"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.

  • pooh [she/her, love/loves]
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    3 years ago

    Which frankly leaves much of the white American population out.

    We should also keep in mind though that material conditions are certainly not static, as we've seen since 1970's with the white middle class being slowly destroyed. This decline will accelerate, and when revolution does happen, it could very well be partly because the suffering has gotten to a point where many of these people no longer have anything to lose. At that point, a revolution could go either way and it doesn't seem like the worst idea to do whatever we can now to make sure things go our direction when shit does hit the fan.

    • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
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      3 years ago

      yeah I agree, I don't mean to say we shouldn't talk to anyone who isn't in the lowest rungs of the working class. We’re all gonna become proletarianized at some point, and so we need our ideas out there so that they are available to be taken up once people begin to recognize their declining conditions. But I also think we can see with the whole Trump/Q/Jan 6 stuff, many in the middle-classes are more likely to shift right as their conditions decline in an attempt to regain lost economic/social/political privilege/status. Maybe that is just the propagandized anticommunist nature of the US at this point, who don't know/understand socialism, but this trend of the middle-class shifting right also bears out historically. So we can't stop talking to anyone regardless of who they are, but I think its most important to set up mutual aid and create a base in the working class and lumpen, so that when people become proletarianized we don't say great, now that you're here we can actually get started, but instead we already have a base to catch those people falling.