Sorry I didn’t get back to on your last post earlier. I had meant to respond and then forgot about it.

I generally agree with the approach you outline concering so-called “extremist” elements. For instance, I wouldn’t want to invite the RCP or American Nazi Party to a secession convention. The only qualification I would add is that to some of these inquisitor-types (whether SPLC or our erstwhile comrade who attacked me here), things like “racism” and “fascism” are defined so broadly as to included virtually anything to the right of The Nation. For instance, Tom DiLorenzo is on the SVR advisory board and he’s been attacked on these grounds. Vulgar libertarian? Maybe. Aryan supremacist? Hardly. Tom Naylor, a career leftwinger, has been called “racist” for merely questioning federal interventionism for the sake of coercive integration.

The problem I see is that if we spend all our time shunning everyone that the inquisitors object to we will get nothing else done and we will alienate or reject perfectly decent people who simply don’t tow someone’s party line somewhere. And the inquisitors will never be satisfied anyway.

Any kind of serious pan-secession movement of the kind myself, Kirk Sale and others advocate will by nature have to be tolerant and inclusive of all sorts of lifestyles and value systems, if for no other reasons because our ultimate victory depends to a large degree on our ability to attract sheer numbers. I agree with Sean Gabb on this question:

“We have lost the battle for our country. This does not necessarily
mean we have lost the war. There is a chance-however remote-that we can overturn the existing order of things. All we must do is
genuinely want to be a free people again, living in an independent country. On this definition, our allies can be everywhere. They can have nipple rings or green hair. They can be homosexuals or transexuals or drug users. They can want to live in racially exclusive enclaves. They can be Catholics or Moslems or atheists. Whoever wants to be left alone in his own life, and whoever wants this country to be governed from within this country, is a conservative for the present century. Whoever will raise a finger towards this object I will count among my friends.”

I find the assimilationist argument especially galling because it’s so much at odds with the early history of this country. At the time of the Revolution, most of the Hudson valley spoke Dutch. Ditto for German in western Pennsylvania, and French in New Orleans and northern Maine.

Keith,

I generally agree with the strategic coalition of secessionist movements you propose. I think we probably disagree on how politically advisable it is to associate with some of the worst pariah groups like neo-Nazis, but I agree that the practical harm they can do is probably minimal. But IMO there’s nothing to be gained by close ties to groups that produce such a viscerally negative reaction in middle class America. Aside from the fact that they tend to creep me out personally, they’re going to pursue their own separatist goals anyway no matter what. IMO what makes sense is simply a tacit agreement not to interfere with their separatism when the Empire starts to break up, on the understanding that their communities exert authority only over voluntary members and they don’t aggress against other groups.

We end up with two narratives—blacks as hapless victims manipulated by forces beyond their control, blacks as victims of their own moral shortcomings and degraded culture. Although there may be kernels of truth in both, neither is terribly constructive or even that historically accurate.
It’s pretty much inevitable that explanations of a phenomenon divide into endogenous and exogenous categories.

An arguably more valid question is “What is wrong with white people?”
A valid question, but not likely to be productive. The Scottish had their enlightenment and the Japanese modernized when they found themselves way behind the English and sought to emulate them. White people in comparison are on top of the world and have no reason to change their ways.

that affirmative action is unjust and reverse racism (even though white women benefit the most)
Are the two somehow contradictory?

The terms displace white racism upon those folks who benefit the least from their whiteness
They are a lot more likely to be racist. People take pride in their race when they have little else to be proud of. I don’t know where the “racism”. I don’t know where the idea that racism requires a position of power came from, but it always struck me as stupid.

