(...even with a Confederate flag)
The whole time I was at Clark Air Base with the Navy in the
late 1980s, I had a Confederate flag hanging on the wall of my barracks room,
the same which had been hanging on the door inside my bedroom since I was
thirteen. It was to remind me of home,
as well as a kind of self-defense against prejudice about the South in other
regions of Neverland, which crossed racial lines for both the holders of that
prejudice and its targets. Of course, I
also had a Filipino flag hanging on the wall on the opposite side of the window.
The truth of the matter was that I’d tried to find a
Tennessee state flag in town for less than a hundred dollars because ordering
one by mail that was cheaper would have taken longer than I had. Al Gore had not yet invented the internet, so
I couldn’t order from Amazon. A little
over two years later when I was a civilian going back to the Philippines to
work for the U.S. Refugee Program, Wal-Mart had them for ten dollars, and
that’s what hung on the wall of our apartment until my despedida, or going away
party, when one of my Filipino co-workers begged me for it.
I bet if most people heard of a bunch of young working class
and impoverished white people calling themselves “hillbilly nationalists”,
carrying or wearing the Confederate flag, and proudly belonging to groups
called the Young Patriots Organization or the Patriot Party that they’d next be
expecting to see white robes, burning crosses, nooses, and maybe
swaztikas. Nothing could be further from
the truth. In fact, Preacherman Fesperman
and the Young Patriots allied with Fred Hampton and the Chicago Black Panthers
and Cha Cha Jimenez of the Puerto Rican Young Lords to form the Rainbow
Coalition, which later included local chapters of the American Indian Movement,
the Brown Berets, the I Wor Kuen, the White Panther Party, Rise Up Angry, and
the Lincoln Park Poor People’s Coalition.
The Young Patriots formed in Uptown, Chicago’s ghetto for
poor whites from West Virginia and the Appalachian regions of Kentucky,
Tennessee, and North Carolina. They
found common cause with Hampton and the Black Panthers because they suffered
from many of the same things as that community: unemployment, sporadic
employment, low wages, poverty, substandard housing, lack of healthcare,
inadequate nutrition, and police harassment.
The Patriot Party was the attempt by one faction of the
Young Patriots to emulate the Black Panthers on a national level established in
1971 that outlasted its parent, lasting well into th 1980s. Long enough to protest along with the Black Panthers
Jackson’s appropriation and copyright of the name Rainbow Coalition. Especially since Jackson’s organization had
no place for poor whites and was a personality cult and more of a reformist
bloc within the Dems than its revolutionary and much more colorful predecessor.
Having said that, I should point out that I voted for
Jackson in the 1984 primary and wrote his name in for the general election in
1996 because I could not stand that neo-Dixiecrat Bill Clinton, whose
administration was the most anti-black, anti-labor, anti-poor of the 20th
century since that of Woody Wilson.
Wilson used the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918
against more victims than any president until Barry Obama. Obama has signed into law bills authorizing
American intelligence agencies to propagandize the American people, to hold
American citizens in “administrative detention” indefinitely, and to create an
institution which here would be called the Department of Truth, as well as
promoting fake news in order to restart the Cold War because his heir
presumptive lost the election she, her campaign, the DNC, and the rest of the
Dems so strenuous worked to avoid winning.
And y’all are scared of Donald Trump because he tweets with his tiny
little thumbs obnoxious things that a primary schooler would be ashamed to
say? Please.
Look, I lived through the 1980s. I was an adult, at university, in the early
years of little Ronnie Raygun’s playtime in the big white dollhouse. At the time we didn’t know that the entire
American military was at DefCon 2 from 22 September 1982 to 11 February 1983 or
at DefCon 1 from 7 November to 11 November 1983 or at DefCon 3 from 1 December
1983 to 19 November 1985, but we knew something was wrong. Little Ronnie Raygun nearly got us, and by us
I mean the whole damn world, destroyed in thermonuclear fire, radiation, and
nuclear winter, and even though we didn’t know some of the details, we knew the
fear, the terror, the dread. And y’all
are afraid of Donald Trump? Please.
I had forgotten how bad little Ronnie Raygun’s cabinet and
administration officials were until I ran across a meme with a quote from his
first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt.
