by Ramin Mazaheri
Americans, whether you like it or not, and whether you admit it or not, this book review is about our family.
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016) by Nancy Isenberg is a book so necessary that it compelled reviews in “The New York Times” and “The Wall Street Journal” because it finally gives White Trash the place in American history that they have always been denied.
After all: “The tenant farmer with his mule and plow is not a romantic image to remain in historic memory.”
In the book’s final paragraph is a pithy historical summation of America’s contempt and disregard for White Trash: “They are not who we are.”
Any good history book allows the reader to draw parallels with the current age. “They are not who we are,” also aptly describes the raging combat in the United States between the Trumper and anti-Trumper camps.
What was the book’s goal?
“If this book accomplishes anything it will be to have exposed a number of myths about the American dream, to have disabused readers of the notion that upward mobility is a function of the founders’ ingenious plan, or that Jacksonian democracy was liberating, or that the Confederacy was about state’s rights rather than preserving class and racial distinctions.” (My emphasis)
Lack of social mobility and preserving class distinctions: keeping peasants in their place – the ultimate goal of aristocrats and today’s anti-Trumpers.
What this book does is to prove how poor Whites have systematically been denied land, opportunity and a voice just as much as Blacks and women.
There has never been social mobility for all Whites – just rich Whites – and this will be the bursting of a major myth for many people who believe America is, or at least used to be, “the land of opportunity”.
If you are not dissuaded of that myth at the end of this book review all I can say is: Read this book.
This book has been criticized by some reviewers for ignoring Blacks.
Well, it’s a book about Whites, and I see no reason not to study this ethnic group. I also see no reason to delve into race wars in this column either, so I guess I’m a racist too, or whatever.
As a communist, I view all race war as a legislatively-correctable absurdity, anyway.
Instead of discussing race politics, I argue that this book proves we absolutely must reject the anti-Trumper’s contention that the current schism in the US is a cultural divide and not a class war.
The White Trash Revolution (WTR), a theme of mine which gained a foothold with Brexit, has always been about class and not race. How else could someone named “Ramin Mazaheri” be one of its leading propagandists?
But elevating race in order to deny class is what Americans always do, and that’s why the author decried this systematic class unconsciousness on the book’s very first page:
“It is as though in separating from Great Britain, the United States somehow magically escaped the bonds of class and derived a higher consciousness of enriched possibility….The very act of migration claims to equalize the people involved….”
It does not, so give up your racial, gender and sexual politics. Let’s get to the down-and-dirty of it all – class.
The foundation of the US is White Trash and you know it
What is trash? Above all, it is waste.
16th century England was obsessed with waste, and that certainly fits in with the stereotypical view of an obsessive English person who can’t waste a thought, much less a minute and even still less a New World of “wasted” natural resources.
The author relates that it also meant “waste people” – i.e. the poor.
So-called “peoples’ history” books such as these are so great because events like Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, “one of the greatest conflicts the colony ever witnessed,” are restored from obscurity to show that class was always from Day 1 in America.
There is, “…ample evidence to show the participants made it about class warfare….It is important that we understand that Bacon’s Rebellion for what revealed: the most promising land was never equally available to all.” (Author’s emphasis)
And imagine if America’s kids identified with the true situation of their 17th century counterparts? You’d have a nation of budding communists: “Waste men and waste women (and especially waste children, the adolescent boys who comprised a majority of the indentured servants) were an expendable class of laborers who made colonization possible.”
Such books also remove the luster of historical figures, which is probably why Arkansas is considering a bill to ban the books of Howard Zinn’s, such as “A Peoples’ History of the United States”.
The deconstruction of Thomas Paine is especially interesting as he was the main propagandist of the American Revolution. As a journalist who is regularly accused of being a propagandist, I’d like to note the already-clear differences between him and me: “His overarching argument was that European-descended Americans were a new race in the making, one specially bred for free trade instead of the state machinery of imperial conquest.”
Critically, the Englishman Paine had been in the US for just a year when he wrote “Common Sense”.
He clearly had only a very superficial level of understanding of how America actually worked, and I can only imagine how false my analysis of France was after only my first year here.
However, Paine did make a true democratic contribution: He destroyed the godly aura of monarchy and openly revealed its parasitic nature – this anti-authoritarian idea was indeed radical.
But his outlook was inherently aristocratic: “(Paine argued) Therefore, if the leadership class did not seize hold of the narrative, the broad appeal for political independence would be supplanted by an incendiary call for social levelling.”
Despite the historically-revisionist claims of today’s jingoists, social leveling was thus not a goal in 1776.
The West as a White Trash dump
The US had so many advantages and possibilities to build a true Utopia, and yet their unparalleled geographical richness has been squandered by capitalism and imperialism.
Beginning with Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, the West became a hugely-effective safety valve for class discontent but it was never the hugely-effective producer of social leveling that people assume.
“The western territories were for all intents and purposes America’s colonies,” and squatters, crackers and poor White Trash would flee to the frontier to escape the indentured servitude of tenant farming.
However, they were rarely able to stay there for long, much less for generations: At best, early settlers would clear the land for the “real farmers”, i.e. rich farmers with connections to land speculators, who had government contacts that would sell them the best farmland as each new region turned into an official state.
The lack of social mobility is evident in the name given to these squatters, such as “swampers”, and good luck raising good crops there. “Tarheel”, “bogtrotter”, “briar-hoppers” and “tackies” are all both insults and descriptions of the lousy land they lived on. In 2017 even “trailer trash” is a term to describe someone who lives on a bad and small patch of land isolated from society.
“By the 1850s, poor whites had become a permanent class. As non-slaveholders, they described themselves as ‘farmers without farms’…. Whether they stayed put or moved west, poor whites occupied poor land.”
