White Riot

 

2014-10-23_white_riot-90cd7205

George Ciccariello-Maher
Facebook
August 4, 2019

Two and a half years ago, I sent a tweet mocking the white supremacist myth of “white genocide,” which posits that white people are being “replaced” by a combination of migration, birth rates, and racial mixing. Twitter and the media briefly lit up, with thousands discussing the absurdity of the white genocide myth—this was a good thing indeed.

But a great coalition of liberals, conservatives, and cowardly academics, hand-in-hand with white supremacists, found my words too controversial (more controversial, apparently, than the words of the Nazis themselves). Today, two and a half years later, I don’t have a job as a result.

Since then, the myth of “white genocide” and “the great replacement” has metastasized, fusing seamlessly with Trump’s demonization of Central American migrants among others. It has been the direct cause of—among other things—the mass slaughter of 51 in Christchurch, New Zealand, only a few months ago, and in just the past week, 4 deaths in Gilroy (targeting “hoards of mestizos”) and now at least 20 in El Paso (targeting the “invasion” of Texas by Mexicans—explain this to the people who were there before 1848).

Despite this roaring cognitive dissonance, too many Democratic Party hacks, handwringing liberals, and trash professors continue to make excuses for the Nazis in our midst. CNN headlines grant credence to the myth of a disappearing white America. They tell us that Antifa and the Nazis are the same things, that fighting white supremacy only makes it stronger. When liberalism coddles the right and legitimizes its theories, the deaths in El Paso and elsewhere are the only logical result.

But we know that material force defeats material force, that fascism and white supremacy will not go away until we make them go away. We know that white supremacist movements and ideas must be destroyed before they kill again.

Every Proud Boy, neo-Nazi, and Identity Europa member is a mass shooting waiting to happen. And every mealy-mouthed liberal is an accomplice.

Death to the Klan. Death to fascism. Death to white supremacy. Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.

Thanks to Nazir Khan for the heads-up. Comic strip courtesy of Keith Knight // TRR

“White Riot” by The Clash
SongFacts

In this song, Clash frontman Joe Strummer is expressing his view that young white people should be outraged over their oppressive government just as blacks were, and should demonstrate through direct action and protest. He made it clear that the song—and the group—in no way advocated violence, and that it was certainly not racist.

Strummer explained to NME: “The only thing we’re saying about the blacks is that they’ve got their problems and they’re prepared to deal with them. But white men, they just ain’t prepared to deal with them—everything’s too cozy. They’ve got stereos, drugs, hi-fis, cars. The poor blacks and the poor whites are in the same boat.”

This song was inspired by the Notting Hill riots in west London on August 30, 1976. The carnival was a celebration of Caribbean culture, but it turned violent when police were attacked after arresting a pickpocket. Over 100 police officers were hospitalized along with about 60 crowd members. A lot of the tension was along racial lines, with black youths clashing with white officers, although gangs of white youth were also involved. Clash members Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, and their manager Bernie Rhodes were at the event and got caught up in the riots, which led to this song. They included a photo of the Notting Hill riots on the back cover of the album.

Released in the UK on CBS Records March 26, 1977, “White Riot” was The Clash’s first single. It became one of their signature songs and was an indication of things to come. The Clash spent the next eight years speaking out for the lower class and against the establishment. Targets of their scorn included the British government and their record company.

Predictably, this song caused some problems during Clash concerts at times when audience members—often political punks—would use it as an excuse to cause trouble. Whether they should play it or not was sometimes a source of tension in the band.

At a gig in 1979, Joe Strummer was determined to play the song as an encore but Mick Jones vehemently disagreed, saying he was sick of the song and wanted to leave it behind. The argument became heated and Strummer for the only time in the band’s career punched Jones, leading to an odd situation during the encore where Jones had a bandage around his eye and nose whilst playing on stage—he gave up playing it halfway through and left the rest of the band to play on. Other tales abound of promoters requesting the band not to play the song for fear of wrecking the venue. Naturally, The Clash, being the troublemakers that they were, would play it anyway.

Clash members Mick Jones and Joe Strummer played this together for the last time in November 2002. Jones was in the audience for one of Strummer’s solo shows and came onstage to join him. Strummer usually didn’t like to play this, but he turned to Jones and said, “This one’s in ‘A’, you know it.” Strummer died of a heart attack a month later.

The album wasn’t released in the US until 1979. Over 100,000 copies were sold there as an import in 1977.

