Present-day Slavery
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an American slave. Douglass had an — for the time — unusual relationship with his master. Whereas most other slaves were forced to work on the plantations, Douglass was free to do the work that he loved and sell his skills outside of his master’s direct control, on condition that he had to turn over a large portion of his earnings to his master every week.
Douglass knew that this was wrong. It was after all money that he had earned himself. No one had the right to take it from him. The whole idea of freedom is that you get to decide for yourself what you want to do with the fruits of your labor. This is a practical application of what it means not to be a slave.
As he wrote in his book “My bondage and My Freedom” (1855):
The practice, from week to week, of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and character of slavery constantly before me. I could be robbed by indirection, but this was too open and barefaced to be endured. I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my honest toil into the purse of any man.
The thought itself vexed me, and the manner in which Master Hugh received my wages, vexed me more than the original wrong. Carefully counting the money and rolling it out, dollar by dollar, he would look me in the face, as if he would search my heart as well as my pocket, and reproachfully ask me, “Is that all?” — implying that I had, perhaps, kept back part of my wages; or, if not so, the demand was made, possibly, to make me feel, that, after all, I was an “unprofitable servant.”
Douglass wrote before the income/payroll tax, but what he experienced then is exactly what we are still experiencing today. It is no coincidence that the U.S. “tax authority” (IRS) was created on July 1st, 1862 — six months before the so-called “abolition of slavery”. Preparations for the transition to the new form of slavery had begun at least half a year earlier. Slaves were told on January 1st, 1863, that slavery had been ‘abolished’. A big lie, of course, since what took place was merely a transition to another form of slavery — one where the slaves were forced through taxation to transfer their energy c.q. the fruits of their labor to the robberment. Like I explained in a previous article, this fact had not escaped Anton de Kom in Suriname either.
Notwithstanding, much has been said and written in recent months about our so-called ‘slavery-past’. The term ‘slavery-past’ falsely gives many the impression that slavery was something of the past, and that we are therefore supposed to be free now. However, the reality is that we are still living in slavery, and although many may not yet be able or dare to articulate this, they are clearly feeling it firsthand today. Apart from income/payroll taxes, VAT and the constant devaluations of money (also a form of taxation according to economist John Maynard Keynes) make sure of that.
Years of brainwashing have left most people confused today. When it is drilled into your head from early childhood through schooling that “slavery has been abolished” and that you are now free, and when this is also celebrated every year on July 1st, it is understandable that in later life it becomes difficult to think differently — even when you are confronted daily with the harsh contrary reality. In a desperate reaction to the injustice that people feel, but of which they cannot see the fundamental cause, they take to the streets to protest again and again, year after year. But nothing changes, because they cannot get to the root of the problem, due to their dimmed mental vision.
As Frederick Douglass wrote in his book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (1845):
I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.
Therefore, at election time, people keep making the illogical choice for the same social-, economic- and political system used to enslave and oppress them.
So my question to everyone is: Isn’t it time to get smarter and make different choices? Isn’t it wiser to start talking about present-day slavery? After all, to solve a problem you must first recognize that it (still) exists.
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