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.
Currently, no such progressive identity exists for the US at a national scale. The US undeniably has a culture, but it’s components are completely built by white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism.
However, I’d say that the US has a wide variety of smaller subcultures which do have elements of a progressive identity to pull from. The first example is of course the black population and their relationship to liberation struggles. Of course there’s the various native peoples who are still confronting settler colonialism. The various communities who are, or have been, undocumented/face the contradictions of the US immigration system have also developed some progressive cultural identity.
All these groups have faced the effects of US imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy, and so they act as a sort of counter culture. Yet they are still undeniably a part of wider US culture, but I think they’re roll in influencing the current US culture is actually another way for the dominant white culture to license their own bigotry. They take the advances of these struggles and appropriate it to their own identity, diluting it of its revolutionary charecter. The white dominant culture also uses its physical proximity to these subcultures as a way to dismiss notions of bigotry and entrap those within white culture into reaction.
As I said at first, there exists no progressive national identity for denizens of the US to pull from. However by studying the progressive sub cultures of the marginalized in US soceity, I think we can arrive at a conclusion for how to construct such an identity. All the progressive subcultures subsumed into the greater reactionary whole all built their progressive charecter in their struggle against US hedgomony.
Therefore, it’s my opinion that some kind of progressive identity will be forged in the process of anti-imperialists building dual power against the state apparatus. In the process of that struggle, a progressive, anti-imperialist shared culture will gradually manifest to counter act the reactionary US culture which currently exists.
In order to build these structures, we must learn from what worked in the past from the marginalized Americans liberation struggles.
Those are my thoughts on the matter as a US denizen.
I think their role in influencing the current US culture is actually another way for the dominant white culture to license their own bigotry. They take the advances of these struggles and appropriate it to their own identity, diluting it of its revolutionary charecter. The white dominant culture also uses its physical proximity to these subcultures as a way to dismiss notions of bigotry and entrap those within white culture into reaction.
This is a very astute observation.
Therefore, it’s my opinion that some kind of progressive identity will be forged in the process of anti-imperialists building dual power against the state apparatus. In the process of that struggle, a progressive, anti-imperialist shared culture will gradually manifest to counter act the reactionary US culture which currently exists.
I think this is the only viable path.
This is very on the noze. People really do not realize how big and different the US is. There’s a lot of differences of people by state and even sections of state. The only “homogeneous” culture it has is the rampant nationalism and leader worship that’s been installed by over a century of capitalist propaganda. What I like to call the “sportsball mentality” is the majority of their politics. That being "out team good, their team bad, and no thought beyond that.
If anyone wants to see real, actual “culture” you have to gouch smaller and deeper into things. Even then though, it’s very shallow. I mean, the country is what? Not even 300 years old since all 50 states existed? There are like, sourdough bread cultures in Europe that are twice the age of the US. There’s tea tree farms in China that are probably more than 5 times that age.
So as far as what OP is looking for. I agree, there’s really nothing here.
Thanks for weighing in! You’ve given me a direction of study that might be helpful. You’re probably right that an identity would probably built in the act of resistance, something about theory and practice there.
Aside from solidarity amongst colonized people I can’t see a single one
That seems reasonable. I don’t think we’ll see a united front against oppression in the U$ that includes a large number of whites/settlers.
Like, we’ll see some with more specific identities (communist/antifascist or whatever).
I think there’s a point in there about not having an identity beyond benefiting from oppression.
Well, when you build your entire society on the basis of exclusion and othering this is the natural result, I’m afraid. I don’t really consider myself Amerikan because of that (I’m Black/New Afrikan)
That makes sense! I would like to not consider myself Amerikkkan.
I think there is some merit in reclaiming lost identities, I don’t think that Amerikans have to attach themselves to the settler identity, most of them can actually trace back their lineage unlike a lot of us cause the records were destroyed or just not kept. After all, we were considered 3/5ths of a person…
But I think that involves abolishing whiteness and the white identity first, which honestly isn’t really my problem, I didn’t create that mess. lol
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 feel like it is dogmatic to reduce the people who did actually leave their homes to seek a better future
Lmfao. Please read Settlers.
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.
If you strip the settler state of imperialism, mcdonalds and other usually american values, what remains?
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).
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?
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 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 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 don’t think that’s a kind way to interpret what I’m saying.
I think it is an apt way to interpret what you are saying.
The romanticized history of Americans is an intentional propaganda push, and not related to some innate culture.
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.
The nature of the settler-colonial project necessitates giving up personal ethnic origins to become a settler.
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.
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
I just want to point out that the two examples you brought up were in invaded countries, not in Germany itself, so it’s hard to compare them to the US.
I think they’re pretty apt comparisons. Both were invaded, but a large percentage of the population were active collaborators. I think that collborators-resistance-invaders dynamic could be relevant to any conflict here (like the troops are from out of a given state and supported by local chuds).
