It seems like Settlers is pretty prolific on the left but there's very scant info about him online.
One of the reasons I'm skeptical of him is that he's extremely elusive for such a major (and divisive) figure. For info on the origin of white supremacy and the evils of settler colonialism I steer people towards Gerald Horne, who is a respected black marxist historian.
Gerald Horne is incredibly good, J Sakai has some issues with citations or sharing methodologies as well, imo. However I've found Settlers to be a good "wrecking ball" for dismantling perceptions on history so I tend to recommend people start there and then move on to The Counter-Revolution of 1776 or something similar
Horne's good. I do think the counter revolution of 1776 over plays its hand a little bit though. To me the revolution is more about settler colonial revolt over conceptions of freedom Ala Aziz Rana's the two faces of American freedom, of which a key part is anxiety over slavery law, but not the principle component (and there is no principle component it's a mixture of several).
Ooh thanks for that, I'll add that to my reading list. I enjoyed the book but I agree the viewpoint felt a little narrow to me at points
Dude is still putting out like a book a year in his late 60s/early 70s.
He cranks them out and he's actually really academic about it. His goal is less to make people hate white folks and more to give people a better understanding of the fucked up system that created this shithole country.
From the way people describe makes him sound way different than the people that read his work
I don't think his stuff is out there for free.
Some of his good works on Amerikkkan settler colonialism:
The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean
The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century
Sorry for the weird format of listing them, they have really long titles. He's definitely not as good at making catchy simple titles like "Settlers" lol
I don't have any I was just checking him out via Google :(
i tried reading the counter revolution of 1776 but damn is horne a clunky writer. i find it very hard to read
Here is one interview https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/interview-with-j-sakai-author-of-settlers-mythology-of-the-white-proletariat/
Yeah I found that interview. I'm more wondering about biographical details (unless he mentions some in the interview, I haven't listened yet)
Idk about this interview but I'm pretty sure he's only done like two. From what I've heard he's a Japanese-American that did blue collar work and was inspired to write Settlers because his working class white co-workers were extremely racist and lacked any semblance of solidarity that he would see among nonwhite workers.
Other than that though he's basically a ghost. He revises Settlers every so often but doesn't really do anything in person.
Yeah he's a weird guy that avoids most contact. I just try and recommend more detailed Marxist studies of the United States and American political development that has better methodology and is more recent.
he's just Some Guy who writes books. his lack of credentials or whatever does not tarnish his work for me
yeah since I started getting radicalized years ago, Sakai has always been extremely mysterious, no picture or video interview of him, only the few written interviews. He was a big inspiration for the original MLM-third worldist, MIM (Maoist International Movement defunct). MIM was a pretty strange group, besides their controversial third worldism, they also believed all sex is rape in a patriarchal society. Like Sakai they were extremely secretive. What was known about them, was that it was founded by Harvard Grads. The most bizarre part was the lead up to the end of the group. There were weird cryptic blog posts by their Chairman Henry Park, about getting caught in a honey trap while working at a government job. A few months later Henry Park was dead. Gives me vibes that the whole MIM thing was an OP.
he has never existed. He is just a figment of our collective imaginations
Here's the closest thing to a bio of him I could find online
https://www.pmpress.org/blog/authors-artists-comrades/j-sakai/
This interview also has a lot of info
http://libcom.org/library/when-race-burns-class-settlers-revisited-interview-j-sakai