The biggest problem I have with cultural separatism is that it presumes a “cultural purity” which often non-existent or illusory and can easily descends into nationalism (in the sense that Orwell defined it–power hunger). I guess I see most cultural identities as being remarkably fluid and largely the product of particular nation-states, class structures, imperialism, common feelings of oppression, etc. If these things disappeared–most identities that appear to be so “natural” in today’s world would disappear as well. It is not that I am arguing for some sort of artificial homogeneity, its just that I hope that in the future, folks will take more active control over how they define themselves culturally and not rely artificial readings of the past which posit some sort of false commonality that all Europeans/Christians/Muslims/Whomever supposedly have.

As far as strategy, I realize that many groups organize around particularly identities–black group x, punk group y, gay group z, etc. That is perfectly fine, but I also think it is important bring folks together whenever possible around common goals and form face to face multi-ethnic/racial/religious/etc coalitions. Only then can many of the stereotypes which are so easily employed and deployed by elites to break up opposition groups begin to lose their persuasiveness. I am not saying it easy, but nothing worthwhile is. Granted, this may be more difficult in rural areas, but not impossible. I guess my goal is to get past the cultural essentialist moment in which we live, but the only way to do that is by understanding where we are.

On Dain’s comment–

Talking about individualism doesn’t make you a racist, but I do think there is a latent racism that permeates American society which goes beyond simple ignorance–at best it is a more willful ignorance. Things have become much more complicated in the post-civil rights period, but all I can say is that it is a lot easier to change laws than it is personal attitudes and cultural narratives and just because being overtly racist makes you an anathema doesn’t mean that can’t find other ways of expressing it–even ways which make it seem like you are not racist.

Funny, this is EXACTLY what I was told by my lily-white government teacher in a class last semester. That talk of “individualism” is just code for racism.

As a libertarian I balked at this. In fact one could say that as a typical mainstream liberal, she was theoretically able to kill two birds with one stone: racism and market individualism, both at odds with her ethos. And worth noting, the attempt to “unmask” this racism by pointing out lack of white anger over the GI Bill or the New Deal as likewise collectivist and anti-merit wouldn’t work with any libertarian I know: they don’t support those either.

But true, since many white folks will rhetorically latch on to “meritorcracy” while never applying this thinking to welfare for the Greatest Generation (of Putnamesque white civic participants), it seems likely that racism explains the gap.

But I’m not convinced by this. Seems more likely, given vast ignorance of politics by the general public and the heuristics at work among differing demographics, that these folks are as confused as most others. It’s not latent racism, it’s lack of ideological consistency, which infects even most professional ideolgoues from time to time. It’s the reason the American Enterprise Institute can wax eloquent about free markets yet support an American empire that is so blatantly bureaucratic and socially engineering that it practically spits in the face of any kind of Hayekian humility.

A suggestion from Larry Kilgore, that need not be limited to extant parties.

Kirkpatrick Sale
Director, Middlebury Institute
MiddleburyInstitute.org

Sun Mar 16, 2008 3:00 pm

Dr. Sale,

Please see if the people who signed the Chattanooga Declaration would add their name to this. If so it may make a good press release for our cause.

Minor Parties Unite

The US Empire is dead. The only people who don’t realize it are the Washington politicians and the people who pray to the almighty US flag. The Libertarian, Green, Constitution, etc. parties should join forces and nominate a presidential candidate that only has one issue. That issue is the peaceful separation of the US Empire. The candidate selected by the minor parties should not mention her personal beliefs about any issue and only campaign on the issue of separation. I would gladly endorse a person that has nothing in common with me politically; as long as he only speaks of separation and no other issues. The presidential and
vice-presidential candidates should be from opposite sides of the political spectrum and only speak of separation and no other issues.

Texas independence candidate that received 225,000 votes,
Larry Kilgore 469-964-1376

While I agree with most of your analysis, I’m curious as to what you would think the solution to these questions would be. As I see it, the urban black lumpenproletariat and the rural white lumpenproletariat have a common enemy in the US ruling class. It’s also true that what sets both groups off the most is repression against their own culture and kind. For instance, the biggest uprising by American blacks since the slavery era was over the Rodney King incident. And one of the biggest uprisings by poor rural whites in recent decades was the militia movement that came about in resistance to the massacre at Waco.

