These comments were sparked by debate around the Oakland Socialist article Opposing Trump: It’s more complex than it might appear! 26 April 2025, written by John Reimann. This was my initial comment 4 days later:
A journalist reporting on the Virginia colony in the 1650's, had to explain to his European readers that “white people” was the new label that Europeans were calling themselves over here now. So, it can truly be said that Europeans came to America, and sent “white people” back. The label was created in America at precisely the time they were institutionalizing African slavery in the colonies. That's why it had such an incredibly strong material foundation, and became the template for almost every other form of racial and sexual oppression. The label first appears in laws forbidding marriage between “white people” and Negroes.
When John writes about “the working class,” I get the feeling that he's only thinking about white workers. Like when he says “perhaps a majority of the working class and countries like the United States, have formed the opposite conclusion. “Build a wall around our own country. Keep all foreigners out. Beggar thy neighbor in order to get ahead. America First.””
This is only true for that majority of white workers that put Trump in the White House. Yes, I know that he can argue that technically he's correct because white workers are such a majority, and the more progressive workers of color can be dissolved into this singular “working class” in such a way that this progressive minority disappears. When he refers to “the working class,” I don't get the feeling that he's talking about people that look like me.
He goes on to say “Maga is part of a historical international tendency that actually goes back 30 years." I would say it goes back considerably further than that—see above. After all, Trump is using a 1798 law to deport probably exclusively immigrants of color without any due process. He looks to the period after Black Reconstruction was overthrown, and the US was conquering colonies of brown people as when America was great before. And his most fervent efforts seem focused on overturning the gains made in the wake of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s and 70s, including those made by women and LBGT.
John says “The psychology of Maga is based on a yearning to return to the – largely imagined – vision of the old days, a vision of a nation bound together by old culture and traditions, in other words, national unity.” This is obviously the vision of a white nation that largely excluded black and brown people.
This brings me to my main problem with John's piece. He speaks of “nationalism” when he should be speaking of “white nationalism,” as when he says “the only alternative is nationalism, which is exactly what Trump and Maga base themselves on.” That's just patently false, if nationalism refers to a unity of all citizens of a nation. What we are dealing with here is “white nationalism.” Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, & Donald Trump, aren't nationalists, they are white nationalists. They have the goal of creating a white ethno-state in which black and brown people are powerless, expelled, or exterminated. John completely disappears that. Every administration from George Washington to Biden was a nationalism, not internationalism, administration. This Trump administration distinguishes itself by being a white nationalist, white supremacist, regime of a new type.
White nationalism is a new form of nationalism, in that it seeks to create a new supra-nationalism. That's why the label white people was created in the first place. It was a largely successful effort to replace the various European nationalities that populated the North American colonies with a single white nation. The 30 year old “historical international tendency” that John sees MAGA as being a part of is an international white nationalist tendency. I think you will find that Bukele, Milei, and Modi think of themselves as “white” even if he doesn't. Dugin's “traditionalism“ is largely a cover for white nationalism.
John erases this important problem which has stopped the US working class from being what it should be, so he can jump right to the goal of international working class unity. That's how he could pen this piece without ever using the words “white,” “race” or “racism.” The problem is that every black or brown person has been living in a climate of fear since Trump's inauguration, because we can see that the hammer is falling on us first. And in reading this piece, we'll see those concerns obscured. This is no way to build the working class unity John says he wants.
This was John's response to my initial comment:
I disagree with Clay that this all boils down to white nationalism. Capitalism created the nation states and it has ruled through the nation states for its entire history. Yes, white nationalism has been a huge part of this, especially in the United States. But the breakdown of the nation states and the rise of nationalism is far more than that. Take, for example, what happened when the British voted in Brexit. One of the immigrant groups that was most subject to attack was the Poles. Or consider the attacks on Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. Traditionalism goes far beyond white nationalism. One of the foremost Traditionalist heads of state is Narendra Modi in India whose rule is based on a return to Hindu “traditions”, not being “white” as Clay claims, and is against the Muslims in India. The Islamic fundamentalists base themselves on traditionalism as do the rulers in Iran. And I think Clay’s claim that Dugin’s traditionalism is simply a cover for white nationalism is mistaken.
In fact, when one looks at the origins of traditionalism, one sees the exact opposite of what Clay claims. As I explain in this article Aleksandr Dugin: Alchemist of “Traditionalism”, mysticism and fascism, Dugin started by reading two philosophers: René Guénon and Julius Evola. Guénon was a founder of a school of thought called “Traditionalism”. He believed in the eternal truth of the ancient ways, first delving into Hinduism and then into Islam. He converted to Islam and lived out the latter part of his life in Egypt. The author of Eternal Wars, Benjamin Teitelbaum, explains that Guénon “celebrated timeless values.” He was apolitical, interested in just exploring some great “truths” for all times and places. Teitelbaum also explains that for traditionalists, human history is a cycle that “proceeds through four ages, moving from golden to silver to bronze to dark, and then – after a cataclysmic event – back to golden again.”
I would also remind Clay that “family values” plays a huge role in traditionalism, and that this theme features first and foremost an attack on LGBTQ people as well as women. In Russia, for example, it is illegal to be openly gay but legal for a man to beat his wife, as long as that beating doesn’t result in her being in the hospital overnight, in which case it’s a misdemeanor.
In response I posted this to John's blog on May 8th, as of May 19th its still awaiting moderation. I guess he wanted to have the last word:
John, I have spent most of my career working in IT, and for most of that time, I resented being asked to whitelist or blacklist an IP address because I looked upon it as having racist connotations. As you may already know, these are terms of art in IT. Whitelisting, means that address will be allowed in even if other rules would exclude it. Blacklisting has the opposite effect. That address would be rejected even if it was otherwise acceptable.
Then one day I had an epiphany. I understood that for the human species, it was quite natural for white to stand for acceptable, safe or good, and black to stand for bad, dangerous or that which should be rejected. This is because we're creatures most comfortable and productive in daylight, which is white light, and when the night comes and it's black, we retreat to our protected spaces to await the next day. So for us the association, white equals good, black equals bad is 1) immutable, 2) primordial, and 3) supra-cultural. For species that hunt or gather at night, and hide during daylight, the association is probably quite the opposite, but that's not us.
So, the problem is not associations that go back before we even had words for colors. The problem is the relatively recent and fraudulent association of those colors with people's skin colors which are neither white nor black. That's why the crayons we got as kids included a special color for white skin, racistly called fleshtone, because the white crayon obviously wouldn't do. This also means that for a part of humanity to take for itself the label
“white,” is already white supremacist. That this label was adopted in the same breath that those so honoring themselves were adopting racial slavery only highlights the point. I start with this, my unique contribution to the understanding of racism, to make the point that it's not really about skin color it's about a racist social construct only loosely related to skin color.
