its wild that a few people in this thread are acting like racism is like an unexplainable part of human nature lol. literally falling into a racist idea because you just refuse to understand dialectical and historical materialism i guess. idealist nonsense! read stalin!
idealist nonsense! read stalin!
This reads like one of Lenin's quips
I just said i don't think capitalism caused racism and that racism was around before capitalism.
Sorry, im not into giving chuds excuses for their venomous hatred of sexual minorities or POC
Capitalism doesn't cause racism any more than it causes markets. But it takes advantage of both to maintain control over society.
As someone who is trans and queer, a POC, and coming from an immigrant family- I have to agree with u/Z_Poster365, this post and the comments come distastefully close to spoilerism (against the most basic simple stance against literal genocide).
Trump supporters are ghouls and whether they like it or not, racist through their willingness to stand alongside and fend for racism, yes- but the nasty, honest truth is that the same goes for all of Klanmala's supporters, with the disgusting caveat even that many more of those are not simply ignorant, but genuinely vile to their core, having seen the full extent of what they support and yet still making their peace with it.
Both sides (if the sides of 100% Hitler, orange flavor vs. 100% Hitler, coconut flavor are "separate sides) are truly and irreconcilably wretched. They might take minor detours in how they rationalize it, but at their core is imperial identity politics (that the lives of the "enlightened west" are worth infinitely more than those of the global south) and imperial anxiety (that those they would see as their slaves if not exterminated altogether are liberating themselves).
Thank you. Racism is not when white dudes with cowboy hats feel afraid of Black teens and call the cops on them. Racism isn't even when white ladies clasp their purse and feel afraid when they see an Arab at the airport. Those individual instances of racist behavior are part of the system of racism; racism isn't evil, it's not Darth Vader or Voldemort, it's a system. And, as a system, it's modular and multivariate. It's a complex phenomenon full of contradictions, like the liberal imperial identity politics you mention which exist in contradiction to the less hegemonic "white working class" aesthetics of the American right. But both aspects are part of the same social system. And like any social system, it exists within the broader context of our social structure, divided into its economic base and the superstructure, as part of the superstructure. And as we should all understand by now, the superstructure is shaped by the based. They are inseparable. Trying to explain racism without understanding that the system of racism operates within capitalism as one of several mechanisms that maintains the economic base is a fool's errand.
Admittedly, I hadn't quite considered racism in the way you describe (though I'm aware of that take of discrimination + social power = racism).
I'd say I fall somewhere between you and @Lussy@hexbear.net in this regard, though I also feel that my own experiences with racism and racial alienation and how they have shaped my mentality in- well, just about everything, do also result in me having an immense bias I don't know if I can entirely overcome. Logically I agree more with you and that aforementioned (racism requires power) take- mentally it is hard to do, FWIW I will admit that I myself similarly cannot fully divorce myself mentally from identity politics (though "imperial idpol" as I described in my previous comment was in response to the "white idpol" mentioned in the post- and I do think is absolutely a thing, though idpol as an... atomization of the proletariat and humanity in general does probably have an infinite number of takes that can be derived from the concept- imperial idpol being just a particularly vile and ubiquitous one across the imperial cores).
Since I @'ed Lussy though, figure I'd respond also here in saying-
Palestine and Nicaragua are literally the last thing on my mind when im living my day to day life, talking about these things while I live in despair might as well be a form of escapism
While not dunking on you for that take, I have to infinitely disagree with it. Solidarity is not escapism, and if we cannot hold onto it even in the worst despair then we are both truly doomed, and at least somewhat wretched. We can't look away, particularly not if we want others to stand by us in turn.
I get what you're saying, 100%, in regards to living in despair (I do as well)- and sometimes we need to just live disconnecting from these things for a while, because it isn't healthy and we can't survive like that while living with our own despair ourselves. But we can't disconnect from it altogether, when it comes up (and it always does) we cannot keep silent and keep to ourselves.
Honestly on some level I feel if I were to do it- for those who do it as well- honestly, perhaps we would deserve it then. Surely we would have asked for it, by looking away from those in even further despair and facing literal industrial genocide or kill squads. Think about it and just what you said (though I don't think the full meaning of it was intended)- is this what we want to be? Are we any better than those who are persecuting us for our race if we do so? Maybe it's just me and my ex-Catholic mentality, but I reject it (the empire) in its entirety even when it is far away doing more horrifying things to others I don't know in Palestine and Nicaragua, I would like to think I would reject it and would not look away or shy from it even if it kills me.
Racism is not when white dudes with cowboy hats feel afraid of Black teens and call the cops on them.
I don’t know about you but that’s the most salient part of racism. Not sure I give a fuck about the metaphysical analysis when my literal skin color is being used to impale me with gunfire or make my conditions worse than oh, I don’t know, fucking yours or the average white dude on this here site.
Palestine and Nicaragua are literally the last thing on my mind when im living my day to day life, talking about these things while I live in despair might as well be a form of escapism
I don’t know about you but that’s the most salient part of racism. Not sure I give a fuck about the metaphysical analysis when my literal skin color is being used to impale me with gunfire or make my conditions worse than oh, I don’t know, fucking yours or the average white dude on this here site.
