"Read Settlers" is a meme, but it's also a true meme. You should read it, or read other things about this thesis regarding the white working class in the US (I've heard other Marxists have since improved on Sakai's thesis but I don't know who they are).

White Americans are doubling down on the racism. As white settler colonialism is starting to face just a little bit of opposition (like teaching kids that maybe the US isn't a perfect, God-blessed country), they are losing their minds over the idea of losing even a tiny bit of their privileges. This is still a perfectly material explanation. White folks have enjoyed an incredible level of privilege since the beginning of this country and they will fight viciously to keep all of it.

IMO the bulk of white Americans are a lost cause. Not to say white folks can't be revolutionary (I'm white), but I think we probably should be spending our very limited time and resources on folks outside the imperial core break from western imperialism, and focus on the oppressed within the core. Any white Americans who want to join in are welcome but any concession to white supremacy is unacceptable.

Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying the Dems lost because racism or whatever. I don't care if the Dems win or lose, it doesn't matter. My point is much more about using electoral results and the campaigns that precede them to see where winds are blowing. It seems that "CRT" and fear-mongering about crime (and thus the need to fund even more cops) was a very effective message in appealing to large segments of the population - particularly the white population.

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      While I'm not very familiar with Buffalo or India Walton, I do think racism has a part (certainly when we add Virginia and Minneapolis into the discussion). Obviously not because Walton is black - so was her opponent. But racism 100% drives white peoples' worship of the cops and "law and order". They want their white enclaves "protected" from black and brown people. In their minds, the cops are the only thing that keeps all those "dangerous" people away. So anyone advocating a more just approach threatens white supremacy.

      • ChairmanBao [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        there are other people besides whites who work forces and support police. Loving the police is more about property rights nowadays. Walton ran on supporting the police as workers and still lost. She lost because she waffled with her union support while trying to appeal to conservatives on issues like law enforcement. Conservatives voted for her black opponent because class trumps race, theyd rather vote for a black guy than what the media is telling them is a real deal commie.

          • ChairmanBao [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            its certainly shifted that way since it became less acceptable to lynch minorities

            • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              its certainly shifted that way since it became less acceptable to lynch minorities

              ”less” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Heck, it’s practically an olympic power-lifter.

              Here is a list of 229 black people publicly executed by police between the murder of Eric Garner and May of this year:

              https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-229-black-people-killed-police-since-george-floyds-murder-1594477

              Tell me those are not “socially acceptable” lynchings. Most of those pigs walk free and faced no consequences.

              “Property rights” is a justification and a dog whistle. Chauvin was a sacrifice to get the libs to go back to brunch.

    • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
      ·
      3 years ago

      I may not be a guy, but there are zero photos of me in existence. The only images of me are X-rays from childhood because I'm that cool and fragile.

      I should publish more theory.

      • ChairmanBao [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        maybe if you publish some theory someone will take a photo of you

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          I have actually published a few things. Just nothing I wanna post here lmao, I'll get my ass dragged over my cringe ass Ph. D. thesis. Also the lack of photos is very deliberate.

          • ChairmanBao [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Same actually. I hope you get photos one day tho, when we dont have to live in fear of the chuds. I hope J. Sakai gets a photo too after they take his mugshot from beating me to death with my own keyboard cuz that would really make my day. I would get murdered by legendary theorist J. Sakai.

            • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              I hope J. Sakai gets a photo too after they take his mugshot from beating me to death

              :wut:

              mrw someone fantasizes about POC being enslaved by the carceral state.

                • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 years ago

                  Sunmary, but it’s more than this: From the moment the first settlers landed in Amerika, they constructed a system of enslavement built on a European definition of race. Many of the first slaves were the indigenous people of the continent.

                  This system of exploitation and “cheap” labor was the foundation that the white class system was built on. Amerikan capitalism (really all capitalism) is dependent on forms of slavery. Even a poor/ working class white person participates in and benefits from the exploitation of minorities.

                  Sakai argues that the true proletariat of Amerika are these minorities. Their labor is exploited and used to fund economic benefits for the white ruling class. The New Deal, for instance, was largely racially segregated.

