J Sakai

Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern

The fourth edition of J. Sakai’s Settlers is now out and available, copies shipping to wherever you may be.

i felt a lot of apprehension working on this book — Settlers is literally the book (or the first in the trilogy of books) that changed my life, and pretty much defined for me what revolutionary writing should look like. Plus, the previous edition was so incredibly beautiful, pictures on every page, really graphically stunning. So if i could have avoided having to work on a new edition, and could have just stuck to selling the old one, i would have. ...........READ MORE

The Shock of Recognition

available from leftwingbooks.net

Looking at Hamerquist’s Fascism & Anti-Fascism by J. Sakai
(an excerpt from Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement)

The Superman is a symbol, the exponent of this anguishing and tragic period of crisis that is traversing European consciousness while searching for new sources of pleasure, beauty, ideal. He testifies to our weakness, but at the same time represents the hope of our redemption. He is dusk and dawn. He is above all a hymn to life, to life lived with all the energies in a continuous tension towards something higher.
Benito Mussolini ¹

We weren’t ...........READ MORE

J. Sakai Reviews AIDS Conspiracy Theories

David Gilbert’s A.I.D.S. Conspiracy? Tracking the Real Genocide is a strong contribution to our knowledge about how to fight the Plague. At first, like so many of us, i thought this horrifying epidemic just had to be some biological warfare experiment run loose. The often-quoted “evidence” in the writings of Dr. William Campbell Douglass, M.D., helped convince me. So it was a real eye-opener for me to learn from David Gilbert’s paper that this Dr. Douglass wasn’t a Black nationalist, as i’d assumed, but a white Right-wing racist whose “evidence” is all fake.

To me, David Gilbert’s paper is fascinating ...........READ MORE

G20 or Bust

The following was written by J. Sakai in response to the G20 “debate” on the left in the hot summer of 2010:

The biggest problem with the “Mr. Black Bloc Has Fun in Toronto” debate, is that it’s so unrealistic. More like the two-dimensional scenery “flats” on school theatrical stages.

Take the cardboard, conspiracy-nut assumptions being used, apparently without any thought at all. Like, that the police are all-powerful and can easily snuff out hundreds of black-masked anarchists in the middle of many thousands of other protesters and bystanders on crowded streets, any time they wish just by snapping their ...........READ MORE

When Race Burns Class: Settlers Revisited (An Interview with J. Sakai)

EC: In the early eighties you wrote Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, a book which had a major impact on many North American anti-imperialists. How did this book come about, and what was so new about its way of looking at things?

JS: Settlers completely came about by accident, not design. And what was so “new” about it was that it wasn’t “inspiring” propaganda, but took up the experience of colonial workers to question how class really worked. It wasn’t about race, but about class. Although people still have a hard time getting used to that – it isn’t ...........READ MORE

Zolo Agona Azania and David Gilbert, Two Teachers Out of Prison

David Gilbert – NO SURRENDER: writings from an anti-imperialist political prisoner. Arm The Spirit/Guillen. 2004. 284p. Paperback book. $20.00

Zolo Agona Azania – Money & Power: Hook or Crook. Kersplebedeb. 2004. 53p. Pamphlet. $3.95

In the 1960s it was common for protesters on the streets to get their ideas right through the bars–from the fiery scribes of the prison revolutionaries like George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver and Malcolm X. Now, in a fresh 21st century when everything including prisons are morphing, prison revolutionaries are still tugging on our coatsleeves. These two writings are alike in being strong-minded, in being anti-imperialist, but ...........READ MORE

Beyond McAntiwar: notes on finding our footing in the collapsing stageset of the u.s. empire

As certain as color
Passes from the petal
Irrevocable as flesh
The gazing eye falls through the world

Ono No Komachi

1: CONSPIRACY THEORIES CAN BE THEMSELVES THE QUESTION

Ever since World Trade came crashing down, conspiracy theories have been like the favorite beverage of men’s protest politics. Wilder the better. Major problems exist with being obsessed about these possible conspiracies, however. We see grainy photos “proving” that the Pentagon was never hit at all (and guesses that the United Airlines passengers were probably flown to a remote desert base in Area 51 to be executed secretly by the c.i.a.). ...........READ MORE

Riffs on the BRICK

Riffs on the Brick: checking out the BRICK anarchist collective’s political statement

Jaybird 2 6/03

Okay, i agreed to kick in some marxist feedback on this anarchist statement, and immediately regretted it. Nothing personal, but organizational political statements usually show the worst, most official-sounding side of us. Stopped reading them years ago. But the BRICK anarchist collective’s Above and Below: Them, Them and Us is short, modest & to the point. i found it thought-provoking (both for what it said and for what it didn’t), with some gutsy ideas. Naturally, there’s lots to disagree with. And many questions. Want to ...........READ MORE

Primary Loathing: Is it Real or Is It Memorex? (March 2008)

You got to hand it to patriarchal capitalism. Just when we thought that the Bushites were on the run, and maybe ku klux klan civilization’s day is over, they come up with some stunning new maneuver. Like this man of theirs, Barak Obama. A biologically white woman versus a biologically African-American man wrestling live on television for the… white man’s big toilet seat of power? This is a mutant, science-fiction moment. So what is it with the Obama Show, anyhow?

There’s a split screen with Obama, the interesting story and the boring story.

We all keep hearing the interesting story, ...........READ MORE

Exchange on “Thoughts” (Feb. 13/2000)

What follows is an email exchange on L.B.’s Some Preliminary Thoughts on Modern Class Structure

Hello again, LB. Sorry, got pulled away for a few. Had to wander around gaza eyeless for awhile, waiting for my eyeballs to adjust to my new eyeglass lens. Then there was backed-up mail, and watering my tiny sprout of a job, and meetings…

By the way, your manila envelope came yesterday. Thank you much for the interesting clippings. The story on the new supertech army “rifle” ala Rube Goldberg was amusing. Reminds me of the special version of the M3 submachinegun they once produced ...........READ MORE