The Weaponization of Hip Hop
excerpt from recent publication: understanding the assault on the Black man vol 2
“Get off drugs, xtasy is turning niggas into soft thugs.”
Ice Cube of Westside Connection, “So Many Rappers in Love” (2003)
What connection can you the reader imagine between the irredeemably racist and genocidal regime of apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s, on the one hand, and American Hip Hop of the late 1990s and early 2000s, on the other? It seems unimaginable, doesn’t it? These two phenomena are worlds apart temporally, geographically, culturally, politically, and spiritually. Yet, these two disparate and irreconcilable realities can be mentioned in the same breath if the discussion is about the recreational drug “Molly” or, to be exact, the militarized MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxy methamphetamine), formerly known in Hip Hop as Xtasy (Ecstasy). Tracing this connection will, I believe, adequately introduce the subject of this Volume: the current scientific assault on Black America, including but not limited to the weaponization of marijuana and the weaponization of Hip Hop. Exploring this subject of “Molly” shines a peaking light on so many of the themes that we will elaborate on here.
I. Ecstasy to Quiet The Black Townships
In the early 1980s, fears of a “black tidal wave” drove white scientists to try to develop a variety of means that could ensure the survival of white South Africa…[R]eportedly part of Project Coast was genetic engineering research, which was being conducted to produce a “black bomb,” bacteria or other biological agents that would kill or weaken blacks not whites. The black bomb could be used to wipe out or incapacitate an entire area where an insurrection was taking place.
The Black Man and Woman in America who suffer under the scientific wickedness of the U.S. government should study closely the so-called “horrors of apartheid” that took place in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s in particular, because America was South Africa’s mentor and tutor in these horrors, and thus the mind, policies and practices at work in South Africa’s apartheid reflects the mind, policies and practices at work in American white supremacy and Israeli colonialism. The US, Israel and apartheid South Africa worked closely together because they all shared the same problem: their most immediate enemy to be disposed of was not another nation-state threatening them from outside. Rather, in all three cases the real enemy threat came from pockets of ethnic populations within their own borders. The U.S. propped up the horrifically racist apartheid regime of South Africa (and Israel) for decades and the US helped repress the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. In fact, it was the CIA who tipped off the apartheid government of the whereabouts of Nelson Mandela, leading to his capture in 1962. The US had pegged Mandela as “the world’s most dangerous communist outside the Soviet Union.” Everything was fine in South Africa – from the Afrikaner rulers’ point of view – until the Soweto Uprisings in 1976, which initiated unrest throughout the country. The eruptions in the Black townships of South Africa put the regime in the mind of “total war” and “total onslaught” against the Black South Africans: “it’s now accepted that the 1976 Soweto uprising’s (massive protests against the Apartheid regime) are what prompted the creation of the project [Coast], with the South African government hoping to develop methods of incapacitating or controlling large crowds.” In 1981 the regime initiated its chemical and biological weapons (CBW) program called Project Coast, headed by Dr. Wouter Basson, later known as “Dr. Death.” Why the nickname? Because: “There are many people who think Basson was a war hero—because he killed the blacks big time,” in the words of Daan Goosen, Basson’s subordinate in Project Coast. The South African CBW program was the protégé of the United States CBW establishment. During the 1940s and 1950s South African military officers were trained in CBW by the United States and the United Kingdom. As William Finnegan in The New Yorker observes: “According to Basson, Project Coast was modelled on the American chemical-weapons program, which he first managed to penetrate in the early nineteen-eighties.” Basson received his training in CBW at Fort Detrick in Maryland and Porton Down in the U.K. From the U.S. he got knowledge, equipment, and viruses to weaponize. Basson himself would later confess: “I must confirm that the structure of the [CBW program] project was based on the U.S. system. That’s where we learnt the most.” Thus,
The South African bioterrorist campaign depended upon very close relationships with U.S. scientists…
From 1981 to 1993, the United States supported Wouter Bassoon’s (sic) weaponization programs by
financing close collaborations with U.S. scientists and by sponsoring Basson’s sojourns to the United
States for conferences education.
The U.S. supported the South African regime and the CBW program, tutoring the operatives in techniques and providing some chemical and biological weapons. The tactics used by the South African bioterrorists against Black people in Africa were also used by U.S. bioterrorists against Black people in America, and vice versa. The chemical and biological programs of Project Coast were divided between two different facilities, and the programs had two specific operational objectives. Both programs aimed to undermine the health of the Black township communities, one through biological means the other through chemical.
