Make no mistake about it, what's going on in Cleveland right now is a national Klonvocation of present and future lynch mobs.
If Barack Obama showed up on that convention floor, the various state delegations would be arguing about who gets to put the rope around his neck. The convocation of lynchers would lynch him not because the economic recovery has been the weakest in the post-war period; not because drone strikes have killed thousands; not because he has pursued the deportation of migrants with a vengeance; not because use of food stamps has doubled; not because a single worker has lost a single job, but because, and only because Obama is, literally, African-American and has dared to presume he has the same right to preserving US capitalism, to use the military and its weapons against civilian populations, the same right to obstruct, prevaricate, cover-up, misdirect, misinform, murder, destabilize, manipulate, spy, provoke conflicts as a white man.
And if Hillary Clinton showed up, this resurrection of the Redemptionists, this expo of nightriders, would lynch her too, but only after assaulting her sexually, for she is a woman who thinks she has the same rights as the African-American who thinks he has the same rights as a white man.
It's just that simple. Doesn't mean vote for Hillary, or vote for anyone. It simply means, recognize this gathering of Kleagles for what it is. Lincoln and Grant-- no pictures of you on US currency; Trump and Trumpettes have targeted those slots for Nathan Bedford Forrest and D.C. Stephenson.
July 21, 2016
Interesting that your analysis of brexit was that the existing institutions of production were no longer suitable (not the typical left take of racism, fear of immigrants, etc). But your analysis of the rise of Trump is exactly racism, and not that the institutions of production are crumbling. Are these movements so easily distinguishable?
ReplyDeleteVery, very interesting-- although I don't think I'm abstracting racism from the economic forces at work that drive racism to the forefront.
ReplyDeleteWith Brexit, we have the manifestation capitalism's self-destabilization, and destabilization of the EU as a mechanism for the integration, and centralization of capital. That certainly "spins off" racist, xenophobic, movements.
Just as certainly, the impairment of capital accumulation in the US, the contraction "recovery" since 2007 have given additional life to racism, etc. in the US. My point in this post was simply that what was being demonstrated at the convention was the "sloughing off" of all the "code words" and ideological gyrations used to present/conceal that racism and sexism that has been, always, at the core of US capitalism.
In short, I think the difference is a result of the difference in "breadth" of the incidents-- a convention of nightriders vs. a plebiscite on capital integration.
Thank you for the comment.