And with that introduction, I can address your other points. I'm afraid this is going to be a long one.
Let me start by disagreeing with your characterization of my position, that it
“all boils down” to white nationalism or white supremacy. I'm not saying that there's never anything else in the mix. On the contrary, there are always other things in the mix. What I am saying is that white supremacy is foundational to the other things you see as quite apart from it. This is simply because racial slavery developed in the early history of capitalism, and the profits from it provided a rich material basis to fund racist scholarship, racist culture, and racist science for centuries since the 1600s. As such it has provided a template for most other minority oppressions subsequently developed under capitalism. And since white supremacy developed, not only as a justification for white men dominating non-white people, but for dominating the very Earth itself, their environmental degradation and denial of climate change also has a white supremacist foundation.
For example, it's well documented that Hitler patterned the Nazis Nuremberg laws after American Jim Crow laws, see for example,
here,
here, and
here. And this American model wasn't just applied to the Jews. Hitler's Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch
publicly referred to Ukrainians as
“niggers.” Yes, he used that very American racial slur.
When the British first founded Jamestown in 1607, the label white had yet to be applied to people, and the British failed to effectuate the
“divide and conquer” strategy that they would later become famous for. African and English could freely intermarry, they labored together under the same conditions, and most importantly, they revolted together. A whole series of serval revolts between 1650 and 1670 rocked the colonies, forced fresh troops to be dispatched from Britain, and most significantly, made Africa slavery the solution to their growing labor problems, while they cobbled together the white supranationality out of the various European nationalities then in the colonies.
From
this YouTube history of the British colonization of India [41:55]:
When the British first arrived in India they considered the Indians as their equals. They were trade partners and quite often romantic partners. Between 1600-1800 the British and Indians mingled together. There were strong trade relationships, friendships, and political marriages..Yet at the end of the 18th century this started to change.
By the time they got about the business of colonizing India, they had learned those divide and conquer lessons well. Whereas Hindus and Muslims had lived together peacefully on the Indian subcontinent for centuries, the British went about methodically creating a wedge between them, mainly by putting the Muslim minority in a position where they could lord over the Hindu minority. The results of those racist policies have us fearing an imminent nuclear showdown between India and Pakistan today. They also converted the long existing
caste system in India into a racist system. For example, the Hindu caste system initially knew four religiously described
“castes.” It was the British that first described a fifth,
“the untouchables,” and made it a legal classification. The segregationist signs in India that said
“No dogs or Indians allowed,” were taken directly from their North American playbook.
Knowing there would never be enough white people in India to insure British control, they went about creating a subsection of the Indian elite that saw themselves as British, i.e. white, to help them. As the British Viceroy of India said
[40:30] “We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race.” The important point here is that since race isn't based on anything concrete, like biology, the parameters of who can or can't be considered
“white” are very flexible. There are plenty of brown people who think of themselves as white.
Given the way British white supremacy shaped the formation of modern India, it is a slap in the face of historical materialism to claim the extreme right-wing Narendra Modi is basing his policies on a mere return to Hindu
“traditions”, and not white supremacy. It means taking t
he claims of a racist about himself at face value, and we shouldn't fall for that. One of the latter day lessons that white supremacists, and its derivatives of all stripes, have learnt from the US is that it's no longer acceptable to claim your motives are racist—you claim anything but, like
“traditionalist” or
“nativists”—but scratch the surface and you will find a white supremacist every time.
Now, let's look at the Polish question. You think the Brexit objection to the Poles is a good example of an anti-immigrant attitude that is not based on white supremacy, because you think of the Poles as
“white.” But it really doesn't matter what you think because race is a social construct, and being so, is very flexible. Sarah Kendzior has done
some excellent work on how the Poles became
“white” in America, which didn't happen until the 20th century. In the interest of brevity, I won't elaborate on her writing here, but will limit myself to the Brexit era you raised simply by pointing to
this 7/16/2016 Guardian article:
Racist incidents feared to be linked to Brexit result
Suspected racist graffiti at Polish cultural centre in London among incidents thought to be fuelled by vote to leave the EU...
The problem is that these racist attacks were coming from white supremacists that still don't see the Poles as
“white.”Finally, you raise the example of Alexander Dugin. You say that my claim that his
“traditionalism” is simply a cover for white nationalism is wrong. Well, plenty of people agree with me. By way of example, let me quote a few short passages from
Trad Rights: Making Eurasian Whiteness at the “End of History” by Leah Feldman, where she talks about
“the Right’s revanchist vision of political change tethered to a political-theological project of white Eurasian statehood.”:
One prominent example is the work of Russian philosopher and political theorist Alexander Dugin. Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism is a white supremacist political theory rooted in the idea of a spiritually predestined Eurasian ethnos and its native land empire.
...
Whether staged in a rural town settlement, or on a gaming platform or 4chan thread, these New Right movements rely on militarized tribal imaginaries and the performance of kinship structures to highlight nativist white supremacist claims to territorial sovereignty, a defense—as the Right frames it—from their “great replacement” by immigrants and people of color.
There's much more to be said about Dugin, even from this 36-page paper, not to mention other sources, including the glowing tributes from white nationalists in Europe, and the MAGA movement right here in the US. There is much more to be said about the white supremacist foundations of these things you cite as examples of phenomenon unrelated to white supremacy, but this response is already much too long. And I haven't even looked into the protests against Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa, but given the long history of British white supremacist rule of both countries, I suspect there is a connection.
When writing about these questions you consistently ignore the white supremacist connections, and when I raise them, you bring up these superficial and faulty arguments to show how you think I am wrong. So, I have to ask you: Do you mean to be an apologist for white supremacy? Because, increasingly, that's what it sounds like to me, and that's a big part of the problem with the US Left.
Does Narendra Modi see himself as "white"?
