Holden Caulfield
22nd April 2009, 10:09
CLASS WAR - NOT RACE WAR!
RACISM IS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RICH
Racism plays a powerful role in dividing the working class. The ideology of race is used to justify imperialism, wars, and the racial division of labour. Racism promotes nationalism on the basis of ethnic identity. This only strengthens enthusiasm for participation in national armies. Those people within the Working Class who hold racist views are puppets of the rich. Contrary to popular belief, racist ideology is actually derived from the Middle and Upper Classes where the real power to split and weaken the lower classes lies. This division occurs through discrimination in social services, education, immigration, and working conditions. The crucial part the Middle Class plays is to mimic mass culture which then becomes the "official" way of seeing the World. Within the "culture" specific racist and nationalistic ideas are promoted through the schools, media, church, etc... This creates a constant flow of racist and nationalist ideas and disinformation, some of which is aimed at the rich themselves to explain why some must be at the "top" and others on the "bottom." Most of this racist filth is received by the majority of the population, which is, of course, not in power. The rich actively promote nationalist and racist lies and always have."Aryan Racialism" (White Supremacism) was first described in Europe by Count de Gobineau in his "Essay on the Inequalities of the Human Race." Prior to World War I, rich Europeans created "chic" Aryan societies and established strong foundations for Hitler's Nazi doctrine among the Upper and Middle Classes. In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan was originally a racist social club founded by seven southern aristocrats -J. Lester, J. Crowe, J. Kennedy, C. James, R. Reed, F. McCord, and later, Nathan Bedford Forest. Racial "Eugenics" (purifying the race by sterilizing persons claimed to be "inferior") was pioneered by doctors in Lynchburg, Virginia and later copied by Nazi doctors in Germany. American racists like Henry Ford were quoted in Nazi newspapers. Ford got a Nazi medal for his racist writings.
DIVIDE AND RULE
Due to Capitalist-induced labour shortages in some nation-states, the exploitation of wage slaves from other countries becomes profitable. With immigration, our class receives different "ethnicities" and cultures. This does not cause a natural conflict. That is, until it is promoted as such by racist pundits. The rich have a lot to gain by taking advantage of our superficial differences. The racial division of labour is the most fundamental division in our class and causes further damage when members of our class follow these divisions. Sectors of the Working Class can become racist when they see themselves having artificial commonalities like "whiteness" with the ruling class rather than sticking with the real problems of their own class -The Working Class. They can also become confused by the efforts of the Ruling Class to trick us into competing with each other and be swayed by Ruling Class lies that people who are superficially different from us because of their skin colour or culture are the cause of our economic problems instead of the REAL bastards who control the economy – the Capitalists and the Ruling Class! Their class identity becomes confused and is eventually replaced by a racial
and/or national consciousness. This is a false allegiance which only serves to keep our class divided and enslaved to work and the government of the Rich. Sickeningly, many of the most politically active Working Class youth are racist/Neo-Nazis. But along with being "white" most are also disaffected and dispossessed. These youths actually have more in common both materially and socially with the Blacks, Latinos, or Asians in their communities, whom they claim they hate so much, than with their rich "Anglo-Saxon" Ruling Class role models. The violent racism and vehement super-patriotism of these dupes helps to legitimize the Ruling Class's suppression of our class.Why is racism so strong in
many sections of our class? It is because the rich need it there. Well-placed racist filth distorts and counters a truly unified class consciousness. It has been in the best interest of our rulers to distort the development of class identity, pride and solidarity with their own racist/nationalist version of these notions.
