William F Buckley was a Nazi!

My fellow Vidalophiles will have seen the famous clip of the Gentleman-Bitch crossing swords with the reactionary William F Buckley, Jr. back in 1968. Here's the juicy bit, and here it is in context. It must've been clear to anyone who followed Buckley closely in those days that he was a racist. Here's an excerpt from his editorial in a 1957 issue of National Review entitled 'Why The South Must Win' which I found in an old CounterPunch article:

The central question that emerges is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own. National Review believes that the South’s premises are correctThe great majority of the Negroes of the South who do not vote do not care to vote, and would not know for what to vote if they could.Universal suffrage is not the beginning of wisdom or the beginning of freedom. The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. It is tempting and convenient to block the progress of a minority whose services, as menials, are economically useful. Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.

As he was about so many things, Gore Vidal was right about Bill Buckley.

Notes on Anglo-Fascism.

In my most recent articles for Souciant Magazine I've been focusing on the Far-Right in the UK, it's history and it's relationship with the concept of whiteness. In the article 'Keeping Britain White' I take Powell's notorious speeches as my jumping off point. It was the perfect starting-point as the extent to which Powell tapped into the race-consciousness of white people in England cannot be exaggerated. There's a reason Powell's memory lives to this day and his political career has been eclipsed by the speeches he gave in '68. The spirit of Powell still captivates many to this day.

It was in 1968 that the Conservative politician Enoch Powell gave his notorious speech, in which he claimed that “in fifteen to twenty years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”. He invoked the language of ‘excreta’ and ‘wide-grinning picaninnies’ in relation to Afro-Caribbean immigrants.

Powell imbued this inflammatory portrayal with a classicist reference to the poet Virgil: “as I look ahead I am filled with foreboding like the Roman I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

Immediately the speech became notorious and has since remained an artefact in the collective imagination of British life. Every so often there is an eruption of racial strife and the phrase ‘Enoch was right’ is bandied about. Yet the speech had not emerged from a clear sky. In the mid-1960s, Powell had penned articles against Indian men sporting turbans and beards at work. There had been serious racial tensions in the past. The Notting Hill riots of 1958 were followed by calls for the doors to ‘coloured’ immigration to be shut. The Far-Right participated in these riots and sought to propel themselves further on the basis of racial strife.

If you look back at old newsreels from forty to fifty years ago you can see people saying things like “We want to keep Britain white”. It was a slogan for far-right organisations like the White Defence League, the National Front, and later, the BNP. In the aftermath of Powell’s speech people would march under banners and placards that displayed the same or similar messages. He had tapped into the racial consciousness of the white working-class. As a prominent right-wing politician Powell had given credence to sentiments widely held in the country. He had gone out on a limb in a bid to unseat his rival Ted Heath as leader of the Conservative Party.

I go on to go over the racial oppression of the Irish by the British in order to frame our common assumptions about race. I refer to the accounts of racist signs, such as "No coloured, or Irish", and the details of British colonial rule in Ireland. Relying on the work of Noel Ignatiev and Ted Allen I present how the Irish were not considered 'white' until the late nineteenth century. In fact, in a conversation I had with Carl Freedman, on this matter, I was told that it was only in certain parts of the US. So there was asymmetry in that regard. The Irish may have found headway on the East Coast, but not necessarily across the American continent. It is true that the KKK was partly a successor to earlier nativist movements looking to restrict the rights of Irish Catholics.

My comments on how this can be did not satisfy some. As I had explained that the 'white race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as it is a socially constructed formation this was bound to be the case. It was thought I was saying that there is no biological basis or differences whatsoever. This is not so, there are genetic gaps and clusters of ancestry. However, 'race' is a far too crude a concept as by the one-drop rule the entirety of the white American population in the Southern States would have been deemed 'black'. South African Apartheid had the same trouble in defining what constitutes 'coloured', 'black', 'Indian', and 'white'. The fact that the Irish were not considered 'white' by the English (and were compared to apes by the popular press) while the Japanese were categorised as 'white' in South Africa tells us a lot about how 'race' really works.

In the next piece I wrote 'Britain Pushes Right' I looked at Britain First and tried to contextualise it within the history of the Far-Right. History reveals the extent to which we take the unoriginal for the original. The Far-Right has a very limited playbook, though we underestimate them at our peril, we have to make sure our response is proportionate to the threat we face. A great article on the Britain First rabble has been produced by Thomas G Clark. Here you can see my own take on the Golding-Dowson double-act.

At the helm we find a double-act Paul Golding and Jim Dowson. Golding leads the Christian patrols, which consists of a campaign of intimidation against the Asian British community. He was a BNP councillor from 2009 to 2011 and left amidst the infighting around Nick Griffin. Dowson is a much more mercurial figure. He ran the BNP call centre in Northern Ireland and pumped £4 million into the Party’s coffers to provide fuel for a public relations campaign. As he was in the Six Counties, Dowson found natural allies in the Ulster Loyalist movement, and has been organising Union flag protests. Before all of this, the Scottish friend of British nationalism was a Calvinist minister and a pro-life campaigner, with ties to the American Religious Right.

Never a member of the BNP, Dowson now says he would prefer to see UKIP go from strength to strength. He has been explicit that the aim of providing support to the BNP was to “push everyone over to the right” and that has resulted in the “success” of UKIP. As Britain First put up candidates for the EU elections of 2014, the group recommended to its supporters to vote for UKIP, or the English Democrats, in areas where they could not put up a candidate. The only other recommendation was to not vote British National Party. Dowson has said that he foresees a Holy War, and that he agrees with Islamists who call it jihad. He only stipulates that it’s really a crusade.

It’s not the first time that the British far right has moved to appropriate religious sensibilities. It’s not surprising, as fascism is a ‘scavenger ideology’, to quote Robert Paxton, which constitutes itself by plucking up whatever may propel it forward. After the National Front was humiliated at the ballot box in 1979, its members moved on to experiment with a kind of fascist Christian mysticism. This was led by Derek Holland, a devout Catholic, who declared himself a ‘political soldier’, advocating an austere and disciplined life committed to the purity of nationalist ideals. The drift into esotericism was no doubt furthered by the infighting which ultimately led to the Front splitting up.

The ‘crusade’ Dowson envisions has international dimensions. The Christian infused nationalism has obvious allies in those parts of the world where religion still plays a serious role as an identity-marker in political conflicts. On the Britain First Facebook page, you can find pictures which demonise Bosnian Muslims, while others celebrate the Lebanese Phalange. No doubt this is to align Britain First with Serbian ultra-nationalists and a Maronite Christian organisation founded out of admiration for Adolf Hitler. This is just what you can find out if you canvas their Facebook page with scrutiny in one’s eyes. As we have already seen this wouldn’t be the first time that the far right has forged unexpected alliances.

The article is now dangling on reddit for the usual feeding frenzy. Good luck to the mob, I say.

"Anti-racist is a codeword for anti-white".

What's in a slogan?

