what a lack of dialectical materialism does to a mothafucka.

“Latent racism” as if this shit is an inherent property of humanity and not an instilled ideology, an “original sin”. The christian moralism and idealism reeks from here.

making absolutist moralist denouncements instead of trying to see the chain of events, the cause, and to fix it

when Liberals and Idealists make racism into a “true” platonic eternal evil, all they are doing is admitting they will never fix or solve the issue and don’t know how to. They are even admitting that it’s somewhat correct or at least has a basis in reality because it’s an inherent law of the universe apparently that we can never escape. Racism was invented on a specific date, not too long ago, and it can be abolished. Anything that was created by people can be destroyed by people too.

Age of Napoleon Bonus Episode that examines the intertwined origins of capitalism and racism

https://soundcloud.com/user-279595680/bonus-episode

this is idealist nonsense and is itself playing into/flirting with lending legitimacy to racist ideas.

It’s true. America is such a segregated society it is almost inevitable, so long as the construct of race exists. The anxiety causes even good-natured people to do awkward shit sometimes. But the elites will literally use anything they can to divide us up. Skin is one of the easiest, humans are such visual creatures and it’s the biggest organ, and we are segregated anyway. The construct of race works better than the elites could have even predicted though.

It’s true not just economics anything that impedes our ability to empathize with one another will create the possibility of this. Though I think for demogogues economic stress it’s the easiest to exploit and misdirect to protect from “levelling”. Also geographic segregation makes it much easier to “otherise” people etc etc regardless. Look at the Brits and the Irish and they are all pale af but Brits wanted the land so they created a construct to legitimize it.

Yes of course even for the wealthy they are going to invent whatever construct they need to justify their own position in their own head. The capital is so concentrated though so there aren’t too many of that kind.

Racism is not when white dudes with cowboy hats feel afraid of Black teens and call the cops on them.

I don’t know about you but that’s the most salient part of racism. Not sure I give a fuck about the metaphysical analysis when my literal skin color is being used to impale me with gunfire or make my conditions worse than oh, I don’t know, fucking yours or the average white dude on this here site.

Palestine and Nicaragua are literally the last thing on my mind when im living my day to day life, talking about these things while I live in despair might as well be a form of escapism

Admittedly, I hadn’t quite considered racism in the way you describe (though I’m aware of that take of discrimination + social power = racism).

I’d say I fall somewhere between you and @Lussy@hexbear.net in this regard, though I also feel that my own experiences with racism and racial alienation and how they have shaped my mentality in- well, just about everything, do also result in me having an immense bias I don’t know if I can entirely overcome. Logically I agree more with you and that aforementioned (racism requires power) take- mentally it is hard to do, FWIW I will admit that I myself similarly cannot fully divorce myself mentally from identity politics (though “imperial idpol” as I described in my previous comment was in response to the “white idpol” mentioned in the post- and I do think is absolutely a thing, though idpol as an… atomization of the proletariat and humanity in general does probably have an infinite number of takes that can be derived from the concept- imperial idpol being just a particularly vile and ubiquitous one across the imperial cores).

Since I @'ed Lussy though, figure I’d respond also here in saying-

Palestine and Nicaragua are literally the last thing on my mind when im living my day to day life, talking about these things while I live in despair might as well be a form of escapism

While not dunking on you for that take, I have to infinitely disagree with it. Solidarity is not escapism, and if we cannot hold onto it even in the worst despair then we are both truly doomed, and at least somewhat wretched. We can’t look away, particularly not if we want others to stand by us in turn.

I get what you’re saying, 100%, in regards to living in despair (I do as well)- and sometimes we need to just live disconnecting from these things for a while, because it isn’t healthy and we can’t survive like that while living with our own despair ourselves. But we can’t disconnect from it altogether, when it comes up (and it always does) we cannot keep silent and keep to ourselves.

