(Thread here: https://nitter.fdn.fr/RodericDay/status/1666063389733298176#m) They have some decent stuff, but they are also tailist patsocs. It’s probably better to just read the Black Agenda Report article than buy the book.
(Thread here: https://nitter.fdn.fr/RodericDay/status/1666063389733298176#m) They have some decent stuff, but they are also tailist patsocs. It’s probably better to just read the Black Agenda Report article than buy the book.
MWM (Eddie) and Rainer Shea are crypto patsocs. They don’t believe in Land Back and Black Liberation, they believe Settler Colonialism in the US is over and thus the decolonial movement doesn’t apply.
They are dogmatists who refuse to do any historical research of North America, and are class reductionists (who ignore that racism and colonialism are class systems in the first place).
A decolonial vanguard government cannot be ruled by the colonizer class, end of. White supremacy needs to be destroyed in its political-economic form, landed property, and the developing white proletariat needs to shed it or it will be consumed by history.
Unity slogan for the colonized masses is asking us to work for our colonizers. America will be destroyed. The Americans will no longer have sovereignty over the land, but they will have use-rights.
I want to point out that the trend of Imperialism being the primary contradiction over Settler Colonialism, so we should form unity around anti-Imperialism, is ignoring the huge flaw that Settler Colonialism is what gives the US the ability to maintain global dominance. The US achieved energy independence and reasserted dollar supremacy under Bush and Obama by massively increasing resource extraction on indigenous and stolen lands. The indigenous nations were at the forefront of trying to stop the expansion in environmental exploitation, DAPL, KXL, etc. Just a few months ago Biden approved a massive project in Alaska on indigenous territory where the people there don’t even have running water or electricity, this was just so the US could replace the gulf states’ oil output to depress prices enough to harm Russia. (Also want to mention Cop City in Atlanta, where an ancient indigenous forest is being razed to build a mock city for states all over the world to practice occupying urban centers. An indigenous protestor was murdered by police there while trying to block construction.)
This doesn’t ignore that Canada and Australia are two more settler colonies that use their own stolen resources to boost the US Empire. If we are to attack the empire from within, doesn’t it make more sense to damage its extractive capabilities rather than engage in unity politics to, what amounts to, reforming the Imperialism? Contesting land within the US is far more crippling for the glass cannon that is the US empire.
I’ve noticed a few times that decolonial points get brought up, specifically in relation to US settlers today, the comments expressing these ideas tend to get quite a few downvotes without anyone really offering a substantive critique. I find it a bit worrying but I don’t know if it’s some external brigading or if some of the users here hold these views.
In any case, like you said, the US is very much still a white-supremacist settler state. There is a very real material basis leading to differences in interests between racial groups in the US. This kind of divide makes it very difficult if not impossible to rely on a predominantly white working class to be a revolutionary force. There’s a reason that most of the theoretical development and all the revolutionary movements in the US have been led by minorities and the conditions to change that aren’t there yet. Not even close.
spoiler
Like confused men they don’t understand that the system of oppression can hurt them while still overwhelmingly benefit them
I also want to point out that many of our comrades here who disagree with our takes on Decolonization are being good party members and holding the lines that their and many parties around the world are holding, hope in the American workers. But these parties especially the ones in the settler colonies of North America have not done the necessary investigation of their settler society and land and resource theft. Many of them are petit/semi (landed) bourgeois, educated, and through this have privileged entrance into Marxist theory, me included. We know that Lenin and the colonized comrades had an uphill battle against European Chauvinism within the international Communist movement which is what crystalized Marxism Leninism in the first place.
There is no reason to abstract internal colonization as either finished or different from external colonization, even calling it internal colonization makes it seem like the solution for the colonized Africans and indigenous nations is to absorb them into the settler nation. No, the settler states exist on stolen resources that they use to dominate the rest of the world, but its connection to wealth is here, inside its borders. It needs settlers to take land and hold it for the bourgeoisie to later expropriate. It needs settler dominated unions to build and work the environmentally extractive and damaging infrastructure that only benefits the settler masses. I posted about armed indigenous resistance (backed by the Panthers) to racist fishing enclosures in the 1960s that sparked the American Indian Movement, and that post had far less traction than this one about MWM.