In my dialogue with John, I said “I think you will find that Bukele, Milei, and Modi think of themselves as "white" even if you don't.” To which John replied, “One of the foremost Traditionalist heads of state is Narendra Modi in India whose rule is based on a return to Hindu“traditions”, not being“white” as Clay claims, and is against the Muslims in India." This was my response:
I, frankly, don't know that much about India, as compared to many other regions and cultures. So, to examine this question in some detail I had to educate myself first, and being the lazy intellectual that I am, I often find YouTube videos the easiest way to do that. I started with The History of India's Caste System by Akshar from the Emissary. This 40 minute talk taught me more about India's caste system than I thought I would ever know, and showed me that it's far more complex and nuanced than I ever suspected. I highly recommend it if you want to know more. The section most relevant to our present discussion is titled "The British Raj's Impact on the Caste System." In it he says:
The British made caste into a legal code. A new bureaucracy was born that codified caste into a more rigid system than it had ever been before. By attaching numbers and laws to this social system, they radically transformed caste. The American journalist William T. Ellis hammered this idea home in 1907, saying, “One advantage of caste has been mentioned to me by British army officers: if it were not for the caste system—which breaks people into irreconcilable sections—England would not be able to hold India for six months.” Political scientist Ajay Varghese notes that even today, caste conflict remains higher in areas that were directly ruled by the British compared to those indirectly ruled by Indian princes. Now, the British did not invent caste, but they sure as hell took advantage of it and made it worse...
So, using the lessons they learned in creating the “white race” in North America in the 17th century, they converted India's ancient caste system into a tool to divide and conquer.
This is the story about a people who used to worship black gods but ended up worshiping white men.
He goes into a long history of how the Indian subcontinent came to be populated by people from a great many areas, starting with the Africans, and thus people of many colors, but skin color references in Hindu texts can easily be misinterpreted:
Color in the Varna is a very special thing. It is used primarily for symbolism, and sometimes people kind of misinterpret this. So you'll hear things like, "Oh, people have golden hair or shining red hair, then golden eyes, golden skin, shining bright white.” This is mostly to do with metaphors for the Sun or fire. We're generally describing like a fiery or sunlike aspect to people. Keep in mind we have geographic descriptors of the Varna, and this is all in India, and there aren't that many blonde people in India as I know.
So there's also symbolism in terms of white being a color of purity or newness or hope, and then black being a color of darkness, ignorance, and evil. Now, sometimes people transpose these into say, ethnic groups or something, but let's keep going and you'll see that doesn't really hold up. Surprisingly enough, in the early Varna, we don't see that much commentary on skin color like that.
The section I highlighted is another example of what I talked about in an earlier post about whitelisting and blacklisting and how these associations, which were hijacked by Europeans to label people and institute racial slavery are 1) immutable, 2) primordial, and 3) supra-cultural. They will be found in every culture long before slave owners decided to honor themselves with the label “white.”
In terms of how dark skin was viewed in pre-colonial India:
Dark skin was not a shame; it was a gift in Vedic India. Ancient Indians revered dark skin. Kali, Vishnu, Rama, Krishna—all these gods are described as very beautiful, and the scriptures have super vivid descriptions of their dark skin.
And later:
My point is ancient India had a unique acceptance around almost all skin tones.
He talks about how this changed in the section titled The Impact of European Colonization:
While India's Turk conquerors were into light skin, Europeans were another level. Much more concrete ideas began to emerge around the ideas of race and the differences between people. Some of the earliest of this rhetoric that we hear is actually from the Portuguese. We have a lot of accounts of Portuguese rule in places like Goa and especially of the Inquisition, when locals were forced to convert to Christianity, as well as the descriptions of these locals. Francis Xavier, a missionary who advocated for this brutal Inquisition, notes how he detested the blackness of the Hindus, and he kind of gloated about their black idols being destroyed.
Things only got worst when the British arrived on the scene:
Think of how often you hear the word “fair” in English literature as a sign of beauty. Now, other global literature also has descriptions about maybe light-skinned being better or a certain skin being better, whatever. But this almost single-minded obsession within British literature about fair being good gives us a clue into the mentality of a lot of these colonialists.
This white supremacist mentality definitely affected the way the British ran India:
The East India Company and the British Crown ran British India with a network of Indians. These Indians would work under British officers and imbibe British values. This idea of dark skin being bad again—we have another set of elite Indians imbibing this.
I suspect he's referring to Modi and company in that last sentence.
The British were very detail-oriented people and super systematic—whether used for good or bad, this is what the British were. And they were super efficient when it came to this. This meant they would start noticing details in people that even the people may not notice. The British recorded the differences in skin color between castes, differences in their demeanor, the differences in how they carried their life, and they would craft theories such as the Martial Race Theory or the Aryan Invasion Theory.
These theories didn't come out of thin air—or the idle contemplation of some racist scholar. They were paid for out of the colonial profits they were created to support. This is what is meant by the material basis for these racist theories. They were also actuated in the British administration of India:
Thomas Macaulay, a leader in the British administration of India, created this “brown Englishman” concept where he wanted to craft a group of Indians who were Indian in blood and color but English in tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect.
These were Indians that saw themselves as “white” even while the British “knew” they really weren't. This same light-skinned elite is running India today.
Macaulay's words came true. We started to see brown Englishmen, but later many of these brown Englishmen would rebel and fight for freedom. However, their biases remained. All these ideas about Indian inferiority and shame would stay in these people despite fighting for freedom. There was a sense of deep shame here—a shame around Indian religion, culture, values, and indeed skin color.
I never understood that the conflict in Kashmir, a conflict that threatens nuclear war even now, was rooted in white supremacy before today:
One interesting manifestation of this in the Republic of India's history is secessionist separatist movements in places like Kashmir, Punjab, or Northeast India. A lot of their foundational thought about why they are separate is related to their light skin, their whiteness. While they'll speak about freedom and human rights in the English language, when they switch to local, a lot of it is just talking crap about Indians because of their dark skin and how much better they are than other Indians because of their lighter skin. The colorism and ethnic supremacy angle of the separatist movements is integral—it is foundational.
So, contrary to what John would have you believe, it's not “traditionalism” or “nativism” that's foundational to the current conflicts in India. It's white supremacy.
On the relationship between that and Hindu nationalism, Aadita Chaudhury has an interesting piece on Al Jazeera titled Why white supremacists and Hindu nationalists are so alike with the teaser “White supremacy and Hindu nationalism have common roots going back to the 19th-century idea of the ‘Aryan race’.” He describes a long history, but his one sentence summary is:
Hindu nationalism and white supremacy are the two sides of the same coin.
Mehdi Hasan wrote a piece for The Intercept 5 years ago that traces much of that history. It's titled: How the White Nationalists Who Love Trump Found Inspiration in the Group That Gave Us Narendra Modi. He traces the long history of white nationalism in India. For example:
The RSS is a far-right, male-only paramilitary volunteer organization, founded in India in 1925. Breivik may have been lauding the RSS in 2011; but back in the 1920s and 1930s, the founders of the RSS were heaping praise on Europe’s far-right, totalitarian regimes — from Mussolini’s fascists in Italy to Hitler’s Nazis in Germany.