Tapping into deep-running resentment has long been a tried and tested method of revanchistes everywhere. Then there are those reactionaries who go a bit further to reach for more than just resentment. This is where we'd do better to borrow a concept from Nietzsche - some would say, an indispensable concept - that of ressentiment. As Anindya Bhattacharyya blogged, the best way to understand ressentiment is in Deleuze's terms as the master's maxim is “I am good, therefore you are bad”, while the slave expresses the logic of ressentiment: “You are evil, therefore I am good.” In striking down the affirmative and active propositions of the master, the slave asserts their own power and their own position.

In white nationalist, supremacist and separatist circles - the crowd who wish they could emulate Adolf Hitler - this strategy can be found in the following slogan: "Anti-racist is a codeword for anti-white." Note the implication that to be pro-white is to be racist and, of course, we can see the truth in that side of the message. Yet it seems to most that the concept of 'anti-racism' is not anti-white when in actuality this requires more of us than straightforward common-sense. We first have to deconstruct what the social category of 'white' really stands for in order to determine what the slogan really means.

The social category of 'white' has in the past removed from the outset certain groups. We know that the white nationalist claim to be 'pro-white' does not extend to European Jewry, for instance, in fact it may even exclude the Slavs and the Irish if taken far enough. Hitler's Aryan master race certainly excluded the Slavs and Roma. In a sense there is truth in this claim insofar as the identification with one's pale epidermis often leads in a certain grotesque direction. In another sense the interests of the majority of white people living in Western countries are not served at all by racism. At the most racism serves to maintain relative advantage - what we may call white privilege - at the expense of class loyalties and the development of a class consciousness.

The slogan is designed to undermine anti-racist activism and even demonise those activists and the language with which we rightly criticise bigotry and discrimination. The constant noise of white whining about the 'misuse' and 'overuse' of the term should be evidence enough that it is not anti-racism which is out-of-control. In fact, we've been living through the reactive offensive to slime the advocates of multiculturalism and demonise cultural sensitivity (under the new swearword of 'political-correctness') and tolerance. The aim is the same as the pro-white message: to further legitimise racism.

Cultural Criticism of Rap

 

Rap has persevered in the decades since the decline of its predecessors, the end of what used to be called Black music, in the 1980s, in conjunction with the predominance of pop music, which had been manufactured and sanitised to maximise sales. Only once the music scene became totally dominated by music which had no relation to anything outside of its bubble do we find rappers could lay claim to authenticity. The success of so-called 'Gangsta Rap' comes down to its drawing upon a certain view of the lives led by the Black American under-class. The fact that these rappers then go on to celebrate their success in a rags-to-riches narrative meshes well with the false promise of meritocracy. We now live with the worst of both worlds, where it seems no one is pushing boundaries far enough.



Lessons for a White Ally.

The radical American anti-racist campaigner Tim Wise has an interesting designation for what he does and what other white anti-racists do. He calls himself a 'white ally'. Wise argues not for white anti-racists to speak for people of colour, but to develop a critique of white privilege from within. The point should be to strengthen the position of racially-conscious Black Americans by providing a critique of the same white male power-structure from a white perspective. I agree with this priority: to undermine white racial consciousness in its manifestations. The other aims that we have to consider were summed up well by Theodore W Allen. As part of the conclusion to his review of David Roediger's book Wages of Whiteness (1991) the Marxist historian and economist Ted Allen listed the four basic challenges that the anti-racist has to meet:

First, to show that white supremacism is not an inherited attribute of the European-American personality. Secondly, to demonstrate that white supremacism has not served the interests of the laboring-class European-Americans. Third: to account for the prevalence of white supremacism within the ranks of laboring-class European-Americans. Fourth, by light of history, to consider ways whereby European-American laboring people may cast off the stifling incubus of 'white' identity.

This is from the starting-point that the historical relativist critique of race as a social construct does not go far enough in unsettling the roots of race as a formation of social control. Likewise, Allen rejects racism as a natural occurrence among white people towards the Other. Actually the point of his work is to provide a historical account for race in specific historical conditions: namely, slavery. As a Marxist historian Allen is concerned with the degree to which white working-class people have undermined their own interests by pursuing racial interests over class interests. The first victims of racial oppression are those immediately subject to it, the second victims are those who blindly align themselves with the oppressors. For example, trade unions in the US were incredibly weaker because they had, for a long time, a white-only membership policy. White privilege (a concept Allen coined) is not to be understood as the literal privileges of white people, but the relative advantages gained through divide and conquer.

The colonial and racial oppression of the Irish provided the impetus to presuppose a 'common interest' among English people which may circumvent the class antagonism and even render it harmonious. This is why Karl Marx was right to situate the struggle for Irish national liberation was, effectively, the struggle against the English ruling-class which could open up the space for the English working-class to shake off the chains of class oppression. Ultimately, the British ruling-class managed the crises of its colonial outpost through various methods, eventually leading to a partitioned compromise, and to this day leading to a peace process. The reunification of Ireland has been postponed and by now the thrust of British capitalism lacks the need for racial oppression in Ireland. We can say that the material circumstances have changed, but that doesn't legitimate the cause of a united Ireland as that was always a just cause. It's just no longer linked to working-class emancipation in the same way.

Dreams of a Black Christmas.

The American Right have long been engaged in the fight to defend Christmas from the imaginary threat posed to it by secular progressives. The tenth box on your advent calendar marks the day of the Slate article by Aisha Harris on the assumed white-skin of Father Christmas. The following week was filled with the usual hysterical commentary from Fox News in its bid to deflect the ‘liberal agenda’ to destroy Christmas and drown puppies at birth. This is a part of the kulturkampf waged by conservatives since the end of the Cold War and anti-Communism no longer provided the impetus of social hypochondria. The snow had not yet settled in the wake of the spat when the anti-racist campaigner Tim Wise offered some insight:

Now don’t get me wrong, if there were a Santa Claus, there is very little doubt that he would have to be white. After all, no black man could manage to work only one day out of the year and not be called lazy; and surely no black man could get away with breaking into millions of homes, even if he was bearing presents. Some cop or neighborhood watch captain would surely have taken him down long ago, convinced that the red suit he was wearing signified gang colors. So, and let me be the first to admit it: in a world where Santa actually existed, along with unicorns, pixie dust and the Lorax, Megyn Kelly would have a damned good point. Note, this is how one can make a joke about Santa being white, without reinforcing white racial normalcy: but of course no FOX personality would choose to make the joke this way, because such a joke would require, first, an acknowledgment of the reality of racial profiling and anti-black racism, neither of which conservatives can afford to countenance. This is why conservative race humor isn’t funny, just racist; please take note of it. Thank you.

The liberal pretentions of colour-blindness forgo all challenges to the normative claims of the white male power-structure in the US and elsewhere. The racial consciousness of white people remains intact with all of its trappings of ressentiment and anxiety about what the future may hold. The barriers are up against any critical reflections on what white normalcy amounts to in seasonal symbolism. The paucity of the liberal framework leaves open the possibility of coercion clouded by consent and by sameness. As if coincidentally Black America just happens to be poorer and more prone to be incarcerated than White America. The assumed white-skin of the meritorious, intelligent, beautiful and articulate individual so prevalent in contemporary society is not to be disassociated from these patterns. The disparities of class and race are these patterns, and they are anything but natural. The campaign to keep Christmas white fits with the anxiety washing over the Republican Party since they lost the 2012 election.

