Fear and White Supremacy
White supremacy has been the GOP’s organizing principle for more than a half century. The “Great Replacement Theory” is the 21st century version of a historic trend. The Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy” successfully mobilized white Americans fearful of the Black movement for social justice into a formidable political bloc. Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy transformed the racist rhetoric within the Republican political establishment into a coded war on “welfare queens” and “crime.” The “Great Replacement Theory” is another iteration of white supremacist ideology which posits that Black Americans, immigrants, Muslims, and non-whites generally are invading the Anglo world in a bid to eradicate whites.
There is no doubt that the influence of far right and white supremacist ideology has played a role in the more than one hundred mass shootings that have occurred in the United States over the past several decades. A society organized to dehumanize and wage war on the masses is ultimately a society at war with itself. However, it is too simplistic to view white supremacy as a purely ideological phenomenon. White supremacy is not merely a set of ideas that, once spread, sets the stage for racist violence. This idealist conception of history strips white supremacy of its roots in the system of U.S. imperialism and simplifies its existence to a matter of moralistic virtue.
In most of the thinking and planning of whites in the West today, it’s easy to see that fear in their minds, conscious minds and subconscious minds, that the masses of dark people in the East, who already outnumber them, will continue to increase and multiply and grow until they eventually overrun the people of the West like a human sea, a human tide, a human flood. And the fear of this can be seen in the minds, and in the actions, of most of the people here in the West in practically everything that they do. It governs their political views, it governs their economic views and it governs most of their attitudes toward the present society.
Malcolm X related white fears of replacement not to some unexplainable hatred but to the material reality that white Americans and Westerners were quickly losing their ability to control the destinies of oppressed peoples of the world. Malcolm X’s words have only become more relevant in the current period. The rise of socialist China has precipitated a Cold War response from imperialism that has poured gasoline on the fire of anti-Asian racism and violence. The Black struggle for self-determination has faced a severe backlash from the U.S. mass incarceration state, opening the floodgates of racist reaction. White supremacy is a global system of social control that is directed at any person, government, or movement (Russian, Chinese, Black American, Muslim, Arab, etc.) that is perceived to threaten the domination of Euro-American imperialism.
The entire system of U.S. imperialism is thus implicated in racist violence. This includes the Democratic Party, which has for decades been wedded to a neoliberal model of governance reliant upon austerity, state repression, and war. The Republican Party is but the loudest and most ideologically influential political branch of the U.S.’s racist and imperialist system. The more that the U.S. finds itself bogged down in its own contradictions, the stronger the tide of racist reaction becomes. A true fight against white supremacy involves popular organization against the forces that gave it birth: the U.S. military state waging wars fueled by dehumanization, the two-party duopoly enacting policies that deprive oppressed people of their needs, and the economic system of capitalism robbing the earth of public wealth and ecological sustainability to enrich its corporate masters.
There is no doubt that the influence of far right and white supremacist ideology has played a role in the more than one hundred mass shootings that have occurred in the United States over the past several decades. A society organized to dehumanize and wage war on the masses is ultimately a society at war with itself. However, it is too simplistic to view white supremacy as a purely ideological phenomenon. White supremacy is not merely a set of ideas that, once spread, sets the stage for racist violence. This idealist conception of history strips white supremacy of its roots in the system of U.S. imperialism and simplifies its existence to a matter of moralistic virtue.
In most of the thinking and planning of whites in the West today, it’s easy to see that fear in their minds, conscious minds and subconscious minds, that the masses of dark people in the East, who already outnumber them, will continue to increase and multiply and grow until they eventually overrun the people of the West like a human sea, a human tide, a human flood. And the fear of this can be seen in the minds, and in the actions, of most of the people here in the West in practically everything that they do. It governs their political views, it governs their economic views and it governs most of their attitudes toward the present society.
Malcolm X related white fears of replacement not to some unexplainable hatred but to the material reality that white Americans and Westerners were quickly losing their ability to control the destinies of oppressed peoples of the world. Malcolm X’s words have only become more relevant in the current period. The rise of socialist China has precipitated a Cold War response from imperialism that has poured gasoline on the fire of anti-Asian racism and violence. The Black struggle for self-determination has faced a severe backlash from the U.S. mass incarceration state, opening the floodgates of racist reaction. White supremacy is a global system of social control that is directed at any person, government, or movement (Russian, Chinese, Black American, Muslim, Arab, etc.) that is perceived to threaten the domination of Euro-American imperialism.
The entire system of U.S. imperialism is thus implicated in racist violence. This includes the Democratic Party, which has for decades been wedded to a neoliberal model of governance reliant upon austerity, state repression, and war. The Republican Party is but the loudest and most ideologically influential political branch of the U.S.’s racist and imperialist system. The more that the U.S. finds itself bogged down in its own contradictions, the stronger the tide of racist reaction becomes. A true fight against white supremacy involves popular organization against the forces that gave it birth: the U.S. military state waging wars fueled by dehumanization, the two-party duopoly enacting policies that deprive oppressed people of their needs, and the economic system of capitalism robbing the earth of public wealth and ecological sustainability to enrich its corporate masters.