                  It is not impossible to be an ally, but it is very much like how a wealthy person can become a class traitor. It is not in their material interest and because of this it will be pretty rare. Liberation from capitalism is most likely to come from and be lead by the workers exploited by racial apartheid.

                  Unsurprisingly, this theory/concept greatly upset the white man for a similar reason someone born into wealth instinctually rejects class analysis. “I worked hard”, “I’m not racist”, etc. That betrays a liberal outlook of individualism instead of a systemic understanding.

                  Sakai doesn’t pull any punches. He uses clear, loaded language and his writing should be loaded. Amerika is unjust and evil. There are clains he’s a fed and “dividing workers”. To me that reeks of white cope and gosh damn is it ever stinky.

                  The closest Amerika came to socialism was moderate social democracy with FDR and even then it was still dependent on apartheid. You cannot make any real progress on a socialist project in Amerika without accepting this, otherwise you will just be trying to build a socialist state on top of that actual proletariat.

                  Someone please correct me if I missed a spot, I’m responding based off memory and still chugging coffee. I tried to use as little jargon as possible.

                    • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
                      ·
                      3 years ago

                      I haven’t had a chance to read much Fanon yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a sobering analysis that realistically could only come from someone who is affected by that system.

                        • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          3 years ago

                          Why does that matter? He’s written other works if that’s what you’re asking.

                          Regardless, this analysis was largely based on conversations and thought within the remnants of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and Sakai articulated it within Settlers.

                          Settlers was written as an underground document for the surviving members of the BLA in prison trying to re-assess their strategy and the historical reason why the white Left abandoned them and other Black Liberation groups seems to be lost on a lot of people as well.

                          To quote Dan Berger's "Subjugated Knowledges: Activism, Scholarship, and Ethnic Studies Ways of Knowing":

                          Sakai is the child of Japanese immigrants and a former autoworker. Butch Lee is a transfeminist who published the 1980s feminist zine Bottomfish Blues. Both were politicized through their involvement with the black freedom struggle, from the civil rights phase through its revolutionary nationalist incarnations that described itself as part of a black liberation movement. These books were written and circulated within a semiclandestine network shaped by revolutionaries close to or part of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), the military offshoot of the Black Panther Party. Sakai and Lee have been key nodes in the circuits of intellectual discourse among imprisoned radicals, especially from the BLA. Their political biographies, like the books they produced, are tied to the fascinating but little known history of revolutionary nationalism based in Chicago from the 1960s to the 1990s. It was a political environment shaped by the racial geography of Chicago, which included a heady mixture of black liberationists, Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalists, Iranian Marxists, Palestinian militants, and white anti-imperialists. As a result the history of these books hints at the hidden history of Chicago’s late twentieth-century revolutionaries.

                          If you also accept his claim that False Nationalism, False Internationalism was written by the group, which included Sakai, which was the "Red Rover" of Night Vision, then you might be able to tell at least which organizations, etc., that he was in contact with given the things that they were interested in at the times they were interested in them with the level of sophistication they had in their analyses. These people and those that worked with them are still out there but they probably have little interest in talking to you.

                          That being said, even if we discount False Nationalism, False Internationalism and Night Vision as being at least co-authored by Sakai, there are a number of additional works published under that name, most of which are collected here: https://readsettlers.org/extras.html (The "Cash & Genocide" piece included as an appendix in Kersplebedeb's 4th printing of Settlers is for instance not included.)

                          • ChairmanBao [he/him]
                            ·
                            3 years ago

                            I have to read Fanon first, I think I can personally trust him more. I sincerely think Sakai sounds like a post-left version of Wretched of the Earth, but I've barely gotten into the text.

                            I still refuse to believe this guy is real. Regardless of how right they are, his theories havent accomplished anything so far and I cant measure the progress. If people want to use this theory to organize, be my guest but please tell me there is a plan.