Is it any wonder that the Hindu nationalist from India has formed such a close friendship with the white nationalist in the White House?
 |
Being Indian, he would be an "Aryan brother" (Himmler
would say) but he does not have the appearance that I
would not identify as "Caucasian" |
The RSS is back, and even stronger under Modi. On the subject of Modi, there is an active online discussion of Modi's skin complexion and how it's gotten lighter with age. As you can see from the pictures that accompany
this Quora discussion What color is Narendra Modi’s skin, can he be mistaken as Caucasian?, he was much darker when he was younger. Many think he used some kind of bleach or skin lightener, but perhaps his
“Michael Jackson” is also the result of a skin disease.
 |
| A younger, darker Narendra Modi |
Truth be told, I can't look into Modi's heart and say whether he sees himself as
“white” or not. But I can say with some certainty that he has somehow managed to look whiter than he did when he was younger, and with great certainty that the Hindu nationalism he seeks to impose on India is white nationalism by another name.
John's method of “fighting” white supremacy seems to be by denying its influence whenever it raises it ugly head outside of America. He sees “xenophobia,” or “nativism,” or “traditionalism,” anything but white supremacy. He'd rather credit political movements that he thinks arose because this or that person read the works of this or that right-wing philosopher, rather than the clear historical materialist roots by which capitalism spawn white supremacy, and all of its derivatives.
While waiting for the moderator to publish this on John's blog, the discussion moved to the USSC [Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Committee] listserv that both John and I were members of at that time. When I posted the same comments above there that I had to John's blog, he had these further comments:
I thank Clay for his comments, which as always are thought provoking.
To take up his points one by one: I said “perhaps a majority of the working class” and I think that is correct. No, I did not break it down by gender nor by race, but saying it might be.a majority overall is accurate. And, no, I'm not only thinking of white workers. When I was working, I met plenty of black carpenters who opposed immigration. And according to a Pew poll I just looked at, while 60% of whites and 59% of Asians support expulsion of undocumented immigrants, so do 34% of black people. Not only that, but I was not referring only to the United States, nor even to the US and Europe. Let's not forget that South Africa has seen riots against immigrant workers from Zimbabwe.
But I am not even mainly talking about that. I am talking about, for instance, the policy of the UAW, which is basically to pressure the auto manufacturers to shut down their plants in Mexico and elsewhere and shift production to the US. That's why Shawn Fain, UAW president, supports Trump's tariffs. I have not spoken with any auto workers, but I would bet a lot that they support that position of Fain, and that includes auto workers of all races.
So I don't think Clay's criticism on that score is correct.
Now, on the issue of “nationalism”: Maybe I should have written a bit more on that issue, explained more. In fact, I was not thinking entirely about white nationalism in the United States. I was thinking about how different groups of workers around the world think more in terms of their national, religious or ethnic group than in terms of class, of being workers. That is exactly what we are seeing in Syria today, and I think it may be the undoing of the revolution there. And it certainly is true for every ethnic, religious and racial group of workers here in the U.S. In one sense, it is a response to white nationalism. But then there's that other sense: As I said, I seriously suspect that the great majority of auto workers of all races support the nationalism that calls for getting more jobs here by taking jobs away from Mexican workers - in other words, beggar thy neighbor.
I responded to this comment as follows on May 4th:
John is so intent on proving himself right, and me wrong, that he picks & frames a few points that he thinks show that, starting with one I already conceded.[“technically he's correct”] But he doesn't comment on my unique contribution that white nationalism is a synthetic supra-nationalist formation, or the way immigration is used to promote the racist “Great Replacement” fear mongering.
In terms of MAGA's connection to international trends he labels as “traditionalism” and I label as white nationalism, I was pointing to Trump's connections to a worldwide white supremacist movement that includes Le Pen, Farage, AfD, and Putin, and was a fascist insurrectionist almost a decade ago when John was saying "Donald Trump is right" about fixed elections, and focused on defeating Hillary Clinton, and Marxmail was kicking me out in a fit of racist hatred while claiming "Trump is toast."
So, it would seem that I have to further develop my critique of the piece that started this thread. In it, he writes:
We start where we left off in Part One, which concluded by discussing the bullying mentality upon which much of the support for Trump is based: We cannot successfully combat this bullying mentality based on moral appeals, nor based on identity politics. It can only be successfully combated through an appeal to working class solidarity.
From Wikipedia we get this definition of bullying:
Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing, comments, or threats, in order to abuse, aggressively dominate, or intimidate one or more others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception (by the bully or by others) that an imbalance of physical or social power exists or is currently present. This perceived presence of physical or social imbalance is what distinguishes the behavior from being interpreted or perceived as bullying from instead being interpreted or perceived as conflict.[1][2]
I find it curious that John sees
“the bullying mentality” as the basis of much of Trump's support without saying who is being bullied and who is in support of this bullying. [In Part I, he does define
“bullying” as
“racism, sexism and homophobia” and its supporters as mainly
“young white men,” and so, having dispense with it, he lets
“bullying,” which is only one aspect of
“racism, sexism and homophobia,” stand in for those types of oppression in Part 2.] But he alludes to it with his slight at
“identity politics,” whatever that means.
If he's suggesting that Jim Crow type “bullying" couldn't be “successfully combated” by African Americans banding together to fight this type of violence, I beg to disagree. If by “moral appeals” he means all those who supported the civil rights movement on the basis of human rights, or even simple decency, again history tells a very different story. He thinks it can only be “successfully”(his safety word) combated through an “appeal”—yes, an appeal to working class solidarity, but still only the appeal, and not actual working class solidarity, and since he has made this appeal, without mentioning who is being bullied, and why it's supported by enough voters to put a white supremacist in the White House, his work here is done!
I think John makes a similar absolutist and idealist error in introducing this piece to the list when he says: "like all symptoms we have to understand the causes first.” Fortunately for all of us, doctors have long been treating symptoms, easing suffering and saving lives, without understanding what causes them first. Even to this day. A week ago, Monday, I was in the emergency room with serious rectal bleeding. The doctors treated this before knowing the cause, which hopefully will be determined with some precision through a colonoscopy later this month. If they had thought like John, and waited to understand the cause first, who knows if I would be writing this today?Identity politics, as a phrase, was virtually unheard of before 1990, which is roughly when John sees all this stuff starting. It may have as many definitions as people using it, but most use it in a derogatory manner. Wikipedia's is this:
Identity politics, as a mode of categorizing, are closely connected to the ascription that some social groups are oppressed (such as women, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities); that is, the idea that individuals belonging to those groups are, by virtue of their identity, more vulnerable to forms of oppression such as cultural imperialism, violence, exploitation of labour, marginalization, or subjugation.[1]
These days, it seems more used by the right, and is associated with
“woke,” “DEI,” and
“CRT,” all derogatory terms designed to undermine the struggle of these oppressed groups for justice. It almost never is applied to the concept of
“white people,” a synthetic identity created almost 400 years ago, for the purpose of instituting racial slavery in the North American colonies.
