tapitsbo » Wed Nov 09, 2016 4:34 pm wrote:I don't have to be more specific because I'm not obligated to participate on your terms. I think you get the message and I note that you too have turned it down a notch since last night's result. Thank you.
I doubt you're referring to me, but maybe you are, since I despise the alt-right types and have said so here. In any event I'll take the bait since I want to get these thoughts out anyway:
1. For some time, I've been very critical of liberals who want to dismiss the racist element of the white working class, not because I disagree they're racist, but because that shouldn't be the last word on the subject. The performance of politically relevant racism waxes and wanes in connection with other social conditions, economic ones obviously being among the most crucial. As I see it, the job of government is to provide a true safety net for all vulnerable populations and if that's done, two things also happen: the racism of the white working class (and other whites) is less likely to become politically
activated in a dangerous way, and second, the targets of that racism will be in a better social position to withstand it if it does. In the US, we have a potential shitstorm coming because that racism has been activated with many racial minorities in vulnerable positions.
2. Why not just dismiss the racists in the white working class? It's not because (if we're doing Marx) there's anything
inherently noble or magical or revolutionary about them as a historical subject, tbh. It's because they're probably going to be NEEDED if capital is to be displaced. It's that simple. In the US, they
have to be part of any coalition that smashes capital and remakes society along more just lines. There's enough evidence from labor history to show that when whites and racial minorities are joined in economic unions, racism can be softened and even overcome as a political obstacle.
3. I will have trouble mustering any sympathy for the wwc members when they're betrayed by the man they helped make president, but who has literally zero human substance: he's a feeling (anger) made into flesh that they've turned into an avatar of their fury. I get the anger. But when he gets to Washington and cuts a deal with their class enemies, which he's very, very likely to do, the new anger they'll feel at his betrayal will be on them. But we'll still need them.
None of this implies "tolerating" their racism or "overlooking" it in coalition-building. It has to be confronted. One way it can follows below.
4. The ultimate irony for me is that despite the hatred the Trumpists have for the elite media, it somehow never has dawned on them that in their fear of ISIS, mooslums and the perceived 'browning' of America, is
the direct product of the same media system they claim to despise. They somehow miss that they've had their fears marketed to them (indirectly in some ways, but just as surely) by the elites in "their" media. I don't hear that argument being made, so I do hold out some hope that in the future there'l be room for an intervention into their racism by making that case more carefully.