Kendrick Lamar was platformed to lead the way for black rappers to model compliance to the fascist agenda to social and material rewards.

Kendrick Lamar (KL) was given a lot of platform in 2024, culminating in the spectacle of his 2025 Superbowl half time performance and the Grammy Awards. His image has been honed over the past decade. He started his career as a working class 'good kid' who is affiliated with the Bloods (gang) in Compton, emphasizing that he goes to church. He bagan publicly appearing with Barack Obama in 2016; it was the election year that saw the viral Bernie Sanders campaign, culminating in Trump winning the presidency against Clinton. In 2017, the first year of the first Trump administration, KL released the album Damn. With Damn, he was countenanced into intellectual legitimacy by being awarded by an academic-ish institution, the Pulitzer Prize, in 2018. l saw this tweet from somebody talking about (being compelled into) studying his poetry in a classroom setting.

https://x.com/VarrickWI/status/1887967738536112475

(this is a screenshot)

KL's background is significant to his platforming. The community leadership and organizing that the Black Panthers provided and represented was systematically dismantled by COINTELPRO. The Black Panther Party was erased, and their community leadership was replaced by street gangs. One can trace this history through rapper Tupac Shakur, who was a Mob Piru Blood gang member, and his mother was Black Panther Party organizer Afeni Shakur.

There is currently a group characterized by Canadian state media (US proxy) to be "New Black Pathers". No actual Black Pather Party members have cofirmed that this group is conected to them in any manner. Meawhile, Mumia Abu Jamal is still prolificly broadcasting from prison.

Over the decades, elder gang members became gentrified: think Dr. Dre, Nas, Snoop Dogg, or the "true face of black conservatism" Jay Z.

Street gang-ish culture and tactics are now recruiting idle people for the administration's agenda while posing as doing the opposite. Johanna Fernandez of City University of New York describes that COINTELPRO recruited citizen agents on a mass scale (from the 1950s onward). What is happening now is sophisticated, engineered propaganda fitting into a larger program that parallels such recruitment. The administration makes an effort to show that this is counterinsurgency recruitment.

KL's current messaging and the subsequent (astroturf &) community responses has divided BIPOC, pushed the Greenland/ Alaska land grab agenda, and silenced any criticism despite his open association with the cult (Black) Radical Hebrew Israelites (designated as a hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center since the 2010s).

Kendrick Lamar’s messaging is simple and consistent

1. In 2024, he was in a high profile rap beef. It was carefully planned drama that is/ was highly publicized. "Not Like Us", the beef winning track, energized Los Angeles and was subsequently elevated with multiple awards.
   This messaging is consistent with fascist politics. The Yale academic Jason Stanley describes fascism a politics of Us vs Them. Not only is "Not like Us" the title of the song, 'they not like us' is repeated dozens of times in the song. An older YouTube video illustrates fascism as a 4 tier pyramid scheme.
   
   The 2018 film "Us" by Jordan Peele describes the motivation of impoverished, invisibilized people to engage with us vs them mentality; note that the film came out the same year KL received his Pulitzer Prize. "Us" received much less platforming in comparison, despite of Peele's success with Get Out the previous year, whose theme is internalized oppression.
   More discussion on Jordan Peele in the films section.


2. KL is then crowned deified as the savior king of rap by influencers. Even before winning this beef against the previously incumbent "king of rap" Drake, KL employed Christ imagery in the album and tour "Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers". More discussion under point 5 below.


3. KL followed the winning of the beef, which was announced by influencers, with a full album "GNX" that was released free on multiple platforms. In the second track "Wacced Out Murals", KL said “turn me into an Eskimo”.
   Soon after the release, social media gave me several pieces of information in conjunction without me asking:
   1. Eskimo is a racial slur,
   2. calling it out (as a racial slur and as a problem) is an attempt to disparage Kendrick, who represents liberation of oppressed peoples,
   3. aggressive speech telling those calling it out (indigenous voices) to STFU, the above resulting in minimal push back.


