“The U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”  - Martin Luther King Jr.

Throughout its history, the American government has echoed the mantra that their country is a beacon of freedom, liberty, justice, and equality; that its actions abroad and at home are motivated by a sense of morality and justice, or simply through the idea that America is the greatest nations to ever exist.

However, history tells us the opposite. The foundation of America was guided by violence and the desire for economic, political, and cultural hegemony. This is central to the dominant ideology of America, one that seeks to benefit a minority at the expense of a majority. Through conquest and genocide, motivated by economic need and white supremacy, America was a nation born in blood and terror. American elites have always destined for more, and they continued to expand and grow America through expropriation, occupation, invasion, and even through media control.

Throughout this work I analyzed American history from a historical materialist perspective which focuses on class struggle and inequality. I then focused on three key factors that I believe uphold and sustain this violent empire:

AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, which violently works to mandate and colonize foreign land for American economic benefit;

AMERICAN CARCERAL SYSTEM, a.k.a the American prison industrial complex and its police enforcers, which manages and produces inequality by suppressing social movements and tightly policing the behaviors the impoverished and people of color: those deliberately on the losing end of economic and political arrangements;

AMERICAN CULTURE, the institutions, practices, and cultural products which reflect the dominant ideology of the US, and support the narratives of American elites.