American comrades, find out what tribes inhabited the places you have physical connections to. Learn how they came to no longer own that territory and why you and your people now do. You will learn far more about capitalism and America than through studying other movements, because our conditions are not the same. Apply the methodologies of MLism to the history of this continent, stop importing the solutions from others.
Rainer Shea is nigh incoherent half the time. I wonder whether they are just high on their own supply of overly wordy hot takes.
Rainer Shea supports landback and Black Liberation though. Shea has stated that Amerikkka is a white supremacist prison house of nations that must be dismantled and the people of color most oppressed by the U.S. should have a large say in how that is done.
He says he does, but his focus on external imperialism forms coalitions with anti-Indian and anti-Black white supremacists. This allows settler white supremacists to dominate any “Communist” movement that forms out of the US and negates any good “intentions” towards the imprisoned nations. His actions speak much louder than his words. We are not going to allow ourselves to be locked into a system of settler political supremacy, because that is the existing system we will liberate ourselves from. Rainer hasn’t read any history about how each nation actually became imprisoned, because he calls the researchers in that space “Liberals” and “wreckers”. He pushes any potential comrade away from the decolonial voices. Whenever I mention land theft and genocide his followers pick examples of indigenous people owning slaves or warring against other tribes, or indigenous and Black people serving the military, without any Marxist analysis to contextualize these facts. As Communists in America we need to be literate in the history and processes of American Colonialism, not this book worship that Rainer and the PatSocs get into.
I will say that it makes me incredibly uncomfortable that Rainer seems to be close to PatSocs, and this is something I have discussed with him before. But when I read his facebook posts, his followers don’t seem afraid to call him out when he says something that is wrong or worth of criticism.
I think calling people liberals and wreckers can be a fair label, but that overuse of it can as you say, push others away.
I’m not you and I haven’t had your experiences, but I haven’t seen any of his followers picking those examples that you mention. Not denying that isn’t a possibility, just I haven’t seen it.
From Rainer’s perspective, I understand his point of view that allowing neoliberals to coopt movements rather than having marxists organize and lead can seem like communism and landback are being delegitimized, and that we must first and foremost not lose communists to democrats, so to speak, and we must take heed of those who channel criticism of capitalism into criticism of socialists. I don’t fully agree with Rainer, speaking as a POC myself, but I tend to find him in at least good faith.
He supports land back only in the nominal sense. His focus on building an anti-Imperialist coalition with liberals and white supremacists is enough proof that he is at a cul de sac in his development, and the reason why he needs to listen to colonized radicals about his legitimizing of settler nationalism.
The standard of a Communist in this country needs to be a person with deep knowledge of the historical materialism that created and developed the US settler empire.
Rainer’s protaganism is leading him into seeking validation from reactionary settlers. Americans have never defeated their own imperialism, every time their victims won for themselves. Outward Imperialism is a necessary contradiction to analyze and propagandize, but it is secondary, and fueled by the complete indifference to, erasure and exploitation of, indigenous nations. Failure to analyze the boujified nature of the Americans in the settler system leads you down the path of cultivating anti-Indigenous and anti-Black stances in your audience.
Isn’t saying that you don’t think Americans can battle our own imperialism kind of the same as you saying that we shouldn’t worship Sakai-like book worship and that people are often more than their apparent material conditions, and we shouldn’t be revolutionary defeatists? If we don’t try addressing internal imperialism, that makes it harder on the rest of the proletariat around the globe. Maybe not the exact same, but its the same general idea.
His reasoning is that even in times of crisis and with little options, the Bolsheviks (yes, the material conditions between then and now aren’t anywhere near the same) would work alongside reactionary trade-unions, if and when they had no choice. I don’t think that is necessary for the moment though.
After re-reading your third paragraph, I think you have some good points.