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF RACISM
Racism/Nationalism begins with the development of capitalist society. Nationalism played a key role in the development of capital during the last period of European
feudalism and was fostered by the emerging Capitalist Class. The new class used the "flag of nationhood' to organize the population against the old aristocracy. Populations were organized along "ethnic" and/or religious lines to create national armies which didn't exist in Europe until after the Napoleonic Wars. National armies were unprecedented in that they involved millions of soldiers and overwhelmed the societies outside of Europe (through colonialism) which introduced an injection of wealth that spurred industrialization and the pre-eminence of capitalists over the aristocrats. Thus, it was by using the lie of Nationhood that the new capitalist class gained control of society. When the new Working Class (rural peasants had become urban workers after 1850) realized that the "liberating" process of offing the old aristocracy was only a "coup d' etat" by the new rich, Nationalism became a reactionary movement. It became a way of maintaining the loyalty of the rural and urban lower classes through patriotism. The position of the rich was strengthened, and loyalty was obtained by creating the illusion of people united by the common goals of their "nation."As capitalism developed and primary resources were depleted (e.g. land, timber, ores, etc.), competition between these new nation-states began. This led to a new and
unprecedented era of imperialism and colonialism which was effected in order to gain more primary capital. These new colonial powers used xenophobia (fear of people of other "nationalities") and religious bigotry to justify long and terrible
wars for riches. Xenophobia was also used to excuse the exploitation and systematic genocide (extermination of an ethnic group) of colonized peoples as cheap and expendable sources of labour. In early America, colonial elites like George Washington (who was the richest man in the U.S. at the time), feared concerted rebellion by English indentured servants (prisoners sold to rich colonial and-owners as slaves), landless "Whites," and African slaves (like the uprising which occurred in 1676 in Bacon's Rebellion), who together made up more than 55% of the English colonial population. During the American Revolution, poor whites were kidnapped and forced to fight in the Aristocrats "Colonial Army," but most battles were won by frontier militias fighting alongside the uniformed army made up of former European slaves who had bought their freedom and settled on the frontier to getaway from the class discrimination of elitist English land-owners. When the U.S. Constitution was written James Madison was scared of the belief in social equality of Working Class Americans. He insisted on an electoral system which would forever insure that only the Rich controlled the government. The original Constitution denied freedom to non-whites and women. After the successful Haitian Revolution by African slaves against their French colonial rulers, American slave owners, fearful of the possibility of poor whites and African slaves staging a similar revolt in America, persuaded the Congress and President Jefferson to enact laws instituting specific legal divisions between "Whites" and "Blacks". Only Whites could bear weapons, criminal punishments were made more severe for Blacks, inter-racial marriages were illegal, military and civilian life
were racially segregated, and only whites could own land or be public officials. After the revolution, rich land speculators began to eye native American nations in the Ohio River Valley. They used the American Army to coerce the native
people into ceding Kentucky to them in exchange for peace then used the army to burn their farms before invading their land and exterminating them. In 1831, Congress passed the "Indian Removal Act"which stole all remaining native land east of the Mississippi, then used the Army to move the native people to present-day Oklahoma. Over ½ Million people died resisting the U.S. invasion or from starvation and exposure to harsh weather on what became known as the "Trail of Tears"to the U.S.-designated resettlement area. This genocide was the beginning of "resettlement" to reservations which was later copied by Italian Fascists, German Nazis and racist South Africans.
THE MYTH OF NATIONAL/RACIAL PRIDE
At the heart of racism/nationalism is the truly lies idea that "ethnic", national, or religious populations have a common destiny, despite any and all obvious class tensions within these populations. Under this idea the Ruling Class invents a false unity among the Working, Middle and Ruling Classes based on either national or religious origins. This fake identity creates a sense of pride, a sense of "achievement" and a sense of "history." The American identity is tied to a pride of "moral" superiority and the Capitalist domination of the Third World. The American
Ruling Class used this pride of "moral" imperative to wage genocidal wars against the indigenous populations of an entire continent. This excuse has also been used to wage war and invade many other nations. This "pride" is all but impossible for many African, Native, Latino, or Asian Americans to feel. It is not meant for those people but it is meant for the White Ruling Class. National/Racial pride is singularly designed to manipulate the Working Class into national armies and to light wars overseas so one group of Capitalists can steal from another at our expense. The thoroughly repulsive idea of racist/nationalist solidarity is exercised through the practices of de facto racial discrimination which excludes and isolates people of colour from certain areas of capitalist society: areas such as "decent" jobs, liveable housing, and "good" schools, thereby forcing a sizable segment of the population into the dead end of petty crime and prisons, or an endless line of demeaning mind-numbing low-wage jobs. This practice further deepens the rifts within our class by creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion between members of our class. The power to discriminate lies almost entirely in the hands of the Upper Class and their vicious guard dogs, the State. The white Working Class does not have the power to discriminate, but, plays a part in justifying discrimination by doing such foolish things as excluding certain "ethnic" groups from workplace activities or by intimidating them within their communities. Racial violence and exclusion are the only elective discriminatory power Working Class racists have.
