tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post455438110543880283..comments2023-12-22T08:44:24.389-05:00Comments on threewayfight: U.S.: Neo-nazis charged over Obama 'assassination plot'Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-77148249284563767512008-11-18T10:29:00.000-05:002008-11-18T10:29:00.000-05:00I’d also like to see something on the election.Som...I’d also like to see something on the election.<BR/><BR/>Some radical leftists are probably trying to figure out to relate to an Obama presidency and understand the significance of the first African-American President in history for an analysis that has made the institution of white supremacy a critically defining feature of American capitalism. There may be some disorientation on the left. Many on the Left no doubt look to an Obama presidency as creating an opening for progressive change, e.g., Howard Zinn’s piece at Znet, “Obama’s Historic Victory.” At CounterPunch.org you can find more skeptical, and maybe more realistic appraisals of the Obama candidacy and the shape of his coming administration. <BR/><BR/>To MAR: So, what are your thoughts? (I’m not a member of BTR or 3-W-F, incidentally.) Are you being sarcastic when you say Obama’s election represents a “vibrant exercise of multi-racial democracy”? And what is a “Middle American Radical”?<BR/><BR/>Another way of thinking about this claim about Obama and “multi-racial democracy” can be found in J. Sakai’s argument about the “desettlerization” of U.S. empire, in his essay, “The Shock of Recognition,” in the collection, Confronting Fascism, written as a response to D Hamerquist’s, “Fascism & Anti-Fascism.” Sakai sees a transnationalization, or globalization of the “U.S.” empire which is partly registered by the growing presence of people of color in high levels of the state apparatus – e.g., Rice, Powell, and others in the Bush Administration. He argues that this globalization of empire is disrupting the system of white-skin privilege, which creates the potential for a white fascist mass movement: while white preference will be around for a long time, “the big guys are sending a message down to ordinary white men. It’s like a bomb. In the new globalized multicularal capitalism…the provincial, sheltered white settler life of America is going to be as over as the white settler life of the South African 'Afrikaners’ is” (pp.96-97). <BR/><BR/>Sakai’s reasoning about globalization's undermining of white privileges, and fascism, is in accord with a lot of what’s been said on on 3-W-F. Sakai also makes me think of Obama in terms of this new, “multicultural, globalized capitalism.” (I put US in quotation marks above because of the view, advanced by Hamerquist, that a global ruling class is ascendant and that the concept of “US imperialism” is increasingly inadequate in a globalized capitalism. Hamerquist’s position is of course also controversial.)<BR/><BR/>Nick ParetskyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-65407484277530640102008-11-13T22:31:00.000-05:002008-11-13T22:31:00.000-05:00Word. True dat. And for those BTR heads analysis.....Word. True dat. And for those BTR heads analysis...Where's that, hmm? Y'all sleeping, or what? People are studying DuBois's "Black Reconstruction," but there's nothing to stay on a black man winning the White House? On the heels, of what is arguably, the most vibrant exercise of multiracial democracy in America, and the world, for that matter.<BR/><BR/>Middle American Radical <BR/>Red State, USAAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-75290866673032537712008-11-06T09:26:00.000-05:002008-11-06T09:26:00.000-05:00i'm interested to see a threewayfight piece on the...i'm interested to see a threewayfight piece on the recent u.s. presidential election.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com