I think working class BIPOC are where most of the potential is. I won’t discount white workers, but I will discount vast numbers of them. I don’t think propaganda tells the whole story when it comes to their supposed vacillation. Settler colonialism and imperialism really does make a huge material difference in their everyday lives. I’m pretty nervous to bring up something like China with any of them for instance because I strongly suspect that they will immediately hit me with reactionary bullshit—even lots of people who would fully support someone like Bernie or perhaps someone even further left. That’s no accident. They know, even if they’ve barely ever thought about it before, that if China goes up, amerikkka comes down.
Yh alot of them are going to need to be discounted at some point, but I think that will be unfortunately true for alot of non-white people as well.
Giving psychological-like arguments that they know, even if they've never thought about it, is always difficult and sometimes veers off into unfalsifiability imo. It's always a difficult question demonstrating the exact relationship between the material benefits even most white working class westerners benefit from to some degree, how that determines their material interests and, in turn, how that influences their behaviour and ideology more broadly. Propaganda doesn't tell the whole but it's still an integral element, essential for determining how people think by interacting with the material conditions that benefit them materially due to imperialism (and which therefore strike them as 'making sense').
Like why do they perceive certain growing, developing economies as threats and others as not, including when they have relations of neo-colonial and imperialist or client-state dominance towards them?
Like if you tell a lib or even a conservative, 'country x in Africa/Asia/South America grew this year and reduced poverty by..' then they might say 'oh hwell i'll tel ya hwhat that's just fine now ain't it'. I think alot of them really don't think that what they think is supporting imperialism. Most couldn't define imperialism if they tried. The socio-economic and cultural conditions are there but I think it requires an actual intentional effort on the part of the ruling class to direct the hostility which, like you note, comes organically out of an imperialist society. A base structure still needs stabilization and direction from its superstructure.
Why during the 80s was Japan the main futuristic fear? Obvs Japan's economic development was important as it struck some members of the bourgeoisie as a threat to their interests, leading to actions in the financial sector which slowed down Japan into stagnation since the 90s. A heritage of xenophobia and racism obviously plays a part. All of these were mobilized in bourgeois media, which reflects the ruling ideas of the bourgeousie, indeed whose function is necessarily to determine and ensure the hegemony of the ideas of the hegemonic class.
With China, you don't just have a clear competitor who is now openly calling into question the US's status as global hegemon and whose influence is unavoidable, but also 24/7 warmongering and 'Yellow Peril' type shit all over almost every media source.
I'm normally sympathetic but also sometimes sceptical (like, how would we confirm or falsify this?) of how strongly some arguments attribute a conscious or unconscious desire on the part of western working classes to preserve an imperialist order which, lets be honest, the vast majority of people are ignorant of. I think it can be understood more clearly as the superstructure producing ideologies, of which those that serve and benefit the capitalist base structure will be more likely to survive, because they are in, and so their conditions of reproduction are those of, an imperialist-capitalist economy, and an anti-China one is clearly aligned with the interests of the western ruling class. Ordinary people are aware of their benefits relative to the vast majority of workers on this planet, and they attribute it to their own social, cultural, or (if they are white) sometimes their racial or ethnic superiority (obvs the former can bleed into the latter). They are told that this is due to the virtues of the place they live, and this is convenient, because people don't won't to hear that their quality of life depends on, for them, unimaginable levels of exploitation.
I think working class BIPOC are where most of the potential is. I won’t discount white workers, but I will discount vast numbers of them. I don’t think propaganda tells the whole story when it comes to their supposed vacillation. Settler colonialism and imperialism really does make a huge material difference in their everyday lives. I’m pretty nervous to bring up something like China with any of them for instance because I strongly suspect that they will immediately hit me with reactionary bullshit—even lots of people who would fully support someone like Bernie or perhaps someone even further left. That’s no accident. They know, even if they’ve barely ever thought about it before, that if China goes up, amerikkka comes down.
Also just practically, I don't see any successful revolution without a mass mobilization of the white working class.
Yh alot of them are going to need to be discounted at some point, but I think that will be unfortunately true for alot of non-white people as well.
Giving psychological-like arguments that they know, even if they've never thought about it, is always difficult and sometimes veers off into unfalsifiability imo. It's always a difficult question demonstrating the exact relationship between the material benefits even most white working class westerners benefit from to some degree, how that determines their material interests and, in turn, how that influences their behaviour and ideology more broadly. Propaganda doesn't tell the whole but it's still an integral element, essential for determining how people think by interacting with the material conditions that benefit them materially due to imperialism (and which therefore strike them as 'making sense').
Like why do they perceive certain growing, developing economies as threats and others as not, including when they have relations of neo-colonial and imperialist or client-state dominance towards them? Like if you tell a lib or even a conservative, 'country x in Africa/Asia/South America grew this year and reduced poverty by..' then they might say 'oh hwell i'll tel ya hwhat that's just fine now ain't it'. I think alot of them really don't think that what they think is supporting imperialism. Most couldn't define imperialism if they tried. The socio-economic and cultural conditions are there but I think it requires an actual intentional effort on the part of the ruling class to direct the hostility which, like you note, comes organically out of an imperialist society. A base structure still needs stabilization and direction from its superstructure. Why during the 80s was Japan the main futuristic fear? Obvs Japan's economic development was important as it struck some members of the bourgeoisie as a threat to their interests, leading to actions in the financial sector which slowed down Japan into stagnation since the 90s. A heritage of xenophobia and racism obviously plays a part. All of these were mobilized in bourgeois media, which reflects the ruling ideas of the bourgeousie, indeed whose function is necessarily to determine and ensure the hegemony of the ideas of the hegemonic class.
With China, you don't just have a clear competitor who is now openly calling into question the US's status as global hegemon and whose influence is unavoidable, but also 24/7 warmongering and 'Yellow Peril' type shit all over almost every media source.
I'm normally sympathetic but also sometimes sceptical (like, how would we confirm or falsify this?) of how strongly some arguments attribute a conscious or unconscious desire on the part of western working classes to preserve an imperialist order which, lets be honest, the vast majority of people are ignorant of. I think it can be understood more clearly as the superstructure producing ideologies, of which those that serve and benefit the capitalist base structure will be more likely to survive, because they are in, and so their conditions of reproduction are those of, an imperialist-capitalist economy, and an anti-China one is clearly aligned with the interests of the western ruling class. Ordinary people are aware of their benefits relative to the vast majority of workers on this planet, and they attribute it to their own social, cultural, or (if they are white) sometimes their racial or ethnic superiority (obvs the former can bleed into the latter). They are told that this is due to the virtues of the place they live, and this is convenient, because people don't won't to hear that their quality of life depends on, for them, unimaginable levels of exploitation.