The entitlement to govern for white people has been challenged by the election and re-election of Barack Obama. And a lot of white people have a problem with this, they feel they're losing their country. There’s some truth in it as anyone can see from the birth-rate of Hispanic-Americans which has outpaced European-Americans. As Mike Davis has suggested, 2012 may have been the last white election. The decline of the angry white male phenomenon may well be underway, the only hope of the GOP is to back-off on immigration and pursue the policies which would appeal to Hispanic-Americans. But the anxiety over this loss is not to be indulged in. It demonstrates that white privilege is real and that it has been a major force in American life for much more than the last decade. The historic construction of a white racial identity has been a means for the class tensions inherent to capitalism to be managed and controlled.

It’s apt then that the reactionary behind the ‘War on Christmas’ phenomenon was the racist columnist Peter Brimelow. Max Blumenthal found Brimelow was first unsettled by receiving ‘Happy Holidays’ greetings from retailers in place of the traditional ‘Merry Christmas’. Around the same time Peter Brimelow had churned out his book Alien Nation (1995) bewailing mass-immigration as undermining the ethno-cultural core of White America. He claimed Clinton’s victory in 1992 was the result of a Black, Hispanic, Jewish and minority white coalition of voters. He suggested that the expansion of this coalition (especially the non-white segments of it) could’ve created the social basis for Jesse Jackson to become President. Brimelow would go on to be increasingly marginalised for his advocacy of a racially-conscious body politic. But the Christmas campaign would be taken up by Fox News in the early years of this century.

In the wilderness Brimelow found new allies in race-baiters of all kinds (neo-eugenicists, white nationalists, cultural conservatives, even eco-racists and racist feminists) and with them he established VDARE.com. It would become the leading anti-immigrant web journal, its name a reference to the first English child born in the New World. By 2010 Brimelow was much less careful in his words in describing the Obama administration as a ‘minority occupation government’ given its lack of ‘deep ethnic roots’. He claimed the immigration policies of the US are aimed at population displacement in the pursuit of radical economic and social change. This fits with the Buchanan theory of immigration as an objective of the cultural Marxist plot to vanquish white Christian male society. In concluding that it would be natural for whites to pursue their racial interests he compared white nationalism (although he didn’t use the term) with Zionism and Black nationalism to claim the same legitimacy for its aims.

VDARE continued the War for Christmas and, as Blumenthal has noted, began to be more specific about who was responsible for the attacks on Christian society. Of course, it turned out to be the age-old enemy of Christendom - namely, the Jews - as VDARE readers would find from reading the obscene scribbles of Kevin MacDonald and Steve Sailer. When Blumenthal pushed Brimelow on this matter he found the aging English reactionary ambivalent and insistent that “It’s an argument”. The need for a racial explanation of social ills is necessitated by rightist criticism given its priority in externalising all failures of the system to disruptions of its mechanisms. The assumptions of white success run with this to emphasise what is at stake, whereas the normalcy of being white has to be emphasised against those who are looking to excavate the disavowed record of racial oppression. Any troublesome talk of racism can be attacked as the liberal agenda going after everything white people hold dear.

'Wishing You a White Christmas'.

Exhibit 1: Race Bait.

The latest move has been to post a Christmas card bearing the BNP message through the internet to as many people as possible. Subtlety has never been a refined capacity of Britain's neo-fascists. A few years ago Nick Griffin made an appearance online telling the nativity story by a fireplace. It's all in line with Griffin's mission to take the BNP on a 'moderate line' of identity politics, complete with appeals to free-speech, democracy, culture and values. This is at the same time as the party trying to maintain its basis as a racist party, while expanding the appeal to other electoral blocs. Historically, Fascism has been a movement focused on stealing the working-class base of the Left, as well as the conservative middle-classes, and ultimately the support of the industrial bourgeoisie. To accomplish this there has to be sufficient economic chaos for the Fascists to subsume these bases of support and stomp the guts out of the Left.

Fortunately, these efforts have been thwarted by the malfeasance and incompetence of the party leadership, as well as its inability to capitalise on the gains made in 2009. All the while the party has faced a lot of opposition from dedicated anti-racists and has had to endure the same ideological crisis as the rest of Britain's political parties. The result has been a fragmentation of the far-right in Britain, with the BNP in financial disarray and new competition arising from the EDL and even new fascist parties springing up such as the BDP set up by Andrew Brons and Paul Weston's Liberty GB. The UKIP has benefited from this fragmentation in pitching itself as the leading right-wing alternative to the Conservative Party. Tommy Robinson has left the EDL headless to pursue his agenda in another form. So the impetus of the far-right has shifted to pushing the Establishment to adopt much more reactionary policies. But this is not the road to a Fourth Reich.

Under Griffin the BNP has been active in attempting to carve out a position of right-wing populism with its own self-sustaining momentum. To this end Griffin has set out to normalise the party as a modern cultural nationalist group standing up for the little guy. The enemy is defined as a coterie of multiculturalist liberals, radical leftist infiltrators and an assortment of foreigners. In plain speaking, the Left (and, of course, the Jews) have triumphed over Western civilization and mass-immigration is their tool in destroying the 'white race'. The assertion of a white racial consciousness combined with a cultural notions of traditions and values. In this way the Other is distinguished in negative terms with no need to distinguish them in somatic references to 'black' or 'coloured' people. If the populist appeal is to culture then the Other can remain opaque. Yet the line is no different to the one Nick Griffin expressed in 1996 when he exclaimed at a rally: "The capitalist free-traders, the Marxists, and organised Jewry, have declared war on the White Man!"

It is enough for 'us' to be defined in order to distinguish 'them'. So the message of a 'White Christmas' with the Aryan folk imagery comes in conjunction with an anti-PC message. The target is the British Muslim population. To all detractors the BNP has a prepared response: Islam isn't a race, so it can't be racist to hate Muslims. The response to such nonsense should be clear, the Jews aren't a race either. Of course, race as a concept of 19th Century biology and anthropology has no validity today. The problem is that the somatic reference of race to pigmentation and even hair colour remains pervasive. As Richard Seymour has pointed out, the move to cultural racism over scientific (or somatic) racism on the European Right has been followed by efforts to pilfer the tactics of American conservatives in the 'culture war' against liberalism. As we can tell from looking at the BNP's more adept rivals race can remain a force as an even more slippery concept in these 'culture wars'.

The call to save Christmas from the purveyors of politically-correct Winterval comes with the message to keep Britain 'white' by keeping its culture 'white'. The assertion of racial consciousness and appeals to white resentment against multiculturalism, political-correctness, and, of course, the foreigners. It's built into the counter-revolutionary motivations of Fascism to assert race. The necessity to block all class opposition to the system creates the need for a means of binding together the classes against a common enemy. The 'white race' has to be understood as a formation of social control. It transcends class and appeals to it presuppose a collaboration of the classes: whites together against the non-whites. Racism is the mustard gas pumped into the trenches of the class war. For this reason Nick Griffin, and his fellow travelers, can't get away from the 'white race' even if they can resist talking too much about categories of 'black' and 'Asian'. The priority is to expunge the contradictions inherent to the system and wipe out its opponents (both real and imaginary).

