Remember what I said about the urgency of white supremacy? Folks who don't want to confront their white supremacy always a have an argument about why something else is more urgent. The reality is, confronting white supremacy is ESPECIALLY important in moments of emergency. https://twitter.com/buttholemuseum/status/1242885293566578689 …
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Gradually, the recruit starts to to fully recognize what the dogwhistle is & what it means. The goal is to get them to say to themselves, gosh, a lot my old comrades use that dogwhistle, too. I guess everyone knows, but only Nazis actually have the balls to "name the Jew."
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That's what they call it. "Naming the Jew." The idea is to convince the recruits that Nazis aren't ideologically extreme, that actually Jewish folks have just cowed the general populace into being to afraid to "name" something obvious.
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They'll say, see, even the leftists know it's true. They'll say, the other leftists are too afraid to "notice." The others are too afraid or brainwashed to "name" the Jews, but what group are they really talking about when they say "parasite?"
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In a liberatory movement where we demanded and practiced intersectionality, it would be extremely hard to make that argument stick. Intersectional liberatory critiques recognize the intertwining of oppressions too fully to appropriate for explicit white supremacy.
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In an intersectional liberatory movement we wouldn't be using that term anyway because of existing associations. Even if we slipped up, though, it would be extremely difficult for white supremacists to make it out like we were dogwhistling in the direction of pogroms.
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Unfortunately, the dirtbags and Jacobin crowd have done an extremely effective job of policing intersectionality and pushing a class reductionism that's extremely easy to co-opt, especially when leftists see no problem using Nazis' favorite dogwhistle words.
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The American left fucked up. The poison of class reductionism has effectively paralyzed our collective body in the face of white supremacist co-option of our issues and work and spaces.
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We aren't starting from a place of movement health when it comes to issues of sexism, antisemitism, racism, and other oppressions that intersectionality recognizes as full unto themselves but that class reductionism renders secondary.
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Class reductionism effectively says that racism and sexism and other identity-based oppressions are solely functions of class inequity. It says we shouldn't waste our time talking about those issues, because once we fix class, those issues will cease to exist.
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Class reductionism isn't a race-neutral politics. It affirms and slaps on the back those that prioritize class and don't give a fuck about racism. It effectively tells people who don't want to confront their white privilege that they're smarter than everyone else.
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Real loud for the folks in back: CLASS REDUCTIONISM AFFIRMS WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
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And what's more... CLASS REDUCTIONISM TELLS WHITE SUPREMACISTS THAT THEY ARE SPECIAL AND SMART FOR BEING WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
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Class reductionism tells white supremacists that they are special and smart for "noticing" that white supremacy isn't actually a problem. For "noticing" that the problem has nothing to do with racism. For "noticing" that the problem is wealth-hoarding social "parasites."
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Class reductionism trains its adherents to think of themselves as special for "noticing" the things other people are too afraid or too obtuse to "name." Class reductionism is all about the smugness of the "noticers," the specialness of those who "name" racism as a non-issue.
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Class reductionism celebrates white supremacist specialness in "noticing" that "identity politics" (their term for intersectionality) are distractions from the issue of class and "naming" intersectionality practitioners (usually oppressed people) as the real problem.
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A white supremacy-affirming politics that celebrates noticing & naming oppressed people as the problem is simply not that far down the road from a politics of open white supremacy. Class reductionists may not use the terms noticing and naming, but that's functionally their game.
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I'm an expert on online Nazi community. But when I say, hey, you're using language that could easily be read as an antisemitic dogwhistle and makes that skip-and-a-jump down to Nazi Town, class reductionism tells its adherents I couldn't know what I'm talking about.
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Class reductionist socialism is the real answer to ending all oppressions, right? So if you're a class reductionist socialist, you're functionally working to end racism and antisemitism no matter what you do, right?
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And isn't "parasite" classically class reductionist socialist vocabulary? It *must* be about ending racism, then, right? So how could it be racist?
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Socialism-- class reductionist or otherwise-- is about redistributing the wealth to all people, right? So how could it ever be racist in the longterm?
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But here's the rub, comrades. Time and time again, humanity has shown itself to be very capable of defining certain subgroups of itself to be less-than. To be non-people. To be "savages." To be "animals." To be "parasites."
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Oppression in general is about dehumanization. When we allow or ignore oppressive behavior, we are tolerating and further cementing the dehumanization of others. When that dehumanization goes deep enough, the oppressed aren't "people" anymore, not in the civic sense.
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Oppression works to strip the oppressed of our civic peoplehood. That's not to say we aren't still people, still human, in the liberatory sense of those words. But as oppressive dehumanization continues, we lose that status in the eyes of society and in the eyes of the state.
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That's how Nazbols can be both Nazis and economically socialist. They absolutely believe in a state that redistributes wealth fairly among all people. They just also want that state to remove civic peoplehood from certain oppressed subgroups of humanity.
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When the left does not actively work to reverse that dehumanization and affirm the humanity and peoplehood of the oppressed, it leaves the door wide open for Nazis. It leaves the door wide open for "socialists" who simply do not believe that we are people.
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Class reductionists wedged that door open as wide as it would go, and the infection is already present. We're not talking in hypotheticals here. When it comes to wealth disparity issues, the Nazis are already in the room.
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You know the Nazi dinner joke? It goes like this: Q: what do you call eleven people having dinner with a Nazi? A: twelve Nazis.
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Well, the Nazis are in the room and it's time for dinner and there are empty seats with place settings and everything. The fucking dirtbag left made sure of that.
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We aren't talking about inviting the Nazis into the room anymore. We aren't even talking about inviting them to dinner. The class reductionists already did all that.
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They're sitting down and the question now is, how do we get them the fuck out?
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