Although this pales in comparison to the racist power of our rulers, it can still be a matter of life and death for Working Class people of colour.
HOW RACIST LIES ARE SPREAD
Racist ideology gains mass appeal by pretending to be "common sense". When racist lies become common sense, it then evolves into "unquestioned knowledge", "taken for granted", or "the truth."The problem for the Ruling Class is that their "common sense" is totally contradicted by the reality of class society. Because of this, racism needs to be perpetually updated and put forward and reintroduced at every "opportune" time (such as when there is civil unrest in communities of colour or "gang killings"). Today's racist jargon tries to camouflage itself, even to the point of denying it is racist, putting it under the heading of just plain "common sense", as a racist agitator like Rush Limbaugh would put it. This "common sense" racism is a philosophy which relies heavily, if not entirely, on its gut-level, emotional impact. It relies heavily on FEAR, whether fear of the Black population or the consequences of a large and growing immigrant population. The use of fear as a basis of racism highlights the very nature of the problem of "common sense" racism. And that is this, fear makes people feel weak and insecure, and people of course will react negatively to negative emotion. This insecurity results in behaviour between members of our class which cannot always be explained rationally. Thus playing on the fears of a segment of class also means playing fast and loose with the truth and twisting interpretations of events to fit a racist point of view. Fear of the Black population and groups like Latinos who are stereotyped as "immigrants" has long been used to justify racism. The racist demagogues concentrate on differences of what THEY call "alien" cultures which are then compared against the supposedly "morally superior" "American Way." The promotion of this basic chauvinism along with the deliberate twisting of the cultures of people of colour in a gross and alarmist way creates a negative feeling toward people of colour. Many of the stereotypes thus created are used to sustain the myths about race. Many of the stereotypes at the forefront of the racist propaganda machine are ones that show a direct threat to "White" suburban tranquillity, such as wanton, ultra-violence. During the 1960s drugs and crime were presented as synonymous with Black inner-city youth, although more drugs factually resided in the "White" suburbs. The myth of violence is now ingrained in many "White" minds. This is one of the many ways that the Ruling Class promotes racist fear which of course leads to naked hostility and open hatred between large segments of our class. That is exactly what our rulers want!
SCAPEGOATING IMMIGRANTS
Another way the Ruling Class crushes the unity of the working class is to create direct competition between "native" and "immigrant" labour. They base this on the idea that native and immigrant or foreign-born workers have different economic positions within the society. In truth, immigrant workers are doubly exploited. As members of the Working Class they have both the worst jobs and highest unemployment rate. In fact, they make up a substrata of the Working Class due to the informal (but very real) racial divisions of labour. Racists flip this over and argue that immigrants and/or foreign-born people are taking our ("native") jobs. They claim that unemployment within the Working Class is caused by competition from immigrants/foreign-born people rather than the Upper and Middle Classes who have the sole power to hire and fire. This scape-goating of immigrants conveniently removes Capitalists from responsibility for the failures of their system and for their own behaviour. It places the blame on those who are least responsible. This is only a small example of the extent to which reality is distorted by racists. By scape-goating people of colour for problems created by Capitalists and the Ruling Class, class anger at what are really CLASS issues is manipulated and presented to Working Class people as racism and racial issues. Racism is nothing more than another filthy and vile product of Capitalism. Racism exists alongside nationalism to divide us from other members of the Working Class in our "communities" and around the World. Racism is subtly used to rationalize world-wide poverty and wars. Nationalism creates a phoney unity between class enemies at the expense of the unity and solidarity of the Working Class. CWC advocates Working Class unity to destroy Racism, Nationalism, Capitalism, the Class System and the government of the Rich and build a society based on personal freedom, social equality, free association, mutual aid, cooperation, worker self-management of all work places and democratic self-government of all communities.
