Ontology talk:9k/RD/Q4619

Main entry

4619. Q4619/Q46,19Trotskyists against 1619 Project [1] [2]

Motifs or claims

618. Q618/Q618The whole period from 1619 to 2025 was one dark twilight of racism only occasionally countered by the efforts of Black Americans to create democracy (1619 Project) [3] -> this is not entirely false. it just omits a few things, like how Malcom X made a real effort to understand Marxism and some of the people who argued for a Leninist movement beginning at the Black subpopulation were Maoists who weren't defined by their race.
     I can see what they're saying when you compare it to like, Trotsky scrambling around in 1938 trying to get people to understand the Fourth International and nobody understands. civil rights movements in the United States are a lot like that. "nobody understands what civil rights movements are going through"? fair. "because there is a unique and special experience of racism people need to be educated on"? no.
618. Q618/Q618There was no difference between the North (the Union) and the South (the Confederacy); the U.S. Civil War was a clash between equally racist brothers (1619 Project) [4] -> this is about halfway true, because the North and the South both contained class rule and none of it was dissolved. the half of it that focuses on racial prejudice and making prejudice special is wrong.
618. Q618/Q618The 1619 Project handed power to the Tea Party (WSWS) -> no. see, this is one of the very few times that having a Stalinist perspective actually makes things clearer. defending the American "revolution" (national independence movement) gives power to followers of Ronald Reagan and empowers all forms of anticommunism and historically, abuse of the Soviet Union. you really do not want that if you want the world to be unified against the bourgeoisie. you want to dislodge everything that legitimizes the United States as the ethnic group that rules the world and imposes anticommunist decrees on the world, unless getting rid of those things means denying something true. toward that end, giving people a history text that says "the United States never actually had democracy" is potentially powerful at getting people to acknowledge bourgeois republicanism as a form of democracy that is only illusory and think about soviet democracy. because otherwise people would genuinely never think of that. worship of the bourgeoisie is absolutely baked into every bit of culture and every social relationship in the United States to the very core. and in some areas of the country the majority of all people are horribly, offensively racist. even when they appear to be nice people, they get super duper offended by one protest for not slaughtering Black criminals in the streets before they ever go to prison. can you imagine a world where the Soviet Union was like that, and a regular old police officer was like, I think that's a Trotskyist, let's just shoot him dead and never have a trial? I think even White people in the United States would be offended by that. you'd start hearing the "Stalin is as bad as Hitler" arguments immediately. "we have to invade!" but they're not offended by doing the same thing to Black people in their own country for crimes far less severe than treason. so... it can sometimes be easier to break people out of capitalist ideology if you first start talking about racism, only if your goal is to unite Black people with other Black people, or unite Mexican immigrants, etc., and then pick up a handful of White allies. the very first day I had a thought about trying to get involved with progressive organizations, however small it was, was when the BLM protests were just barely getting started. I think I would have ended up at Marxism eventually anyway due to the unusual way I think about things, always thinking about how the economy works and questioning everything. but in some ways I feel like BLM and the 1619 Project may actually be serving as a meaningful first step for some people where this is their very first time thinking about anything that resembles questioning initial bourgeois class rule.
     that said, other "shocking" anti-racism efforts before this like "Settlers" and attempts to decontextualize Frantz Fanon from his relationship to Third-World Marxisms were never very good. I think the 1619 Project is a rather special case where for once it's not doing much to misinform people despite not being quite correct.

Related

1887. Q1887/Q18,87

      The Confederacy contained class rule

      / There was an initial class rule inside the Confederate States of America / (9k) -> ... in the North / the "Union" there is an initial class rule of capitalists, which isn't complete but is forming. in the South / Confederacy there is an initial class rule of plantation owners. they look a little different on the ground (the plantation owners are arguably a little more physically violent, they sometimes beat the slaves and such...) but actually, the initial class rule inside each of them is basically the same thing.
      

      this is really important. because it means that when the U.S. Civil War happens, if the North takes over, the status of the United States as filled with initial class rule doesn't go away. it changes from one kind of initial class rule into another kind of initial class rule, but in a way, it's still there.
      and this is how two populations of capitalists and slaveholders changed into one divided population of capitalists that keeps trying to change into two populations of capitalists. initial class rule is not unified, it's inherently divided. ...

Ideologies or fields

92. Q92/Q92MXmeta-Marxism / meta-Marxism
4444. Q4444/Q44,44MXmeta-Marxism / violet Trotskyism
4104. Q4104/Q41,04IV (pronounced Fourth) / Trotskyism
618. Q618/Q618LR (pronounced L-R) / Liberal-republicanism
618. Q618/Q618W (pronounced West) / hegemony politics