The person in charge of all natural resources belonging to the federal
government said that we didn’t have to worry about the environment because
Jesus would be returning soon. They were
all like that, that degree of crazy and/or corrupt (both of which Watt
definitely was); for example, Edwin Meese, Michael Deaver, Richard Perle,
Oliver North, Richard Secord, Bill Bennett are just a few. Yes, Donald Trump’s nominees are nausea- and
suspicion-inducing, but as scary as Raygun’s?
Please.
Now, let’s get back to white people with the Confederate
flags, and this time I mean voters for Donald Trump. The prejudice of urban/suburban people
against rural folks roughly equals that of those of the rest of the country against
Southerners, and a large part of his electorate came from those two sources. The same sources which produced the founders
of the Young Patriots organization and later of the Black Panther-led original Rainbow
Coalition (non-inc.). Not all of them
wave the Confederate flag, and most that do just want to feel enfranchised and
are offended and outraged when racists try to claim it. So don’t judge Trump voters by what they wear
on their clothes or their car or over their house. After all, at the same time I myself was
adjutant of the Sam Bennett camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans on the
cusp of this century, I was also chairman of the local branch of CPUSA called
the Chattanooga Communist Club.
Look, for a moment, to Scottish history. That royal ass Bonnie Prince Charlie was a
drunk, an authoritarian, a sectarian Catholic zealot, and an incompetent
fantasist who thought himself an Englishman designated by God to rule over the whole
United Kingdom. He was followed by an
army that was mostly Scottish Highlanders whose culture was much less
stratified, mostly Presbyterian and Episcopalian, marching for “Scotland and No
Union”. Sure, many of their leaders
drank the Stuart Kool-aid, but the rank-and-file fought for their homes, a
better way of life, and a country of their own.
That shouldn’t be diminished by the surety we know from hindsight that
they would have been grossly betrayed had the Jacobites instead won and Jamie
the Rover been enthroned to be followed by his worthless son. So all the poor white mostly rural and/or
Southern voters, citizens, that the white, neoliberal establishment Dems and
their sheep are weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth over? They are potential allies, and rather than
laugh when Trump & Co. betray their desperate hopes, we on the Left should
be ready with open hands to welcome them aboard, Confederate flag and all.
Sunday morning, 8 January, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said was that
Repugs shouldn’t be laughing at Dems over Wikileaks exposing their fraudulent
and corrupt conduct in their primary and the general election because it didn’t
feel good when the Dems laughed at Repugs when Wikileaks exposed the fraudulent
and corrupt conduct of the Bush administration selling the case for the Iraq
War. Much praise is aimed at his supposed
bipartisanship in his subsequent statement that the two groups have a common outside
enemy that they need to unite against.
That enemy, however, is not Russia, but Wikileaks, and the crime of
Wikileaks was to tell the truth, and dishonest, morally corrupt politicians
hate that.
I doubt Graham realizes that he is admitting that Dems and
Repugs are merely two factions of a single party serving the corporate oligarchy,
the 1%. If revealing embarrassing information
about illegal and corrupt practices by one is an attack on both, that is
exactly what he is saying. Thank you,
Senator Graham, for your candor.
No number of big shot political appointees authoritatively
claiming that “17 intelligence agencies all agree” that Russians hacked the
emails will make it any more true than big shot political appointees claiming
that “16 intelligence agencies all agree” that Saddam had massive WMD programs
made that true.
One final word on the Dim-Dems: How many times does the Frog have to be stung
by the Scorpion to learn that it can’t be trusted? Resistance is only futile if you allow it to
be coopted by “leaders” such as them.
Let there be no gods and no masters.
Thig ar latha. Peace out.
For a recent movement toward those same ends, see:
For a recent movement toward those same ends, see:
Redneck Revolt Builds New Anti-racist, Anti-capitalist Working Class White Movement
http://www.mintpressnews.com/redneck-revolt-builds-anti-racist-anti-capitalist-movement-with-working-class-whites/229127/
And their website at:
https://www.redneckrevolt.org/
And their website at:
https://www.redneckrevolt.org/
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