A White Problem.

One of the major flaws of political correctness and multiculturalism has been the way in which it has subsumed questions of 'race' under the euphemistic umbrella of 'culture'. This shift in language correlates with the disavowal of the race problem. Culturalisation of discourse has amounted to depoliticisation. With good intentions of inhibiting prejudice and furthering sensitivity, we find ourselves all too complacent in attestation to racial oppression and injustice. You'll know what I mean if you've ever had that conversation about Malcolm X with your liberal friend, who accuses the man of being as bad as the white racists he fought against. It's the presupposition of equal standards which trips over the unevenness of history's contours, where we find the grievances of black people conveniently tucked away from prying eyes.

As if standards have ever been levelled between white and black. The continued relevance of these categories of race are evidence of the inequality already present before we begin to talk. The categories remain with us in spite of the civilising consequences of the abolition of slavery, the struggle for human rights, the emergence of affirmative action and political-correctness. In the avoidance of these primitive forms of classification we only affirm them as categories, in that we hold them at arm's length because they seem too real. This isn't to say that we should revert back to the language of scientific racism. Rather I would suggest we have to first acknowledge the problem of race and engage with its emanations and its poisonous legacy. I would not discard politically-correct and multiculturalist tolerance for I value hybridity, equality, freedom and solidarity. It's that these innovations are reformist rather than revolutionary for which I reproach them.

 

What was so interesting about the trial of George Zimmerman was the way in which Zimmerman's own ethnic background became a subject of discourse. The question of whether or not Zimmerman counts as 'white', or if 'white Hispanic' is a more appropriate term, became an early fixture of the media spectacle. This is interesting for a number of reasons. For starters 'white' isn't even a colour and the classification of 'Caucasian' has been discredited as a product of a discredited ethnology. Yet the history of 'whiteness' reveals it is not a wholly natural factor. There was a time when signs saying "No dogs or Irish" could be acceptably left in shop windows. Benjamin Franklin considered German immigrants to be too dark. By the 19th Century the American settlers laid claim to a mythic Anglo-Saxon heritage to distinguish themselves from the fresh influxes from the Old World. Traditionally racists have viewed any tainted form of whiteness to constitute its opposite.

 

Last year John Derbyshire was dumped by National Review for a racist article in which he refers not to 'white' people but to 'non-black' people. Revealingly we find 'white' to be socially constructed and necessarily distinguished from the Other. How else are we to understand the tones of voice in which coloured and half-caste were once said? This is how we are to properly understand George Zimmerman and the media fascination with his background. It is not whiteness but his status as a non-black person. Incidentally we find that the signifiers used to designate blackness are just as slippery, if not more so, than in the case of white privilege. During the American imperial adventure to the Philippines, the racial classifications of the period were far from absent. Sergeant Howard McFarland of the 43rd Infantry described the situation "At the best, this is a very rich country; and we want it. My way of getting it would be to put a regiment into a skirmish line, and blow every nigger into a nigger heaven." In these examples we find that there can even be a disconnect between pigmentation and racial constructs.

 

We can't get away from these tropes even if we have moved away from the acceptance of scientific racial classifications. The constructs have to be understood partly in accordance with the historic situations from whence they came and the consequences they continue to have in society today. It is on these lines that Noel Ignatiev talks of the need to abolish the 'white race', e.g. the category of 'whiteness' as a privileged social strata. This is no simple task and cannot be achieved by liberal colour-blindness. The hopes of resuscitating Black liberalism in the wake of the Zimmerman not-guilty verdict are highly flawed. The radical strain of the Black Civil Rights movement has to be resuscitated. Though we also need to engage with the historical process behind the identities of white and black. The very contours of the debate have to be explored before Americans, let alone the rest of us, can move to a post-racial society.

Apartheid, Analogy and Disanalogy.

 

"Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." - Nelson Mandela
 

The analogy between Israel and South Africa is often drawn when it comes to the question of the occupied territories and the Palestinians. There are good reasons for making this analogy, as well as serious differences between the cases that would mean the analogy is dubious. The problem of a Palestinian state is innate to Israel in the same way that racial equality is a problem innate to South Africa. The creation of nation-states out of the processes of European colonialism comes with the brutality of expansionism and war. South Africa was a principle aggressor in Southern Africa in its role as a counter-revolutionary force it slaughtered over a million people in neighbouring states in the 1980s. By comparison, Israel has been at war almost constantly for most of its existence and it serves the US as a "cop on the beat" in the Middle East. This is well demonstrated by the worrying tensions between Israel and Iran. I don't think I will be able to settle this matter in just one article, so I'm only going to go over a few points about the comparison.

The network of roadblocks and checkpoints which regulate the daily lives of Palestinians has been compared to the Apartheid rule of South Africa. Though it is worthy of condemnation even if we dismiss the comparison as a disanalogy. After all it's a system which has left pregnant women to give birth in the street only for their newborn babies to die in the heat, all in the name of Israel's national security. There is even a segregated highway system, roads on which only Jews are allowed to travel. This highway system was established on the pretext of counter-terrorism.  Actually this has nothing to do with counter-terrorism. Instead it is a part of the maintenance of the occupation of the West Bank, where the Israeli government supports (directly and indirectly) the settlements which hold 60% of the land. To this end the Israeli government are busily constructed a wall of annexation in and around the West Bank to snatch the major concentrations of resources and water from the Palestinians. This wall is called a 'defensive barrier' in Israel, which is what the Berlin Wall was called in East Germany. But the West Bank wall is longer than the Berlin Wall.

It's clear that the Israeli government is not too comfortable with the prospect of a Palestinian state. The continued encroachment into and domination of Palestinian territory has the potential to reduce the possibility of a free Palestine to a Bantustan at best. This isn't an accident of history. As Noam Chomsky would remind us Moshe Dayan's recommendation to his colleagues shortly after the 1967 conquests was that we must tell the Palestinians in the territories "You shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads". This is not the last of the ugly words spewed over Palestinian territory. Almost 30 years later the Director of Communications and Policy Planning David Bar-Illan who said in 1996 that "the Palestinians can have a state if they want, or they can call it fried chicken". And that's when the Israeli establishment talks peace. The establishment is aware of the situation on the ground, the need for a two-state settlement. It's just that there is no reason for the Israeli government to seek out peace.

It would seem that the Israeli elite are for a peaceful solution, whereas the more economically deprived and zealous Israeli citizens - particularly Mizrahi Jews and refuseniks - are much more hawkish. The ruling-class have been busily eroding the civic institutions and welfare state of Israel in recent decades. The neoliberalisation that the Israeli economy has undergone is another point of fair comparison with South Africa. Israel was once a quasi-socialist state with a significantly slim gap between the rich and the poor. Today it is one of the most unequal countries in the world. This is what comes with expanding a state by force and creating a country out of thin air. The apparent abnormality of Israel by world's standards today is exactly what makes it normal in historical standards. The very same process of aggressive expansionism was carried out in North America to a much more genocidal degree. And the founding of the American Republic provoked a desperate resistance from the likes of Geronimo.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." - Benjamin Netanyahu

There are good reasons to suspect that the Israeli ruling class is well aware of the consequences of their actions. In an interview with Gideon Levi Prime Minister Ehud Barak said "If I were a Palestinian at the right age, I would have joined one of the terrorist organizations at a certain stage." By the way, everyone should know that Nelson Mandela was officially listed as a 'terrorist' in the US until about 2009. This isn't to say that by analogy Hamas are the Palestinian version of the ANC. Sadly the picture is much more complicated than that. The concept of 'terrorism' really designates the use of violence to achieve goals of a political, religious or ideological nature. That would certainly include all of modern warfare. So it could be that the notion of 'terror' lacks any weight in terms of moral condemnation. When the US shoots down an Iranian civilian airliner, it's an accident and not an act of terror. So it might be better to talk about specific forms of violence. For instance, in his years as 'terrorist' leader Nelson Mandela argued against car-bombing as a tactic. This wasn't a rejection of violence, rather it was about scale.