It seems to me what we need is a strategic alliance of urban blacks and rural whites against the common enemy of corporate America and its police state. This is an excerpt from Joel Dyer’s “Harvest of Rage”:

“A new breed of other elements within the movement-representing perhaps yet another step in the movement’s evolution-is also seeking foreign funding. One of my contacts, whom I will call ‘Tom’ since he spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me that he is actively seeking money abroad. Tom’s antigovernment organization, which has established dialogue with Mexico’s Zapatistas, South America’s Shining Path guerrillas, and the Nation of Islam, is the antithesis of the Identity-driven groups. But don’t mistake Tom for a leftist-he’s not. His vision of America is similar to that of the sovereigns, with small pockets of self-governed individuals living in regions outside of any federal authority. ‘If blacks want to live separate from whites,’ says Tom,’they should have that right. I don’t think that’s necessary, but people should be allowed to choose how and where they live.’ Tom says that the American government is responsible for creating the conditions worldwide that have spawned the sort of radical organizations his group communicates with in other countries, so it’s only natural that today’s antigovernment movement should consider them as alllies. In line with this vision, he says: ‘Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll have a standoff in Texas …and the Zapatistas will come to our defense. It could happen.”

I was a left-anarchist, IWW-type in the 80s and I was around the militia milieu Dyer is describing in the 90s. The conclusion I came to was that a tactical alliance of the racial/economic sectors we’re discussing is the way forward. However, I think leftist radicals make a mistake to both preach at poor whites about what racist sinners they are, and also to encourage blacks to blame whitey for their problems (as opposed to the system itself). Instead, a better approach is to “attack the system” and agree to disagree about other things.

What I would like to see is a pan-secessionist movement where enemies of the US regime collaborate towards the common purpose of overthrowing the existing state through secession by regions and localities. Further, I would like to see insurrections in large cities whereby state and corporate holdings are expropriated and municipalized, syndicalized, mutualized, etc., prohibition laws that feed the prison-industrial complex are eliminated and the state’s police forces and courts are shut down.

I would like to see parallel movements in rural America involving resistance to land seizures, farm seizures, gun laws, taxes, etc. with rural counties becoming the equivalent of sovereign states.

The big controversy that comes out of this idea is the fact that so many rural whites hold social views unpalatable to “progressives” like pro-life, anti-gay, pro-religion, racism, etc., but I don’t see this as a particular difficulty if the two groups are separated from one another both geographically and politically. A revolution in the large cities would have to be multiracial and cosmopolitan by nature but of the nature of urban life. Likewise, rural people tend to be socially conservative in any kind of society.

Even when it comes to ideological racial or religious separatists, I would be in favor of, for example, setting aside certain urban neighborhoods for Nation of Islam type or intentional communities for Euro-centrists like South Africa’s Orania township.

Whenever I propose this idea to cultural leftists, while I get some support, I also encounter a lot of people who go ballistic over the idea that somebody somewhere might be practicing racial discrimination and that someone would prefer a separatist ideology. But I think something like what I’ve outlined here is the only thing that has a chance of working, if anything does.

So what are your ideas?

An arguably more valid question is “What is wrong with white people?” What is it about “white” American culture and politics which allows for the self-deception that (from Buchanan) welfare programs were designed to help black people (they weren’t), that white folks have never benefitted from government largesse, that affirmative action is unjust and reverse racism (even though white women benefit the most), that slavery was somehow “good” for black people (don’t even get me started), and that ignores the long history of social struggle and “self help” which African Americans have engaged in the face of incredible odds.