• Roodeplaat Research Laboratory – the biological research, development and production facility located ten miles north of Pretoria. The aim of this program was a biological “Black Bomb” or Kaffir-killer and a sterilizing vaccine or agent. Later during our discussion on the weaponization of Black America’s food, we will elaborate more fully on this program.
• Delta G Scientific - the chemical research, development and production facility located south of Pretoria. The aim was the development of incapacitating, crowd control chemical agents that could pacify the angry “insurrectionists” and quelle the townships: “chemical agents were being developed to make people passive”.
One of the chemical agents looked to “to make people passive” was MDMA. In 1999 the independent South African News organ Independent Online (IOL), under a headline that read “‘Basson’s men made ecstasy for warfare’,” reported:
The apartheid government manufactured ecstasy on a large scale in 1992 as a possible chemical weapon to incapacitate state enemies, a chemical scientist employed at
Delta G at the time testified in the Pretoria High Court on Friday.
According to testimony and reports the Directorate of Covert Collections, a super-secret unit within the South African Defense Force (SADF), manufactured the weaponized MDMA for Dr. Wouter Basson. “Almost 100 percent pure ecstasy made from unique formula as part of a secret project to control crowds.” The desire was for incapacitating agents which could affect the thinking and judgment capabilities of state enemies. MDMA was to be put in aerosols and sprayed over an angry crowd to “neutralize the offensive spirt.” Dr. John Koekemoer, former head of chemical and biological research at Delta G, testified during the 1998 Truth and Reconciliation Commission trials that in the final days of apartheid the South African government ordered the Project Coast chemists to make one ton of ecstasy for riot control. Dr. Koekemoer acknowledged that ecstasy’s effect was to enhance interpersonal relationships and make one “want to kiss [his] enemy.” Therefore “Basson’s production of ecstasy as a ‘love drug’ [was] aimed at pacifying unruly mobs”. The ecstasy was manufactured “in pure crystalline form” and delivered beginning in February 1992. As we shall see, 1992 was an important year in South Africa and in America. Ecstasy was not the only incapacitating agent Delta G produced in order to pacify the Black townships. Mandrax (Quaaludes), LSD and marijuana were also weaponized for crowd control purposes. The plan was to extract the active ingredient (THC) from marijuana and insert it into crowd-control grenades. The overall aim of these efforts, some investigators suspect, was for the drugs to be “dumped into black areas to encourage addiction and sap the resolve to resist.” According to Zhensile Kholsan, an investigator for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there are strong suggestions that “drugs were fed into communities that were political centers, to cause socioeconomic chaos.” Also,
The former head of police forensics in South Africa, Lothar Neethling, told the commission Mr Basson was
briefed to produce riot-control equipment containing mood-altering drugs, and was therefore supplied with
200,000 mandrax tablets as well as LSD and marijuana. The TRC's legal officer, Hanif Valley, put it to Mr.
Neethling that the purpose of the research on drugs was to spread addiction among blacks, asking: "What
better crowd control than to have an enslaved youth?" The scientist said the aim was to find non-lethal
methods of crowd control.”
"What better crowd control than to have an enslaved youth?" America would show the exact same mindset. In fact, while South Africa’s Black townships were the primary destination for much or most of that “pure crystalline” ecstasy manufactured for Project Coast, at least some of it was reportedly intended for an international destination. One of the destinations, we now know, was Chicago, Illinois. Karl Kemp reported for Vice:
International concerns were raised when a drug bust (in Chicago) traced almost completely pure ecstasy all the way back
to South Africa and the Delta G laboratories, which led to cooperation between American and South African intelligence.
What Kemp does not realize is that it was likely American and apartheid South African intelligence cooperation that brought the Delta G Ecstasy to Chicago in the first place. In fact, the evidence strongly points to South Africa having originally gotten their weaponized ecstasy from the U.S., who was the first to militarize the drug . . . .
II. The U.S. Army Militarizes MDMA
MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by the German chemical company Merck and stayed shelved for fifty years. Then, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies got their hands on it and researched its weaponization. In 1953 the Army undertook studies to assess the toxicity of mescaline analogues, MDMA being the best-known member of the group. As Steven B. Karch relates in his “Historical Review of MDMA”:
Army researchers had hopes that MDMA could be used in its highly classified MK-ULTRA experimental
program – an exercise in mind control. These experiments began in the 1950s and continued through the
early 1960s. Military and intelligence interests were in MDMA as an interrogation and behavior manipulation
tool. The experiments focused entirely on “weaponizing” MDMA . . . .