Christopher Hitchens observed the similarity of the theological justifications of Apartheid in the dogma of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Church adhered to a variety of Calvinism that enshrined a strict separation of white and black in holy design. Its presupposition was racial inequality, for the white man shares the bodily form of Christ. The ravings at the pulpit spewed forth its own blood myth of a Boer Exodus and in what Hitchens describes as an "Afrikaner permutation of Zionism" awarded the whites exclusive rights in a promised land. It should be no surprise that the National Party had an appalling record for anti-Semitism and took the side of Hitlerism in the Second World War. The end result was a pariah state where the rights of non-whites were nonexistent, in fact the people were confined to open prisons with boundaries defined by pigmentation. The state exercised its monopoly on violence to maintain this system for as long as it could. But the justifications were not simply theological.

Apartheid justified itself further as a separation which protected African culture from being drowned in white civilisation. Earlier in the 20th Century Jan Smuts formulated a holistic philosophy to justify British colonialism. This holism took the world to be composed of wholes, each together constitute a grand system while each can sustain and stabilise themselves. The stability of the system was guaranteed by the arrangement of wholes, provided each whole remained in the right place the system could be maintained. Every whole is made up of small wholes which are evolving and will inevitably come together to form larger wholes until finally becoming part of a single unified whole. This was the beginning of what would become Apartheid. South Africa further justified its brutal methods of repression in its claim to be an outpost of freedom fighting against Communism. Although Israel does not have the same kind of racial mythology as South Africa, its government often claims that the country is an outpost against radical Islamism.

No wonder then Israel and South Africa entered into a pariah's pact in 1975 to trade in weapons of mass-destruction. The end of Apartheid might actually signal how the occupation might end and Palestine might actually be established as an independent state. It was almost inevitable that the Apartheid system would undermine the future possibility of survival of the state. So the Afrikaner business elite began meeting with the ANC in neighbouring countries in the late 1980s. By then a campaign of sanctions and boycotting had done its damage on South Africa's economy and body politic. Around this time the Priests had a 'revelation' regarding racial equality. The fate of the regime was settled before the National Party goons even knew it. South Africa had been significantly isolated in the international community by that point. It was when the US started to withdraw its support for Apartheid that the Botha government started to cave. But this came after decades of struggle in spite of extreme violence and rejectionism.

Lincoln's Favourite Play.

MACBETH:

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly. If the' assassination

Could trammel up the consequence and catch

With his surcease success, that but this blow

Might be the be-all and end-all, here;

But here upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases

We still have judgement here, that we but teach

Bloody instructions which, being taught, return

To plague th'inventor. This even-handed justice

Commends th'ingredience of our poisoned chalice

To our own lips. He's here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against

The deep damnation of his taking-off,

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself

And falls on th'other. 

The Price of Haitian Liberty.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Pat Robertson recently claimed that the earthquake Haiti suffered was for the best, because it will lead to greater development and change in Haiti. The prominent Christian fundamentalist also claimed that the earthquake was a result of a Faustian pact, made between by the Haitian revolutionaries in order to liberate their country from the French. The implication being that chattel slavery was a practice blessed by God which only the Devil could undo. Robertson pointed to the consistent pattern of tragedy and failure in Haiti as evidence for a "curse" as a consequence of such a pact. It is unsurprising that this came from a man who once agreed with Jerry Falwell that 9/11 was the fault of the ACLU, as well as lesbians and abortionists, and later called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Despite all of this, his statement reflect a general attitude in the Western media. In the media, Haiti is often discussed as if it is cursed, the earthquake is just one of many tragedies to strike the island over the last two centuries. But the country's history, which tells a quite different story, is rarely explored for the sake of public consumption.

The Republic of Haiti may seem an insignificant country in 2010, the economy is in tatters and society has been decimated by crime, the political system is corrupt and often resorts to violence to get it's way. Too many people have forgotten Haiti was the first independent Black Republic. A nation-state which had been liberated by slaves from white supremacy, in a revolution based on the same ideals espoused by French revolutionaries - liberté, égalité, fraternité. The Revolution that began in 1791, and with the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, had snatched Hispaniola from the hands of the wealthy colonialists and slave-masters by 1804. The goal was to turn the island into an autonomous state of free and equal citizens, working together for the good of society, that would not be exploited. Unfortunately, after over 200 years of political turmoil, Haiti is now branded a "failed state" by the hegemons of the United States and Europe. The accomplishments of the Haitian revolutionaries were undermined by a series of dictators, but external forces hold some responsibility, to say the least, for the "difficulties" Haiti has endured.

The "Curse" of Black Jacobinism.

In using the sword against their oppressors, the slaves of Haiti had "become" Jefferson's universal human beings. Despite this, the colonial powers did not just accept Haiti as a sovereign nation equal to their own. The Vatican avoided signing a concordat with the first Black Republic until 1860. The American government refused to even recognise Haiti until 1862. The French soon punished the Haitians for deposing their masters. The former slaves had to compensate their former masters, and in the end Haiti had to pay 150 million francs - the equivalent of $21 billion - in reparations to French slave-masters. This in itself is an appalling perversity. The Haitians had to pay to avoid an embargo, the same kind which the US imposed on Cuba after the fall of Batista. In order to repay such an enormous "debt", Haiti had to lend money from banks in France, Germany and America. The aim of all this was to destroy the positive example of Revolutionary Haiti and crush the spirits of slaves everywhere. By 1900 Haiti was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. The US first "intervened" militarily in Haiti in 1915, occupying and effectively ruling the country until 1934. During the American occupation, revolts by the people were crushed with extreme force and several politicians were executed or exiled from the island. The colonialists were successful in their wish to destroy the "contagious" example that Haiti might have become. Finally, in 1947 Haiti had managed to pay off 60% of the "debt". Over the next nine years, Haiti was plagued by instability, disasters both natural and man-made, the theft of relief funds and military coups. It was in 1956, that a new leader, who would leave Haiti sinking with debt and dead bodies, was elected.

In 1956, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier took office as the President of Haiti. He would rule for 15 years, leaving thousands dead and the country driven further into ruin. Duvalier had been elected on a black nationalist platform, characterised by populist rhetoric against the mulatto elite. The Haitian state itself was always effectively dominated by powerful elites, the 200 years since the Revolution has not changed that. The country has a long history of despotic regimes going right back to the Revolution. The most horrific and infamous of which was the Duvalier regime, under which a kleptocratic family dominated Haiti for 30 years. This brutal dictatorship sustained itself through violent repression, using a oprichnik-like militia known as the Tonton Macoutes to terrorise the masses - to not just crush opposition, but to crush the possibility of an opposition.