4. Large portions of Los Angeles burned to the ground in January 2025. The depression of tragedy would drive people to reminisce about the fun, unity & excitement that this song represents, from the good (old?) days of the previous summer, which was actually not a good time at all: July 2024 was the hottest summer on record in LA; the streets are filled with homeless encampments; UCLA was occupied by Pro Palestine protesters who engaged in physical altercations and were attacked by counterprotesters and police; there was a mass shooting at a warehouse party in August. It is a formula for instant nostalgia for a bad but less terrible time in people's traumatized minds. People were encouraged to lower their expectations for safety and freedom. It positions "Not Like Us" as an anchor for sanity in chaos, sanctuary.


5. The diamond encrusted crown of thorns by Tiffany (from the imagery of "Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers") is also a symbol of capitalism and not giving a damn about African (including indigenous) populations. Diamonds are worn by rappers all the time, but KL presents himself as moral (cf. title of the album and tour), as moral as Jesus.
   KL talks about having gone to Africa in his poetry, implying some type of understanding or connection to Africa deeper than that of his audience. Fresh natural diamonds are always exploitative of African populations, including indigenous ones. It can be gleaned what type of relationship KL decided he has with people in Africa.
   
   More on colonial mentality under the Bad Bunny section.

KL falls in Line with the Arctic Land Grab Agenda

Greenland is majority Inuit, and Alaska’s native population is Inuit. This US presidential administration has the agenda of grabbing these arctic lands. In the lyrics of Wacced Out Murals, the line preceding the one rhymed with the word ‘Eskimo’ could be better rhymed with ‘popsicle’ or ‘icicle’, if KL just wanted to say he’s cold. Instead, he used this racial slur.

Social media then made sure the consumer understood it as a slur. When confronted, KL refused to acknowledge the confrontation, much less apologize.

The result is minimal confrontation from indigenous communities. l engaged with some indigenous folks vocalizing discontent online. Like most people exposed to this messaging, l did not know that 'Eskimo' was a slur toward Inuit peoples. At first, some people online projected that an apology was forthcoming. It never came. Indigenous voices did not get loud nor sustain a protest. l myself, on the other hand, reached out to Red Nation Podcast asking them to address this shade in a way that can potentially disarm it. The following week they did a panel on cults in the US, but only those affecting the yt population.

In the mid 2010s, there was an Inuit social media protest regarding the celebrity Ellen Degeneres funding anti sealing campaigns and platforming this agenda, also the legacy of Brigitte Bardot's extended campaign regarding baby seals.

l viewed the documentary Angry Inuk (2016) to learn more about this issue. This doc discussed at 13:02 Inuit anger being quiet, an individual would insult whoever had offended them with satiric song,

...then they take a turn at the drum and tease you back. It's kind of like a modern day rap battle.

There is no Inuit rap superstar, or even someone in the Inuit community who has the confidence to take on the ostensibly biggest rapper in the world. When l heard this line in the film, l got an instant mental image of 2016, the height of the No DAPL action and the Bernie Sanders campaign; a cis yt man in his 20s starting a political career watched this documentary. Now that guy would be 10+ years into his career and in charge of things, such as engineering counterinsurgency.

Inuit people are associated with ice constructed igloos. KL says turn him into a person who has a close relationship with ICE. Since 2025, everyone knows what ICE means.

Open association with hate group Radical Hebrew Israelites

In his Pulitzer Winning album "Damn" (from a decade ago in 2017), in the track "Yah", KL states:

I'm a Israelite, don't call me black no mo'
That word is only a color, it ain't facts no mo'
My cousin called, my cousin Carl Duckworth

The outtro is Carl Duckworth (aka Karni Ben Israel) stating in voicemail:

we're gonna be under this curse because He said He's gonna punish us — the so-called blacks, Hispanics and Native American Indians are the true children of Israel.

Carl Duckworth/ Karni Ben Israel is a member of the Israel United In Christ church.

(this is a screenshot)

Here is an article about "Black"/ "Radical" Hebrew Israelites.

Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Radical Hebrew Israelites as a hate group for more than 10 years. The Wikipedia article continues to use the title 'Black Hebrew Israelites'. It is noteworthy that there are members of this cult who are not black/ African American.
More articles about this group from SPLC.

