Kwanzaa: America's Pseudo-African Holiday Created by Convicted Felon Maulana Karenga
Kwanzaa is a separatist pseudo-African holiday created by a convicted felon.
Every December, the President of the United States issues a statement celebrating Kwanzaa, a holiday honoring “African heritage.”
Corporate America changes its logos. Schools teach children about its “seven principles.”
What they don’t teach is that Kwanzaa was (1) invented by a man convicted of felony assault (involving the torture of women — including testimony that a hot soldering iron was used), and (2) created as a weapon against Christianity, White people, and the West. (R)
This is not conspiracy theory. This is documented court testimony, the man’s own published writings, and public records anyone can verify.
The question isn’t whether these facts are true — they are. The question is why American institutions have decided they don’t matter.
The Man Behind the Myth: “Maulana Karenga”
The creator of Kwanzaa was not an African. He was born Ronald McKinley Everett in Parsonsburg, Maryland in 1941 — the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. (R)
He grew up in rural America, moved to Los Angeles, and attended community college before transferring to UCLA.
At some point in the 1960s, Everett decided to reinvent himself. He abandoned his “slave name” and adopted the title “Maulana Karenga” — a combination of Swahili and Arabic meaning “master teacher” and “keeper of tradition.” (R)
This was not a name given to him by any African community or tradition. He invented it for himself.
This matters because the entire premise of Kwanzaa rests on “authenticity”—the idea that Black Americans should reject “white” holidays and embrace “African” traditions.
But Karenga is not African. He has never lived in Africa. He was an American who literally cosplayed as an African revolutionary while building a paramilitary cult in Los Angeles.
The Paramilitary Cult: US Organization
In 1965, Karenga co-founded the US Organization (the name meaning “Us Black People”) with Hakim Jamal, a cousin of Malcolm X. (R)
This was not a community service organization. It was a black nationalist paramilitary group with:
Armed members who served as Karenga’s personal bodyguards
A paramilitary unit called “Simba Wachanga” (The Young Lions)
Strict hierarchical control with Karenga as the supreme authority
Members who took loyalty oaths and adopted new African names
Karenga demanded absolute obedience. He was the “Maulana”—the master teacher—and his word was law. Members who questioned him faced consequences.
The UCLA Killings
On January 17, 1969, members of Karenga’s US Organization shot and killed two Black Panther Party leaders at UCLA’s Campbell Hall during a Black Student Union meeting. (R)
The victims were:
Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter — Deputy Minister of Defense, Southern California Black Panthers
John Huggins — Black Panther leader and husband of Ericka Huggins
The shooter, Claude “Chuchessa” Hubert, was a 21-year-old US Organization member. George and Larry Stiner were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of second-degree murder. (R)
The FBI’s COINTELPRO program had deliberately inflamed tensions between the two groups — via forged cartoons and letters. (R)
But COINTELPRO didn’t pull the trigger. US Organization members did.
The Torture Conviction
Two years after the UCLA killings, Karenga’s paranoia turned on his own followers.
In 1971, Karenga was convicted of felony assault and false imprisonment.
Court testimony and contemporaneous reporting described an episode in which he: (A) brutally tortured two women who were members of his organization: Deborah Jones and Gail Davis — and (B) held them captive.
Karenga believed they were conspiring to poison him. (R)
The torture methods, documented in court testimony and reported by the Los Angeles Times on May 14, 1971, included:
Stripping the women naked
Whipping them with electrical cords
Beating them with a karate baton
Placing a hot soldering iron in Gail Davis’s mouth and against her face
Tightening a vise on their toes
Forcing detergent and running water from hoses into their mouths
Hitting them on the head with toasters
“Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise.”
— Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1971 (R)
According to one account, Karenga told the women during the torture: “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know.” (R)
Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison. He served approximately four years at California Men’s Colony before being paroled in 1975. He has never apologized. He has never acknowledged guilt. To this day, he claims he was a “political prisoner” and that the prosecution was politically motivated.