"Papa Doc" Duvalier formed the Tonton Macoutes in reaction to a coup attempt in the late 1950s, when he had yet to consolidate his power. Duvalier immediately exploited the rift between Cuba and the US, beginning in the late 50s. The populist rhetoric targeting Haiti's mulatto elite, which "Papa Doc" had ran on, concealed a reactionary agenda. The Duvaliers were explicitly anti-communist, the subject of political repression among the poor were suspected communists. Haitians who had an education were the immediate subject of suspicion; this led to the Haitian brain drain which the country has yet to recover from. By 1969, Duvalier had introduced the death penalty for the crime of "communist activities". Officially, the US government opposed the Duvaliers, but in practice they supported the dictatorship all the way because of their vehement anti-communism. By the time of his death in 1971, Francois Duvalier had supplanted members of the elite, who were "disappeared" or forced to emigrate, with loyal supporters of his family. His son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, a.k.a. "Baby Doc", would rule the country until 1986.

The Crisis and The Change.

In the words of Milton Friedman: "Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change." This is the logic currently at work in Haiti. A crisis offers opportunities, for the United States, to reshape the Haitian government and economy. The earthquake that has devastated Haiti is the worst to hit the island in nearly two centuries. The IMF did not waste time and quickly seized the opportunity, in a matter of days, to push through a loan of $100 million. Though, such hefty amounts of funds are needed in Haiti but the country is already heavily in debt. This loan also came with conditions, such as raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. This is just an old story on a new day, the IMF took advantage of the devastation, and the trauma inflicted upon the people, to push through further neoliberal reforms.

This is nothing new to Haiti, or any developing country for that matter. Since the end of Duvalier rule in 1986, the US government, along with the IMF and the World Bank, has continued to interfere with Haiti's political and economic system. The democratic election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 was soon undone with a military coup backed by the first Bush administration. The IMF proceeded to impose "structural adjustments" on Haiti throughout the 1990s. Haiti's tariffs on rice were soon chiselled down from 35% to 3%, leading to massive rice-dumping from the US. The long-term result of such cuts on tariffs resulted in an increase in dependency on American agribusiness. By 2005, the effects of trade "liberalisation" could be seen in Haiti, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in the country had been produced by agribusiness in the US. There is plenty of money to made from Haiti, sweatshops where Haitians earn less than $2 a day are not uncommon.

These are standard practices, for multinational corporations and politicians, which have been refined since the 1950s. As detailed in the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, it is corporations who send "economic hit men" into a country which has resources they covet and arrange a massive loan to that country (through the IMF or the World Bank). The loans end up going to developing infrastructure, which will benefit only a few rich people in that country as well as large corporations. The country is left with a massive debt which cannot be paid off, the "economic hit men" then negotiate to drive down the price of resources, such as oil, which can then be easily bought by corporations. This logic can be pushed further to allow countries like the US to build a military base in the country. But also to force the country to privatise electrical companies, schools, health care and, in the case of Bolivia, even water. The IMF and the World Bank might even offer to "refinance" the country's debt leading to yet more debt, with potentially higher interest rates and more radical "conditions". These "conditions", or structural adjustment policies, vary from currency devaluation, mass privatisation, deregulation and trade liberalisation (like the lowering of tariffs).

The "economic hit men" are not always successful in their pursuit of such goals. When they do fail, the "jackals" are sent in. These individuals are often trained and supported by the NSA or the CIA, they are usually used to overthrow or assassinate politicians who are in the way. During Aristide's second Presidency, began in 2001 and ended "abruptly" in 2004 after he had demanded France pay $21 billion in restitution to Haiti. At that time, the Haitian government had just put $57.4 million towards the state's debtors. The Haitian government had received $39.21 million to spend on education, health-care etc. from foreign assistance. At a time when Haiti was paying back more than it was receiving, when the country was in desperate need of $21 billion, that he was once again overthrown in another coup - this time backed by the second Bush administration through the CIA. If the "jackals" had failed in overthrowing Aristide, the final move may have been a full blown invasion by the US military.

As far as I am aware, $1.2 billion of Haiti's debt has been cancelled thus far. Though, the country still has $900 million in debt, which will be taken up to $1 billion and over by the end of this crisis. Almost half of that debt is owed to the Inter-American Development Bank, to which Haiti is scheduled to pay $10 million next year as part of the repayments. Recently, there has been even more talk of writing off Haiti's remaining debts. The Venezuelan government has written off the $295 million, in oil-related debt, Haiti owes to their country. This is a positive update, but on it's own it is not enough. It is imperative that the structure which has driven Haiti into such debts is changed, for Haitian poverty is down to neoliberal reforms. The structure and these reforms can only be reversed if the IMF and the World Bank are changed radically, which can only be accomplished by bringing about radical change in the West - particularly, the US.

Interesting links:
IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages
Whitewashing Haiti's History
Haiti - The Broken Wing
Covering Haiti: When the Media is the Disaster
Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert
Why the US owes Haiti billions: The Briefest History
Confessions of an Economic Hitman

Aryan History X.

The Mythical Supermen.

There was a mythology prevalent in the United States in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries – the myth of specifically Anglo-Saxon origins. The myth had been developed in 15^th Century England and was then picked up in America soon after colonisation. Though, it is fundamentally not too dissimilar to the myths and ideals of the National Socialists. The end result of such widely propagated myths include genocide and slavery. The myth was that there was an Aryan race, originating in what is today Iran, a unique and superior species to all over human beings. The characteristics of this race included: a round cranium, tall in stature, blond-hair, blue-eyes and a paper-white complexion. They were the embodiment of physical perfection, in the eyes of the people of that time and place. This noble race stood for freedom, the Aryan race were said to have been actively dedicated to justice and law. Today, it is easy to say that such mythical supermen are only real to the KKK, but the truth is rather more unsettling.

Once the Aryans had emerged in the East, they migrated to the West and eventually settled in the Black Forests of Germany where they became the Teutons – who were a “perfect race”. But as they had migrated, some of these Aryans had inter-married with the people in the East and produced the “degenerate race” of the Mediterranean. The Aryans, who were dedicated to the purity of their race, exterminated everyone and later became the Angles and the Saxons. The Angles and the Saxons moved onwards to ancient Britain, where they maintained their purity by exterminating inferior tribes they came across. The Anglo-Saxons later came to America in the form of the colonists, again committing genocide along the way. The implication being that indigenous British and American people are descendent of the "perfect race". Racism runs deep in Western civilisation, to an ideological extent by now, and America is no exception. Even the Founding Fathers" believed in this myth, Thomas Jefferson thought that the race had been “poisoned” by immigration to Britain in the centuries since the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. For Benjamin Franklin, even Germans did not fit the criteria of the Aryan ideal, for they were too “swarthy” for his liking.