Moving right along, because this is already taking more ink than it's worth. He seems to think there was [an attitude of] working class solidarity in the past, but it collapsed 30 years ago. [with the fall of Stalinism in the USSR and the rise of “identity politics”?] And then he looks at external factors [international tendencies] as the prime cause, and talks of everything from Bukele's El Salvador to Putin's Russia as the forces behind the rise of MAGA. I would argue that this is putting the cart before the horse. The “historical roots” are located right here in the US, and go back much further than 30 years.
Polls don't generally divide voters into working class and non-working class, so that makes it a little hard to know the composition of MAGA, but according to
these poll results, the breakdown between college educated and non-college educated was 47% to 52% for Harris, and 39% to 61% for Trump. Similarly, for white collar versus blue collar, the figures are 57% to 41% for Harris, and 45% to 53% for Trump. From that poll:
More than half of Trump voters in the workforce — 53 percent — define themselves as blue collar or service workers, while only 41 percent of Harris voters do. Harris voters are more likely to be white collar and college educated, with 47 percent of them having degrees versus 39 percent of Trump-voting workers.
This Newsweek piece says that Trump got 16% of the African American vote, so we know MAGA hasn't found a home among black workers in this country. This is why, when John writes: “No wonder Maga has found a home amongst workers in this country!”, I conclude that he's thinking only of white workers.
On the listserv a number of other people were able to contribute to the discussion. One of them said:
I agree the problem here is really White Nationalism, although I would argue that White Supremacy is a better term for this since we see it operating in Russia, and in the Far-Right parties of Europe and Latin America.
To this I responded:
Yeah, I tend to use white supremacy and white nationalism interchangeably, but I think there are important differences. White supremacy is the ideology that white people are superior to non-white people, and the former, by birthright deserves to rule over the later. White supremacy was implicit in the way the white race was initially created, a synthetic amalgamation of all the European nationalities in North America into one supra-nationality for the purpose of subjugating the indigenous population, and the imported Africans.
Nationalism is the ideology, and practise, cultivated by a given bourgeoisie to bind together the people under its control in a given region, to form a nation, and ideally from the bourgeoisie's POV, into a state they control. Looking back to the very early history of the United States, we can see that most of the first Africans that came to the Virginia colony in the decades starting with 1619 were enrolled in the colony as indentured servants. That meant that some of the lucky ones were able to survive long enough to work off their indentureship, and could get a piece of land, just like their European counterparts. A very few were able to accumulate enough land to establish a plantation and own their own slaves [indentured servants], including European indentured servants—owned by Africans! That meant Africans were initially a part of the incipient bourgeoisie. Racism, as we know it today, didn't exist. Europeans and Africans could freely intermarry, and did. Black landowners could prevail in court against their European counterparts, and be considered well respected members of the community. This period, while very brief, is important because it shows that another road to national development was possible—one not burdened by racism.
In less than a couple of generations all that changed. Africans that were lucky enough to own land were dispossessed, and soon found themselves in chains, or expelled from the colony. The label “white” to describe people was first used in law anywhere in the world in 1691 Virginia statues that forbid intermarriage between Africans, Mulattos, or native people with the newly labelled “white” people.
What precipitated this change was the insatiable need of the growing tobacco industry for labor, and the reality that European and African laborers were making common cause in their struggles against their masters. The English bourgeoisie's solution to this dilemma was to cobble together the various Europeans in the colonies into a new synthetic creation—the white race. This is where white nationalism comes from, and why I tend to call those white supremacist who seek to build unity among white people that spans national borders white nationalist. But white supremacy remains the foundational problem, and this racism between lighter skinned people and darker skinned people, is not only a problem throughout Latin America, as you noted, but also within the African American community in the US, and even among Africans in Africa. And if you dig a little, you will find that it has served as the imperialist template for all sorts of other group oppression, as for example the Japanese supremacy with regards to its Asian neighbors that develop after first contact with the West.
Thank you for your comments. This is the period that I have been studying intensely—the Virginia colony between ~1619 when the first Africans arrived and 1705 when the Virginia Slave Codes finally codified African slavery in the soon to be US, because a lot of stuff happened in that distant period the consequences of which we are still dealing with today.
1613 still stands as the first known use of the color white to describe Europeans. That was an isolated occurrence in a relatively obscure London play. It didn't come into common usage until much later ~1650, and that was on this side of the Atlantic. It didn't make it into law before 1691, and didn't make it into dictionaries, as a second definition of
“white,” until >1690. Although we have been taught to believe
“white” people were always with us, even in ancient Egypt, if Hollywood is to be believed.
A lot has been written about this era, but one area that has not been well examined is just how the English, and other European nationality, in the colonies, were convinced to trade their rich national heritages to join this amorphous amalgamation called
“white people.” I don't believe they did this without a fight.
That 1691 VA law that first used that label
“white” was
titled “An act for suppressing outlying Slaves,” which tells you a lot about the connection between that label and the institution of racial slavery. Far from granting any sort of privilege, it took away the right of the newly labelled
“white people” to marry anyone they chose to. The first law I've found that granted anything that could be called a
“white privilege” came a few years later in a law that forbade whipping a white man without the constable's permission—some privilege that.
By the time laws were passed that restricted voting, land ownership, carrying firearms, etc. there were almost no free blacks left VA to exercise those rights. So, I believe the first real effect of those laws was to force any Europeans that wanted to exercise those rights, rights they already had, to declare themselves
“white” just to preserve them. If anyone has any info or ideas on how the Europeans in the colonies were convinced to accept this redefinition, and especially any struggles around that, I would very much appreciate some help.
Even among Europeans, the question of who could be admitted to the white race has varied greatly with time and place. In one of my blog posts on this subject, I draw upon Sarah Kendzior description of how the Polish in Chicago finally gained admittance to the white race during the 1919 race riots:
In 1919, Irish gangs in blackface attacked Polish neighborhoods in Chicago in an attempt to convince Poles, and other Eastern European groups, that they, too, were “white” and should join them in the fight against blacks. As historian David R. Roediger recalls, “Poles argued that the riot was a conflict between blacks and whites, with Poles abstaining because they belonged to neither group.” But the Irish gangs considered whiteness, as is often the case in America, as anti-blackness. And as in the early 20th century Chicago experienced an influx not only of white immigrants from Europe, but blacks from the South, white groups who felt threatened by black arrivals decided that it would be politically advantageous if the Poles were considered white as well.