I will say he rightfully decries liberals, but as you say, his tacit support for Rage Against the War Machine can definitely be a case of actions speaking louder than words.
Sakai isn’t the only nor even close to the best analyst of settler Colonialism, but he’s the boogyman for settlers.
Revolutionary defeatism for Americans means bringing about the destruction of the American settler colony.
I’m saying we should address internal Imperialism, by focusing on working for the internal decolonial movement lead by the colonized nations. I said the Americans have never defeated their outward Imperialism. It has always been defeated by their victims themselves. This begs the question of why they are ineffective at defeating external imperialism? Because they fail to analyze their own inward imperialism as society that enables the outward Imperialism.
Think about how the US sanctions have been targeted at oil states like Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, and Libya, our internal colonization of oil extraction was accelerated by Bush and Obama which allowed us assault these nations. Which is more effective? RAWM like protests or the struggle by the internal colonies against the extractive industries? Dollar dominance from controlling oil prices allows the US to keep developing countries in a dependency trap. America’s wealth is here, extracted here. Pull the weed by the roots.
RAWM does nothing and half of that “movement” was made of China Hawks. It’s good to advance such positions, but most effective when tied to anti-colonial solutions which can actually solve the problem.
Learn what wars subjugated the tribes that inhabited your home town. Learn how they were removed and how the American workers were involved. Learn where they are now and what they have to say about the current environment. Even if they are not Marxists, they know more about American Imperialism than you do. They live it every day. Their natural inclinations are closer to reality than the average settler Communist’s theories, who doesn’t even know their name.
Yes, and I think this point is very important. This is true pretty much anywhere that imperialism has been defeated, even temporarily, and we shouldn’t expect it to happen the other way around. In fact, the US being a settler colony makes this already unrealistic scenario even more unrealistic. The people of Imperial core nations simply benefit too much. That’s where revolutionary defeatism comes in. In cases where an imperialist/colonialist nation was defeated militarily (e.g. in a world war), the colonies of those nations that won independence still had to fight for it. It wasn’t ever just given. And cases where it might seem like it was, are cases where imperialist ties still persisted and the formerly colonized nations were still exploited through imperialism.
I think the fact that some people don’t understand this and push basically a white savior narrative in which settlers in the US have a revolution or do something to free all the lands the US extracts wealth from is a symptom of the prevalent and baked in white supremacy of these settler states. There is a dialectical relationship between the colonized and the colonizer classes that also needs to be resolved in order to actually build towards communism and that resolution will not come from the class in power just stepping down. I’m not a settler myself so I guess it’s easier to see this more clearly from the outside, but our comrades that are settlers need to do this analysis and self-crit accordingly. No one is saying that white communists in the US can’t support these indigenous and black movements, in fact they have to support them against the mass of settlers but they cannot replace them.
I think this is a severe misrepresentation of their position. They have each expressed support for both of the things you claim they don’t believe in. What they have criticized are liberal versions of those ideas, that is the misuse of those slogans to advance a neoliberal agenda under the guise of radlib language.
Speaking on Rainer: He criticizes “Liberal” positions on Land Back and Black Liberation while forming unity with Libertarians (actual Liberals) on anti-Imperialism while calling Black Agenda Report’s refusal to work with that crowd “wrecker” behavior. He calls Horne and Sakai “wreckers”. Centering external facing Imperialism as the primary contradiction over internal Imperialism brings you to politics such as this.
Who’s to say these folks are “Liberals”? Do we just take Rainer’s word for it since they call out that his dead end politics are resorting to working with white supremacists?
He shows no serious attempt to advance the decolonial movement, but like MWM is more than willing to work with open PatSocs. 🤷🏾
He’s willing to work with reactionaries that are unhappy with the US Imperialism and the fact that it is taking away from working class conditions. Through this these allies are platformed as “MLs” that are Settler Nationalists, anti-Indian, anti-Black, extremely transphobic, anti-“Globalist” (🐕 😙), calling people “d*generates” and white haters. They agree with Vaush far more than any MLs.