Honestly on some level I feel if I were to do it- for those who do it as well- honestly, perhaps we would deserve it then. Surely we would have asked for it, by looking away from those in even further despair and facing literal industrial genocide or kill squads. Think about it and just what you said (though I don’t think the full meaning of it was intended)- is this what we want to be? Are we any better than those who are persecuting us for our race if we do so? Maybe it’s just me and my ex-Catholic mentality, but I reject it (the empire) in its entirety even when it is far away doing more horrifying things to others I don’t know in Palestine and Nicaragua, I would like to think I would reject it and would not look away or shy from it even if it kills me.

And like any social system, it exists within the broader context of our social structure, divided into its economic base and the superstructure, as part of the superstructure. And as we should all understand by now, the superstructure is shaped by the based

And the base also shapes the superstructure.

That is the entire point of this immigration, as Samir Amin states:

Successive waves of immigration also played a role in reinforcing American ideology. The immigrants were certainly not responsible for the poverty and oppression that lay behind their departure for the United States. But their emigration led them to give up collective struggle to change the shared conditions of their classes or groups in their native countries, and adopt instead the ideology of individual success in their adopted home.

Adopting such an ideology delayed the acquisition of class consciousness. Once it began to mature, this developing consciousness had to face a new wave of immigrants, resulting in renewed failure to achieve the requisite political consciousness. Simultaneously, this immigration encouraged the “communitarianization” of U.S. society. “Individual success” does not exclude inclusion in a community of origin, without which individual isolation might become insupportable. The reinforcement of this dimension of identity—which the U.S. system reclaims and encourages—is done to the detriment of class consciousness and the forming of citizens.

Communitarian ideologies cannot be a substitute for the absence of a socialist ideology in the working class. This is true even of the most radical of them, that of the black community.

The implication of your brow beating is pretty clear. It’s to whip votes for the DNC, this shit always spikes right before elections around here

high praise lol thank you it’s just one of my favourite things to call people out for on here (and happens all too often)

you literally said “sometimes people are just racist”. do you not see how that is an idealist statement? do you understand the difference between materialism and idealism?

no, they don’t think they will be treated equally; it is an inherent part of colonialism (from which white supremacy arose) to condition a projection of a ‘reversed consequence’ if power is let go by making the colonized subject into a ‘dangerous’ and ‘unpredictable’ embodiment of ‘barbarity,’ against whom the colonizer is instead a ‘civilized’ and ‘rational’ embodiment of ‘good’ in dialectical antithesis to it. It is where the ideological dynamic of ‘civilizing the savages’ comes from in the material relation of colonialism and its white supremacist expression in history (how European colonialism unfolded and reified its relations). ie. there is an underlying understanding in the white supremacist consciousness that “they want to do to us what we did to them or worse, and will if we let them” (the implication being, we can never ‘let them,’ meaning never give up vigilance and power over them, securing the colonial relation).

It comes out very obviously from white liberals in conversations about decolonization when they are pressed that they are not to and can not insert themselves into deciding ‘how’ the colonized ‘should’ carry out decolonization. There is a deep primal fear in this projection which dialectically necessarily grows out of the material relations of colonialism and colonization; as for there to be a colonizer there must be a colonized — which inherently necessitates dehumanization and justifications for ‘why’ maintaining control and dominance over the colonized subject is “right,” “natural,” or “the only option.” Which then cyclically reinforces the material relations to the material base — land, resources, labor, means of production and subsistence and reproduction of labor. Cyclically because then every act of defiance and resistance against this colonial relationship by the colonized, in the perspective of this superstructural ethos, ‘justifies’ the claim of the ‘dangerousness’ and ‘barbarity’ of the colonized and so the colonizer’s need to ‘keep them under control’. As we saw it also with oct7 in Palestine. As we see in every uprising and riot of colonized people or major push against the structures and systems of their subjugation.

I recommend The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon for a good understanding of colonialism and decolonization and all its inter-relations.

that is economic stuff, it’s about people who are “cutting in line” for the american dream when many americans feel left behind. if those americans didn’t feel left behind (by 40 years of neoliberalism) they wouldn’t be looking for someone to blame and trumps BS wouldn’t work.

What’s the difference?

That includes them, alright!