Sure. That's understandable. My objection to this is that, despite the fact that the immediate violence that you are forced to face is the most salient part of racism, not engaging with the entire system critically from a materialist perspective leaves you with a poor position to fight against it. Short sightedness is the essence of liberalism, being unable to see the forest for the trees. This is how you end up fighting racism with Black capitalism, instead of fighting racism, understood to be one of several systems that reproduce capitalism, with socialism.
I dunno about that. Based on the osmosis I get from an old co-workers group chat, a dude from India is definitely voting for Trump after getting his citizenship last year. Another from Hong Kong is like 80% for Trump at this point. And that’s just what’s being discussed in the open.
I think you’re underestimating how much it is really coming down to “what is Biden (Harris) going to give me?” and that Trump is at least pretending to promise something.
Also, don’t be surprised that Trump has a solid hold on a certain bloc of non-white immigrants. The “Democrats are the party of handout for lazy people and going to bankrupt the country” and the “Republicans are the party for hardworking people” stereotypes continue to hold in the minds of many people who emigrated to the US.
I got to know many Chinese immigrants in the US when I used to live there and most first gen immigrants were solid Republican voters. They really bought into the “government spending billions on handout for lazy people is why our economy is going so badly” narrative.
I hate a lot of the immigrants the US lets in because they are all these ultra-capitalist greedy bootlickers from around the globe. the US has been doing this for the last century (since the russian revolution), and I think it is making the US an even more right wing pro-capitalist hellscape.
That is the entire point of this immigration, as Samir Amin states:
Successive waves of immigration also played a role in reinforcing American ideology. The immigrants were certainly not responsible for the poverty and oppression that lay behind their departure for the United States. But their emigration led them to give up collective struggle to change the shared conditions of their classes or groups in their native countries, and adopt instead the ideology of individual success in their adopted home.
Adopting such an ideology delayed the acquisition of class consciousness. Once it began to mature, this developing consciousness had to face a new wave of immigrants, resulting in renewed failure to achieve the requisite political consciousness. Simultaneously, this immigration encouraged the “communitarianization” of U.S. society. “Individual success” does not exclude inclusion in a community of origin, without which individual isolation might become insupportable. The reinforcement of this dimension of identity—which the U.S. system reclaims and encourages—is done to the detriment of class consciousness and the forming of citizens.
Communitarian ideologies cannot be a substitute for the absence of a socialist ideology in the working class. This is true even of the most radical of them, that of the black community.
Well, lemme put it this way, beyond serving rentier western hegemonic capitalist masters of shareholders and lenders (Ego)
Trump appeals to the petit-bourgeois (read: "small" business) settler-colonial descendants of Amerikkka, that promise further radical rightist change to the nation, regardless of how dirty or feasible it is (ID)
And Kamala appeals to the labor aristocrat PMC tendencies of it, that hope to maintain the bloody imperial hegemony as is, and its image (Superego)
Both still further Amerikkka's interest in different faces, under the same Ego...
Is there anyone here who really believes Kamala’s campaign core isn’t imperialist war and genocide and smug bourgeois paternalism?
There’s enough genocidal people that she’s a candidate
That’s it, let’s stop putting our heads in the sand with ‘harm reduction’
The small whites are for sure afraid they will be treated economically like a minority. That is the anxiety. They don't want to lose the benefits of their white privilege. So kidna
The small whites are for sure afraid they will be treated economically like a minority
No, they're afraid they'll be treated equally. Equality feels like oppression
If you actually treated them like a minority they would all sudoku in like 3 days from the shock
no, they don't think they will be treated equally; it is an inherent part of colonialism (from which white supremacy arose) to condition a projection of a 'reversed consequence' if power is let go by making the colonized subject into a 'dangerous' and 'unpredictable' embodiment of 'barbarity,' against whom the colonizer is instead a 'civilized' and 'rational' embodiment of 'good' in dialectical antithesis to it. It is where the ideological dynamic of 'civilizing the savages' comes from in the material relation of colonialism and its white supremacist expression in history (how European colonialism unfolded and reified its relations). ie. there is an underlying understanding in the white supremacist consciousness that "they want to do to us what we did to them or worse, and will if we let them" (the implication being, we can never 'let them,' meaning never give up vigilance and power over them, securing the colonial relation).
It comes out very obviously from white liberals in conversations about decolonization when they are pressed that they are not to and can not insert themselves into deciding 'how' the colonized 'should' carry out decolonization. There is a deep primal fear in this projection which dialectically necessarily grows out of the material relations of colonialism and colonization; as for there to be a colonizer there must be a colonized
which inherently necessitates dehumanization and justifications for 'why' maintaining control and dominance over the colonized subject is "right," "natural," or "the only option." Which then cyclically reinforces the material relations to the material base
land, resources, labor, means of production and subsistence and reproduction of labor. Cyclically because then every act of defiance and resistance against this colonial relationship by the colonized, in the perspective of this superstructural ethos, 'justifies' the claim of the 'dangerousness' and 'barbarity' of the colonized and so the colonizer's need to 'keep them under control'. As we saw it also with oct7 in Palestine. As we see in every uprising and riot of colonized people or major push against the structures and systems of their subjugation.
I recommend The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon for a good understanding of colonialism and decolonization and all its inter-relations.
economic anxiety and racism go hand in hand. blame life stresses on the other simple as. classic demagogury.
That's the core of Trump's movement, but the cultural and political membrane surrounding it stands in for industrial American conservatism which alot of non white nationalists buy into
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