But importantly, the U$ is an invaded state supported by active violent oppression. It’s basically an unholy amalgam of Vichy France and the Nazi government, and only held in place by violence over the oppressed groups.
(Edit - also those two are just what I read about most recently, not really intentionally strategic examples)
No they will have to cultivate one; the material conditions of settler colonialism and imperialism are obstructions for which those benefits need to be impeded (and currently increasingly being done so by successive US governments as the Global South resists).
Even where one may be able to find it in immigrants from the Global South, it is not a given because there is a tendancy to resolve the contradiction of your homeland having its people and resources plundered by becoming/collaborating with the plunderer (ie extends beyond gusanoism)
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I would also add progressiveness found in Westerners often hits a wall when challenging imperialism sufficiently because it is the improvement of material conditions from Global South exploitation that afforded this; any western “rights” for children/women/LGBTQ/non-white westerners/anti-ableism though maybe hard fought for domestically was ulitmately won due to the above imperialist subsidy - and the reaction and deterioration of the above is directly proportional to the changes in those international relarionships with the global proleteriat.
It’s a tough question. I want to think on it more.
All that comes to mind for the moment is the concept of being a “melting pot of cultures”, but it would be crap in the standard use of it, which is associated with liberal thought and assimilation into white supremacy and imperialism. It would have to take on a different meaning, something more like: an international amalgamation of cultures with the shared goal of liberation and decolonization, with emphasis on celebrating and sharing in unique culture and ethnicity. But for those who don’t really have one (namely, “white” people) it would be tricky to have that as a focus - you could say, okay, have a focus on learning about your european heritage/culture, but how far back do you go to find stuff that isn’t steeped in colonialism and empire? For some, that may be difficult, ex: British or French roots. Whereas for Irish, it’s history is more complicated by being a victim of British imperialism and it may be easier to find roots that don’t seem as tied to the status quo.
And if you just say the identity is being working class, this runs into problems of not confronting white supremacy and the exploitative position of empire.
Anti-imperialist and de-colonial, seem like the most substantively important things, but I don’t know how connective they are as something to rally around in terms of identity. Self determination might be a more positive way to put the same general concept, but in individualist culture might be confused with self determination of the individual (as opposed to the meaning of self determination of a people in a sovereign state). Sovereignty is along the same lines as self determination, but could also go in the reactionary direction of isolationism in the USian context.
To some extent, this may just be a thing that has to develop out of struggle rather than trying to think too hard about presentation outside of it.
Thanks for weighing in!
The only US organization that comes to mind when I think of a truly revolutionary cadre is the Black Panthers. Despite their leaders being murdered by the state, their numbers decimated by the law, and their community programs being bastardized and polluted by the government, they have stayed true to the cause.
It isn’t difficult to find Americans that oppose the Christian nationalist on the hard right, problem is the vast majority are completely useless. They fall into the trap of thinking that they must do everything the opposite way that fascists do and defang themselves in the process while the fascist continue playing to win.
They fall into the trap of thinking that they must do everything the opposite way that fascists do and defang themselves in the process while the fascist continue playing to win.
I see this happening constantly within the realm of AI. Not even open-weight models from China will stop that trap from working.
Class during an economic collapse.
Americans are in the unique position to craft an identity entirely from being an intersectional traitor. From race to nationality to gender to class to sexuality to income bracket to position in the global order to member of the empire
The best I can argue from is The Civil War, but famously that is not shared for all Americans. There also has not been a unified history around it, and even the anti-slavery history of the Civil War has been systematically minimized, and is only recently making a resurgence.
The second best one would be WW2 but agian that is a strech because it often feels like we more stumbled backwards into doing it, and then stayed in the fight to minimize the spread of communism, and then the second it was over aided facism regrow. Heck germany was inspired by the United States and Japan Bombed the US because it was worried the US’s Imperal ambitions would hinder its own.
so not really
I was thinking of Cascadia, often called the PNW (Pacific Northwest) much more, but not enough people seem to be considering themselves as Cascadian, and as my earlier AskLemmy post went, you cannot build up nationalism, especially national chauvinism, and then expect to have it be a vehicle for socialist education and activity.
Really, I was thinking that Cascadia could be introduced to people first as a left-wing movement, and then once people are subsumed into a cohesive Cascadian culture, they could be given instruction on communism. But altho I see some promising developments, there would be significant work building the shared identity from the ground-up.
Lots of Cascadians are, ultimately, progressive. They are built from left-wing resistance to the U.S. gov’t. It’s stuff like the 1999 WTO protests, resistance to the War On Terror, and the legalization of weed that Cascadians are proud of. But I don’t know that these people will resist effectively. Hell, I don’t know how fascism could be effectively resisted with a shared identity!
Honestly, my main gripe with a shared identity is that resistance to fascism must be class-based first and foremost. The entire purpose of fascism is to protect capitalism from its own contradictions, by any means necessary. I don’t exactly know what a shared identity would do compared to educating and organizing workers into anti-fascist groups.
The white supremacy makes cascadia a non-starter