The Ideology: Anti-Christian, Anti-Western, Anti-White, Black-Only
Karenga did not hide his ideology. He published it. In his 1967 book The Quotable Karenga, he made his views explicit:
“Christianity is a white religion. It has a white God, and any ‘Negro’ who believes in it is a sick ‘Negro.’”
— Maulana Karenga, The Quotable Karenga (1967) (R)
He described Christianity as “spookism” and questioned the sanity of Jesus. (R) His philosophy, which he called “Kawaida,” was explicitly designed as a replacement for Western religion and values.
Kwanzaa was not created as a supplement to Christmas.
It was created as a replacement for it — an ideological rejection of what Karenga called the “White man’s holiday.”
“You must have a cultural revolution before the violent revolution. The cultural revolution gives identity, purpose, and direction.”
— Maulana Karenga (R)
This wasn’t about celebrating African heritage. It was about ideological warfare—using culture as a weapon to separate Black Americans from American society and prepare them for “violent revolution.”
The “Seven Principles” — Collectivist Ideology in African Packaging
The “Nguzo Saba” (Seven Principles) of Kwanzaa sound benign when translated into English platitudes. But examine what they actually promote. (R)
Umoja (Unity) — Unity of the Black race above all else (reject White integration)
Kujichagulia (Self-determination) — Racial separatism; “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves” (reject White names and holidays)
Ujima (Collective Work) — Make “our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems”—racial collectivism
Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) — Build race-exclusive businesses; “profit from them together”
Nia (Purpose) — “Restore our people to their traditional greatness”
Kuumba (Creativity) — Leave “our community” more beautiful than we inherited it
Imani (Faith) — Faith in “our people,” “our struggle,” and ultimate victory
Every principle emphasizes racial solidarity, racial separatism, and racial collectivism. This is not a celebration of “heritage.”
The Academic Grift: From Prison to Professor
Here is where the story becomes truly absurd.
After serving four years for his felony conviction in the torture case, Karenga was paroled in 1975. Within a year, he had obtained a Ph.D. in “political science” from United States International University (which later merged into Alliant — Alliant became for-profit in 2015.)
He later obtained a second Ph.D. in “social ethics” from USC in 1994.
In 1989, California State University, Long Beach hired Karenga as Chair of the Africana Studies Department — a position he held for over 35 years until his recently announced retirement. (R)
A convicted felon from a heinous torture case. Running an academic department. At a public university. Funded by taxpayers.
Ask yourself: In what other academic field could this happen? Would a physics professor keep his job after a torture conviction? A chemistry professor? An engineering professor? Of course not. But in the world of “Africana Studies,” a torture conviction apparently qualifies as “street cred.”
The field Karenga chaired is one he helped create. He wrote the foundational textbooks. He developed the theoretical framework. He trained the professors who now teach at other universities.
When you invent a discipline, you become its unquestionable authority. He wasn’t just a professor; he was the Dungeon Master of his own role-playing game.
He writes the books, he invents the theories, and he grades the papers based on a reality he created. He cannot be “wrong” because the entire field is a closed loop of his own imagination.
In his woke field of study, you can literally just make shit up and it becomes embedded as “truth” or “fact” without challenge.
A man who called Jesus psychotic and Christianity “spookism” gets taxpayer-funded tenure, while his victims get footnotes in history.
The Political Celebration Machine: Wokeness
Despite Karenga’s documented history, woke politicians issue glowing Kwanzaa statements every year.
In December 2022, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden released a video message praising Kwanzaa’s “seven principles” and giving “thanks for the rich heritage of African Americans.” (R)
Vice President Kamala Harris claimed Kwanzaa celebrations were: “one of my favorite childhood memories” — despite being raised in a Hindu household and spending much of her childhood in Canada. (R) Pics or it didn’t happen.
Bill Clinton issued the first presidential Kwanzaa declaration in 1997. Barack Obama issued detailed statements connecting the “seven principles” to American values — the same principles created by a man who explicitly rejected American values as “White.”
