I’ve been reading about the development of resistance movements in WWII, and I noticed something that got me thinking.
Resistance in a unified front (i.e. among groups that disagree politically), seems to require some form of shared identity.
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The fighting front in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (groups including Zionists and Bundists) shared the common identity of being Jewish.
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The united front in the French resistance (nationalists and communists) shared the common identity of being French1.
I think we can all agree that identifying with American patriotism is entirely reactionary – as a settler colony, there’s basically nothing redeemable there.
Is there an effective shared identity for people in the U$ to resist from?
I feel like the 2020 BLM protests had a shared identity of anti-racism, but it feels like that energy has dissipated.
1: not an identity without controversy, but not as directly reactionary as a full settler colonial national identity.
I wish.
Our identity has always been tied to empire, sadly. We have neither history nor culture.
Are there really zero theoretitians who have written about this? Sounds hard to believe.
As descendant of an american citizen I think there are a lot of contradictions that need explicit solving not implicit condemnation.
For example, the american colonial settlerstate is what, 250 years old? Of course, being based on genocide there is the ultimate question of what is the solution for the people born on that stolen land. On the other hand, what is their material reality? They have not decided to be born there nor can they alone cleanse the land of british settler descendants.
So what is their actual history and actual culture? That needs to be worked out and written down, then organize from there. If you strip the settler state of imperialism, mcdonalds and other usually american values, what remains? Stupid side question: was the later us full with people or are some of the stories of wagons through dusty landscapes real and did some of these people actually struggle against nature to build up something?
Because same as with some people here trying to reduce germans to their genocidal past, i feel like it is dogmatic to reduce the people who did actually leave their homes to seek a better future (even if it was erroneous) to the genocidal outcome.
Because if that were the case (please point out if i made a factual mistake) then the USians could unite on being the descendants of people seeking a better future and having to make good on that now, not by genocide but by stopping it.
Does that make sense?
I respect what you’re trying to do but I don’t think you realize how closely what culture we do have is tied almost directly to imperialism and colonialism and liberal mythology and the capitalist mode of production and settler ideology.
Our entire national identity is quite literally surgically linked to being bourgeoisie even though most of us never have been and never will be. Our country was quite literally founded on bourgeois ideology as its culture, emphasizing materialist consumerism and rugged individualism to an almost comical degree. We cannot even conduct a cultural revolution under these conditions because our culture is literally defined by liberalism and capitalism and to reject these things is to essentially be a foreigner.
So the only path forward I see is to just scrap the entire thing and start over; go back to America’s founding and start the process again, but this time with socialism as the basis for our culture instead of capitalism. That is legit the only thing we can do for a socialist revolution in the USA: dissolve the union, wipe the slate clean, start over fresh.
I agree
I think we dont disagree on the entirety of what to do. The US state needs to go, no question. I’m talking about something different. People grow up and learn a language, they develop culture. Same as people from the us or the balkans who live in germany have their own culture which is produced by their multiple different cultures and material circumstances. If someone grows up in a german neighborhood with a basketball court and plays there every day after school, develops their own groups, shares their stories. That is how humanity works. And both can be true: the colonialism, the imperialism and the lives of the people. It is chauvinist to say they dont matter. This means the black slaves and black communities building their own also need to be deleted. I think it is dogmatic to no end and just a continuation of imperialism but against different people. Again, of course the imperialist states need to go and the settler states need to be given back to the people who lived there and things need to restart but denying culture is imperialist in itself.
I don’t think there’s anything left. Every single element of shared American identity comes back to something horrific, or the intentional exclusion of people based on race (e.g., the “founding fathers” slavery while professing liberal values).
The Eastern U.S. was mostly peopled by native groups in static settlements. While they died to disease, iiirc groups like the Taino were directly genocided and worked to death.
The diseases the Europeans brought had more time to work their way across the continent, and by the time large groups of settlers made their way into the interior of the continent, a massive amount of people had died already. In the plains, what was left were smaller groups living in a post-apocalypse. They still directly genocided them (for instance, by killing all the buffalo to destroy their ability to feed themselves), and destroyed static settlements on the west coast.