Some indigenous people pointed out that KL "has been anti native for a while" when the "Eskimo" issue came up. No indigenous nation in the US has classified themselves as Israelites. Indigenous individuals in the US refer to themselves as native, Native Americans, or Indian. Some older people use Indian because the treaties their nations signed with the US government use "Indian" to refer to them. Applying 'Israelite' to define the identity of Native/ Native American/ Indians is the use of an exonym, much like applying 'Eskimo' to Inuit people.

Some fans read "Israelite" as metaphor while KL explicitly states he is an Israelite both in his music and in interviews. When l engage with rap consumers, mostly people in their late teens & 20s, many begin to splain to me about 'Israelites' being symbolic until l show them the SPLC article on Radical Hebrew Israelites.

Black People Cannot Talk About Radical Hebrew Israelites Without Creating an Opening for Attack on the Community

There is a big problem that prevents questioning of KL's actions. It is the anti Jewish black person trope.
l am purposefully not use the word here that has become a theater of war in itself.
The opponent in the rap beef spectacle, Drake, is Jewish through his yt Jewish mother.

A well-researched, well-argued academic paper describes this:
How White Folks Became Jews: The War on Black Antisemitism and the Recalibration of Racial Regimes
by Matt Seriff-Cullick
also a recent blog post:
The Racial State’s ‘National Day of Mourning’: and how the whites become Jews
by Alana Lentin

l inform the reader that this essay was edited from a 5000+ word letter l sent to the academics in the panel Black Studies and the Fight Against Fascism" hosted by Haymarket Books on YouTube.
In my letter l stated that a General Strike is the tool of choice, and how it would look. (The general strike has come to pass in Minnesota, more discussion under the Minnesota essay.) l had a brief correspondence with Robin D G Kelley (UCLA US History Chair) who told me that this material can be edited to be published. l was surprised at his answer because the material was directed at these academics, who have platform and standing in the black community to talk about this in a timely manner, in order to defuse the effects of KL's messaging. l do not have such standing, that's why l wrote them. Unsurprisingly, l did not receive further communication from Dr. Kelley. Black people have already been extensively characterized as antisemitic over the decades. Publicly talking about the problem with KL's cult, who actually act like this, triggers this trope affecting the entire black population.

The conflict over the word "antisemitism" is so extensive, at such intensity and scale, that UC Riverside black studies scholar Dylan Rodriguez coined the term "Lexical Warfare" to describe it as being a theater of war in itself. He describes it in this YouTube video.

Rappers are displayed prominently as being rewarded for falling in line with the fascist agenda

KL won a lot of Grammys for Not Like Us, ostensibly a west coast uniting song. As someone from the San Francisco Bay Area, l would say it did not even unite California even though it alluded to the hyphy movement from Oakland, (as social media commentary narrates, making sure l knew.) It united the LA rap scene and energized LA. Yet, while the LA fires' devastation was still fresh in February 2025, KL did not give one single shout out to the affected communities when he received his multiple Grammy Awards.

Displacement is an agenda of the city of LA, like any other city in California and much of the US. The state of California systematically defunded its state park service and fire fighters beginning more than 10 years ago. Our wild fires are resultant of a combination of climate change and policy. We have the biggest population of unhoused people; contrary to the narrative of homeless people flocking to California, unhoused folks in California are mostly from California, and people from other states become unhoused when they come. The Black Panther Party itself was uprooted from its base in Oakland, Calfornia. R Reagan was the governor of California who starred in propaganda Hollywood films. California has always had a duality of liberal image and actual deprivation policy.

KL is not the only one showing that falling in line is rewarded.

1. Snoop Dogg (& Nelly) performed at Trump's inauguration party, to everyone's surprise, while the awards portion of the KL spectacle was still ongoing. His approach to conforming to fascism is not manipulative of the community, conforming in a very obvious way to maintain his privilege instead of presenting as moral.


2. A side character in the scripted KL spectacle is Doechii, who was only somewhat famous until after the Grammys. Not long before that, she signed to KL's long time record label "Top Dog", and has been labeled the female KL. She also received a lot of Grammy Awards at the same event as KL.
   The night of the Grammy Awards was the start of the ICE raids by this administration. The host of the awards show was Trevor Noah, an immigrant, who would not stop talking about illegal immigrants to platform the issue. Doechii was prominently framed in a shot with Noah talking about immigrants and rolled her eyes visibly. This was further highlighted on social media, with gifs and clips. In social media, Douchei was lauded while Noah was being called inappropriate, racist, and not funny.
   This performer's disconnect between recognizing one's own identity as coming from an agrarian slavery past and present agrarian slavery of another group is salient. She is modeling internalizing oppression to rewards.
   

