Jim Goad, Simon and Schuster, New York 1997
The purpose of this book is to challenge the anti-white racism of the American media. It explains how racism has gradually been turned upside down, so the media and the liberal establishment in general perpetrate racist slurs against the white working class population. The author isn't a redneck, but an articulate advocate of working class unity.
He refutes the myth at the origin of anti-white racism, the idea that
all white people arrived voluntarily in luxury liners. In fact, most white
people arrived in the holds of ships with a mortality rate similar to that
of slave ships from Africa, and their arrival was a product of
a) actual slavery - he argues that there were at least as many white
slaves as black
b) transportation of various kinds
c) economic force - move or starve.
When they got to America, white immigrants were sometimes treated worse than black slaves. Jim explains why with an analogy. Many whites were temporary servants, bound to their masters for seven or ten years. Black slaves were usually a man's property for life. A white servant was like a rented car: you thrash the hell out of it while you've got it. It didn't matter if a white servant died of exhaustion a day after his term of servitude ended. Masters could murder or rape their servants or slaves with impunity. Through the school system and the media, Americans are taught the horrors of black slavery over and over again, but white "indentured servitude" is hardly mentioned.
This is a polemical book, not a scientific treatise. All the history needs to be checked, but there is enough authentic research in it to assert that the origin of the white working class in America was no tea party. Discussing the origins of the slave trade, Jim notes: "Africans were imperialistic; they just weren't very good at it." This is simplistic to the point of inaccuracy, but makes a good point. Most Africans were hunters a small-scale agriculturalists, but among them were empires such as Ethiopia, which was good at imperialism. See The Race to Fashoda by David Levering Lewis, for an account of how Ethiopia defeated Italy and played off Britain and France against each other during the big carve-up of the mid-19th century. In any case, there were indigenous slave-traders in Africa. Most of them were Muslims, like Louis Farrakhan.
It might be asked, what does all this history prove? The barrage of anti-white racism puts its opponents in a difficult position. Most of what it claims is both false, and strictly irrelevant. It is not true that most white people's ancestors benefitted from slavery, and even if it were true, no-one should have to pay for the crimes of their ancestors. Most whites in America today are working class, and have far more in common with their black neighbors than their white bosses. Or as Jim puts it, "if the niggers and rednecks ever joined forces, they'd be unbeatable".
It could be said, and often is, that poor whites may be poor, but they defend their relative privileges, and thus the system as a whole. Some of them do, but so do latter day carpetbaggers like the Southern Poverty Law Center and all those who try to hold all white people responsible for the state of blacks today. Jim shows that the history of poor white/poor black antagonism in the South is not as simple as we are taught to believe; a clear cut case of poor whites ferociously defending their meager advantages against any black advancement. There are examples of the political system using black people to keep the white workers down, for instance immediately after the Civil War. In any case, it's always the bosses pitting one section against another, divide and rule at its crudest. Blaming the white working class, as liberals do, is part of this policy. The professional anti-white racist demagogues are far more effective than the Ku Klux Klan.When they can't find hate crimes, they just make them up.
In 1996, there was a lot of fuss made about white racists setting fire to "black" churches. A little-noticed item in USA Today looked at the statistics, and it turned out that arson of churches was distributed fairly evenly across the ethnicity of their congregations. Numerous other hate crimes were faked. These range from outrageous provocations to clumsy stunts which backfire on the liberal establishment which encourages them. A black woman claimed to have been raped by white men, and was gleefully paraded in front of the liberal media by politicians like Al Sharpton. It turned out to be a fantasy. A black lesbian in Portland even pretended to be disabled, and planted a burning cross on her own front lawn, attempting to get a triple dose of sympathy from the liberals ("Hate Crimes That Weren't", Willamette Week, July 3, 1996). When blacks make racist attacks on white people, you won't hear a squeak about it.
Campaigners for racial and sexual equality do not challenge capitalism at all. On the contrary. If companies hired people solely on the basis of ability, they would do better. There would be just as much inequality, but it would be an inequality of ability, an inequality which benefits the economy. Anti-racism is simply racism in reverse. Its purpose is to distract us from the real issues. For example, we are told that an average black person's income has risen from 50% to 59% of the average white's in the last 25 years. The reaction is supposed to be that we still have a long way to go. What they don't tell us is that this increase has been achieved by reducing real income for whites. Since 1973, average income has slumped more than 10%. Eventually, perhaps the entire working class will live in the same abject povery. Then the anti-racist liberals will be happy. "Average" usually means "mean", a meaningless figure. It only takes a few white multi- billionaires to greatly increase the mean income of the entire white population. If a man who earns a million dollars a year walks into a room with nine people who earn $30,000, the mean income in that room would more than quadruple, to $127,000. Are you feeling privileged yet? There are few, if any, black billionaires. So the disparity between black and white working class income is not as great as the figures suggest.
The facts you discover follow from the categories you classify them into. The racist media assume that all white people, or all women, or all members of various other categories, have something in common, and then produce statistics which apparently prove just what they have assumed. One response to this is to reject their categories altogether, and defend the interests of the one category they never use: the proletariat. They do talk of "Labor" or "working people", but these categories divide the proletariat, which includes many people who aren't in unions or don't work. But it is sometimes effective to counter the media by pointing out that even if their assumptions were true, their conclusions would not follow. This will only work if we remember that we are on enemy ground from the outset.
Guilt is a powerful instrument of social control. There is a constant barrage of propaganda trying to make white people, and particularly, white men, feel guilty for the accidents of their birth. One effect of this is that white working class people are blackmailed into keeping quiet about their own condition. Another is to provoke a racist reaction to the anti-white racism of the media. The different varieties of racism reinforce each other.
Do you answer the ideologues by "fist-fucking them with the facts", to cite Jim's purple prose again, or by pointing out that their claims are red herrings? I think you need to do both. Jim generally chooses the first, and occasionally this leads him into a liberal trap. Explaining in great detail where poor whites came from, and how they've been used and exploited, almost gives the impression that he's competing with the liberals on their own terms: here's another oppressed group to whine about. Hey, white boy, it's ok! You're descended from victims, not oppressors! He even talks about his own origins, as if, like an American leftist, he needs to say where he comes from before telling us what he thinks. His overdone explanation of his white trash "roots" could be read as a parody: "Speaking as a half-Irish redneck...", instead of "as a gay Mexican...", or whatever. But eventually, it becomes clear that he really does identify with white trash.
Jim's identity politics is akin to the workerism of the late British anarchist paper Class War. But Class War never whined: they glorified working class victories, not complained about their defeats. In America today, there are precious few successes to brag about, particularly among the congenital losers Jim champions.
Occasionally, Jim even defends blue-collar conservative resentment against college kids and foreigners coming over here and taking "our" jobs. But his description of the working class he lives and works with tends to undermine his pride in them. A moron in Jim's local bar sums it up: "Working people built this fuckin' country, and they don't give a damn about us." It's difficult to avoid the thought that, if the working class is stupid enough to swallow patriotism, it deserves to lose. At least, until it sees through this trash, it is bound to stay at the bottom of it. Class pride is not the same as class consciousness. Being proud of the accident of being born working class is as ridiculous as being proud of your skin color. And you can change your class, if you're clever and ruthless enough.
It takes courage to stand up against the liberal establishment, and
despite its faults, you should support Jim by obtaining this book. "Being
called a racist can ruin a career just like communist blacklisting could
destroy someone in the fifties." In the current anti-right, anti-white
political climate, The Redneck Manifesto is an important addition
to the arsenal of anyone who wants to puncture the liberal concensus with
a few salvoes of sarcasm.