FIGHT THE RICH - NOT THE POOR!
NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR!
RACISM IS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RICH
Racism plays a powerful role in dividing the working class. The ideology of race is used to justify imperialism, wars, and the racial division of labour. Racism promotes nationalism on the basis of ethnic identity. This only strengthens enthusiasm for participation in national armies. Those people within the Working Class who hold racist views are puppets of the rich. Contrary to popular belief, racist ideology is actually derived from the Middle and Upper Classes where the real power to split and weaken the lower classes lies. This division occurs through discrimination in social services, education, immigration, and working conditions. The crucial part the Middle Class plays is to mimic mass culture which then becomes the "official" way of seeing the World. Within the "culture" specific racist and nationalistic ideas are promoted through the schools, media, church, etc... This creates a constant flow of racist and nationalist ideas and disinformation, some of which is aimed at the rich themselves to explain why some must be at the "top" and others on the "bottom." Most of this racist filth is received by the majority of the population, which is, of course, not in power. The rich actively promote nationalist and racist lies and always have."Aryan Racialism" (White Supremacism) was first described in Europe by Count de Gobineau in his "Essay on the Inequalities of the Human Race." Prior to World War I, rich Europeans created "chic" Aryan societies and established strong foundations for Hitler's Nazi doctrine among the Upper and Middle Classes. In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan was originally a racist social club founded by seven southern aristocrats -J. Lester, J. Crowe, J. Kennedy, C. James, R. Reed, F. McCord, and later, Nathan Bedford Forest. Racial "Eugenics" (purifying the race by sterilizing persons claimed to be "inferior") was pioneered by doctors in Lynchburg, Virginia and later copied by Nazi doctors in Germany. American racists like Henry Ford were quoted in Nazi newspapers. Ford got a Nazi medal for his racist writings.
DIVIDE AND RULE
Due to Capitalist-induced labour shortages in some nation-states, the exploitation of wage slaves from other countries becomes profitable. With immigration, our class receives different "ethnicities" and cultures. This does not cause a natural conflict. That is, until it is promoted as such by racist pundits. The rich have a lot to gain by taking advantage of our superficial differences. The racial division of labour is the most fundamental division in our class and causes further damage when members of our class follow these divisions. Sectors of the Working Class can become racist when they see themselves having artificial commonalities like "whiteness" with the ruling class rather than sticking with the real problems of their own class -The Working Class. They can also become confused by the efforts of the Ruling Class to trick us into competing with each other and be swayed by Ruling Class lies that people who are superficially different from us because of their skin colour or culture are the cause of our economic problems instead of the REAL bastards who control the economy – the Capitalists and the Ruling Class! Their class identity becomes confused and is eventually replaced by a racial
and/or national consciousness. This is a false allegiance which only serves to keep our class divided and enslaved to work and the government of the Rich. Sickeningly, many of the most politically active Working Class youth are racist/Neo-Nazis. But along with being "white" most are also disaffected and dispossessed. These youths actually have more in common both materially and socially with the Blacks, Latinos, or Asians in their communities, whom they claim they hate so much, than with their rich "Anglo-Saxon" Ruling Class role models. The violent racism and vehement super-patriotism of these dupes helps to legitimize the Ruling Class's suppression of our class.Why is racism so strong in
many sections of our class? It is because the rich need it there. Well-placed racist filth distorts and counters a truly unified class consciousness. It has been in the best interest of our rulers to distort the development of class identity, pride and solidarity with their own racist/nationalist version of these notions.