Even more fucked up, they drove the Cherokee from the Missouri region to reservations in Oklahoma ( the trail of tears), then drove them off the reservations when white people wanted the land.
The romanticized history of brave frontier farmers is a history of the dumbest people in the world claiming land that was used by nomads, fighting the nomads for it with the full support of the state, deciding they didnt even need any of the community farming conventions used in Europe, and fucking up so hard they almost destroy agriculture in the region (the dust bowl). They’re basically the same as the Isra*li settlers.
Idk, there’s a lot of history, and it’s all pretty dark.
I dont think this is a meterialist view to be frank. The people living in a place are not their ancestors and stating that people have no culture is in itself fascist. Its one precursor to genocide so I think we should take a less chauvinist view on this.
I understand that especially in the perspective of the israely settler state, the pain runs deep and the footage from the ground is horrific to no end. This does not make it okay to for example condemn the four year old that was born in that shithole, the same is true for germany, usa and uk.
Dialectical materialism teaches us to work out the primary contradictions. The settlers in israel must be stopped but they have nuclear warheads, the remaining natives of the us settler state must be put into charge and they must decide how to destroy the imperialist us project, the same goes for the working class of germany, uk, france etc.
The us people do have a culture, i bet the israeli people in palestine do as well and as the contradictions in palestine are sharp, they must be stopped, the us settlers dont need to be stopped from taking native americans land atm but foreign land. So each situation is different and needs different solutions.
Depriving humans of their culture ist not the solution.
I don’t think that’s a kind way to interpret what I’m saying. The romanticized history of Americans is an intentional propaganda push, and not related to some innate culture. The nature of the settler-colonial project necessitates giving up personal ethnic origins to become a settler.
I’m not saying that Americans have no real culture because they’re innately bad, I’m saying they have no culture because they gave it up (or their ancestors did) to take part in a synthetic settler culture.
People aren’t their ancestors, but they do benefit from the things their ancestors did and took in their name. That has to be taken into consideration.
Americans have culture, same as germans have culture, same as all other people in the world. Culture is a human thing. There is not one or the other. People develop specific ways to do things, that can happen in a school, a neighborhood, a school or whatever. People create art and interact with the world around them. I cant help but see denying people their culture as chauvinist.
You’re talking past me, it makes me feel like you haven’t read what I’ve written. The vast amount of culture in the U$ is intentionally, verifiably, created as synthetic nation-building propaganda.
What is an element of culture in the U$ that you consider to be real and positive?
Fine.
I think it is an apt way to interpret what you are saying.
That is not a materialist way of looking at it imo. American people exist in their material circumstances and as humans they create culture. Their mere existence creates culture. It is fused from their own circumstances, their ancestors, their life story, etc.
So the black people in the us or the germans who have never understood the us settler situation did not bring any culture to the us? they dont speak a special type of german after 2 or 3 generations, same as the germans living in the rotfront village near bishkek?
Again, this is just thinly veiled chauvinism imo.
Your tone reads as very condescending and rude to me, and it makes it difficult for me to have a polite conversation with you.
You’re being insulting without understanding your insults. Chauvinism is patriotism, I am specifically opposing patriotism here.
Stolen slaves from Africa were not settlers, they had their culture and ethnicities taken from them to become part of the black underclass.
German settlers were settlers. They gave up their ethnic identity to become part of the opressive white overclass. The vast vast majority of Germanic descendants in the U$ retain none of their ethnic origin.
Why do you think you understand the material conditions in the U$ more than people here? Would you consider my opinion over yours as to the German national project?
Just like Israel has culture. Hummus, Falafel, Shawarma, and French fries.
Amerikan culture is white supremacy and capitalism. That’s it, that’s the whole thing. I don’t see how that’s “depriving” people of culture. There just isn’t anything here.
Im not sure I would agree that is what the culture is, but what the culture is rooted in
Lmfao. Please read Settlers.