I would add to the “God ‘n’ Country” mentality, the implicit white supremacist worldview which remains incredibly pervasive. It isn’t white supremacy in the classic, burn a cross on your lawn, sense, but it is a white supremacy which makes the assimilationist model the “norm” (forget the old country, pull yourselves up, learn the word “nigger,” and “pass” as a white American) and to the extent that you fall outside of the model, is to the extent that you are “un-American,” “immoral,” “dysfunctional,” “have no values,” etc. Buchanan’s example of the poor Catholic kid not getting a scholarship is case and point. Firstly, I hate to break the news to Buchanan, but there are black Catholics, not many, but they do exist, even in Aliquippa. But “Catholic,” in Buchanan’s narrative, is a code-word for “deserving moral white” and is specifically intended to invoke white working class hostility to the black working class, but without being “racial.” (I live a stone’s throw from Aliquippa, it is a classic deindustrialized working class community which has yet to recover and rife with frusration and desperation).

It is one of the reasons why I have such trouble with terms like “white trash, redneck, hillbilly, cracker, hick, etc.” The terms displace white racism upon those folks who benefit the least from their whiteness, leaving the politically correct white middle class in their gated communities, who like that their kid has a “black friend” (like it is some sort of project) and tolerates their “gangsta rap” phase, off the hook. This is the value of Goad and his “scapegoat” thesis.

Some self-disclosure—I have been pretty heavily involved in anti-racist activities for years (used to be in ARA which is why few subjects set me off more than race), and I have come to the conclusion that “color-blind racism”—racism that masquerades as race-neutrality–is much more insidious than the “rough racism” which is expressed by the working class whites described by Joe Bageant. It is not that the latter isn’t a problem, but it is a problem in a different way—primarily because it makes it more difficult for poor whites to see poor blacks as their allies, rather than competitors—but it isn’t the primary way in which blacks, other people of color, and even whites are victimized by racism. The bigger problem is people, like the “respectable” Pat Buchanan, who carefully construct racist arguments that appear to be defenses of morality, Americanism, “the West,” and meritocratic justice but in reality are ways in which elites secure the support of the “silent majority” by soft-peddling white supremacy.

Worse yet, the people who directly profit from sweatshop labor often *are* part of the ruling class, which means sweatshop employment is the “best available” alternative after all the other alternatives are eliminated (by a ruling class that includes the employers themselves). So it’s a case of breaking someone’s legs and saying “Here, these crutches are the best available alternative.” When a robber says “your money or your life,” handing over the money is the best available alternative.

I’d prefer to make it a local issue. “Liberal” communities can become “sanctuary cities” if they wish and “xenophobic” commuties can station a ring of minutemen around the county line.

I wonder about the issue of sweat shops.
I think the Misoids are correct when saying that the sweat shops offer the best opportunities, but I think they miss what you are saying - that there is the possibility of even better opportunities which are denied them by the ruling classes.

I just checked out the Horowitz link you posted. I didn’t know he specifically had a bug up his ass about them, but I’m not at all surprised. And their strategy of overwhelming the welfare state with demands sounds an awful lot like the Netwar “swarming” strategy that Ronfeldt and all those other RAND guys got so worked up about.

Of course indentures had some of the problems I mentioned in the post. Once you were in that status, even if white, you faced the serious possibility of dying in servitude.

But in any case saying Africans were indentured is misleading. It doesn’t mean they came here voluntarily. Even transported convicts who were brought here in chains were considered to fall under some form of the indenture law once they got here. It just means that the legal status of slaves was not yet formally defined by a slave code, so the legal difference between them and white indentured servants was fuzzy.

Keith,

The anti-immigration movement at the federal level has its own hidden constituency: the whole national security industry and the public-private partnership supporting it (Halliburton, Blackwater, and other contractors). The old saying “you can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it” applies, big time, to the barbed wire fences, detention camps, and the like. If they ever build a full-scale Iron Curtain on the southern border, with detention centers capable of holding hundreds of thousands of illegals at a time, the role the “national security-industrial complex” plays in the program will make its present involvement with Fatherland Security look like peanuts.