The Nazis didn't consider the Ukrainians to be white. Hitler's Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch publicly referred to Ukrainians as “niggers.” They certainly didn't consider the Jews to be white. That's still a big division on the extreme right, and I suspect that much of the deference given to the Zionists and Israel today is an apology for ever having doubted that they were white.
Even to this day, some white supremacists don't consider Poles to be white. While searching my blogs for the above reference, I found my response to a 7 year old dispute with John with regards to the use of the term “xenophobia,” which I feel, like “traditionalism,” may have some merit in its own right, but is too often used to hid the core issue. So, allow me an extended quote from this 2018 blog post, because I think it speaks directly to this current dispute, once you substitute “traditionalism” for “xenophobia”:
Many on the Left position xenophobia as the higher, all encompassing category, with racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim [Islamophobia] attitudes operating as sub-categories of xenophobia. This is how John Reiman, who blogs as the Oakland Socialist, and thinks himself a Marxist, used it in discussions with me. He defines xenophobia simply as “hatred of foreigners” [email 23/7/2018]:Yes, the anti-immigration issue is and will be used to build the forces of white supremacy, but you could also put it the other way around. In any case, I think that the xenophobia that is being built also has its own component. And let’s not forget that this is a global development. Yes, white supremacy is often part of it elsewhere, but consider this: The Brexit vote was largely an anti immigrant vote, but a large part of that xenophobic, anti immigrant sentiment was directed against Polish immigrants into Britain.
The Poles and white supremacy
Actually, anti-Polish attitudes have their own phobia - polonophobia. More to the point is this BBC News article from 19 July 2012:
The Polish Association of Northern Ireland has called for action after Poland flags were burned in several locations across Belfast on 11 July.
They have described the burning of the flags as “racist intimidation” of the Polish community.
The reason they called it “racist intimidation” and not “xenophobic intimidation” is that it was being done by white supremacist gangs that don't consider the Poles to be really “white,” no matter how hard the extreme right-wing government back in Poland tries to be white nationalist. Such are the odd contradictions of “whiteness.”
Because Reiman considers the Poles to be “white,” he thought they would make a good case for why xenophobia, as opposed to white supremacy, was the operative force at work in this case. What he overlooks is that it is the racists that determine who is “white,” and the Poles aren't always considered white.
It seems, the more things change. the more things remain the same.
In a May 9th email to the listserv, I wrote more about Dugin and the trans right:
Nonetheless, Dugin has held popularity among US alt-right ideologues from Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer to the former Traditional Workers Party founders Matthew Heimbach and Matthew Raphael Johnson. Spencer’s former wife, Russian-Canadian writer Nina Kouprianova, was also one of the main translators of his work into English. Richard Spencer describes a Duginist framework, which he calls “Identitarian-focused populism.” He clarifies, “I do not subscribe to pure biological determinism. I believe that one’s identity is a complex interplay of nature and nurture: from one’s DNA to cultural and social interactions, and, of course, geography—the sense of rootedness in one’s native landscape” (Spencer 2017). Neo-Eurasianist geopoetics thus offers US thinkers a vision of white supremacy that emphasizes nativism to circumvent discussions of race.
I think John is using terms like “nativism” and
“traditionalism” in precisely that way. That's how he could write a
whole blog about Aleksandr Dugin without once mentioning white supremacy or white nationalism.
On May 11th, I posted this:In John's argument that what we are witnessing is the rise of traditionalism, as opposed to what I call the resurgence of white supremacy, he gives the following example:
One of the foremost Traditionalist heads of state is Narendra Modi in India whose rule is based on a return to Hindu “traditions”, not being “white” as Clay claims, and is against the Muslims in India.
So, what traditions is Modi trying to return to? Is he trying to return to India's pre-colonial traditions when Hindus and Muslims lived together peacefully for centuries? John's own statement above answers that with a definitive
“no.” Is he trying to return to the much looser caste system that existed before the British codified it into law? Is he trying to return to a Hinduism that worshiped black gods, and revered the dark skinned child above all? The answer to all these questions is
“no.” And he certainly doesn't want to return to the primitive communism of its earliest inhabitants. Modi wants to return to the traditions of the British Raj, the India that the British white supremacists created.
The same could be said about the US proponents of traditionalism. They certainly don't want a return to the old ways and values of the original indigenous occupants of North America. Nor do they yearn for a return to the earliest colonial period, before the white race was created, when Africans could own property, vote, and carry firearms, when Africans and English could freely intermarry. They want to return to the traditions of dominance by white supremacy and patriarchy.
In terms of John's question as to why we are seeing so much talk about traditionalism now, I think they use it as cover for a resurgence of white supremacy and patriarchy that they can no longer openly advocate.
On May 12th someone posted a link to this article excellent essay from New Lines Magazine and encouraged both John and I to read it:The Trouble With Race and Its Many Shades of Deceit
To which I responded to on May 13th:
“My great-grandfather was a slave.” This is the way my older brother, Cory, began his high school valedictorian speech. My grandfather began as a sharecropper in North Carolina. Eventually, he worked his way up to owning his own farm. I remember when he used a mule to grow tobacco. I remember how proud he was when he got his first tractor. My mother had brown hair, green eyes, and fair skin. While all of her life she identified as African American, there was a period in the 1930s, when she was going to college in Savannah, that she passed for white. So, like the authors of this piece, the questions of race and racial discrimination are very personal to me.I knew Noel Ignatiev long before he penned “How the Irish Became White.” In the mid-1970s, when I was a member of the St. Louis collective Worker Unity Organization (WUO), he was a member of our sister collective in Chicago, Sojourner Truth Organization (STO). We met and exchanged papers often. He affected my political development, as I did his. I was the only African American member of WUO, and I don't remember any African American members of STO. I find it extremely sad to see how little progress has been made in integrating the US Left in the half-century since then. Until that changes, the US Left will remain the impotent force it still is today.
I want to second just about everything they said in this article, except that I take it to the next level. I point out that the adoption of the label “white” for a subsection of humanity is already white supremacist. So, when they say:
We can certainly imagine a world in which describing someone as Black or white would be as innocuous as describing them as tall or short..
I would beg to differ. The adoption of the label “white” by the slave owners, and their labeling of their slaves “black” is far from innocuous, and can never be. Let me explain why with another personal story.