A Putin-Trump Bot and Shill for Lyndon Larouche Has Something to Say to You

maga man.pngThis is what I look like in real life. Photo by Jonathan Ernst. Courtesy of Reuters and Business Insider Deutschland

Throughout the last presidential election campaign, I was verbally abused by a young art historian who was so determined to see Hillary Clinton win the race he attacked everyone who expressed the slightest uncertainties about her sterling character, political record, etc.

He did this to me on countless occasions, despite the fact I had already said I would vote for Clinton to prevent Trump from becoming president.

My ex-art historian friend pursued this social media campaign of abuse right up until election day. Although I tried several times to persuade him that verbally abusing people is not a very good way of making them do anything, he persisted in his vicious attacks on specific doubters like me and people who weren’t crazy about Clinton in general.

I’m not sure where he got his marching orders or whether he got them at all. Our political culture is suffused with violence, abuse, aggression, and stupidity, so it’s possible he set out on his perilous and, ultimately, futile course without any explicit prompting from the obnoxious Clinton campaign and the even more obnoxious Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Whatever the case, I’m already seeing signs the DNC faithful have started abusing doubters well in advance of the primaries, the convention, and the election.

Just today, in fact, one such fanatic labeled me a “Putin-Trump bot” and a “shill for Lyndon Larouche.”

Why did he attack me in this way? Only because I suggested—plausibly, I think—that there is no guarantee that if a Democrat grabbed the White House in January 2021, she or he would move to prosecute Trump.

I think it is likely that, instead, the new president would pardon Trump and only Trump in order to smooth the transition and also receive carte blanche to go after everyone else in Trump’s administration.

Two tenured professors who know for a fact I am neither a “Putin-Trump bot” and “Larouche shill” let this abusive comment stand without comment.

So, if that is how it’s going to be, I am going to make a promise to all of you.

I will not vote for the US Democratic Party in the 2020 US presidential election. They have broken their promises to working-class people, minorities, people of color, and pretty much their entire so-called base for as long as I have been following politics.

What our country needs is not a Democrat in the White House but a lot more democracy. It is clear the two “legal” parties have very odd ideas about democracy. One party has abandoned its conservative and liberal roots in pursuit of fascism. The other party does almost nothing to stop them while rapping the knuckles of the inspiring congresswomen of color who were elected in 2018 and are willing and able to take on a bully like Trump.

In short, if the Democratic Party could run an Ocasio-Cortez/Omar ticket in the 2020 presidential election, I would consider voting for it (and I’m sure millions of other people would, too), but the DNC would never let such a ticket make it onto the ballots even if Rep. Ocasio-Cortez were not too young to run, and Rep. Omar had not been born in another country.

What our country really needs, as an interim step toward real democracy, is a multi-party parliamentary republic without a president. I would argue this form of governance would make the nightmare of the last two and a half years a lot less feasible by diffusing power among parties more narrowly defined by class, ideological, and regional interests.

I don’t encourage anyone else to follow my example. After all, I have it on good authority that I am a Larouchian shill and a Trump-Putin bot.

I would, however, encourage you not to succumb to the “unity at any cost” campaign the DNC will unleash on the nation, using its millions of dupes around the country to viciously attack anyone who wavers from the party line.

When you’re verbally abused by a DNC fanatic, as I was today, explain as calmly as you can that this style of campaigning turns people off and encourages them to stay home rather than vote.

The latest issue of the Economist (July 6, 2019) had an interesting piece summarizing some research done by the newspaper itself. It claimed that, if everyone had voted in 2016, Clinton would have won.

In other words, if the US had mandatory voting like Australia has, for example, passive Clinton supporters would have been more or less forced to vote for her and she would have easily beaten Trump.

The Economist also argued Republicans would have to soften their hardline fascist message to appeal to fence-sitters, who also have a tendency not to vote.

What the article failed to point out is that the real Australia recently returned the governing Liberal-National coalition to power despite the fact all of the polls had predicted victory for the Australian Labor Party.

This means Scott Morrison was returned to his job as the country’s PM, despite the fact he presided belligerently over Australia’s own asylum-seeker concentration camps on Manus Island and Nauru before mounting a leadership challenge and taking over as the Liberal Party chair and, hence, the PM.

Scott Morrison is only slightly less odious than Donald Trump, by the way.

So, mandatory voting is no guarantee of happiness and sunshine in Australia, America or anywhere else.

