I wrote a little about this over on Bluesky as well, but recent interactions with more white European leftists on here has got me thinking.
Time after time after time, I have seen white leftists who claim ironclad principles and a fundamental commitment to liberation abandon both in a heartbeat the second they are confronted with a Black person talking about their experience under white supremacy.
And I'm not even talking about advanced, high level conversations about white supremacy and antiblackness. Like, one Black person shows up and says someone was racist to them and these folks without one second's hesitation turn around and run for the hills like the devil is chasing them. It's giving "I'm taking my ball and leaving the country" because home just isn't far enough.
And these folks aren't all liberals, either. They're dyed in the wool leftists, folks who are claiming to be antifascists and anarchists and communists. Some of em spout paragraphs of theory. But they can't tolerate one second of Black anything before they fold. Every time.
On Bluesky I wrote a thread about how the #1 way I know that any given white leftist does not have what it takes to build working class coalitions is if they are snide to Black folks on the internet. That one thing tells me practically everything I need to know.
So my question is this: if you can't handle even one second of looking in the mirror, how the hell do you think you can do revolutionary work?
How are you supposed to help transform society when you can't admit you need to transform with it? What exactly do you think you'll be able to achieve? Because it won't be liberation, I can tell you that right now. To put it in more familiar terms, how can you kill the cop in your head if you won't admit you have one in the first place?
These people will read reams of communist and anarchist literature written by other white folks and memorize the entire 20th century's worth of global foreign policy so they can cosplay as historical experts but can't handle someone telling them their fave Norwegian utopia is white supremacist too. Building entire palaces out of the words of dead white men only to have them fall apart and collapse like a house of cards every time a Black person breathes too hard near them.
All that time studying history only to prove they didn't understand any of it. They can summon up fountains of information about colonialism but never once in their life actually listened to someone who has been colonized. They read Mao's "On Contradiction" but have never once seriously considered the fundamental contradiction of racial capitalism, white supremacy. Just handwaving it away as "superstructure" so they don't have to worry about it.
The thing is, they couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag because they haven't truly done any of the required work on themselves. Liberation's least useful antifascists AKA empire's most useful stooges.
I need for folks to be better than that, white leftists have got to get their shit together because the fact of the matter is, their contributions are needed. We are not so blessed with solidarity and comrades that we can out-organize fascism without them. It's the truth.
Worldwide, the people of the global majority do not have the luxury of waiting for most of y'all to get your heads out of your collective asses on white supremacy. Stop huffing the fucking Klan glue and get serious. It's past time.
Emelia 👸🏻
the people's eva
LiteralGrill