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF RACISM
Racism/Nationalism begins with the development of capitalist society. Nationalism played a key role in the development of capital during the last period of European
feudalism and was fostered by the emerging Capitalist Class. The new class used the "flag of nationhood' to organize the population against the old aristocracy. Populations were organized along "ethnic" and/or religious lines to create national armies which didn't exist in Europe until after the Napoleonic Wars. National armies were unprecedented in that they involved millions of soldiers and overwhelmed the societies outside of Europe (through colonialism) which introduced an injection of wealth that spurred industrialization and the pre-eminence of capitalists over the aristocrats. Thus, it was by using the lie of Nationhood that the new capitalist class gained control of society. When the new Working Class (rural peasants had become urban workers after 1850) realized that the "liberating" process of offing the old aristocracy was only a "coup d' etat" by the new rich, Nationalism became a reactionary movement. It became a way of maintaining the loyalty of the rural and urban lower classes through patriotism. The position of the rich was strengthened, and loyalty was obtained by creating the illusion of people united by the common goals of their "nation."As capitalism developed and primary resources were depleted (e.g. land, timber, ores, etc.), competition between these new nation-states began. This led to a new and
unprecedented era of imperialism and colonialism which was effected in order to gain more primary capital. These new colonial powers used xenophobia (fear of people of other "nationalities") and religious bigotry to justify long and terrible
wars for riches. Xenophobia was also used to excuse the exploitation and systematic genocide (extermination of an ethnic group) of colonized peoples as cheap and expendable sources of labour. In early America, colonial elites like George Washington (who was the richest man in the U.S. at the time), feared concerted rebellion by English indentured servants (prisoners sold to rich colonial and-owners as slaves), landless "Whites," and African slaves (like the uprising which occurred in 1676 in Bacon's Rebellion), who together made up more than 55% of the English colonial population. During the American Revolution, poor whites were kidnapped and forced to fight in the Aristocrats "Colonial Army," but most battles were won by frontier militias fighting alongside the uniformed army made up of former European slaves who had bought their freedom and settled on the frontier to getaway from the class discrimination of elitist English land-owners. When the U.S. Constitution was written James Madison was scared of the belief in social equality of Working Class Americans. He insisted on an electoral system which would forever insure that only the Rich controlled the government. The original Constitution denied freedom to non-whites and women. After the successful Haitian Revolution by African slaves against their French colonial rulers, American slave owners, fearful of the possibility of poor whites and African slaves staging a similar revolt in America, persuaded the Congress and President Jefferson to enact laws instituting specific legal divisions between "Whites" and "Blacks". Only Whites could bear weapons, criminal punishments were made more severe for Blacks, inter-racial marriages were illegal, military and civilian life
were racially segregated, and only whites could own land or be public officials. After the revolution, rich land speculators began to eye native American nations in the Ohio River Valley. They used the American Army to coerce the native
people into ceding Kentucky to them in exchange for peace then used the army to burn their farms before invading their land and exterminating them. In 1831, Congress passed the "Indian Removal Act"which stole all remaining native land east of the Mississippi, then used the Army to move the native people to present-day Oklahoma. Over ½ Million people died resisting the U.S. invasion or from starvation and exposure to harsh weather on what became known as the "Trail of Tears"to the U.S.-designated resettlement area. This genocide was the beginning of "resettlement" to reservations which was later copied by Italian Fascists, German Nazis and racist South Africans.
THE MYTH OF NATIONAL/RACIAL PRIDE
At the heart of racism/nationalism is the truly lies idea that "ethnic", national, or religious populations have a common destiny, despite any and all obvious class tensions within these populations. Under this idea the Ruling Class invents a false unity among the Working, Middle and Ruling Classes based on either national or religious origins. This fake identity creates a sense of pride, a sense of "achievement" and a sense of "history." The American identity is tied to a pride of "moral" superiority and the Capitalist domination of the Third World. The American
Ruling Class used this pride of "moral" imperative to wage genocidal wars against the indigenous populations of an entire continent. This excuse has also been used to wage war and invade many other nations. This "pride" is all but impossible for many African, Native, Latino, or Asian Americans to feel. It is not meant for those people but it is meant for the White Ruling Class. National/Racial pride is singularly designed to manipulate the Working Class into national armies and to light wars overseas so one group of Capitalists can steal from another at our expense. The thoroughly repulsive idea of racist/nationalist solidarity is exercised through the practices of de facto racial discrimination which excludes and isolates people of colour from certain areas of capitalist society: areas such as "decent" jobs, liveable housing, and "good" schools, thereby forcing a sizable segment of the population into the dead end of petty crime and prisons, or an endless line of demeaning mind-numbing low-wage jobs. This practice further deepens the rifts within our class by creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion between members of our class. The power to discriminate lies almost entirely in the hands of the Upper Class and their vicious guard dogs, the State. The white Working Class does not have the power to discriminate, but, plays a part in justifying discrimination by doing such foolish things as excluding certain "ethnic" groups from workplace activities or by intimidating them within their communities. Racial violence and exclusion are the only elective discriminatory power Working Class racists have.
