From: Doug Henwood
On Aug 8, 2011, at 10:47 AM, Carrol Cox wrote: > I trust the judgment of Glen Ford. I admire Ford a lot, but really, Carrol, the TP isn't just a bunch of nativist yahoos. A lot of them are amped-up libertarians who hate social spending. Seth Ackerman has a nice piece on how liberals use the charge of "racism" against the TP because it's a lot easier than arguing with them: ^^^^^^^ CB: And you all actually think we've reached a point when you can be "leftists" and not emphasize the white supremacy of the right wing, TP and otherwise. LOL Y'all just whistling Dixie. Left-wing white supremacy. The argument against white supremacy is integral to arguments against capitalism in the US. ^^^^^ http://jacobinmag.com/summer-2011/liberals-and-racism/ > Make no mistake; my intention isn?t to praise or defend the Tea Partiers or > the braying geriatrics who bum-rushed the health care reform town halls two > summers ago. It is to ask why liberals, when faced with the political idiom > of the American Right, gravitate so insistently toward racialized accounts of > their motives. ^^^^^ CB: This is pathetic. You still don't understand that white supremacy ( including especially today, anti-dark skinned immigrant white supremacy) is central to dividing the US working class. The Tea Party, as usual by the American rightwing ( including everybody's now favorite Republican Richard Nixon with his "Southern Strategy") use white supremacy to pit White workers against Black and Brown workers. Of course, the Tea Party's motives are "racialized", i.e. white supremacist( what a weak term). That doesn't contradict in the least their anti-working class , pro-capitalist "motives". White supremacist motives are critical in carrying out anti-working class motives. ^^^^^^^ The Right talks endlessly about freedom, defined as negative liberty; yet liberals in their ordinary political discourse have no critique of the right-wing concept of freedom. The Right loudly and consistently champions free markets and capitalism; yet liberals have no principled critique of free markets or capitalism. ^^^^^ CB: What is Paul Krugman's principled critique of free markets or capitalism ? What's yours ? ^^^^^ > > Unable or unwilling to articulate any coherent rebuttal of their opponents? > ideological rhetoric, liberals instinctively resort to accusations that the > opposing ideology is covertly racist because racism ? unlike Reaganite > celebrations of the magic of the market ? requires no refutation. ^^^^^^^ CB: In the US, criticism of white supremacy is critical to a critique of capitalism. Always has been since the primitive accumulation of capital. As to the US See Karl Marx in _Capital_ "In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded." Leftists' lack of a critique of white supremacy is as much a deficiency as liberals' lack of a critique of capitalism. Paul Krugman is not against capitalism. He's for welfare capitalism, at best. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