It was this myth which fuelled the extreme racism of the time. Which was a factor in the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of Native Americans and Mexicans. Since then, every influx of immigrants into the United States has been persecuted and scapegoated. When the first Irish people came to America – the "Land of Opportunity" – to escape poverty, famine and the tyrants of England, they were the immediate subject of persecution. Signs such as “No dogs or Irish” were hung in shops and restaurants for all too see. Eastern Europeans and the Jews fleeing pogrom were treated in similarly dehumanising ways. But it wasn’t until many Chinese people began to immigrate to the United States, that the methods of segregation were “developed” further by the government. In fact, the first “racial exclusion act” was passed against Chinese immigrants. Black people soon became the subject of these same methods of segregation, particularly after the abolition of slavery. Each of these perceived “races” also became the scapegoat for the problems in American society. Today, the new targets of scapegoating and persecution in the US are Mexican immigrants and Arabs. Though, the way in which groups are persecuted and scapegoated has changed greatly, thanks to the progress made over the last five decades. But it remains a real influence on the way Western politicians act.

The Race War.

It was this primitive myth which became a form of sophistry, favouring racial persecution, segregation, slavery and genocide, before becoming ideological. By which I mean, it became a set of ideas, beliefs, values - some of which function independent of conscious belief by individuals - and a way of interpreting the world. A dominant ideology can function regardless of the belief of mere individuals, because such an ideology is embedded in daily life. In times of segregation in the US, you would be bombarded constantly with signs designating who uses what. Even if you consciously disagree with separate water fountains, if you drink from them you are actively obeying the dominant ideology. This is because it is the intended way, by those who put up the signs "white" and "coloured", in which water fountains are used that is ideological. The only way to escape from this is to act on one's disbelief, the Montgomery Bus Boycott is an example of how to challenge ideology. This ideological racism was actualised further through war.

It was first actualised in this way as America was "expanded" - namely, the theft of half of Mexico and the mass-murder it entailed. Unfortunately, the American politicians wanted to move onwards to the homeland of the Aryan supermen, in what may have been Iran or India. So Hawaii and the Philippines were later conquered by the US, again the conquest was characterised by mass-murder. From there, it was intended, that they would go on to conquer China and the rest of the East, so that the rightful descendents of the Aryans could return to their "homeland" once they had circled the earth. In fact, Theodore Roosevelt designated the Japanese "honorary Aryans", because they were seen as the key to defeating the Chinese and in doing so he laid the basis for the Pacific battles of WWII. Arguably, this was also the ideological aim for American involvement in the war in the Korean peninsula. Luckily, the US government never accomplished this imperialist goal, as it would have probably required genocide to "succeed".

Of course, the way ideology functions today has changed much since those primitive bigoted days. Today, as Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, ideology can function through cynicism (though, not always). For instance, upon Barack Obama's victory it was immediately said by many that he won't bring change. To believe that political change is impossible, because politicians are compromisers and all government is corrupt, is to accept the status quo as it is. Obama has not accomplished change, but to simply state "He was never going to..." implies it doesn't matter because politicians aren't meant to deliver change. If we follow this logic to it's ultimate conclusion we find that voting is a meaningless gesture that we might as well not participate in. Effectively, this hands over the polity to people who aren't expected to bring change and aren't representative of the population. This remains so if one does not actively pursue the desired change.

It is interesting to think about American imperialism, and it's guise of jingoism, as an extension of racist ideology, especially as Iran and China are still discussed in terms of their potentially "threatening" military. Many fear a war with Iran and many cynics are resigned to the fact that the US want a war with Iran - "The government will invade Iran, like they invade Iraq, we have no say in the matter..." Though, this ideologico-political explanation of American racism and military aggression isn't the only dimension to take into account, there are also the politico-economic reasons. Nevertheless, it is revealing of the "We own the world" mindset of American politicians, let alone the self-proclaimed "masters of the universe" running the corporations who benefit most from war and exploitation. Time will tell if the "master-race" will return to their rightful homeland in Iran.

Life after Race.

"The proof that one truly believes is in action." - Bayard Rustin

Since the election of Barack H Obama in 2008, the first African-American President, there has been much talk of the possibility of a post-racial America. Even Obama himself has said that his election has taken race out of the equation. The electoral victory of Barack Obama was met with an explosion of optimism in America, and the West in general. The optimism, widespread among the people, at the possibility of a black family entering the White House for the first time in history, was met with a reaction from the corporate world. This reaction consisted of optimism - not for change, but for more of the same - and an eagerness to hold racial issues at arm's length, along with issues of class and gender. This is why the electoral triumph of Barack Obama has been portrayed as evidence of America's successful transition, from a fragmented white supremacist state to a united post-racial society.

During the campaign, Barack Obama was put on the defensive as his association with the "anti-American" Reverend Jeremiah Wright was called into question. The sentiments expressed by Wright were misrepresented by the media. Wright is often quoted as saying "not God bless America, God damn America!" But the full quotation was never released by the mainstream media, which was "It's not God bless America, God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating citizens as less than human!" Nevertheless, Barack Obama was put on the defensive as Wright was accused of being "anti-American". Though, terms like "anti-American" only exist in totalitarian states, in the Soviet Union there was the concept of "anti-Sovietism" used to vilify critics of the state. So it is very typical for the term to be applied to Reverend Wright for condemning the US government for violating human rights and killing innocents - as the US government has done for decades. The function of the term's use is clear, to shut up Wright and to make sure that Obama is not a radical.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama has reassured the "masters of the universe" that he is no radical and this is reflected by the fact that Obama's campaign received $700 million from corporations, the most funding in history and around $300 million more than John McCain raised. In his speeches, Obama has continuously referred to the "wounds" of racism as something people need to move on from. This is part of the rhetoric on unity his campaign team dished out - the idea of a United America existing beyond socio-economic and political divisions. In disguising this assertion, that racial issues are a thing of the past, as a way of unifying the nation the Obama campaign made it clear that solving America's race problem would not be the focus of the Obama Years. It is almost as if issues of race may be becoming a taboo subject, just like issues of class. However, between the two it is clear that the elites prefer to pay lip-service to fighting racism, while keeping their foot on the neck of "Black America".

America is a patriarchal society founded on slavery and violence. The suffering of the black woman and man has been tremendous over the last four centuries, let alone the suffering of Native Americans, the white working class and women. Countless Africans died in slavery, at the hands of the slave-masters who settled in America. But the abolition of slavery was just one battle won. Over the decades after abolition, the rights that people had died to see applied to black people were applied to property, as corporate lawyers sought to endow corporations with the rights of human beings. The KKK and Jim Crow Laws that brutalised African-Americans for decades. Segregation became a distinct part of society in America throughout the early 20th Century, it was only in the 1960s and 70s that desegregation finally took place. But that was down to the Black Civil Rights Movement, the struggle of young black women and men - many of whom died for basic human rights. It took the American political class nearly 20 years to dedicate a day to Martin Luther King Jr. and the ideals he fought for.