LOL! I missed that before. I wouldn’t put it past them. I like what they have to say about non-economic issues like foreign policy, but they’re a bit over the top on this vulgar libertarian stuff.

As for Mexicans in the Southwest, a while back a liberally-inclined someone was giving me some flack for supporting a guy who ran in the Texas GOP primary on a single-issue of Texas secession. The guy was also a crazed “Christian Reconstructionist” (basically the Taliban with a Bible rather than a turban). I suggested that if Texas were to someday become independent it would most likely become “North Mexico” rather than some Jeezo-looney theocracy. As one who’s been to Dallas and Houston multiple times, the majority of the people whom you see there are Hispanic.

Steve Sailer has written some interesting stuff about rising ethnic conflict between black and Mexican gangs in southern California. I agree the future of the southwest seems to belong to “La Raza”. I’m a little more skeptical of any progressive labor action coming out of it. More likely, it will just be “North Mexico”.

I don’t think Hispanics will organize as you hope. You mention California, but in Los Angeles, home to more Mexicans than any other city in the U.S., there is not one ethnic Mexican hospital, college, cemetery, or broad-based charity. The labor movement is pretty weak as well. La Raza has defeated La Causa.

So open immigration would actually make it harder for employers to exploit immigrant labor? I can see the case for that. I suppose a rough analogy might be to the drug issue, where legal drugs might actually make it easier for addicts to get help or at least live a functional lifestyle.

The big difficulty I have with the immigration thing is that, realistically speaking, any kind of populist anti-system movement is by nature going to have to include both left/libertarian pro-immigrationists and populist/paleocon anti-immigrationists. I’d prefer that there be no federal immigration policy and simply leave it to states and localities, with reds and blues, browns and blacks and whites, left and right doing their own thing. Personally, immigration isn’t an issue I really care about one way or the other.

I think their mass migration was about as “voluntary” as that of the evicted cottagers into the English factories. The main difference between when they left, and earlier times, is that in earlier times they hadn’t yet been evicted from the land they were ‘cropping–and after WWII they were.

English laborers were directly driven into the factories to a considerable extent by things like the Poor Laws and Laws of Settlement. But what I had mainly in mind was their being indirectly being driven in by the previous land expropriations, which forcibly deprived them of any alternative to wage employment.

I’ve seen frequent assertions in places like Mises Blog that peasants flocked into the Dark Satanic Mills, and continue to flock into sweatshops, because it was such a superior alternative. But then I expect any day to see some Misoid argue that there was a voluntary African mass migration to America because of the good factory jobs.

Keith,

The reference to Clinton as “intelligent friend” tipped me off on Wright’s real degree of radicalism. But I don’t buy the “civil rights industrialism” idea in his case because he’s primarily a local community activist in the Chicago area, not someone previously famous in any national organizations. I doubt he’s shaken down Anheuser-Busch for any distributorships.

I suspect that immigration as such–genuine immigration, with open borders–would benefit the ruling class nearly as much as the present halfway system. Currently employers can get as much immigrant labor as they need into the country with a wink and a nudge, but the immigrants themselves are just technically “illegal” enough that they’re dependent on their patron for protection against the authorities–and you’d better believe he’ll cut them loose if they complain about low pay, or working off the clock, or start talking union. What we have now is a de facto bracero program where employers hold all the cards.

I’d much rather we simply had open borders.

I still have hope that the local influx of Hispanic workers into Northwest Arkansas will backfire on Tyson et al. There’s a large degree of cultural cross-pollination between this area and California, with second (and later) generation Hispanics out there deciding this is a good place to invest in businesses to serve the new Hispanic market (despite all the Taco Bells and such around here, I don’t think I ever tasted cilantro until ten years ago). Leaders of the LA gangs are doing the same. IMO it’s only a matter of time until Latino labor activists, e.g. veterans of Chavez’s organization, get the same idea: that this is a field white unto harvest. And if and when they start shutting down Tyson’s chicken plants, I have only one thing to say: “Viva la Raza!”

http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/buchanan_strikes_again/

I can forgive a lot of ideological and historical snafus for writing a book like this! Should really put a hair up the ass of the neocons!

