Settler News

An excerpt from the review posted by Wolfe states

As an aside, why lim­it the cat­egory of “set­tler” to those from Europe? People from Africa were im­por­ted to the west­ern hemi­sphere to pro­duce sur­plus-value, which was sub­sequently trans­formed in­to cap­it­al. Were they “set­tlers” too? And what about Mex­ic­ans and In­di­ans already here, and Chinese im­por­ted later? They also pro­duced wealth used to dom­in­ate oth­ers.

The blatant class reductionism portrayed here obscures the reality of settlers arriving on the shores of North America out of their own volition. A settler is defined as someone who settles in an area, typically one with few inhabitants. North America bursting with human life and culture was not only settled, but colonized. As a result, settler-colonialism is the nomination we use to describe the tactics of genocide and chattel slavery that came with European settlers.

Who did the genociding? Some academics argue that because both African American slaves and indigenous peoples were contracted by militias to clear the land, via mass murder, to produce surplus labor, that they were complicit in imposing the settler movement on Amerikan soil. Again, blatant victim-blaming is apparent as the situation both victims (indigenous and African) were forced to perform these acts of violence. How accountable in genocide are oppressed populations in their own settler-colonialism if they are threatened with death and starvation for refusing to people of color off? I would hope the answer to this question is not at all; even as a basic biological concept, the desire to remain alive is inescapable.

The review goes on to make light of the job opportunities available to Europeans settlers versus the Chinese, African, and indigenous proletariat upon Amerika’s colonizing. Chinese workers being massacred by Irish union workers, labeled as coolies in typical fascistic manner to justify genocide sent a clear message to people of color, the vast majority who did not own land of their own and were no more than slaves. Surprisingly, there was not a single mention of Irish servants during this foundational point in Amerikan history. Often times, these Irish servants are portrayed as slaves alongside the many Black and Brown workers of the time. However, unlike institutionalized chattel slavery, However, unlike institutionalized chattel slavery, indentured servitude was neither hereditary nor lifelong; unlike black slaves, white indentured servants had legal rights; unlike black slaves, indentured servants weren’t considered property. It takes a short visit to any slave-record site in the Caribbean to see that the vast majority of workers in the Caribbean were Irish.

The review by Noel Ignatiev concludes

For European-Amer­ic­ans who think that re­volu­tion is ne­ces­sary, what bet­ter use could there be of their time, in­tel­li­gence, and en­ergy than the ef­fort to crack open white so­ci­ety? To do that, they need a the­ory that will point out the fis­sures in it, not deny their ex­ist­ence.

To crack open a white society bent on turning Amerika into a homogeneous utopia where whites are the only population considered people with any claim to well-being, they need to consider that they are all complicit in white supremacy, not be coddled into believing they have any claim to as drudging and horrifying a past as any population victim to genocide has been. This is where Ignatiev falls short of realizing his own internalized racism — not a single Black, Brown, or Asian person would dare to compare the plight of a chattel slave with even a servant during Amerika’s colonization.

A Colonial Throwback to Ontological Oppression

The name-dropping of writers Wolfe indulges in is testament to the very weak-minded, racist, and class reductionist propaganda many see as a true, monolithic Marxism. Not a single original thought of his own is presented to the audience, where quote for quote references alleged “inaccurate” representations of slavery without a single citation.

Wolfe goes even further to tokenize Rashid John­son of the New Afrik­an Black Pan­ther Party in order to further his white supremacist outlook on settler-colonialism in an attempt to create an erasure of the obvious inequalities between settlers escaping an early capitalism, and slaves forced against their will to work and die for them. Speaking of ‘affectual’ minds, his clear misrepresentation of Johnson’s fair critique projects an innocent feat of ‘simply being realistic’, as if every person of color could agree with Johnson simply because he is a Black Panther. However, the internal Black colonies of Amerika are not a homogenous people. Just as we do not all look identical, we also do not think identically. Some of us even come from different backgrounds; could you have guessed!? I can, because I am a Black transwoman myself who would disagree with Mr. Rashid’s earlier writings about LGBTW spaces and the pathologization of identity that takes materials through neocolonial resourcing and dulls the masses, all while stealing their money for Big Pharma… EDIT: I understand why he would say that white people are oppressed too, though I would definitely like to have a conversation with him on why it matters when working class, and sometimes even upper classed Black folks are still being killed by white working class because their victims are Black…My point still stands however… Mr. Wolfe’s tokenizing of Mr. Johnson is a shameless example of cherry picking and exemplifies the racism with which he rejects our history. In other words, Mr. Wolfe should stay in his lane when it comes to deciding who is racist, and who isn’t, not to mention defenders of whiteness are racist. It’s a slogan of the alt-right as well as many the white supremacist group. And now that that’s been made clear, let’s talk about unfounded claims that haven’t been redacted.

