Anarchism and the Black Revolution

The Myth of "Reverse Racism"

"Reverse Discrimination" has become the war cry of all those racists trying to roll back civil rights gains won by Blacks and other oppressed nationalities in housing, education, employment, and every aspect of social life. The racists feel these things should only go to white males, and that "minorities" and women are taking them away from white men. Millions of white workers day-in and day-out are bombarded by this racist propaganda, and it is having a big impact. Many whites believe this lie of reverse discrimination against white people. This belief is embraced by many duped white workers, who consider "reverse discrimination" to be at least partly responsible for the economic problems so many of them are suffering from today. Such beliefs propelled Ronald Reagan to his two terms as U.S. president. Reagan tried to use this racist propaganda line to precipitate a rollback in the civil rights gains of oppressed nationalities.

The racists claim the concept of reverse discrimination suggests the wholesale discrimination against Blacks and other racially oppressed groups is a hoax. Baldly stated, the idea is that the passage of the 1964 Civil rights Act ended discrimination against Blacks, Latinos and other nationalities, and women, and now the law is discriminating against white people. The racists say racial minorities and women are the new privileged groups in American society. They are allegedly getting the pick of jobs, preferential college placements, the best housing, government grants, and so on at the expense of white workers. The racists say programs to end discrimination are not only unnecessary, but are actually attempts by minorities to gain power at the expense of white workers. They say Blacks and women do not want equality, but rather hegemony over white workers.

An Anarchist anti-racist movement would counter such propaganda and expose it as a ruling class weapon. The Civil Rights Act did not cause inflation by "excessive" spending on welfare, housing, or other social services. Further, Blacks aren’t discriminating against whites : whites are not being herded into ghetto housing ; removed from or prohibited from entering professions ; deprived of decent education ; forced into malnutrition and early death ; subjected to racial violence and police repression, forced to suffer disproportionate levels of unemployment, and other forms of racial oppression. But for Blacks the oppression starts with birth and childhood. Infant mortality rate is nearly three times that of whites, and it continues throughout their lives. The fact is "reverse discrimination" is a hoax.

Anti-Black discrimination is not a thing of the past. It is the systematic, all pervasive reality today !

Malcolm X pointed out in the 1960s that no civil rights statutes will give Black people their freedom, and asked if Africans in America were really citizens why would civil rights be necessary. Malcolm X observed civil rights had been fought for at great sacrifice, and therefore should be enforced, but if the government won’t enforce the laws, then the people will have to do so, and the movement will have to pressure the government authorities to protect democratic rights. To unite the masses of people behind a working class anti-racist movement, the following practical demands, which are a combination revolutionary and radical reformism, to ensure democratic rights, are necessary :

1. Black and white workers’ solidarity. Fight racism on the job and in society.

2. Full democratic and human rights for all non-white peoples. Make unions fight racism and discrimination.

3. Armed self-defence against racist attacks. Build mass movement against racism and fascism.

4. Community control of the police, replacement of cops by community self- defence force elected by residents. End police brutality. Prosecution of all killer cops.

5. Money for rebuilding the cities. Creation of public works brigades to rebuild inner city areas, made up of community residents.

6. Full socially useful employment at union wages for all workers. End racial discrimination in jobs, training and promotions. Establish affirmative : action programs to reverse past racist employment practices.

7. Ban the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and other fascist organisations. Prosecution of all racists for attacks on people of colour.

8. Free open admissions to all institutions of learning for all those qualified to attend. No racial exclusion in higher education.

9. End taxes of workers and poor. Tax the rich and major corporations.

10. Full health and medical care for all persons and communities, regardless of race and class.

11. Free all political prisoners and innocent victims of racial injustice. Abolish prisons. Fight economic disparity.

12. Rank and file democratic control of the unions by building an Anarcho-Syndicalist labour movement. Make unions active in social issues.

13. Stop racist harassment and discrimination of undocumented workers.

Smash the right wing !

"Fascism is not to be debated. It is to be smashed... "

— Buenaventura Durrutti, Spanish Anarchist revolutionary, 1936

As Capitalist society decays, people will look for radical and total solutions to the misery they face. The Nazis and the Klan are among the few right-wing political forces that offer, or appear to offer, a radical answer to the current problems of society for the white masses. That these solutions are false will matter little to confused and hysterical people searching desperately for a way out of the socioeconomic crisis the Capitalist world is facing. Sections of the middle class, better-off layers of the white working class, poor and unemployed white workers, all poisoned by the racism of this society, are easy prey for Nazi and Klan demagogues.

The Nazis, skinheads and the Klan are the most extreme right-wing racist/fascist organisations in the United States. Today these groups are small, and many liberals like to downplay the threat they represent, even to argue for their legal "rights" to spread their racist venom. But these groups have a tremendous growth potential and could become a mass movement in a surprisingly short period of time, especially during an economic and political crisis like we are now in.

Basing themselves on alienated white social forces, the Nazis and Klan are trying to build a mass movement that can hire itself out to the Capitalists at the proper moment and assume state power. When the Capitalist feel that they might need an additional club to keep the workers and the oppressed in line, they will turn to the Nazis, Klan and similar right-wing organisations, with both money and support, in addition to strengthening the state police and military forces. If need be, the Capitalists will place them in power, (as they did in Spain, Germany and Italy in the 1920s and 1930s), so the fascists will smash the unions and other working class organisations ; place Blacks, Latinos Gays, Asians, and Jews into concentration camps ; and turn the rest of the workers into State slaves. Fascism is the ultimate authoritarian society when in power, even though it has changed its face to a mixture of crude racism and smoother racism in the modern democratic state.

So in addition to the Nazis and the Klan, there are other right-wing forces that have been on the rise in the last 15 years. They include ultra-conservative rightist politicians and Christian fundamentalist preachers, along with the extreme right section of the Capitalist ruling class itself - small business owners, talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, along with the professors, economists, philosophers and others in academia providing the ideological weaponry for the Capitalist offensive against the workers and oppressed people. Not all the racists wear sheets. These are the "respectable" racists, the new right conservatives, who are far more dangerous than the Klan or Nazis because their politics have become acceptable to large masses of white workers, who in turn blame racial minorities for their problems.

The Capitalist class has already shown their willingness to use this conservative movement as a smoke screen for an attack on the Labour movement, Black struggle and the entire working class. Many city public workers have been fired ; schools, hospitals and other social services have been curtailed ; government agencies have been privatised ; welfare rolls have been cut drastically ; and the budgets of city and state governments slashed. Banks have even used their dictatorial powers to demand these budget cuts, and to even, make entire cities default if they did not submit. This even happened to New York City in the 1970s. So this is not just an issue of poor, dumb rednecks in hoods. This is about hoods in business suits.

A first step in organising and preparing the working class in the economic crisis we face is to directly take on the right-wing threat. Repressive economic legislation by conservative politicians to punish the poor and working class must be defeated ; taxes on the rich and major corporations must be increased, while taxes on the workers and farmers must be abolished. If the politicians will not do it, we will organise a tax boycott to force them to do it. The Nazis and Klan must be confronted through direct action. Anarchists, the left and labour organisations must organise to defend workers and oppressed from physical assaults by the racists, as well as hold mass demonstrations in the streets at fascist rallies. We also must oppose scum like Operation Rescue that uses violent Fascist tactics against women’s rights to abortions. It is part of the same battleground

Here is the situation : David Duke, the "ex"-Klansman is now part of the "respectable" right, which picks up support among the upper middle class. Meanwhile the Klan and Nazi skinheads are making headway among different social layers, mainly poor white workers and unemployed white youth. Tom Metzger, the leader of white Aryan Resistance, called the Nazi skinheads his "Brown-shirts of the ’90s" . This is very dangerous, but we cannot leave these people to the Nazis and Klan uncontested. We should try to win them over, or at least neutralise any active opposition on their part. This is a defensive tactic at the very least, but really we have no choice, and it is part of our revolutionary duty to organise the entire working class anyway. We should direct propaganda to these workers to expose the Nazis and Klan for the scum they are, and show how the workers are being misled. We should also make it possible for them to fight this misery against the real enemy : the Capitalist class.