When these statements are issued, backlash inevitably follows on social media. Critics point out Karenga’s criminal history. They’re dismissed as racists. The cycle repeats every December.
The Double Standard: What if a White Guy Did This?
Let’s conduct a thought experiment.
Imagine a white American activist in the 1960s who: reinvented himself as a “European warrior,” ditching his “degenerate American” birth name for something fraudulently authentic like “Vladimir Slavovich” — a Russian-sounding invention to claim ancient Slavic roots he never had, even though his real ancestors were English, German, or Irish, and Russian traditions are as foreign to Western European heritage as Swahili is to the West African origins of most Black Americans.
Invented a holiday explicitly to erase and replace “Black religions,” dismissing them as “inferior savage rituals” poisoning white minds.
Published hate-filled screeds calling any white person who practices non-European religions “sick race traitors” or “mentally deranged” for betraying their bloodline.
Crafted “Seven Pillars of Whiteness” hammering home white racial purity, White self-determination, White-only economic enclaves, and collective loyalty — straight-up echoing KKK manifestos or Nazi Volksgemeinschaft ideology.
Commanded a White paramilitary cult whose armed thugs gunned down black activist rivals in a brazen campus shootout, leaving bodies in the halls amid FBI-stoked rivalries.
Was convicted of felony assault with reported: stripping naked, whipping with cords, burning faces with irons, crushing toes in vises, and force-feeding detergent to “loyal” followers he paranoidly accused of betrayal — all while boasting his methods outdid Vietnamese war horrors.
Paroled after a slap-on-the-wrist sentence, snagged quickie PhDs from diploma mills, and landed a tenured chair in “European Heritage Studies” at a public university, raking in taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate students with his separatist drivel for decades.
Received glowing annual proclamations from every U.S. President since the 1990s, celebrating his “holiday” as a beacon of “European American pride” and “cultural empowerment.”
What would we call this monster? A white supremacist kingpin. A domestic terrorist mastermind. A psychopathic cult leader whose phony Russian-rip-off “holiday” gets flagged as an ADL hate symbol in record time.
Schools teaching it? Outrage and lawsuits. Corporations virtue-signaling with it? Boycotts and cancellations. Any politician praising it? Instant career suicide — buried under “racist” headlines and deplatformed forever.
But swap the races, and this is precisely Maulana Karenga’s resume: self-invented “African” name and title, manufactured holiday borrowing from unrelated East African Swahili traditions (completely alien to the West/Central African roots of Black Americans), torture conviction, cult killings, anti-Christian/anti-White rants, the whole package.
Yet he’s revered as a scholarly icon, his scam holiday gets school curricula, corporate logos, and (until recently) White House videos.
The asymmetry is not subtle. The same institutions that would (rightly) condemn racial separatism and violence from white Americans actively celebrate it when packaged in Afrocentric wrapping. This is not equality. This is a double standard so obvious that pointing it out has become taboo.
Only Black people seem to get away with this. How? Game theory dynamics: (1) Blacks have high in-group bias AND (2) a significant portion of Whites favor Blacks over their own racial group (suicidal empathy/pathological altruism trait)… this gives Black people clear special privileges that no other racial group gets.
Read: Black In-Group Preference: Robust Evidence
The Manufactured “African” Holiday
Kwanzaa is not African. It is not celebrated in Africa. It was invented by an American, in America, using a language (Swahili) that the ancestors of most Black Americans never spoke—they came predominantly from West Africa, not East Africa where Swahili is spoken. (R)
This is the equivalent of a white American using Russian traditions to honor their English heritage just because “it’s all European.” It proves Karenga viewed Africa not as a real place with distinct cultures, but as a prop for his own ego.
The holiday borrows elements from Southern African harvest festivals, but these elements were selected and combined by Karenga to serve his ideological purposes—not to authentically represent any African tradition.