Although this pales in comparison to the racist power of our rulers, it can still be a matter of life and death for Working Class people of colour.
HOW RACIST LIES ARE SPREAD
Racist ideology gains mass appeal by pretending to be "common sense". When racist lies become common sense, it then evolves into "unquestioned knowledge", "taken for granted", or "the truth."The problem for the Ruling Class is that their "common sense" is totally contradicted by the reality of class society. Because of this, racism needs to be perpetually updated and put forward and reintroduced at every "opportune" time (such as when there is civil unrest in communities of colour or "gang killings"). Today's racist jargon tries to camouflage itself, even to the point of denying it is racist, putting it under the heading of just plain "common sense", as a racist agitator like Rush Limbaugh would put it. This "common sense" racism is a philosophy which relies heavily, if not entirely, on its gut-level, emotional impact. It relies heavily on FEAR, whether fear of the Black population or the consequences of a large and growing immigrant population. The use of fear as a basis of racism highlights the very nature of the problem of "common sense" racism. And that is this, fear makes people feel weak and insecure, and people of course will react negatively to negative emotion. This insecurity results in behaviour between members of our class which cannot always be explained rationally. Thus playing on the fears of a segment of class also means playing fast and loose with the truth and twisting interpretations of events to fit a racist point of view. Fear of the Black population and groups like Latinos who are stereotyped as "immigrants" has long been used to justify racism. The racist demagogues concentrate on differences of what THEY call "alien" cultures which are then compared against the supposedly "morally superior" "American Way." The promotion of this basic chauvinism along with the deliberate twisting of the cultures of people of colour in a gross and alarmist way creates a negative feeling toward people of colour. Many of the stereotypes thus created are used to sustain the myths about race. Many of the stereotypes at the forefront of the racist propaganda machine are ones that show a direct threat to "White" suburban tranquillity, such as wanton, ultra-violence. During the 1960s drugs and crime were presented as synonymous with Black inner-city youth, although more drugs factually resided in the "White" suburbs. The myth of violence is now ingrained in many "White" minds. This is one of the many ways that the Ruling Class promotes racist fear which of course leads to naked hostility and open hatred between large segments of our class. That is exactly what our rulers want!
SCAPEGOATING IMMIGRANTS
Another way the Ruling Class crushes the unity of the working class is to create direct competition between "native" and "immigrant" labour. They base this on the idea that native and immigrant or foreign-born workers have different economic positions within the society. In truth, immigrant workers are doubly exploited. As members of the Working Class they have both the worst jobs and highest unemployment rate. In fact, they make up a substrata of the Working Class due to the informal (but very real) racial divisions of labour. Racists flip this over and argue that immigrants and/or foreign-born people are taking our ("native") jobs. They claim that unemployment within the Working Class is caused by competition from immigrants/foreign-born people rather than the Upper and Middle Classes who have the sole power to hire and fire. This scape-goating of immigrants conveniently removes Capitalists from responsibility for the failures of their system and for their own behaviour. It places the blame on those who are least responsible. This is only a small example of the extent to which reality is distorted by racists. By scape-goating people of colour for problems created by Capitalists and the Ruling Class, class anger at what are really CLASS issues is manipulated and presented to Working Class people as racism and racial issues. Racism is nothing more than another filthy and vile product of Capitalism. Racism exists alongside nationalism to divide us from other members of the Working Class in our "communities" and around the World. Racism is subtly used to rationalize world-wide poverty and wars. Nationalism creates a phoney unity between class enemies at the expense of the unity and solidarity of the Working Class. CWC advocates Working Class unity to destroy Racism, Nationalism, Capitalism, the Class System and the government of the Rich and build a society based on personal freedom, social equality, free association, mutual aid, cooperation, worker self-management of all work places and democratic self-government of all communities.
FIGHT THE RICH - NOT THE POOR!
NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR!