This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Migrants' rights demonstrations: Where are the whites?

By HC116, April 27, 2006

The lack of white worker and even white liberal attendance at demonstrations for migrants' rights during the past several months is so obvious that pointing it out provokes no refutation except from the most stubborn people with fantasies of white socialist revolution, and the most intransigent believers in the myth of white leftism. The occasional Euro-Amerikan who comes out to a demonstration expresses shock and dismay. When a white persyn is seen at a demonstration, it is literally a "Kodak moment."

For sure, white people do come out, but are often middle-class elites, religious people, students, gay immigration equality supporters, recent European migrants (many of whom have not assimilated into the Euro-Amerikan nation), or people with strong memories of their ancestors' migration experience -- in other words people who might be expected to show up because of some objective self-interests, or deep-seated convictions. Others simply have friends or employees who are migrants.

Euro-Amerikan people are not showing up in numbers remotely proportional to their number in the population, even in Southwestern cities with relatively few whites or cities considered liberal. On the other hand, those who do show up are there for a definite reason. So, what do we make of suggestions that white people are acting against their self-interests by not demonstrating for migrants' rights more vocally and supporting migrants' rights in other ways? In fact, it is as MIM has said for years: the vast majority of Euro-Amerikans are oppressors and reactionary, and have neither the self-interest nor the will to lend any tangible support to most movements of the oppressed. The majority of Euro-Amerikans don't support revolutionary movements. Neither do they support other movements of the oppressed.

There are many anecdotes, some published, reflecting on the lack of Euro-Amerikan participation in demonstrations. Some people have drawn a similarity between the demonstrations and the 1963 March on Washington during the civil rights movement. Actually, relatively more whites took part in the March on Washington than have taken part in recent demonstrations for migrants' rights. So, not only have Euro-Amerikans learned no lesson, they have gone backwards, isolating the oppressed even more while trying to drive mass demonstrations in a conservative direction. It is long past time to acknowledge the truth about the thoroughgoing reactionary nature of the Euro-Amerikan nation and continue building movements that are sharply opposed to white nationalism -- movements that have broken with the ideologies and tendencies of the different reactionary Euro-Amerikan classes.

Euro-Amerikans have more income, leisure time, and means of transportation. And they have a lower incarceration rate. When we look at these things, there is no excuse. Euro-Amerikans sometimes show up in large numbers at antiwar demonstrations to absolve themselves of complicity for the wars they started, while putting forth chauvinistic white-worker and middle-class demands. Ultimately, it is the oppressed, not the oppressors, who have defeated, and are going to, defeat the reactionary wars of the oppressor nation. When it comes to a movement against repression right here in the United $tates, suddenly Euro-Amerikans are almost nowhere to be found. In the ensuing litany of bogus excuses, we hear racist ones, such as, rally organizers don't speak enough English; they wouldn't feel comfortable being the only white persyn at a rally with so many people of color, etc. One of the most disingenuous excuses is that the English-language mainstream media doesn't report time and location details of upcoming demonstrations, though some mainstream papers have, and lack of mainstream coverage doesn't stop Euro-Amerikans from coming out to antiwar demonstrations with white-dominated messages.

That is not to deny that there is a disconnect, indeed, a gaping fissure, between Euro-Amerikans and oppressed nationalities in the United $tates. The racially integrated society and even the racially integrated workplace is largely a myth. Lack of intercommunication is an issue. Still, this does not explain Euro-Amerikans' lack of internal motivation. If they truly had a fundamental interest in opposing the anti-migrant movement, they would produce their own leadership to organize themselves, or mobilize each other to follow a leadership chosen by the oppressed. We see self-motivation in some Catholic and other Christian groups. We see self-motivation in Jewish groups. When it comes to other demographic groups overlapping with the Euro-Amerikan nation, however, there is hardly any self-motivation, and where there is, much of it is just exploitive self-interest or accomodation to the increasing voting power of migrants' communities and families.

Looking back at some published proceedings of Amerikan labor union conventions over the past several years, what we see are trite, empty statements about working-class unity, Amerika's "immigrant" (settler) heritage, and the supposedly tolerant traditions of the white-supremacist Amerikan labor movement. There is conniving and often open support for border repression, and a chauvinist attitude toward temporary migrant workers. The rank-and-file white workers unburdened by bureaucratic diplomatic pretensions are even more reactionary. Within the Euro-Amerikan nation, opposition to increased immigration restrictions has mostly come from religious groups, capitalists, and political elites and economists.

Much migration, documented and undocumented, increases the already parasitic wages of U.$. citizen workers. However, from the economic and nationalist standpoint of the Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy, permanent open borders are not in their interests. When the social and economic interests, and subjectivity and political behavior, of a class line up so well, people should deal with reality, not try to obscure it with rhetoric about common interests between the settler imperialist oppressors and the oppressed.

