Hang on, class reductionism is bad. We don't want them to turn into stupidpol.
The post was totally a "black power is just as bad as white power! You dark fellows stop complaining about your oppression!" Kind of thing. It also completely misses the point that Black Power was a leftist org and that white power are fucking facists.
It's a leaflet 1968 from Socialist Labor Party of America aimed at combatting the propaganda campaign of the southern aristocrats had been pushing to antagonize the poor working peoples of the south. It is expressly a message to ALL working people to know who's pitting them against one another and to place the blade to their necks instead of each other.
To quote MLK, ("Our God is Marching" speech, 1965.)
Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century. If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow.
There is fundamentally nothing racist about this. any perception of this is an ignorant modernist interpretation of age-old agitprop tailor-made for the American material conditions.
I understand now! How embarrassing on my part :ohnoes: forgive me for I did a cringe
Here's the source for MLK's speech "Our God is Marching"
let me follow up with what he said right after that
If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)
Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike (Uh huh) resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir) That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality. (Yes, sir)
I need to read more of his speeches. What an amazing dude.
Popularized by Kwame Ture to be exact, and Mr.Ture's stance of black power differs from Comrade Huey Newton's stance of revolutionary Intercommunalism.
I think the point Alaska is making is that even though the pic is bad the thread had some good posts showing how race and class intersect. Basically making the argument why you must have racial justice as part of your workers party. But the mods removed the whole thread, taking that with it. Rather than letting the discussion stand, they removed it.
I could be misinterpreting the point though.
Thats true, people were shitting on the racist part in the comments. I guess I might be jumping to conclusions.
Edit: Thats totally what the point was. I am stupid. Sorry Alaska.
Those are perfectly valid points to be brought up in internal party commissions, intra-organizational discussions, socialist scholarly circles, and so forth where the nuances of the issues that stem from decades of eating Jim Crow served by sore ass yee yee confederate loosers in addition to the other complex issues that undergird the USA.
The problem I'm having is that this is a subreddit filled with libs and hogs who barely are even aware of the basic history beyond "MLK once had a dream and then civil rights happened" - much less the the history of something like how redlining and discriminatory housing standards have led to generations of black Americans to grow up in old decaying households where the paint on the walls was lead-based leading to myriads of health conditions compounded by the psychological trauma of fear of legal oppression, etc as I think the points made. - come face to face with this most basic and direct agitpropt points out out and reinforces anti-capitalist belief.
Summarizing, this is the beginning part of the socialist ideological pipeline with people at the end of that pipeline tearing out the sink to throw the baby with the bathwater out.
Of course not, if you work a day in your life you feel deep down inside to some degree you're getting fucked over by someone but you won't have the words or even the concepts to explain that feeling without education, literature, or at least a proverbial signpost in that direction to help you along.
For a lot of us shitlibs here brother Bernard Sanders was that proverbial signpost to start learning our socialist history that we were denied-by-omission all our lives. It's almost a decade, or longer for some, down the ideological pipeline for us. But for these 27k+ shitlibs over on AntiChapoTrapHouseWork, they're where we were all those years ago.
Nah it was good this was removed. It was super sus seeing a poster that looks like it's equating "black power" with "white power". This is what a lot of comments were pointing out as well. It feels like it was intentionally astroturfed or something to have so many upvotes. Or maybe it just appeals to white redditors' feels to get to say "no to black power" while purporting to support positive change. The poster itself just exudes "uppity black people are wrong too!". Might as well have been from some COINTELPRO thing.
I think it's better to remove stuff that could have an incorrect connotation in people's minds, especially since the post title and body don't mention it. There would be too many people who would simply skim over it and think "yeah not black or white power!" in self-reaffirmation. Especially for a newish subreddit probably astroturfed to hell already.
I don't see how any context changes it. I saw the image and immediately rolled my eyes. It doesn't matter that it was before all that COINTELPRO stuff. The title of the post is just "It's the only way". It doesn't have any of the context you brought up. All they had to do was edit the body of their post to make it clear that black power is not a bad thing.
Class solidarity is the only way. You'll get nothing if your time is spent bickering like terminally online children over the "optics" of decades old agitprop that clearly spells out to normal people the rich are the real enemy.
So why are you bickering about it? Just post some agitprop that's appropriate in a modern setting.
People reacting to black power with "class solidarity is the only way" is why black power exists and is necessary.
Class reductionism is when workers overcome racial divisions and stand together to fight their common enemy.
Good progressive intersectionalism is when black and white workers fight eachother and ignore the bourgeoisie.
I am very intelligent.
Bad comeback, put a pot on your head and march around like a loud bellend
I get their point about "equating black power with white power", the comic should be worded slightly different like "racism only helps our common oppresor", but yeah I want to believe the intention of the author and the 26.7 k people upvoting it wasn't class reductionism.
I would bet every bit of money I own that 95% of people who upvoted that think that black nationalism is equivalent to white nationalism and black power is equivalent to white power.
Calling em anti-socialist liberals because of one take half of lib Hexbear can´t agree on, sounds like an anti-socialits lib take to me. :curious-marx:
The important thing is that thousands of people saw it, and updooted it, so the "damage", so to speak, is done. Thousands of other vooters on :reddit-logo: went and did a hecking class reductionism and agreed with it, no matter what the mods think.
I hate all the pathetic mods that lock comments sections when things get the least bit spicy. WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THINGS