‘Biology is destiny’ means Trash stays trashy
In the 1840s and 1850s, as Europe was discovering Marxism, the US was only discovering a reactionary social science known as evolutionary biology.
This ideology made biology destiny, and in the 1850s the term “White trash” became widespread. The author repeatedly stresses that the term mainly connoted physical defects, and not just a culture of poverty and a character marked by frontier wildness.
Poor whites were now labelled as a degenerate class, biologically induced to crime, immorality and even incest. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s humanistic and moral “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (praised by Tolstoy) had a 2nd book that was as anti-white trash as the first was anti-slavery, per the author.
By promoting evolutionary biology instead of Marxism, America employed such great ideas like the right to exterminate all the Indians, mulattos being defects, Hispanics being unevolved. Sweet, righteous Anglo-Saxons could not even live by Indians.
But let’s forget all that, because such racism is already well known.
What this book focuses on is the widespread belief of the time that – much like undocumented immigrants lowering wages today (sidebar: that solution is total amnesty and open borders) – slavery was something which was ruining not just the allegedly-perfect DNA of whites, but the living standards of poor Whites.
“In barring slaveholders from the territories he (the Republican presidential nominee of 1856 and ‘Free Soil’ supporter) would prevent northern white laborers from being reduced to virtual slaves in the West.”
What? I thought the US Civil War was to free the Blacks?
Admit it, American: You already knew that the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t issued until 1863, two years into the war. Why do you suppose that was?
They never gave us a satisfactory answer, but it’s – as usual – class and not race.
Forget what you knew about the Civil War
“We are not told the whole story, then, because social insecurities and ongoing class tension preoccupied the politicized population too.”
Is it any wonder the WTR is so anti-government when it is no exaggeration to say that the first thing the US federal government ever did for White Trash was to launch the Civil War!
Because our Southern American readers have just spit up their coffee over the previous paragraph, I will quote extensively here:
– “By 1861, both sides saw the other as an alien culture doomed to distinction….The two class systems – slave and free – were locked in a battle for domination and only one would survive.”
– “In (Commanding General of the Northern Army and future President Ulysses S.) Grant’s estimation, the war was fought to liberate non-slaveholders, families exiled to poor land, who had few opportunities to better themselves or educate their children. ‘They too needed emancipation.’”
– “Discontented whites had been given the vote and, ‘being the majority they are the depositories of all your political power’.” James Henry Hammond, leading pro-slavery intellectual.
– “Sherman (general who led the total war/scorched earth “March to the Sea” campaign) made sure his men understood the class dimension of their campaign…They (Northern soldiers) saw secession as a fraud perpetrated against hapless poor whites.”
And, my favorite:
– “As one angry Southern writer declared, the northern party should not be called “Black Republicans”, but “Red Republicans,” for their real agenda was not just the abolition of slavery, but inciting class revolution to the South.”
(This is the very first mention of Socialism in the book, and there are only 3 others!)
In this way, the Civil War was the death of aristocracy in the US, but only the feudal kind – a capitalist kind was immediately elevated without any of the leavening of European socialism.
What capitalists and free-market proponents have always hidden is that Northern troops truly were rallied by an ideology in which “…they were benefactors of a government and society that promised class mobility and a genuine respect for the working man.”
What’s key is that this was the first time any such promises were made in American history.
Of course, we working men and women are still fighting today for these promises to be delivered.
But, because this America, we have to get back to race politics. Ugh.
The Age of Eugenics (class groans audibly)
Because Socialist ideas could make no headway in the US, what reigned supreme instead was Social Darwinism. It was simply “nature” that men were unequal; that Whites were the supreme race; that legitimized the imperialist doctrine of Manifest Destiny – and no legislation could change that, so why even try?
It’s the same thing today….
The idea that “biology is destiny” is fundamentally rejected by communists, who award primacy to environment and culture. When we compare the literacy, health and security levels of White Trash in the US with the same indicators among Cuban, Iranian and Soviet Trash there is no comparison that the latter won out in a much, much faster manner.
But while the politically-correct revolution (PCR) focused on the White supremacy aspect of the eugenics era, this book focused on the fact that White Trash were also just as condemned for their lack of “fitness” to survive.
Because just imagine how the conquering Northerners viewed White Trash, who are now White Trash War Refugees, flooding into St. Louis?
Northern White Trash were now occupying Southern White Trash – it’s the poor who staff all armies, after all.
The author relates plenty of historical examples of Northerners talking of the “worthless barbarian” they had conquered; of the “ignorant, illiterate, and vicious” poor white, who had simply stopped disappearing into the bushes of the postwar South.
Blacks were often viewed more positively in the Reconstruction era: they were industrious strivers, now that their wages went all the way to something from nothing.
The pre-war Northern White Trash had been threatened by the “no-wage” system of the south, but now they were threatened biologically if they procreated with White Trash War Refugees.
It sounds crazy, but it’s true!
You know it’s true because this late 19th century era was the time of “eugenics mania” across the West as well as the colonial “Scramble for Africa”, and the two went hand in hand, of course. This was the time of Nietzsche’s “Ubermench” – the White Superman.
And in the US the Northern White (Trash) Superman was superior, genetically as well, to the Southern White (Trash) Conquered Superman.
This era produced fears of “mongrel” blood; hypotheses that isolated White mountain folk were genetically “pure”, just not “graded up”; sterilization laws in most of the country; “fitter family” competitions at state fairs just like blue ribbons for county’s prize pig; the idea of a “aristogenic” class (genetic leadership class).
“Even with such racial overtones, the major target of eugenicists was the poor white woman,” which I include due to its importance.
Why were Southern Trash so far behind, from a genetic/health standpoint?
Obviously, it was the centuries-long lack of public education funding and basic health or sanitation programs – it was not genetics, but the dominance of capitalist policies instead of socialist policies.
Fortunately, with the 1917 Russian Revolution this hysterical, discredited, absurd ideology all evaporated.
But only in the USSR.
“The 1920s saw social exclusiveness masquerade as science as disdain for rural backwardness and the mongrel taint intensify. In a culture under siege, white trash meant impure, and not quite white.”
Are we still White Trash when all Whites are poor?
White Trash went nationwide in the 1920s…but not in your family, I’m sure, superior anti-Trumper.
When unemployment hit 20%, the definition of White Trash suddenly expanded.
In 1934 the frontier was official closed by the government, ending the so-called “safety valve” of the disproven “frontier migration thesis” of alleviating poverty and providing social mobility (so easily conflated with personal mobility in the US).
By 1937, the author writes, “…most Americans had already come to accept the uncomfortable truth about their national situation: equal opportunity was a grand illusion.”
But many formerly middle-class Whites found their Trashy status intolerable, and so White Trash Power spurred the demands for the first government assistance to White Trash since the war refugee assistance after the Civil War.
To make a long Depression story short: The United States could not remedy the problems of the Great Depression until they final overcame their hatred of White Trash.
(And we see the same phenomenon at play with today’s Great Recession and Trump, whose right-hand man Steve Bannon is a self-described “Leninist” who urges economic protectionism in order to, one hopes, redistribute wealth to the re-enlarged class of White Trash in America.)
It is not until 1935 that we first read of a centrally-planned, government-supported effort at attempting an obviously socialist remedy in the history of the United States: the Farm Security Administration.
This meant actually helping peasants: Loans for farm improvements, loans to improve living conditions like adding outhouses (indoor plumbing comes later), government education programs for new farmers, building experimental communities instead of tolerating shantytowns, etc.
It’s almost as if America realized that the government could do something, anything at all, to help clean up White Trash? What a radical use for taxes….
The head of this agency was mocked as a “parlor pink” who was “winking at Marx” – and this was the 2rd and 3th reference to Marxism or socialism in this entire book devoted to class analysis, with 4 references in the book total! Only in America….
(And this lack of Marxism is why the book got a major publisher – Penguin Random House. Had she added in more Marx…goodbye book deal.)
“The New Deal’s mission was to make individualism available to those ordinarily deprived it, freeing the many from their virtual imprisonment at the hands of the few.”
Winking at Marx indeed, Ms. Isenberg! Did you have to fight your editor to get that line included, LOL?
The Red Radical Isenberg proves (at least to me) that the famed Tennessee Valley Authority program – which coordinated among many southern states and created monumental public works – is the apex of socialism in America.
Its success is not disputed by anyone, not even school textbooks. It built not just dams and bridges, but libraries, recreation facilities, training centers, unprecedented adult education programs – “The TVA led to well-designed communities….”
The TVA remains a testament to the need for central planning today, whose success in creating steady economic progress amid capitalism’s inevitable depressions is attested to by the long-term growth rates of nations with 5-year economic plans like China, Iran and others.
“The straitjacket of states’ rights had suffocated southern progress long enough.”
Indeed. People are calling for a new TVA program today, and much of Trump’s legacy will rest on if he funds similar employment/public works programs.
Or we can just go back to mass war, like the US did with World War II.
Lotta money to be made there…but the Pentagon never did economic redistribution to White Trash.
Very interesting vignette, especially if you have read this far: At this time an intellectual sent questionnaires to top academics to define what “poor white” meant to them. The most common adjective was “shiftless.”
“It was connected to a string of synonyms: purposeless, hand to mouth, lazy, unambitious, no account, no desire to improve themselves, inertia.”
Basically, today’s version of “welfare queens”. Sure….
Elvis, the great White Trash rehabilitator
All hail the King:
“Elvis had achieved what no white trash working-class male had ever dreamt possible: he was at once cool and sexually transgressive and a “country boy”. No longer a freakish rural outcast, as in the past, Elvis was a ‘Hillbilly Cat,’ something many teenage boys wished they could be.”
The King in American-style democracy should be White Trash…that’s simple numbers.
Of course, communism is not mere “majority rule” democracy (which is actually “mob rule”) but elevates all together, realizing that harmony is produced by adding black ink to a white page.
Cultural sidebar: The author notes that popular early television shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Andy Griffith Show” were mainly based on caricatures of White Trash, but also contained characters who were positive White Trash figures, like the star of the latter.
More importantly, these shows “…tapped into suspicions that modern America had failed to create a genuine melting pot; the cultural distance between rural and urban life, between rich and poor, was immense.”
And this cultural divide remains the main divide in Trumpian America because when was it ever resolved?
Crucially, it’s the 1960s which mark the true entry of White Trash into the American power structure.
Finally giving White Trash, not just Blacks, the vote
The passing of the 24th amendment in 1964 – the banning of poll taxes – is rarely brought up, despite being one of just 27 amendments to the US Constitution. What’s given far more press is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when Blacks who were finally given the right to vote.
Giving Blacks the vote is correct, of course, and gives one a nice feeling that America has become a moral society.
So why is America not more openly proud of the 24th amendment? Because America ignores class, of course.
The author demonstrates that poll taxes were always used to disenfranchise White Trash as well. It’s much more well-known that prior to the post-Civil War introduction of poll taxes you had to be a landowner to vote in the US, but from 1865-1964 countless Whites were denied franchise, especially in the South.
If you insist on focusing on racial/identity politics you cannot explain, much less appreciate, the significance of the 24th amendment.
So we can use the elimination of poll taxes as when White Trash, when all Trash, truly began the WTR.
I’m getting a little misty here – sniff, sniff – for when the WTR turns into the ATR: the American Trash Revolution (i.e. communism).
And it should not be thought of as a coincidence that giving Trash the vote lent democratic support for major socialist-inspired successes like Johnson’s “Great Society” programs.
The civil rights movement meant: “Whites could no longer speak for people of color. Men could no longer speak for women.”
And now that White Trash truly had the right to vote, even in the South, politicians had to address them. Address them only with policies, but also changing their image to win their vote.
Saxophone-playing Bill did this; fake cowboy Dubya did this; Trump did this.
By the end of the 1980s “white trash” was finally reclaimed as a class having cultural value. In 1996 a man was charged with a hate crime for using the epithet “cracker”, while “redneck” became a badge of pride.
This was, of course, part of the PCR: “A larger trend was turning America into a more ethnically conscious nation, one in which ethnicity substituted for class. The hereditary model had not been completely abandoned; instead, it was reconfigured to focus on transmitted cultural values over inbred traits.” (Emphasis mine)
And this is the failure of Trumpism: Because It lacks the modernity and unity of socialism, it is merely an updating of the totally discredited ideologies of eugenics, racism, Darwinism. “White Trash versus the world!”
Of course, the moneyed White conservatives funding Trump also rely on a false and imagined economic history: “The same self-made man who looked down on white trash others had conveniently chosen to forget that his own parents escaped the tar-paper shack only with the help of the federal government.”
It is only via the promotion, application and enforcement of communism that people finally learn it is morally wrong to resent government programs which uplift the poor.
Again, a book on class but no Marx? Only in America….
Because no book review is “objective” unless it contains criticism….
Nearly 125 of the book’s 460 pages are just the footnotes: This strongly implies that the author is primarily a technocrat in her worldview.
This is a book by a major publisher and not an obscure university press – 27% of the book should have gone towards ideological discussion instead of anal facts us average readers will never bother to pursue.
Despite the Communist Manifesto being written in 1848, the revolutions of 1848, and the fact that Marx worked as journalist in New York, the first reference to communism does not occur until about 1861, just prior to the outbreak of the civil war. As previously stated: 4 references to socialism in a book about class seems willfully blind.
The author’s lack of political intelligence to accept and promote Marxism implies the acceptance of the contrary view – capitalism and racism.
And there is proof of this: Isenberg decries capitalism’s eugenics-filled and racist worldview and yet the title of her otherwise-fine epilogue is, “America’s Strange Breed”. (Emphasis mine)
It is not ironic but sad and bewildering that she uses this term to title this section, because the epilogue is otherwise rightly filled with condemnations of outdated genetic human branding of “breeds”.
But without communist class solidarity, one will always rest upon divisions: national, ethnic, religion, skin color – “breeds”.
Of course communists don’t believe in breeds. In Cuba nobody has improved more than Blacks (except women) after 1961. Russia was the first empire founded on affirmative action. Iran’s Supreme Leader is ethnically Azeri and Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel (with their own parliamentary representative).
“The sad fact is, if we have no class analysis, then we will continue to be shocked at the numbers of waste people who inhabit what self-anointed patriots have styled the ‘greatest civilization in the history of the world.’” (Emphasis mine)
I don’t’ see what’s sad about it? Class analysis is, by the author’s own admission, a freeing perspective. She clearly has some sort of bias against it, and that is to her own detriment.
And yet despite clearly not being a Marxist, the author is not interested in religion’s role in White Trash, either positive or negative? The only examination of lower-class Christianity is not until the 1980s and the Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker televangelism scandal. What about all the storefront holy-rollers, Pentecostal snake-handlers, etc.? Why only the sensational Bakkers and not the radio-era evangelists? Ignoring religion is the author’s right, but it should be all or nothing, I would think.
A far more major fault is that the author – who teaches at Louisiana State University and lives in Virginia – focuses way too much on Southern White Trash at the expense of both Western and Northeastern White Trash: “(Teddy) Roosevelt would have agreed: the distinct culture of the West did not translate to the South,” but this certainly not true of America 115 years later.
Television and the internet have created a situation where the “country twang” accent is a clear class delineation from coast to coast. Someone who speaks with a twang certainly lives all over the rural areas of so-called “blue states”.
Finally, the author, perhaps due to the lack of sympathy for humanity instilled by communism, vacillates too often between sympathy for White Trash and a clear abhorrence of them. She recounts way too many stories of a sensational or titillating nature about hut-dwelling, violent, unstable, dirty White Trash peasants.
If just a portion of these boringly scandalous stories had been replaced by proper ideological-based condemnations of the system she has studied, her book would have profited the reader much more both intellectually and socially.
Great book overall.
Now all we need is to get this White Trash painted red!
(This book review is paired with an editorial which uses the author’s insights to analyze the role of White Trash in the election of Donald Trump.)
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.
” by ((( Nancy Isenberg ))) ”
That says all I need to know
Jim Goad’s “Redneck Manifesto” is a clear antecedent to this book and is probably much more eloquently written.
One more thing, Senator Jim Webb of Virginian has also written of this ethnic conflict in his book “Born Fighting” which discusses the antagonism and hostility of the Anglo-puritan New England WASP establishment against the descendants of the Scottish-Irish who would go on to become hillbillies, hoosiers, and trailer trash in America today.
Fascinatingly dissected and documented by David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed.
Katherine
Impressive. I’m heading out to buy a copy today.
Companion reading: http://joebageant.net/
Very interesting Steve. I’m enjoying it.
The writer is very naive about the nature of Communism.
Communism, led from the top, KNOWINGLY hijacks man’s moral instinct for fairness and “equality” and puts the good aspects of our nature in service of the creation of a TYRANNICAL system that concentrates all power in a very small number of hands at the top.
Committed Communists become blind Cultists as demonstrated in the Soviet Union when what quickly became the head of the Satanic beast (The Central Committee) had little trouble recruiting party followers who would slaughter many, many millions of their fellow citizens.
It is hard to understand today how Culturally Marxist cultists fail to recognise this about the leaders they are happy to follow. Thus Obama and his owners are good guys (don’t think Libya, Syria).
Trump.
Is Evil.
So many people choose not to see elephants in the room that SHOULD, were they not mind-locked into their Cult, shatter adolescent illusions.
Well, what do you expect?
This man openly admits here to being a commie.
Laughed out loud, when he came to the references of communism(marxism) in this book, and that the book could only have been considered for publishing by keeping the red-ish rubbish down to the minimum.
I mean…wow. I have no words of how can one have such a distorted view of the state of affairs of (((american))) unintelligentsia, the publishing and education(Sorry, propaganda and disinformation) & media Inc.
That is as far as I have gotten…
Yes, indeed, white trash here – secessionist, and proud of it. We shall have at it yet…
And yes, Trump IS the first shot in this coming revolution.
If the “democratic” way turns out to be unreasonably optimistic, we SHALL find an other.
It is a matter of the survival for the likes of the White Trash Tribe, such as I am.
There are a lot of misconceptions, that are cleansed from the head of whites daily by the actions of the (((cultural marxists))) and their menagerie of usefull idiots.
The most damaging of which is: Diversity is our strenght.
It is not.
Diversity and proximity equals war eventually.
Look around You.
‘Communism’ led from the top is tyranny, as is everything led from the top; communism led from the bottom is diametrically opposed to tyranny. Two different things entirely — the difference between monarchy (or oligarchy) and democracy. But what the Soviets ended up with do not even meet the inherent definition of communism or socialism because it was not democratic, but like a sometimes benevolent monarchy or oligarchy. The Soviets started out with good intentions but didn’t do it right, and a good part of that was that it was under constant external attack.
The US says it is democratic, but it’s very far from democratic, of course. Don’t get trapped by propaganda and words.
Central organizing principle communism is class. If you have boss is not communist. In communism all classes experience eleutheria at all times. Is contradiction in meaning to claim communism has possibility of being led “from the top”. Such remarks show semantic error and fundamental lack of literacy political.
This is what someone who is afraid of discussing race sounds like.
“Yes, yes race exists, now lets get back to me beating this dead horse of a theory of mine about Communism.”
If he understood a damn thing about the founding stock of America, he would understand that Anglos were keen on using all subsequent wave of immigration as low-paid labor. They used the Irish as indentured servants, then as cannon fodder, the scots-irish to settle the West, the yellow man to build the railroads, blacks to pick the cotton, irish agains as cannon fodder, and on it goes.
Now they are keen on importing just about everyone for no damn reason, only they’ve gotten accustomed to doing it.
The Civil War was a continuation of the English Civil War. The southerners and northerners were descendants of the same WASPs that had fought the war back on the home island…and yet he actually treats “White” as a racial identifier.
Newsflash, its one ethnic group of Whites vs the other groups. Not Rich Whites vs Poor Whites. But Anglos from the northern part of england vs anglos from the south-east vs the irish vs the scots-irish, vs the italians, vs the polacks vs the jews etc. Are they all “white?”
Race is the key to understanding the formation of the modern world. Both the reviewer and the author deserve to have their name put in (((brackets))).
Race is absolutely not the key to understanding anything at all. It, along with sexual and other form of identities, is they key to *distract* everyone that the major divide that articulates or exacerbates all the others is the class division. Thus it has always been. The exploiters and the exploited. Trying to explain the world by distinctions between different kinds of wasps and bees is idiotic.
Another thing, the phrase “white trash” has always struck me as profoundly racist. It clearly suggests that trash of other hues and tones is to be expected, but if it’s white, it is an anomaly, an outrage. There was a time when french canadian intellectuals liked to present their plight by saying they were “le blancs noirs d’Amérique”, the white blacks of America, where similar undertones are detected. It’s okay for blacks to be “black” but we whites being treated as blacks is an outrage.
What nonsense, my god.
The writer has major issues with the understanding of society and racial issues. His last three articles on France were very prejudiced and the author showed no understanding of the functioning of french society, in spite reportedly being here since 2009.
Actually his wikipedia page says he’s an audio engineer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramin_Mazaheri ) and says nothing of any function of “chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV” for the last seven years, which is supposed to be more or less a high-profile function.
I can not see a real chief correspondent being so out of touch with the country he’s supposed to report from, except of course from CNN etc. Maybe this man is a fraud and conned the admins here, or he’s been a sponsored tourist in Paris for the last years, or journalism is really dead.
It then goes without saying that he would fail to understand the social realities of the USA.
…Never crossed your mind that Ramin Mazaheri could be a pretty common name, heh?
Jeezus.
LOL, Nebbia, I am indeed quite upset at this upstart music producer claiming to be me!
And being better at being me than me! I don’t even have a Wikipedia page!
Mazaheri is a rather common name. Ramin even more so.
Alex, for the first and last time – please read my byline and then do some research. I have done perhaps 1,000 reports for Press TV from France since 2010. Press TV uploads them all on Youtube, where you can call them all “fraudulent” to your heart’s content. I warn you – they are not the “everything is great in France” reports you seem to prefer, but real, critical journalism.
@Ramin Mazaheri
The criticism I have is that you made problems in France between communities an issue of race when they are an issue of society. If people of Arab origins were universaly rejected your articles would be true – but the fact remains that there are people of Arab origins (and other origins as well) who are well accepted because they’re from the middle class (and higher).
This is a fundamental distinction, which is vital to understand.
“You’re racist” is a standard sentence you can hear from ghetto people, gypsies etc. whenever they have a problem with the police, with the teachers or with potential employers.They even use it against coloured/Arab-origin people.
It doesn’t mean it’s true.
You have to do research before publishing your ideas : any trip in a french working place or administration would have shown you the situation. But you didn’t do it, and I don’t care if you published several other articles, if they’re missing the point as blatantly as this one they’re not worth mentionning (except at your detriment, or at the detriment of your employer).
When you say I have an “everything is great in France” mentality then either you didn’t even understand what I wrote, although I said it repeatedly and very clearly, or you are being plain dihonest.
In either case I find this behaviour unprofessionnal, you could have handled this quite differently, like it could be expected from a chief correspondent of a major news agency. This is on the level of a mild internet flamewar, which is quite disappointing.
This is a very good piece of writing … My thanks to the author. Not much here to argue with, though the ‘Brexit’ concept is possibly flawed. Here in the UK it is not so easy to become excited about ‘Brexit’: Is it real? I really don’t know; after all the UK is fake news central. I hold to the perhaps temporary view that it is a psyop, while hoping to be proved wrong. This is the news yesterday from the UK Column:-
http://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-6th-march-2017
How can ‘Brexit’ be a reality? If you watch the video you will note that Mr Gerrish states that Germany, through French deceit is to take control of the British Nuclear deterrent while “ALL” british armed forces, infrastructure, and defence budgets are too to come under German control: Nominally the EU Commision. Does this sound at all like independence from the tyranny that is the EU? Mr Gerrish, has even described the actions of the UK’s hopelessly ‘German penetrated’ Government Corporation as Militarising a tyranny. This is the reality. Brexit the PR.
My belief is that the Treaty of Elysee (1963?) was put in place for these reasons; to facilitate the coup d’etat that is unfolding. My opinion only is that a war on China (perhaps Russia too) is viewed as inevitable: Perhaps as a means to exterminate the “trash” spoken of in the book review.
The framers of the constitution were if memory serves all freemasons operating under the British Crown. This Constitution does not apply to ordinary Americans. Decisions being taken in the west, including the abusive theft of wealth (taxes) are being justified under State of Emergency rules in place since the 1930’s, and in Britain since Napoleon. This is why the “trash” must help themselves; politicians certainly will not.
RM
Well done.
James W. Loewen has also written about this subject, as part of a broader look at american history and social order.
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/liesmyteachertoldme.php
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/liesacrossamerica.php
They both provide some surprising insights into american society. The first book has a chapter on “white trash”, both go into detail on how the poor in america are glossed over or forgotten in most american “historical” work and emphasize how class is completely ignored or downgraded.
Bravo Ramin Mazaheri!
An oasis in a desert of clerical conservatism.
“Of course, communism is not mere “majority rule” democracy (which is actually “mob rule”) but ”
Not every crowd is a mob, and majority rule is not mob rule — which is often not majority rule but manipulated by a few. This ‘majority is an unreasoning mob’ meme is from the elite, who aften work hard to ensure that the majority can not be rational or informed through their manipulation of emotion, spin, and lies through the schools, media, and other institutionalized instruments of the wealthy ruling class.
The point of her book is to point out that the indentured white servants were basically the first slave class to be used to populate and work the wild lands of the New World for the first 100 years. Average age at death was 25-30 as they were worked mercilessly under worse conditions than the African slaves because they often expired before their 15-17 year contracts expired.
On the other hand It was in the interests of the black slave owners to keep their life-long property alive and to breed it for further profit–not so for indentured servants who tended to run off and blend in with the largely white population anyway and were not very good at working in hot, humid ( thus, the red neck term) climates like cotton or tobacco growing states.
She goes into great detail to show that the extreme poverty and isolation of the white “lumpen” class are a consequence of the indentured servant heritage, much like many of the problems of the Afro American community which stem from the similar crushing experience of slavery. Of course, this is discounted by the official upper class ( and academic) white class line that any white person who does not “make it ” in upwardly mobile fashion has only himself to blame–even though many of the factors which are listed to account for the lack of Black upward mobility are very similar to the permanent White underclass. Also there is the denial built into the American social narrative by how early American history is taught or, as she points out, not taught.
I find it very interesting that just as the Black communities were ravaged by crack cocaine so the
poor white rural communities along the Appalachian mountains is being devastated by cheap heroin— Demoralization and Drugs as a form of Demographic control. And there are no jobs so no unions or class organizing—but the South has always been a tough nut to crack for unionization.
teranam13 – I can vouch for your point about the author’s emphasis on the role of indentured servitude in pre-1776 America.
“For servants 17th-century New Englanders relied most heavily on exploitable youth, male and female, ages 10 to 21. By law, single men and women were require to reside with families and submit to family government. Children were routinely “put out” to labor in the homes of neighbors and relatives.”
This last part is from England and is such a fascinating and rather shocking aspect of Olde English culture: the idea that children should be torn from their home and put to work. Here is a very interesting article which discusses this practice…which of course children hated.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26289459
It was an extremely callous and greedy practice, and such seeming disregard for your own children is rather contrary to the Asian model of tight-knit families. But this practice explains a lot about English capitalism, individualism, etc.
It’s something which is rarely ever discussed in the English-language world, and such silence reminds me of the fact that China rarely discusses the historical practice of foot-binding women. With today’s understanding – both practices are extremely shameful and embarrassing.
Venetian traveler – who was shocked by the practice. “It was for the children’s own good, he was told – but he suspected the English preferred having other people’s children in the household because they could feed them less and work them harder.”
Indentured servitude – worthy of another article.
The Anglo mentality is quite child- hostile.
