Policing are globalized
The same technologies and counterinsurgency logics used abroad circulate back home—through predictive policing, border militarization, and expanded intelligence powers. Empire is not just external; it reshapes domestic governance.
Realize that crisis is opportunity—for Capital
Whether war, pandemic, or climate disaster, elites often consolidate power and wealth during emergencies. Murder Inc. argues that global instability is not accidental—it flows from an economic system that requires expansion, discipline, and periodic violence.
Empire is not a foreign policy mistake—it is an economic system’s survival strategy.
Most importantly, resistance is key
Says Mumia, "We know now that the most powerful weapons in the world cannot create a result if the people continue to resist."
|
|
Please consider donating to Prison Radio so we can keep these books in print, and continue recording commentaries from behind the prison walls.
|
|
Here’s what your gift can do:
- $50 covers our email and mail communication with correspondents.
- $100 funds a week of recording phone lines.
- $178 pays expenses for one prison visit.
- $250 covers publishing one action alert.
- $500 funds the editing and publication of one commentary (we release more than 250 every year!).
|
|
|
View all the books available on Prison Radio website
HERE
“The term may have been coined in 1845, but the seeds of Manifest Destiny arrived with Christopher Columbus when he stumbled onto the shores of North America—the self-styled “New World.” Since then, the death grip of its ideology has been the operating principle of the American Empire—a fervent, fanatical, at times religious mandate to carry out economic and geo-political acts that will always benefit the chosen few, which, in today’s parlance is the “one percent.” In fact, this Draconian gospel of exceptionalism has been the all-powerful dogma fueling American imperialism and free-market fundamentalism at the core of U.S. armed atrocities—both domestic and foreign. Writer and cabinetmaker Charles Sullivan offers this allegory: “It is the unquestioned religion of America that also bears a strange resemblance to the ideology of the cancer cell.”
-Quote from Murder Inc.: Dreaming of Empire
|
|