                            • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
                              ·
                              edit-2
                              3 years ago

                              Why does there need to be a plan involved for a piece that’s focused on a structural analysis? Sakai is a Maoist in the style of the Black Panthers, if I remember correctly.

                              Can’t speak to how much its directly informed organizing. The book is useful for understanding racial apartheid and highlights why intersectionality is necessary.

                        • layla
                          ·
                          3 years ago

                          Does it matter? The analysis is correct.

    • Lundi [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Racism is inherently tied to the opposition of communism in this country and has been for over 50 years. Racism is the primary mechanism for the justification of anticommunist sentiment at home and activities abroad by the capitalist class.

      I think America has made more progress in the tolerance between races than tolerating communism.

      That’s impossible. If America had actually made improvements in tolerance between races, there wouldn’t be so much anticommunism.

      • ChairmanBao [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        My point is that objectively America is more tolerable of racial difference than it was in 1950. You can improve racial tolerance in order to defend capitalism, thats why it accepted integration in the middle of the cold war.

        I actually think property rights are the primary mechanism (see Mao: primary contradiction), for the justification of anti-communism AND rascism.

        But thats cuz i read :marx-joker:

        not :sakai-no-picture:

        • Dingdangdog [he/him,comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          I think the intolerance probably just slightly changed forms. With integration came a ton of more subtle ways to discriminate. Like it became less socially acceptable to lynch people, but behind closed doors the state kept doing all it could to harm minorities and still does.

          The moment the real "Amerikkka" feels sort of threatened by minority power in the US all the violence will come right back.

          I mean you can see it happening right now. The neo-fascist movement that happened in response to Obama and then BLM is fucking scary and wraps communism, LGBTQ, and all non white people together.

          • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            Oh dang howdy, do I ever agree with this. The “AntiFa anarchist thugs” squealing from the hogs only really showed up once the BLM movement started fighting back even more.

        • LoudMuffin [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          My point is that objectively America is more tolerable of racial difference than it was in 1950.

          Only among young people......we're trending backward lately from what I've experienced and seen

    • Vanjones [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      It's being reported that India walton used scabs and the union came out against her in the past few days.

    • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I think America has made more progress in the tolerance between races than tolerating communism.

      This isn’t accurate at all. Jim Crow and segregation still exist, it’s just been restructured so white moderates feel better about it.

      Shaking hands with someone and smiling at them doesn’t matter if you support government death squads occupying their communities.

      Examples: prison system, war on drugs, the ongoing genocide of BIPOC by the pigs, means-testing, ongoing denial of reparations, etc.

      Meanwhile, you’re much less likely to be killed by a cop or denied housing for being a communist. Sure commies only rarely get elected to public office, but we’re all aware electoralism is a dead end.

      • ChairmanBao [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I mean that we've made progress in the field of civil rights, Im not sayings its not still bad. You dont think integration helped at all?

        Meanwhile there is a longer way to go towards building a racially diverse socialist America than a racially diverse capitalist America. Red-baiting is arguably becoming more effective than race-baiting. Antifa gets mentioned a lot in chud propoganda.

        • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
          ·
          3 years ago

          You dont think integration helped at all?

          Pal, I did not say that. I said People Of Color in this country are less “tolerated” than communists.

          • ChairmanBao [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            People of color get fucked over by the state and then get gaslit into being told rascism is over in America. I am not trying to say this.

            I am trying to say that communism as a theory is farther from acceptence than the theory of racial tolerance

            • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Maybe. In Amerika they’re pretty much linked to the extent I’m not sure they can be separated. Amerikan culture is deeply entrenched and built upon apartheid.

              :shrug-outta-hecks:

              • ChairmanBao [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Idk, I just think is easier to talk to coworkers about how shitty the boss is, instead of how white he is and that should be the premise of organizing. Thank u for coming to my TED (turner is literally a confederate apologist) Talk.

                • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  That’s a step of it and necessary to deprogram and make progress. The reality of it being easier to talk about class than race with other white workers also demonstrates what I'm talking about.

          • effervescent [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Not just that. Integration was a failure. Most of the US is still pretty heavily segregated