#settler left

[milkboydotnet]

The White Left comprises a tiny portion of white Amerika and they're so factionalized to the point where they're just-almost totally infeffective. There's an old joke about you put two people on the White Left in a room and you sit 'em in front of a clock and they'll get into an argument about what time it is. That seems like a joke to a lot of people, but it's true. They are so factionalized 'til they argue about everything. And they're arrogance and white supremacist arrogance leads them to believe that THEY are the only ones in the world that have the right answer. THEY are the only ones that can lead the poor and oppressed people to liberation and that's just not true. We couldn't depend on the White Left in the 30's, we couldn't depend on the White Left in the 60's, what in the world would make us think that we can depend on the White Left now? I'm not saying that we shouldn't work with White people on whatever level that we want to that suits our interest -- but we can't just keep our heads in the sand and we can't build our movement depending on the White Left.

Statement from Assata Shakur (1979)

[milkboydotnet]

“Nobody would deny that there are middle class Black conservatives and Black misleaders of various kinds active in Black politics. And Black cops, too, along with other gangsters. And Black capitalists, for that matter. Is this a surprise? The Black Nation encompass many material interests, tendencies and forces. Any national liberation movement contains a multitude of differences: differences along class lines, differences about ideology, strategy, and tactics, problems with state agents and traitors who have to be dealt with. Black people discuss these contradictions all the time; they are matters for Black people to resolve, hopefully under the influence of Black proletarian politics.

There are many middle-class Black people who, largely because they themselves experience national oppression, are an active part of the struggle for Black self-determination and revolution. Many of the Panther leadership and rank and file came from the Black middle class, for instance. Black intellectuals have made, and continue to make, valuable contributions to the Black/New Afrikan liberation movement. (Shemon says that there’s no such thing as a revolutionary intellectual, but that’s just rhetoric.) Overall, I would estimate that there are a lot more revolutionaries in the Black middle class than there are white revolutionaries—in any class.

I think it’s crucial for radicals to grasp that the national oppression of Black people is a defining feature of US politics. That oppression includes the ongoing process of genocide—the process of elimination as a people—that Black people have been facing for some time. But much of the US Left, especially the white Left, avoids the whole question of national oppression. It assumes that the goal is to achieve immediate, pragmatic, multiracial working class unity against the capitalists—meaning, in my opinion, unity on white workers’ assimilationist terms. It fails to make a clear commitment to Black self-determination, which is the only principled basis for solid long-term multinational unity.” —“Decisively breaking with both worker elite mythology and male leftism”: An Interview with Bromma

[milkboydotnet]

"Personally, l think white activists should reject the idea that we are indispensable to the Black freedom struggle. We should emulate John Brown’s courage in fighting white supremacy, without pretending that he was a leader of the Black movement or was essential to it. We should specifically reject the proposition that white activists should be involved in a fight against the Black middle class. Telling ourselves we’re doing it to help the Black proletariat is no excuse. Attacking the Black middle class is a bad idea to begin with, and in any case it’s not white people’s role to 'settle accounts' among Black people. If we’re looking to be helpful, there’s plenty of white counterinsurgency around for us to fight." —“Decisively breaking with both worker elite mythology and male leftism”: An Interview with Bromma

[milkboydotnet]

If colonizers won’t take basic health precautions to avoid getting their own families sick what makes you think they’ll consent to being governed by a Communist Party comprised of colonized people? I don’t know if you realize this but the average colonizer’s nightmare is a Black person crawling through their window to seek repayment for their continued oppression and exploitation of our people. This is going to have to be reckoned with. People give a lot of importance to organizing the 'white working class' — here’s the thing, they’ve organized themselves. Into vigilante lynch mobs and KKK and other fascist organizations. Whose fault is it? White Communists who instead of trying to organize their own people choose instead to preach the virtues of what we and they both already know to be a nearly worthless segment of society to Black people who had enough of our share of the white 'working class' in slavery. Their greatest aspiration wasn’t to participate in some proletarian revolution, it was to own Black people. We were the proletariat, they aspired to own us like livestock. Until you realize this you will continue to fall prey to delusion.

a comrade

[milkboydotnet]

Colonizers left and right really can’t wrap their heads around the fact that we don’t want or need them ruling us, period. We don’t need them. It doesn’t matter what your 'line' is we don’t need y’all telling us what to do or affirming shit for us. You can’t even rule yourselves or take care of your own people. We take care of ourselves and you both. Why do we suffer, because y’all, humanity’s spoiled children, are in the driver’s seat. Let the adults take care of shit.

A comrade

[milkboydotnet]

Imagine being a colonized person and spending your entire life trying to teach colonizers not to be racist from a moral perspective lol. Martin Luther King tried it and all he got was a bullet in his throat. They’re racist because it supports their standard of living and they realize that this standard of living will go away when we liberate ourselves, not because they’re ignorant. They know exactly what is going on. This is not a question of thinking, this is a question of $$$. Those on top want to stay on top, those at the bottom must pull those down on top. This is how history works. Colonizers know that there are children in cages that do not legally belong there, they simply do not care. These are the same people who sat and watched through the entire period of slavery, never lifting a finger as a collective on behalf of the enslaved. Why? Because they didn’t give a shit about humanity, natural rights or any of that shit, they wanted cheap sugar, tobacco, and other slavery products. They didn’t give a shit about the millions of indigenous people condemned to death, they wanted land. They don’t give a shit about the starving and maimed millions in Africa or the Middle East, they want cheap gasoline and electronics. The Left does not realize this and is basically the equivalent of the petit-bourgeois abolitionists during the chattel slavery era trying to appeal to the nonexistent conscience of the colonizer American body politic. For all their pamphletting and heartstring pulling, it took a war to end chattel slavery.

a comrade

[milkboydotnet]

At the end of the day, the white left must learn that they are, from the perspective of most of our people just as useless and stupid as the rest of the colonizers. Their consistent performativeness, attention seeking behavior and 'pick me' behavior is tiresome and wearying. They claim to be and do so much, yet their working class is still fascist, and useless. They do not listen to us, yet love our energy. They claim to be ready to die for us, yet when the Panthers were getting shot, they were nowhere to be found. They don’t come when we call, but when we don’t call here they are. Their analyses are dogmatic, lifeless and bland, and they all seem to think that they are entitled to and deserve a position of leadership after the revolution in exchange for their mediocre efforts. They are in for a big disappointment.

I’m Finally Starting To See Why The Panthers Didn’t Admit Colonizers.

[milkboydotnet]

I have been accused of 'worker-ism' in some of my writing and this has been projected as 'old school'. Well, most folks still do work for a living, in contrast to the bohemian Anarchists, although I acknowledge structural unemployment that has made millions of persons as a surplus labor force. However, this does not mean they do not belong to a working class. Further, even if it is weak numerically and its leadership is corrupt, most folks consider it a good thing to join a union, especially at a bad worksite. I realize that the nature of the poor and working people have changed and capitalism has gone on to new modes of production, some call this a 'capitalist transformation' from industrialism to high-tech and I agree, but this has not obliterated class difference or done away with work itself. Class contradictions between rich and poor, order-givers and order-takers, workers and bosses remain. So, I continue to talk about a labor movement, workers and poor people in the present tense. They are real people, not figments of my imagination.

Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin in The Progressive Plantation