I currently live with two house cats, Boots and Tango. Through centuries of domestication, they have come to adopt my schedule—they sleep when I do, and they are awake when they know they will be fed. Being small predators, their natural rhythm would be quite different because they can see much better than I can at night, and their daylight-agnostic senses of hearing and smell are much more developed than mine. On the other hand, my eyesight is much more developed than theirs in at least one important way—I can see colors and they can't. Human beings are by nature diurnal animals, we are active at night only to the extent that we have been able to bring daylight into the night. That means that positive associations with the color white—the color of daylight, and negative associations with the color black are 1) immutable, 2) primordial, and 3) supra-cultural for our species and can never be neutral labels like “Jack” and “John.”
That is why I call on all so-called white people to disavow that label. The label “black” is a little bit more tricky. Although it was first put on the slaves as a derogatory label, it has since been adopted by African Americans, as derogatory labels for oppressed people often are, with a sense of pride, in an effort to reverse those effects. “Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud." This is also why I don't object to it in the same way. Still, no amount of sloganeering can completely overcome the negative symbolism of the color black. That's why you will most often see me refer to our people as African Americans—except when I'm being lazy. It should also be noted that the label “black” was not put on Negroes simultaneous with Europeans adopting the label “white,” but followed it in usage and law only a generation or two later. I plan to write more about this period in the future.
On the whole, I consider this article to be another powerful argument as to why nobody, especially on the left, should be using the completely discredited white supremacist term “biological racism” in an affirmative manner, calling the white nationalist Proud Boys “cultural racists,” which aligns very well with their own claims that they are “western chauvinists,” or making nice with Modi, as he breaks the ceasefire by again striking Pakistan, by calling him a traditionalist. He certainly isn't trying to go back to the pre-colonial traditions where Hindus participated in Eid and Muslims in Holi and Diwali.
Thank you for bringing this very informative article into our discussion.
I also critiqued John's references to biological racism and cultural racism in a May 11th email to the listserv:
There was a time when I would use the term racism to mean white racism, referring to a system of racial oppression, but white supremacists have sought to muddy the waters by inventing so many other types of
“racism,” that I find the term lacks the clarity it once had. Not a day goes by that some black person isn't accused of practising racism against white people on Fox News. The term is turned on its head. That's why I use the longer phrases white supremacy or white nationalism instead.
Which brings me to your
'reference to “cultural racism” vs. biological racism.' Wondering what you might mean by
“biological racism,” I
googled the term, hoping to gain some clarity. Here are the first 8 search results:
1) Scientific Racism [
Wikipedia]
2) Scientific Racism [
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) (.gov)]
3) Eugenics and Scientific Racism [
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) (.gov)]
4) Misunderstanding of race as biology has deep negative ... [
National Institute of Health (NIH)(.gov)]
5) Scientific racism [
Britannica]
6) Addressing Scientific Racism and Eugenics in the Classroom [
American Society for Microbiology]
7) A Prehistory of Scientific Racism [
The MIT Press Reader]
8) The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism [
Smithsonian Magazine]
That last one would seem to be quite on point given your insistence of using the term
“biological racism” even in a socialist group.
Turning to that first search result from Wikipedia we get:
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "races",[1][2][3] and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racial discrimination, racial inferiority, or racial superiority.[4][5][6][7] Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific.[5][6] The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, racial realism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.[8]
Before the mid-20th century billions of dollars, in today's money, was spent on
“research” and
“scholarship” to booster the claims of the biological racists. That's one of the things I mean when I talk about the material basis for the ideology of white supremacy.
Later, you do say,
“I’m open to reconsidering the question of cultural vs. biological racism...” I certainly hope so, given the near universal opinion that
“biological racism” is just another name for the long discredited white supremacist theory of scientific racism.
Read any of the search results listed above and they will explain to you that race has no biological foundation. If you need extra help with that, you might consult with what would be number nine on the above list:
9) WHAT IS THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR RACE? [
Science Direct]:
The concept of race has pervaded social policy and political discourse for 400 years. Race has become deeply rooted in our lives, institutions, and cultures such that the notion of race as a biological myth may seem unfathomable to most people. In fact, there is no biological basis to race. It is a purely social construct fabricated by 16th and 17th-century scientists and perpetuated thereafter.
I have long said that it's a social construct, which means a cultural construct, which raises the question of what you mean by
“cultural racism” which you juxtapose to
“biological racism.” You say "
The Proud Boys base themselves on cultural racism,” Yes, white cultural racism. But who knows? Maybe the definitions given by the .gov websites listed above will more closely align with yours before the year's out—given that the Trump regime is now in charge of them.
But reading your reply further, I see that it's not just the faulty use of this one term, you really do see race as something foundational, permanent, static, scientific, and real. I see this when you says:
Maybe Clay would dispute the reference to “cultural racism” vs. biological racism. But what does he make of the Polish immigrants in Britain being considered to be non-white? Obviously this is not based on skin color nor on biological ancestry; it’s based on culture to say the least.
John, get the net! Race isn't based on
“skin color nor on biological ancestry.” At best, it only loosely follows those markers. Consider the case of
Jane Morrison who was sold in the slave market in New Orleans in 1857. By all accounts she had fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, but since she had been sold into slavery, she was judged a Negro by several Louisiana courts. In point of fact, there were many white-looking women that were sold off as Negroes in the slave markers of New Orleans. They were called
"fancy girls."Or when you said of René Guénon:
His ideas were also picked up by many who by no stretch of the imagination could be considered to be white (despite Clay’s claim that the Poles are non-white).
By the stretch of whose imagination could they be considered white? Since
“white” is by no means a concrete biological category, but a social construct, I find it impossible to consider who someone might think of as white. As to the part in parentheses, I never claimed that the Poles are non-white, and I never said they were white. I said that the Italians in Chicago in 1919 considered the Poles to be non-white until they didn't, and I said the white racist hooligans in London that violently opposed the Polish immigrants didn't consider them to be white. It would seem that you think the Poles are obviously
“white," as though that was some immutable, timeless category. Ask Google's AI:
When did the Poles become white? and it spits out:
The concept of Poles being considered “white" in the United States evolved over time, particularly after World War II. While some Poles had been considered “white” in the US by the mid-20th century, they were often categorized as “ethnic whites” and faced discrimination unlike those of Western European descent. It wasn't until after 1945, when Polish gentry culture became dominant, that most Poles were widely accepted as fully “white".
You can also ask it: When did the [Irish|Italians|Jews|Armenians|Sicilians|etc] become white? and it will give you an overview of the particulars in each case. There was a period when each of these people weren't considered white by those that considered themselves white. Finally, John says:
It’s as if for Clay it’s simply a matter of white supremacy always having been with us,
Wrong! John, have you not read a word I have written about the creation of the white race, and with it white supremacy? Have you not heard me speak of an important period before that?