For instance, Ronald Reagan opposed the proposal of a Martin Luther King Day when it was first proposed in the 1970s and opposed it until Congress caved to a petition of 6 million signatures in the early 80s. He had also voted against the Civil Rights act in the 1960s, as did many other politicians. In 1988, the Reagan administration added Nelson Mandela to a list of "terrorists" kept by the government - a list which does not include the KKK, who have murdered thousands of blacks, Jews and any whites who got in the way. Mandela was removed from the list in 2008 by the Bush administration. Crimes such as the Jackson state shootings, in which 2 black students were left dead along with 12 injured by state police, and the Orangeburg massacre, in which 4 black students were killed and 31 injured by police officers, are still relatively ignored in political discourse. Not only is it naive to assert that America is now a post-racial society, on the basis that there is a black family in the White House, it is insulting to assert such a monumental falsehood. It is true that the election of Obama is a sign of progress, from the horrors of lynchings and segregation, but it is only one battle won in the ongoing fight for equality and liberty.

"When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him." - Bayard Rustin

It was nearly 50 years ago, that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his most well known speech, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, calling for equal rights to transcend the so-called boundaries of "race". The poignant line "I have a dream..." was used recurrently throughout the speech by King, and in doing so he emphasised the idealism of the demonstration. The dream he spoke of, was a vision of equality in America, the dream came embossed with heavy religious overtones and patriotic rhetoric. The words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. that day have echoed through the decades since and are still remembered today. King's words are remembered as the definitive moment and expression of the ideals which the Black Civil Rights Movement fought for in those days.

Many have forgotten, or not even heard, of Bayard Rustin who helped organise the march with A Phillip Randolph. Partly because many other figures involved in the Civil Rights Movement, namely Roy Wilkins, did not want Rustin to receive any praise for his role in the march - because of his open homosexuality and his socialist beliefs. During the 1950s, the decade of anti-communist crusades, Martin Luther King Jr. and other African-American figures were attacked for their association with the perceived "anti-American" left-wing elements such as unionists, Marxists, socialists and anarchists. One function of the patriotic and religious language utilised by King in his speeches, was to distance himself from socialists like Bayard Rustin. This is even true of King's speech at the Washington March for Jobs and Freedom.

There are people who would rather remember the Civil Rights Movement as exemplified entirely by King's tearful eyes, grace and eloquence in the face of brutality by white supremacists and reactionaries. But not as a struggle fought by young men and women against a power structure. A power structure based on violence and tyranny, sanctioned and sponsored by the government and "Corporate America". This power structure could be described simply as rich, white and male - though, one could add heterosexual and Christian to that description. For the most part, this structure has remained entact and continues to function, despite the best efforts of radical activists representing ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and the poor alike.

We are taught to remember King's brave fight against segregation, racism and oppression - which should not be ignored. But we are not taught to remember King for his pacifist opposition to the Vietnam War or his socialist leanings. Many aren't even aware of King's friendship with Bayard Rustin, who served as his adviser and introduced him to Gandhi's ideas of nonviolent resistance. At the time of his death, Martin Luther King Jr. was involved in a campaign, which was much broader than the African-American Civil Rights Movement and had goals of equal importance, and was aiming to construct a movement for poor people. At the time class issues were taboo in political discourse, and still is in many ways, as was race. But it seems as though there has been a return to the days when both were topics to avoid in order to succeed.

Many American journalists and pundits attempted to portray Jeremiah Wright as a racist and attempted to portray his sermons as separatist in nature, as a threat to the unity of the nation. This is reflective of the preference for Martin Luther King Jr. over Malcolm X that is common in predominantly white societies. King is remembered for his unconditional love and compassion, as informed by his religious conviction. Malcolm X is remembered more as an aggressive figure, even as a racist figure. Martin Luther King Jr. is commonly associated with peace, whereas Malcolm X is commonly associated with violence. King is associated with integration, Malcolm X is associated with the Nation of Islam and by extension separatism. Wright's aggressive tone and style of delivery is what has led to him being likened more to Malcolm X than to Martin Luther King.

The truth is that Malcolm X is a lot scarier to whites than Martin Luther King Jr. This is because of the aggressive style in which Malcolm X conveyed ideas of self-determination, independence and autonomy for African-Americans. On the other hand, King spoke with the style of a Baptist preacher and spoke with love about peace and unity. Malcolm X would not accept the surname "Little", which was probably passed onto his ancestors by a slave-master with the surname "Little", and instead chooses "X" as symbolic of the African name he will never know. The name Malcolm X is in itself is a distinct reminder of the nameless condition experienced by black people since the days of slavery. Unlike Martin X, Martin Luther King Jr. kept the name he had been given at birth - the name of Protestant theologian Martin Luther.

Despite what "White America" may want, think or feel, the words of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X had to be said and need to be heard. The uncompromising and "harsh" rhetoric of Malcolm X, and the Nation of Islam, had to be said because a firm condemnation of white supremacy had to be made. The horrific and immoral nature of the crimes committed by white men had to be addressed. The "Love thy Enemy" approach taken by King would not suffice in condemnation of such crimes. Only Malcolm X had the bravery to indict "White America" for its criminal conduct in the "harshest" of terms, almost as a way of reciprocating the anger and mistreatment white men often "dished out" so eagerly.

"To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true." - Bayard Rustin

During the campaign months, Obama was able to capitalise on black solidarity as he made an effort to reassure the business class of his credibility and neutralise the anxieties prevalent among white voters. To "Corporate America" he proved his credibility by accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in backing, which will no doubt shape policy during his tenure. In accepting such corporate support, Obama confirmed his dedication to the same long-term plans and goals as the Republicans - to maintain the status quo. To "White America" he distanced himself from the rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright, and by extension the black liberation theology which was developed during the Civil Rights Movement. It could be argued that this was a necessary move to win the election. Nevertheless, it is a shame that the struggle for racial equality is now considered too radical for mainstream American politics. Though, if we're honest with ourselves, it always was.

History appears to have repeated itself, as Marx once said "first as tragedy, then as farce." The way in which the faces of the Black Civil Rights Movement distanced themselves from the gay leftist Bayard Rustin in 1963 was tragic, because it mimicked the kind of discrimination exercised by whites against blacks. But the way in which Obama, and the Democrats, distanced themselves from the black radical Jeremiah Wright seems farcical by comparison. In fact, some of the defenders of Jeremiah Wright have claimed that his words did not differ so greatly from the words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. But as Dr Cornel West pointed out, the big difference between Wright and King is that the latter delivered his message with love and compassion for the victims of oppression - but also for the oppressor who will inevitably reap what they sow. Rustin embodied that which was considered "un-American" in the backward days before desegregation. But today it is Wright, a preacher of liberation theology, who is considered "anti-American" in this supposedly post-racial age.

The facts are that race still matters in America, and in the West in general, despite the many years of struggle and the progress made. This was demonstrated perfectly by Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath - thousands have yet to return to their homes. But it should not be surprising in this day and age that rich white men do not care, or even think about, the needs of poor black people. Just as the rich do not care about the needs of any minority, woman or working-class individual. In the words of Howard Zinn: "I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King. I'm sure he pays verbal homage, as everyone does, to Martin Luther King. But he ought to think before he sends missiles over Pakistan, before he agrees to this bloated military budget, before he sends troops to Afghanistan, before he opposes the single-payer system. He ought to ask what would Martin Luther King do? and what Martin Luther King would say?"

From Protest to Politics - by Bayard Rustin (1965)