But in addition to defensive operations for propaganda, we must take direct offensive action to physically resist the racists when this is possible. For example, where the balance of forces allows it, we must organise to forcefully drive the Nazis and Klan off the streets. In order to smash their movements we must organise commando-type actions to attack their rallies, close their bookshops and newspapers, destroy their meeting halls, and break up their marches. Since the Nazis and Klan organise by threatening and using violence, we must be prepared to reply to them in kind, but in a better-organised and more effective way. For instance, pigs like David Duke and Tom Metzger, who have been advocating and leading the fascist movement in America, should be assassinated. We should infiltrate Klan and Nazi demonstrations in order to assault leaders and disrupt them, or hide at a distance and snipe at them with high-powered rifles. I have always felt that underground guerrilla movements like the Black Liberation Army, Weather Underground, and New World Liberation Front should have attacked fascist movements and assassinated their leaders. If we cripple the fascists in this fashion, we can smash the entire right and begin to smash the State. This is the only way to stop fascists.

DEATH TO THE KLAN AND ALL FASCISTS !

None other than Adolph Hitler has been quoted as saying : "Only one thing could have stopped our movement. If our adversaries had understood its principle, and from the first day had smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement. " We should take heed.

One other thing that we must do, and is something which tactically separates us Anarchists from the Marxist-Leninists , is that we use our studies of the authoritarian personality to help us organise against fascist recruitment All the M-L’s "United Fronts" care about is a strict political approach to defeat fascism and prevent them from attaining state power, while being able to usher the Communist party in instead. They organise liberals and others into mass coalitions just to seize power, and then crush all radical and liberal ideological opponents after they get done with the fascists. That is why the Stalinist "Communist" states resemble fascist police states so much in refusing to allow ideological plurality — they are both totalitarian. For that matter, how much difference was there really between Stalin and Hitler ? So, I say that merely physically beating back the fascists is not the issue. We need to study what accounts for the mass psychology of fascism and then defeat it ideologically, going to the core of the deep seated racist beliefs, emotions, and authoritarian conditioning of those workers who support fascism and all police state authority.

The third prong of our strategy is to organise among the workers and other oppressed sections of society with a program that addresses their needs. As has been said, the Klan and Nazis recruit among certain social layers - overwhelmingly white youth who are hard-pressed by the economic crisis. These people see Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Gays, women, and radical movements as a threat. They are racist, reactionary and potentially very violent. Fearful that they will lose the little they have, they buy the myth that the problems is "those people" trying to steal their jobs, homes, future, etc., rather than the decay of the Capitalist system.

As long as there appears to be no alternative to fighting over a shrinking social "pie," the fascists, with their simple minded "solutions," will get a hearing among the degenerate elements of the working class. The only way to undercut the appeal of the right is to organise a Libertarian workers’ movement that can fight for and win the things that people need — jobs, decent housing and schools, health care, etc. This can demonstrate concretely that there is an alternative to the right wing’s poisonous "solutions," and it can win to the ranks of the workers’ movement some of those people attracted to the fascist movement.

In all areas of our organising, we must carry out consistent revolutionary propaganda explaining Capitalism is responsible for unemployment, rising prices, rotten schools and housing and the rest of the decay we see around us. We must expose the fact that, while the Nazis, Klan and other right-wingers make Black, Gays, Latinos and other oppressed people the scapegoat for the economic crisis, their real aim is to destroy the entire workers movement, commit genocide, start an adventurist war and turn workers into outright slaves of the State. Therefore, these fascist forces are a threat to all workers of every nationality. It must be explained that they only want to use white workers as pawns in their scheme to create a fascist dictatorship, and all workers must unite and fight back and overthrow the state if they are to be free.

DEATH TO THE KLAN, DEATH TO THE NAZIS !