Alternative Facts and the Racist Creep

Worst of all is Wolfe’s uncited claim that “Sakai him­self no longer seems to think the cent­ral thes­is of Set­tlers holds with re­spect to the con­tem­por­ary US.” Mr. Wolfe, how dare you cite Sakai’s claim that fascism somehow transcends race and religion, and therefore is explicitly class oriented in its design. Have you not read this essay in its entirety? What you claim is the exact opposite of Sakai’s thesis, and is a prime example of not only your academic dishonesty, but exposes your true intentions to downplay the importance of race and anti-racist movements in Amerika:

J. Sakai explicitly states his main thesis as follows:

Why do we insist that some religious fundamentalist movements can only be understood as fascists? It isn’t that the Taliban or Egyptian Jihad aren’t religious groups. They clearly are, in the sense that their ideology and program are couched in an Islamic framework. And they are part of broader Islamic rightist currents that contain people of differing political programs. Just as the German Nazi Party was part of broader nationalistic currents in Germany in the 1920-30s that shared many of the same racialist views. People have tried to shallowly explain away the Nazis by saying that they were only extreme racists. They were that (which they shared with many other Germans) but they also had far-reaching fascist politics beyond that. In the same way, the Hindu far right in India, for example – which contains perhaps the largest fascist movement in the world right now – is not only a religious movement in form but one which has far-reaching fascist politics in essence. There is no natural law saying that men’s religions have to be benign or humane or non-political. And they seldom are. But what the West calls “Islamic fundamentalism” is not that at all. First off, like its brother “christian fundamentalism” there’s some kind of relationship to religion but there’s nothing fundamental about it. There’s no similar vibe between white racist abortion clinic bombers today and some outcast Jewish carpenter with illegal anti-ruling class ideas in the Middle East 2000 years ago. And the Prophet Mohammad’s youngest wife wasn’t wearing a burka and hiding indoors, she was riding the desert alongside male warriors and disputing doctrine with male preachers as the head of her own religious school.

To summarize the above, J. Sakai makes the statement that Westerners view Islamic ‘extremists’ through a Eurocentric lens and thus label them as fascists. In other words, fascism is a white construction.

Material Presents, Unanswered Questions

In a world where Nazis kill Black men in broad daylight, in midtown Manhattan, in the middle of busy thoroughfare… In a world where a fascist president is building a wall to fend off starving and violated children from entering and acquiring work, albeit slave labor… A reality in which immigrants are being detained based on the color of their skin, and their ancestral roots... A reality in which indigenous peoples across the world are being isolated and suppressed by reservations… In a world where Asian doctors are dragged off airplanes and bloodied in the process… In a world where supremacists massacre children and families while they worship peacefully, this article is a protraction of pure, unfiltered racism.

They, then are complicit in the genocidal campaign of US imperialism both domestic and abroad. We need to act. The Eurocentric tenets of ‘white radicalism’ need to be obliterated. By the graces of Mao, Touissant l’ouverture, and Zapata before us, we need to overcome this obstacle within the decolonial movement by following this tide of decolonization away from the orthodox and into the adaptable: the variegated world of theory waiting for us to discover it, beginning with stepping through Fanon’s door and onto the welcome mat of J. Sakai, Butch Lee, Bobby London, Frank B. Wilderson, and many other non-Eurocentric thinkers.

The principle must always rule that ideas are not born of other ideas, philosophies of other philosophies; they are a continually renewed expression of real historical development. The unity of history (what the idealists call unity of the spirit) is not a presupposition, but a continuously developing process. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks

We need to start working, organizing, supporting our communities, and ensuring our future as an autonomous, self-determining people apart from a self-reprocuding system of white supremacy.

The 55,000+ followers Anti-Fascist News’ page has is too much to present this racialized violence towards. As the oft-ignored (in younger Leftist spaces) Gramsci puts it: “Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like.” Withoit a well-developed atmosphere that answers as many questions as possible through a systemic method clof consensual analysis by respective parties (ie “staying in one’s lane”), we can make order of the chaos that is a rapidly-growing Leftist movement against a fifth-column fascism in Amerika. We nust not fall victim like German, Italian, and Spanish Marxists had in the past. Following multiple responses to the article in question, and the decision of a popular ‘anti-fascist’ news outlet, multiple people of color were blocked by Anti-Fascist News for voicing their frustrations and concerns. People were gaslit and told which of their histories were valid. Black women were told that they didn’t even read the article, written by a white person invalidating a history all people of color know. And why should they? We experience enough racism on a day to day basis. It must then be a request born of furthering the violence towards those who are non-white. This is an act of racial aggression by none other than a white man.

The Racist Creep