Even the name is manufactured. Karenga took the Swahili word “kwanza” (meaning “first”) and added an extra “a” to make it seven letters long—one for each child present at the first celebration. The word “Kwanzaa” does not exist in Swahili.
The Later Sanitization
As Kwanzaa gained mainstream acceptance, Karenga quietly revised his messaging. In his 1997 book Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture, he claimed that:
“Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday.”
This directly contradicts his own statements from the 1960s. He explicitly created Kwanzaa as an alternative to Christmas—as a weapon against “White religion.”
Karenga’s denials persist: In interviews, he frames himself as a “political prisoner” framed by COINTELPRO, ignoring victim testimony.
By 2016, he softened further, calling Kwanzaa a product of the “Black Freedom Movement” amid Watts riots — conveniently omitting his anti-Christian roots.
The sanitization worked.
Today, Kwanzaa is taught in public schools as a benign cultural celebration. Teachers don’t mention that its creator tortured women. They don’t quote his anti-Christian writings. They present the “seven principles” without noting their separatist intent.
The man who created Kwanzaa as ideological warfare has been repackaged as a kindly professor promoting “family and community.”
Conclusion: Why It Matters
The real outrage — and let’s call it what it is: a profoundly embarrassing national farce — is American institutions and Black communities alike peddling a 1966 Los Angeles basement invention by a Maryland-born, non-African felon as “ancient African heritage” and “authentic Black culture.”
Kwanzaa wasn’t born from any real African tradition or ancestral wisdom; it’s a blatant grift conjured out of thin air by a paranoid cult leader, Maulana Karenga, as a prop for Black racial separatism, virulent anti-Christian bigotry (dismissing Jesus as “psychotic” and Christianity as “White spookism”), and seething anti-White ideology — all while he was running a paramilitary group that tortured and murdered in the name of “unity.”
This “holiday” has zero ties to actual Black history — it’s a scam that somehow evaded common sense, bamboozling generations into treating a torturer’s fever dream as sacred legacy, sidelining genuine African customs like Yoruba festivals or Ethiopian Timkat for this made-up mishmash of Swahili words and harvest rip-offs.
Yet here we are in late 2025, with the nonsense still in full swing: Schools like Malcolm X College in Chicago hosting week-long Kwanzaa events with children’s reading circles and vendor markets, corporations virtue-signaling through holiday logos and DEI memos, and public venues like the Mercer Museum in Pennsylvania or Hudson Hall in New York throwing “celebrations” complete with kinara lightings and principle recitations — all while conveniently ignoring Karenga’s heinous felony conviction for reportedly stripping Black women naked, whipping them with cords, burning their faces with soldering irons, crushing toes in vises, and force-feeding detergent in a three-day torture spree fueled by his drug-addled paranoia.
How did this cult concoction become “Black history”? Through sheer collective delusion and institutional gaslighting, where facts get buried under platitudes about “empowerment” and “heritage,” even as fresh backlash keeps resurfacing the ugly truth: Karenga is a felon cult boss whose “holiday” is as phony as his self-invented African name.
Politicians and media perpetuate the pathetic charade, drawing zero scrutiny from the same crowd that would riot over a White equivalent.
They hype it as “uplifting Black people,” while erasing real historical Black achievements for a holiday spawned from violence, ideological warfare against Christianity and “White society,” and a grift that’s only “Black history” because no one bothered to fact-check the con artist’s resume.
In any sane context, this would be universally denounced as the glorification of a domestic terrorist’s hate-fueled scam: Christianophobic, anti-White racism masquerading in faux-Afrocentric drag.
But because Karenga ticked the “right” racial (Black) and political (woke/anti-White) boxes, he scored a lifetime free ride — tenure at a public university, taxpayer-funded salary, and mainstream sanitization — while his victims fade into obscurity.
The facts are undeniable, documented, and verifiable. The only question left: Will you keep embarrassing yourself by pretending this cult leader’s thin-air invention is “Black culture,” or finally wake up and call out the decades-long scam for the nonsensical grift it is?