This is Part 3 of a 4 part series written by Collectivist Action
Please refer to Part 1 here:
https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-new-confederacy-collectivist-action.html
and Part 2 here:
https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-new-confederacy-collectivist-action_22.html
~~ written by collectivist action ~~
THE NEW CONFEDERACY
Part 3
By Collectivist Action
https://youtu.be/-U6Y4RmxC9o
By the end of the 1960s remnants of the old Confederacy, and their allies, were clearly on the defensive. Their almost uninterrupted legal and extra-legal reign of terror, since their ‘reincarnation’ in the 1930s was arguably greatly mitigated, if not eliminated, by several critical social and political factors:
Federal desegregation policies i.e., the beginning of the legal dismantling of ‘American apartheid’ in response to an irrepressible post-WW2 Civil/Human Rights Movement. The most significant legal victories were the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Plessy vs Ferguson by the Brown vs Topeka ruling in 1954 and a slew of Civil Rights legislation (first passed in the 1870s!), culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The emergence, post-Abolitionism, of an unprecedented number of radical white activists into the Movement
Much of this can be attributed to televised protests and demonstrations, causing many conscientious people to view, on a daily basis, the sheer savagery of some of the unrepentant and (not-so) deadenders, and defenders of fascism.
The imperialist war in Indochina. The war impacted the Struggle by, not only illuminating the similarities between foreign and domestic colonialism, but also - after the integration of the U.S. armed forces under the Truman administration - objectively brought large numbers of black and brown and white working class soldiers together in solidarity in life & death situations and into anti-war activism..
The emergence of an unprecedented militant sector of the Black Liberation Movement, led by the Black Panther Party (formed one year after the assassination of Malcolm X ), reaching its height after the assassination of Martin Luther King.
https://youtu.be/4knmHAZjzsc
“The United States, or what we like to call North America, was transformed at the hands of the ruling circle from a nation to an empire. This caused a total change in the world, because no part of an interrelated thing can change and leave everything else the same.. . .There were other nations in the world. But ‘empire’ means that the ruling circle who lives in the empire (the imperialists) control other nations.. Now, some time ago there existed a phenomenon we called - well, I call - primitive empire. An example of that would be the Roman Empire because the Romans controlled all of what was thought to be the known world. In fact they did not know all of the world, therefore some nations still existed independent of it. Now, probably all of the world is known. . .The United States as an empire necessarily controls the whole world either, directly or indirectly.” Huey P. Newton, BPP
It is important to note, here, that, notwithstanding the fact that some indigenous (American’) nations had allied with the old Confederacy during the Civil War, the emergence of militant organizations like the American Indian Movement (AIM), in the 1960s, once again, hi-lighted the unresolved land contradictions between indigenous nations and white nationalists, particularly the unrepentant political descendants of the Confederacy. Indians were the first populations to be enslaved before the transition to indentured servitude and then to lifetime African bondage. Also, during this period, the 1970s, the struggles of other oppressed and exploited nationalities - Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Chinese and others - moved into the center of U.S.-based social justice movements.
The collective impact of these struggles, forcing the implementation of significant reforms, made it seem that the most virulent and violent expressions of white nationalism had been vanquished. . . .a thing of the past . . .
Or was it?
. . .In 1979, an alliance of nazis and klan members murdered five (mostly white) leftists, and seriously wounded ten others, during an anti-klan rally in a black neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina:
https://youtu.be/E3UcFQv57SI
The filmed coverage of the attack, which became known as the ‘Greensboro Massacre’, was shown on national and international news. Although the state attorney of North Carolina subsequently charged five white supremacists with the murders, in November of 1980, a jury acquitted all of the defendants.
Afterwards, the FBI charged nine of the klan and nazis with “racially-motivated violence and interference in a racially integrated event.” Nine other men were charged with “conspiracy to violate the demonstrators civil rights.”
On April 15, 1984 all nine defendants were acquitted.
Meanwhile, an anti-apartheid movement was emerging across the country and the world . . .
It was not difficult for many African Americans to notice the similarities between South African apartheid and U.S. racial segregation. Although much of the latter had been ‘outlawed’ by the 1970s, de facto segregation and periodic acts of extra-legal white nationalist terrorism continued. In South Africa these practices and policies existed as early as the 19th century and were officially codified in 1948, almost 50 years after the U.S. Nevertheless, in South Africa an anti-apartheid struggle had already consolidated in the early decades of the 20th century, with the formation of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African Congress (PAC).
Both groups , along with Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu had close ties with U.S. liberals and leftists.
Meanwhile, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 could be seen as the ‘South’, i.e., the old Confederacy “rising’, once again. This time, however, those forces had to contend, or ally with, ‘neoliberal’ capitalist forces, committed as ever to the militant defense of private property (if not in humans anymore), but more than willing to use oppressed and economically exploited people, of all colors, to uphold their rule.
At this juncture, we see another illuminating example of the dialectics of history.
In spite of the ascendancy of the aforementioned neoliberal tendency - or because of it - it was during the 1980s that Jesse Jackson, a national Civil/Human Rights 'leader' and acolyte of the martyred Martin Luther King, ran for the presidency, twice. The first time, in 1984, he led a broad electoral campaign, which included many leading former 1960s & 70s social justice, labor, religious, womens liberation, labor, and environmental activists and organizers - a self-identified “Rainbow Coalition”* - and ran on an objectively 'progressive' social democratic platform.
At the end of the fray, however, he failed to get the Democratic Party nomination.
Four years later, after getting the 2nd highest number of votes for president in the Democratic Party primary that year, Jackson, once again, lost the nomination, and a bid for vice-president.
By the late 1980s, it had become clear to those paying attention to electoral politics that the principal leadership, and constituencies of the Democratic and Republican parties had gradually switched places, somewhere between the 1930s and the 1970s. No longer the party of 'Dixie', the Dems would now represent the liberal wing of the ruling class (political) ‘bird of prey’, while the Repubs would represent the conservatives.
Yet, in the final analysis both parties remained adamantly committed to upholding the rule of capital via the strategy of cooptation and/or fascism.
The Jackson campaign was also confirmation for many on the left of either the limitation or uselessness of electoral politics.
Nonetheless, at the same time, political forces, emboldened by ‘Reagonomics’, were busy organizing their base, or ground-forces, with the stated intent of undoing the limited, liberal reforms of the 1930s 'New Deal' abd the 1960s “Great Society’, and any radical, or liberal, resistance to their agenda.
As the 21st century began, two unlikely 20th century new-media-manufactured celebrities would play major roles in the resurgence of the New Confederacy:
A former rock & roll radio deejay from a small town in Missouri, named Rush Limbaugh
A narcissistic, real estate developer, from New York City, named Donald Trump
. . .(to be continued in Part 4)
https://youtu.be/AlePLLlfH4Q
*First introduced in the 1960s by Chicago BPP leader, Fred Hampton
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