It’s the source of eugenics and it’s recent incarnation, reprogenics.
It comes from the view that people are commodities.
The Anglo ruling class has always viewed its own offspring in dynastic terms, the so-called ‘heir and spare.’
The function of wives was to produce sufficient offspring to continue the line.
The welfare of children was besides the point, who were generally reared as miniature adults.
Unsurprisingly, this class is the main sponsor of the current LGBT agenda to sexualize children through ‘health’ and ‘education.’
This is but a ‘liberal’ approach to rhe same perennial eugenics/Malthusian agendas, now filtered through the UN.
Re: “What? I thought the US Civil War was to free the Blacks?”
Wrong. The Civil War was actually a war for the West: who (which economic groupings and power) would control the American West—its economic development, its infrastructure, its power structure, etc.
Colin Woodard (American Nations) is very good on this.
Katherine
Grant wrote about his view – which was that allowing Texas into the Union made the civil war a sure thing – and he thought that when Texas was an “independent” country – actually a rogue Provence of Mexico…
Important to remember Russian involvement in US civil war – fleets on both coasts…
why was that? Hint – that’s important to understand – because it’s happening again, in rhyme this time, with the bear leading the weak to mana in the forest, so to speak…
Hi Katherine,
The author makes the same point: a primary factor in going to war was would the slave-model or wage-model rule in the new Western territories. I think the author has a good insight of how the slave-model brought down wages/living standards for the average White back then, which many wanted to avoid repeating in the West.
West as eupherism -the real meaning.
Ever wondered what word “the west” really means? It is not Mediterranean civilisation of greece, Italy,spain or even France. it is not north western european civilisation of germany or scandinavia. In fact all these countries have been spied upon by the nations who call and self designate themselves “the west” -a nation otherwise known as 5 Eyes !- A combination of england, usa,canada ,newzealand and australia- disparate nations geographically and not even european but esssentially anglosaxon race nations. A race based concept really.West is euphemism for anglos- it does not include any of other white european nations not even the msot westerly european nation of Ireland! The word “west” is a fraud to distract from real actors behind the scene-the 5 eyes.
�Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the U.S., including among presidents and other leading figures.�
Hence comes the myth of white-where white is a code word for English and English scumbag�s derived anglosaxon race who incidentally are much more swarthy than the Irish and Germans who were declared non-whites in usa according to their vocabulary.
In other words anglosaxons though in minority have been able to get hold of power only by myth of white which is to pit one against another while they really mean it for the benefit of not all white races but anglosaxon race only.
The anglos dictated west.
The anglos evil empire so called West is founded on theft and murder, and its ruling Elite remains as dearly infatuated with this behaviour as ever. pirate films are very popular amongst the anglo thieves. Forms a key part of this Elite’s very class consciousness, the more so since without the loot there’ll be no way for them to buy domestic social peace and chauvinistic cohesion.
Unlike their grovelling subjects, however, the Western Elite knows it’s deeply hated throughout most of the world. Hence, they’re constantly raging and fuming in accordance with what seems most threatening to them at any given moment. At present, it is the aspirations of Russia to put an end to Western financial parasitism, but being at odds with an ever growing majority of the world’s population could bring about changed priorities instantly. The corporate media duly passes on the new “party line” to the Western zombies without much difficulty
Heard another reason why the Anglos (English speaking so called “West”) wanted to destabilize Ukraine: it’s because of the natural symbiosis that’s getting stronger and stronger between Germany (engineering, industry) and Russia (resources). A match made in heaven (well … sort of …) that is a direct threat to the Anglo thieving and piracy directed economic supremacy.
England always hated, hates and will hate Russia!!!
So true, they invaded in 1918 to, as that racist thug and mass murderer churchill said “Strangle bolshevism in it’s cradle”.
English caused mass starvation during the civil war when they withheld food supplies that were paid for , and without our weapons, army and help the racist monsters of the White guard could not have fought against the people.
Stalins forced collectivization only happened because the british threatened to invade again in 1929.
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The Brits re-colonized the USA during/after the Civil war and finished the coup in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Banking Act. Along with the income tax, IRS, and property taxes. All in the same year.
The only elections the anglosaxon controlled so called West respects are the elections they control.
�afganistan�
By what right are the british english coward troops are in afgansitan?
Even after the ouster of Taliban the then govt. of afgansitan(installed by west) refused to allow the british troops to enter and stay in Afghanistan. But british pressure on America made sure that british troops were allowed there in Kabul.
Since then coward british English troops many times bribed Taliban with money pleading with Taliban not to attack british troops_the implication being that other nato troops can be attacked.!
Mind you it was the british who created Taliban in the first place where ever is rotten smell you find the English rotten scumbags!
==============================================
The English strategy is to involve others like usa and even Europeans to destabilise other nations through any means so that leader of such nations will flee with stolen money to london on which depends the money laundering economy of enlgand �real pirate which must be killed now.
The strategy has always been to make countries unstable and ungovernable. Subjected to internal/external conflict/aggression till they are weakened to accept handing over effective power, control to the new world criminals. You only have to look at the template being used in various countries in the world,�Nato�
There is a confusion among many that USA uses Nato exert her influence in Europe. In fact USA does not need nato . But that entity is needed by a third rate country which after second world war found herself without real power so nato was created by that country to keep Germans down and Russians out using American arms and money.. Since early 90s that same country manoeuvred to keep Nato alive and install her stooges in European commission like british spy barrasso and English pirate witch cathertine ashton and many more inside European beaurocracy to make Europe follow one and only one policy to be dictated by that same country.
Name of the evil country? Of course it is england the centre of money laundering and all spying in the world and most evil entity in the history of world.