   Note that Bruno Mars, whose father is Puerto Rican & Jewish, and whose mother was an immigrant from the Philippines to Hawaii, supported Trevor Noah's joke. Trevor Noah was instantly deplatformed.

   
   
   Immediately after the Grammys, she was shown on social media attending Paris fashion week sporting many outfits when attending runway shows with praises for her looks. The Twitter account ‘Good Kids Madd City’ (almost verbatim KL's 2012 album title), an ostensibly grassroots youth group from Chicago, tweeted her cross dressing photos and praised her. Basically she is what happens when Missy Elliot & Lady Gaga go into a blender. This juxtaposition furthers the LGBTQIA+ against BIPOC trope.
   Again, this shows an artist falling in line with the fascist agenda and literally receiving immediate rewards. Few in the black community is calling out this artist, and when they do, it is attributed to feuds with other artists who are more in the lineage of the stripper turned rapper archetype, while Douchei is marketed as wholesome. Wholesome is thus framed as visibly internalizing oppression and expressing it as supporting oppression of others, what some of us call lawful evil.


3. Trinidad artists Trinidad Killa & Nicki Minaj made a song called Eskimo in early 2025. In the song, TK repeats that (they) are nice.
   "Nice" is only one letter off from "ICE".
   In December 2025, Nicki Minaj was prominently interviewed by Erika Kirk at Turning Point USA's annual conference in Arizona where she gushed about supporting this administration. Nicki Minaj, stated "it's ok to change your mind," and bring in her mid-40s, "we are the cool kids".

This public theatre is spoonfed to millions.

l got back on social media in 2024 to support Gazans asking for direct financial help. l do not watch awards shows and l am not a rap enthusiast. In returning to Twitter, l have been exposed to the above.

Even French people listened to Not Like Us in real time. France is where American culture from 60 years ago go to retire and die, they usually receive American media late and react late, but not with Not Like Us. KL is part of the propaganda machine hard at work.

The above is carefully engineered, planned, and executed weaponization of popular culture, in action in ongoing low intensity warfare upon the domestic populations of the developed world

The methods of attack are:

• modeling preemptive compliance to the fascist agenda, which is visibly rewarded with fame, public awards, and implied monetary gain;
• division: e.g. the black community from indigenous, LGBTQIA+, Latinx, and immigrant communities
  (more discussion under the Bad Bunny section)
• promoting insulation and self segregation based on identities
  ref. front page section on Elite Capture of Identity Politics

Some grassroots groups like ‘People’s City Council LA’ came out stating that KL sucks immediately. They have been obfuscated. Antisemitism always serves Eurocentric yt supremacy.

STIFLING the ability to discuss problems
and competing narratives
is a major assault front in domestic counterinsurgency.

Mechanisms of division must be centered. While active people are in panic, the psychological needs of individuals cannot be addressed without dealing with the psyop mechanisms of division. Rather than succumb to crisis, individuals can recognize that now is the opportunity to get to the root of long-standing problems surfacing for resolution.

It feels like a moment of opportunity... to make big demands.

- Robyn Spencer-Antoine

Liberal counterinsugency psyop aims to bait people on the lower tiers of the fascist pyramid scheme to strive for the "like us" tier, by exhibiting that privilege is achievable by someone born into the working class. BIPOC personalities are prominently featured as receiving privilege from compliance, but they serve the "us" tier. This is why the spectacle makes an effort to show that this privilege is rooted in capitalist yt supremacy.

Preemptive compliance is how a lot of movements are defeated... We give up before we are defeated.

- Barbara Ransby

Fascism has been defeated before without violence

An example is the immigrant and youth led movements in London in the late 1970s. This Youtube video describes that during the fascist upsurge of the 1970s, famous musical artists David Bowie (as the Thin White Duke) and Eric Clapton made public statements directly promoting fascism or that was inciting racism. Rock Against Racism directly faced down such incitation culturally, coinciding with the rise of Punk.