In my view, gentrification and immigration are both pro-ruling class policies that attack the economic well-being of the indigenous American poor and working class of all races and colors. It’s funny, because I have plenty of liberal/leftoidal acquaintances who shout “hip, hip, hooray” when I attack yuppie gentrification of poor neighborhoods, but when I denounce ruling class importation of immigrant labor, it’s like, “Racism, xenophobia, boo-hoo, sniff-sniff, sob-sob!”

I think the ultimate solution to both issues is economic decentralization of the kind Kevin advocates. Repeal the housing and land regulations and subsidies that make gentrification possible, and decentralize the economy into worker cooperatives, and you’ve pretty much taken care of both problems.

The problem I have with these fiery black preachers is that they’re usually a lot less radical than they let on. I don’t know enough about Wright to evaluate him personally, and I’m inclined to criticize Obama for not standing by his pastor strongly enough, but a lot of these guys like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are what I call “civil rights industrialists”. Yeah, they denounce the Man for all his crimes, but they never really want to do anything about it except pass more federal laws and expand federal entitlement programs, thereby making black Americans (at least poor blacks) more in thrall to Uncle Sam/Big Brother than they already are. When these guys start talking about overthrowing Big Brother and expropriating the ruling class, and completely renouncing the system in favor of self-determination (not necessarily racial separatism, but complete independence of the existing system) I might have more respect for them.

I have been studying the family trees of 20 successful African-Americans… And I’ve seen an astonishing pattern: 15 of the 20 descend from at least one line of former slaves who managed to obtain property by 1920 — a time when only 25 percent of all African-American families owned property….
I’d hesitate before saying a correlation is established. He’s started with people who were already successful and found many come from one family. He’s not looking at the property-owning black class as a whole.

Spooner sounds like George Fitzhugh in the quoted passage!

and then driven into the factories like cattle
Is that referring to something like Poor Laws/Houses or simple economic forces?

gentrification
Reminds me of an old Sixteen Volts post. Is there anything that distinguishes opposition to gentrification from opposition to immigration?

Same goes for the whole “Don’t be a snitch” thing, which seems so naughty to anyone who grew up in Pleasantville with sixty thousand hypnopaedic repetitions of “The Policeman Is Your Friend.”

More broadly, as I’ve argued elsewhere, you can get some indication of the political function of the Drug War by considering that the two main demographic groups it places under extreme surveillance and control–rural whites and inner city blacks–are also the demographics most prone to political radicalism against the corporate state, and least prone to cheerfully accept direction from authority figures behind desks.

As Jim Goad probably pointed out somewhere, both racism and the upper-middle-class version of PC both perform the useful function of making these demographic groups (who should be natural allies against the corporate state) fear and distrust each other. That’s what happened with the southern sharecroppers’ union back in the ’30s, which fractured along racial lines (predating by thirty years the success of the same divide and conquer strategy in COINTELPRO).

The whole God’n'Country thing is also a devilishly successful tool for getting poor whites’ minds right. That’s especially true of my own demographic, the Ulster Scots (or “borderers”) Joe Bageant writes about. Their original livelihood, in the barren country on either side of Hadrian’s wall, consisted mainly of raiding other clans and stealing anything not nailed down. The hungry and mean population that developed under these conditions was admirably suited to serve as cannon fodder for an Empire.

From that day to this, depite an ostensible hatred for “gummint,” they’ve also been prey to uncritical support for King or Commander-in-Chief, and served as the main shocktroops of repression and violence in wartime. The whole Red State war psychosis, as Bageant pointed out, is almost entirely a feature of those parts of America where the Scotch-Irish predominate.