The DNC is even less inclined to produce happiness and sunshine for ordinary Americans than the Australian Labor Party or even the Australian Liberal Party, not all of whose members are fascist pigs.

Don’t take the DNC’s abuse. I understand the desire to get rid of Trump, but it can’t happen at any price. If the price is Joe Biden, I would place a bet in any establishment willing to take it that he would pardon Trump the day after the inauguration.

If you must vote, then, a) don’t vote for a “compromise” ticket, and b) don’t take abuse from the DNC-inspired unity-at-all-costers.

When someone is willing to rain such mendacious filth on the head of a person he has never met and knows nothing about, this alleged unity is worthless.

All of you are smart and strong enough not to buckle under such pressure.

Who knows? If millions of you made pledges like the one I am making now it might make the DNC sit up and listen. {PUTIN-TRUMP BOT}

Mac’n’Cheese

macncheeseSign on the front of Daily Delicatessen, a restaurant on Liteiny Prospect, in downtown Petersburg, that purports to serve “autherican american [sic] cuisine.” Photo by the Russian Reader

A Democratic majority will not bring back the eleven Jewish people in Pittsburgh, massacred while they prayed. Or the two Black people gunned down days before at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky. It won’t fully stop the relentless attacks against immigrants in America.

But on Sunday evening, Pittsburgh mourners—angry and broken-hearted like us—chanted “Vote! Vote! Vote!” They understand the magnitude of the midterm election six days from today: that it affords us the chance to forge a powerful bulwark against Donald Trump’s hate and hold accountable the Republicans who have been complicit in every step of his toxic, self-serving, and destructive agenda. We must offer a path out of the darkness.
—Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, excerpted from a Moveon.org campaign email

The path that the avowed democratic socialist Ocasio-Cortez offers out of the darkness is a “Democratic majority.” The sad thing is that, given the sluggish staying of the stagnant course and unchange the DNC and, thus, the Democratic Party have represented my entire life (I was born in 1967, one year before the disastrous 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago), I think we would be fools to trust them to hold anyone accountable for anything, much less Don Trump and the Falangists.

They certainly don’t ever hold themselves accountable for anything.

In any case, it’s been clear for two decades, at least, that most Americans don’t want either the now full-blown fascism of the former Republican Party or the so-called centrism of the Democratic Party, whatever face you put on it, even the handsome face of the otherwise utterly likable Barack Obama, a former community organizer who should have know better than to do half the things he did while in the White House, and who should have done many things he didn’t even contemplate doing.

What we need is actual democratic socialism, as fought for by an actual socialist party.

We also need an actual labor party, whose agenda is driven by progressive trade unions and their members.

And a party for small-c conservatives, not fascists.

And a green party that is not run by people who think it’s okay to fly to Moscow and have dinner with Putin.

And a libertarian party whose leaders and rank-and-file are true to actual libertarian principles, instead of being eager to make alliances with the falangists.

And a centrist party for people whose cup of tea is Obama and Hillary Clinton, warts and all.

We could also use a few regional parties, for folks who think the South, the Midwest, etc., are essences in themselves and need special representation in Congress.

And an agricultural party, to protect our farmers all over our great land.

In short, we need a parliamentary democracy. To that end, we need a presidency whose powers are much reduced, and a president who is elected by a straightline popular vote, not by an electoral college.

This would be an actual path out of the darkness, because a multi-party democracy and a weakened presidency would make it nearly impossible for what we have been witnessing lately—a lying, vicious clown, who is probably a Kremlin stooge, smashing our country to bits on behalf of his sponsors and a increasingly rabid white nationalist minority—to happen again.

So, go and vote a straight Democratic ticket on Tuesday. It won’t save us from the darkness, because with our absurdly outmoded political system, rigged to protect the tiny ruling class and its interests, our faith in leaderism and lesser evilism, our nearly perennial committment to racism, savagery, and barbarism at home and abroad, and our preference for policing over politics, we are the darkness.

P.S. We also need to ditch the Supreme Court in its present untenable form: political appointees disguised as nine wise mandarins of justice, seated for life, making a mockery of the law. In a real democracy, we would elect Supreme Court justices to one-time eight-year terms by popular vote, and the vetting they would get before being put on the ballot—conducted by a panel of lawyers, journalists, and ordinary citizens, and broadcast live on TV and the internet—would ensure we actually knew what they stood for before we voted them up or down, end of story. {TRR}