John, please refrain from miss-characterizing my position, and please, please, change you own.
In a May 13th email, John claims “Traditionalism is the ideology of 21st century fascism.” and lists as one of its characteristics “Attacks on immigrants of all backgrounds.” This was the same day the Trump administration was welcoming its first batch of Afrikaner “Refugees” to the US. So, I posted this in response:
Here are a couple of very recent YouTube videos that issue a strong rebuke to John's claim that “Attacks on immigrants of all backgrounds” is one of the “facts” of 21st century fascism.
Racist Right-Wingers Roll Out Red Carpet for White South African “Refugees” Trump Imported - The Humanist Report
The Trump administration admitted around 60 South African “refugees.” They were not only met with a warm welcome from a Trump administration official, but offered social welfare benefits (including healthcare, housing and food assistance). On top of that, right-wingers celebrated their arrival, writing that they seem “patriotic” and are destined to “benefit” our society. Why are conservatives suddenly SO welcoming to immigrants, you ask? Well, it’s because these ones are white. In this video, we’ll talk about the treatment of these white South African immigrants compared to black and brown immigrants and discuss the disingenuous pretense the Trump administration used to admit them as “refugees.”
Tim Miller calls out the press conference by Trump's Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau where he explains the decision to accept white South African refugees while rejecting others, particularly Afghan refugees being forced to leave the United States, highlighting blatant racial bias and hypocrisy in U.S. refugee policy.
One more thing:
When I say this or that has “a foundation in white supremacy,” and John recasts that by claiming “Clay’s insistence that the whole issue boils down to a resurgence of white supremacy...,” he's doing that so that he can easily defeat my arguments. This is a very disingenuous way of arguing, because if I said that a house boils down to its foundation, that would obviously be a pretty stupid statement, wouldn't it?
I have no tolerance for these straw man arguments. Life is too short, and there is too much good work that needs to be done.
Hoping to address this conversation from a new angle, in May 10th I posted a new email to the listserv with the subject line: John Leguizamo on Latino support for MAGA
I'm hoping to hear people's opinions about what John Leguizamo has to say about why a minority of Latino's support Trump in this YouTube video
Beloved Actor Says What We're ALL Thinking About This MAGA Bigot. John Reiman and others use the fact that some brown & black people support Trump to argue that this shows that white supremacy/white nationalism is a lesser force, if a force at all, in their support for MAGA. That's why he says
“The Proud Boys base themselves on cultural racism,” a new term often used to deny that the force at work is still white racism. After all, these people aren't
“white," at least in John's eyes, so how could white supremacy be a main force in their support for MAGA. Here Leguizamo gives us another opinion, one that becomes readily apparent if you care to scratch the surface. He begins:
It's about the proximity of whiteness. It's for our Beigestan brothers and sisters who feel like if they vote for Trump, they appear more white and less brown, and that's part of it. The proximity of whiteness is still a thing in America. Do you know what I mean? So, that's kind of important...These Latinos, who are also brown, or white passing, or white Latinos, are also part of this white nationalist Christian movement, Christian nationalism. But we're allowed to enter there, as long as you're hating, you know?
Later in that day, I added this to that thread:
One of the most blatant examples of the flexibility of racial definitions was Hitler's practice of giving a German Blood Certificate (German: Deutschblütigkeitserklärung) to Mischlinge (those with partial Jewish heritage), who were important to him. One such person was Erhard Milch, a German Generalfeldmarschall of the Luftwaffe. About Milch, Hermann Göring reportedly
stated,
“I decide who is a Jew in the Luftwaffe”.
After the war, the term Mischlinge, was redefined to refer to the offsprings of couplings between German women and African American soldiers stationed there during the occupation years.
And on May 16th, this:
When John said traditionalism is the ideology of 21st century fascism, I thought of Matthew Heimbach and his Traditionalist Worker Party. As you can tell by their name, they prefer to be seen as
“trationalists,” but
SPLC,
ADL, and even
Wikipedia have no problem seeing through that ruse. Even the Google AI bot, which is designed to deliver fact-based information, free of political bias, has no problem calling it out for what it is:
Search Labs | AI Overview
Matthew Heimbach is an American white nationalist who co-founded the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), a now-defunct neo-Nazi group, with Matthew Parrott in 2015
. 1. White Supremacist Ideology and Activities:
- Heimbach and the TWP advocated for the creation of a white ethnostate in the United States and espoused racist and anti-Semitic views.
- They were part of the broader "alt-right" movement, a white supremacist ideology that emerged in the 2010s.
- Heimbach and the TWP organized and participated in numerous rallies and protests, including the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
Notice, unlike John, none of these sources pander to
“traditionalism” by going into a long discourse on the roots of
“traditionalism.” I engaged in
hand-to-hand combat with John's “traditionalists” the week before the Unite the Right rally, so this is no joke to me.
With regards to ableism, it's worth remembering that the Nazis first used the gas chamber on such people, but they clearly weren't the main target.
With regards to patriarchy and misogyny, one has to consider the powerful effect racial slavery in America had on the worsening of those oppressions under capitalism. The breeding of human beings as though they were cattle, the absolute control of a woman's reproductive processes, rape with no consequences, and the effects of putting white women on a pedestal all had major effects.
I should think the answer to John's question,
“why now, what has happened in the world that we are seeing these phenomena?”, is pretty obvious. In one word—Obama. Yes, this white backlash has been building ever since the civil rights movement's successes of the 50s & 60s. It received a powerful boost during the Reagan years. But the thing that pushed it over the edge to the creation of the MAGA movement, and the election of the most white chauvinist president in US history, was the election of the first African American president in US history. Having personally lived through all those years, I have no doubt about the main impetus for those changes. That's why I think it most correct to see it as a resurgence of white supremacy—and not the influence of certain European philosophers most MAGA supporters have never heard of.
But when I sat back, and took an overview of the past weeks discussions, I realized that John was, in 21st century socialist circles, still pushing long discredited white supremacist BS about
“biological racism” which is synonymous with scientific racism, and nobody but me was pushing back on that, I saw that I was just wasting my time. That's why I have unsubscribed to the USSC listserv. Anybody can call themselves
“socialist.” The Nazis did it. Heimbach called his group a
“workers party” before he adopted the Dugin-styled
“Bolshevik” label. The real test of any organization is what it stands for.
And with that I ended my years long association with USSC.
Clay Claiborne
23 May 2025