For Russia the easiest way to tackle the problem is to support Scottish
independence because that would good for scots and it would ruin england and her position in the world. Scots don�t like parasitical existence as English lead so once Russia discloses how england is sitting on black box and not saying anything(after all hue and cry within 24 hours of Malaysian plane crash) that will show to world and scots how low lifes these English are. Russia should disclose barrasso talk with Putin aswell because that pest Barroso is an English spy who should be hanged for his war crimes just like war criminal blair must be publicly hanged AFTER BRUTAL BEATING after a fail trial for his war crimes.
Russia should hurry to annihilate the English empire of evil pirate pests.
�fraud�
Don’t forget that Putin jailed Khodorkovsky, one of the many Oligarchs who had raped Russia’s resources after Glasnost, nationalised his oil and gas fields and paid off the debts of the Russian Federation in 5 years. Just before his arrest Khodorkovsky wired all his money to Jacob Rothschild who runs the corrupt City of London, without proper financial regulation, so that 60% of the UK GDP is fraud.
According to the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banking havens such as the british controlled the Cayman Islands.
England as pirate rogue state today and yesterday.
Just as Britain is the save heaven for all kinds of wanted top political and financial criminals.
====================================================
==60% of the UK’s GDP is financial fraud, dabbling in stolen money from the third world with help of british approved dictators in those nations.-otherwise humanitarian bombing is coming your Way!
Money laundering is the business of English race-they never graduated from the piracy days.
==============================================================
True Americans were exterminated only after the arrival of bloodthirsty but coward and sly thieving anglosaxon hordes. Fact.
“white “=eupherism and misnomer used by english occupiers who detested even whiter irish and germans as nonwhites.
the english spies in us discriminated against much of non anglosaxon whites in america.
The reason minority england worshipping anglosaxons are still ruling USA is because of this-other stupid European origin whites(whom the anglosaxons hardly care about) are not fighting for their right from anglosaxons but from the blacks!
Usa comes to rescue of not European white nations but only england and its anglo colonies.
Usa shares stolen secrets not with white nato nations but only with anglosaxon races.
english racists occupiers of america really mean -white= anglosaxons who worship england as master nation.
most of anglos are not anglosaxon race which is the most vile race using usa as a colony for england. wake up whites and blacks in usa. Destroy british spy journalists and their stooges in hollywood.
Benjamin Franklin “we should bewary of allowing Germans and sweds to immigrate, because they were too swarthy!”
“Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the U.S., including among presidents and other leading figures.”
Hence comes the myth of white-where white is a code word for English and English scumbag’s derived anglosaxon race who incidentally are much more swarthy than the Irish and Germans who were declared non-whites in usa according to their vocabulary.
In other words anglosaxons though in minority have been able to get hold of power only by myth of white which is to pit one against another while they really mean it for the benefit of not all white races but anglosaxon race only.
Anglosaxons are neither caucasian nor white
Aryan gene in India and Indo- european gene in Russia, ukraine ,Lithuania , Poland and Germany.
Check the Data section.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_R1a_frequency_by_population
Anglosaxon race are not white or caucasians. Even the person who first coined the word ” caucasian” emphatically put the english and americans race outside the category of white or caucasian race..
english
as anglosaxon race was borne out of misgeneasis between Neanderthals with carthagian traders of phonecian origin living in bog lands of northen Holland.
Now the recent gene research confirms that the english and anglos are not caucasian or any trace of Indoeurooean gene.
Recent DNA research of y chromosome haplotypes of races show that anglosaxobs do not have gene marker of R1a1a which is found amongst all Indo eurooean races -so they have had no relationship with so called aryan race either.
Similarly jews were never considered white race exceptt from late 60s when pakistani became the object if harassment by anglosaxon low breds who wrongly considered themselve as white race but they are not.
Guess how a Frenchman would pronounce “Zend”? du Perron’s work was rejected until someone found the 13 century record of a 10th century Persian text written by a Parsi Sanskrit scholar (Neryosang Dhaval) on which linguists did their reconstructions, creating a language called “Avestan” from the name “Zend Avesta”
These linguists created a land called Avesta from the French name of a book and created people called Avestans, just like they created people called Aryans from the Sanskrit Hindu word “Arya” .
__”””*********************(((((****
haplogroups R1a and R1b were found in 60% of Late Neolithic/Bronze Age Europeans outside Russia (n10), and in 100% of the samples from European Russia from all periods (7,500–2,700BC;n 59). R1a and R1b are the most common haplogroups in many European populations today18,19,and our results suggest that they spread into Europe from the East after 3,000BC.
—************************,
Look at the colour map and check that england is compketely devoid of aryan gene while india and russia have the most high concentration of aryan gene. Or R1A1 gene.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/10/r1a1a/#.WhXCksunzqA
See also – about haplogroup H2
” is hypothesized that Haplogroup H2 may have been one of the original patrilineal lineages of the earliest Europeans; and may indicate that ancient Europeans once shared a common ancestor with the Proto-Dravidian peoples of the Southern Indian Subcontinent. “
Civil war in 1860 was british reattempt to reoccupy america and failing which tear usa into 2 to 3 parts.
confederates and Lee were british english agents and thus traitirs to the cause of usa.
Britush caused civil war to separete a part of usa for themselves , for which the britush sponosored and funded and armed the confederates.
Unfirtunately this traitors were not killed as should have happend after war and the confederates repositioned themselves as patriots of america !
Kick englabd abd her agents out because it is england which controls america and its all wars for usa to fight while england enjoys the fruit of war booty in form of money pouring in from devastated countries to british tax haven for safe kerping aka money laundering in london. All 3rd world corrupt elites are given assurance that they should bring their stolen money to englabd for money laundering as it will have guarantee of britush protection made possilble by support of american army.