Obviously, the point here is not to encourage whites to attend demonstrations just for the sake of it, or to encourage underground revolutionaries to form contingents in demonstrations. However, few Euro-Amerikans are in that situation. Demonstrations are only one aspect of national struggle and other progressive movements, and some Euro-Amerikans playing the establishment game are doing things beind the scenes (in academia, think tanks, political offices, etc.), but demonstrations can reflect how future struggles are going to play out. If Euro-Amerikans don't support migrants' rights, they aren't going to support national liberation struggles either. If Euro-Amerikans will not even oppose the fascist repression of migrants looming on the horizon, and which already exists in some instances, they cannot be relied on to oppose the larger imperialist system and repression machine either.

Riled-up whites support fascism, not migrants' rights

If a membership figure quoted in a recent Associated Press article is to be believed, one organized Minuteman anti-migrant vigilante group is, after only one year of intense organizing, larger than all groups claiming to be leftist in the United $tates. The purported number of members seems doubtful, but the Minutemen are unquestionably mainstream, as it has been for almost a year. Polls indicate that majorities of Euro-Amerikans have supported the Minutemen -- as well as increased border-militarization, crackdowns on undocumented migrants, building more deadly border fences, and further immigration restrictions. Mainstream TV networks such as CNN have treated the Minutemen as a mainstream group. "Minutemen" is literally a household word, with conservative Reader's Digest having recently run a sympathetic article about the Minutemen. Reader's Digest is known as a "family" magazine.

The Minutemen are imitating Ku Klux Klan anti-migrant vigilantes. Mainstream Amerikkkan support for the Minutemen is all too typical. Yet, many of those who a year ago were trying to portray the Minutemen as an isolated fringe group, distant from mainstream white Amerika, are now defending a legislative process in Congress that can only lead to increasing the repression of migrants.

Migration issues have been framed in a reactionary way. Within the so-called immigration reform debate, the Minutemen and their neo-Nazi backers drew the line so far to the right that anything to the "left," even the infamous HR 4437 and proposals to deport migrants through a gradual process of "attrition" and a series of roundups, rather than immediate mass deportation, seemed preferable. MIM was absolutely correct to reject compromising with white nationalism and resolutely oppose white-nationalist approaches and formulations on migration, especially when they were raised not by migrant workers trying to prove their worth to Euro-Amerikans but by Euro-Amerikans themselves and their lackeys. Those who fostered the view that the Minutemen were merely a fringe group and took a "pragmatic" approach to other white nationalists -- the majority of Euro-Amerikans -- are now helping reactionaries move forward with their strategic planning discussion to repress migrants.

Euro-Amerikan-dominated labor unions and "socialist" groups with a lot of resources are trying to inject chauvinist ideas into migrants' rights demonstrations. They are calling for legalization for "immigrants," but not open borders, and are suspiciously silent about migrants who don't want to stay in the United $tates permanently. More sophisticated rhetoric claims to oppose increased immigration and border enforcement but accepts some level of imperialist border repression as necessary. These things directly fuel efforts to increase anti-migrant repression while bribing a subgroup of undocumented migrants in the United $tates with imperialist-country privileges. "Full legalization," "unconditional," "immediate," etc., are put forth as maximum demands but in some cases are actually just more "pragmatic" compromising with white nationalism. At best, they represent a doomed piecemeal effort to increase rights for migrants in the United $tates without challenging the overall repression of migrants.

Most demonstrators are not opposing temporary-worker programs. They are defending against attacks on migrant workers' rights and the rights of migrants' families and communities. There are also calls for Latin American and indigenous unity, and internationalism. Some demonstrators flatly oppose U.$. borders and settler chauvinism. If Euro-Amerikan workers showed up en masse and started protesting temporary-worker programs and undocumented migration (and by implication even documented migration of workers in low-wage occupations), their chauvinist "contribution" to the migrants' rights struggle would be exposed for the reactionary tendency that it is.

Those who say, in the midst of a migrants' rights demonstration, that the Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy is exploited, are raising a sectarian and divisive idea that must be rebutted. There have already been interventions to try to turn demonstrations into a Euro-Amerikan-dominated "multiracial" working-class movement against the "bosses," rather than an oppressed-nation or oppressed-nation-proletarian movement against white supremacy and repression. There is an urgent need to criticize this settler interference in the movements of the oppressed, an interference that works to deflect the class struggle against all exploiter classes. As long as "socialists" and labor bureaucrats continue introducing labor aristocracy ideas into demonstrations, raising misleading ideas while trying to take leadership, MIM will continue criticizing these elements while calling for demonstrators to unite on other questions. Opposing racism and white supremacy, and supporting proletarian internationalism without (wrongly) designating the majority of U.$. as exploited, should take precedence over agitating for the demands of mainly U.$. workers and potentially inflaming imperialist-country worker chauvinism -- especially when the U.$. labor aristocracy is an exploiter class and U.$. borders (which make it possible to speak of U.$. workers as a group apart from the world's workers) are illegitimate.

Hiding the class struggle against the exploiter labor aristocracy aids reaction

There is an article going around the Internet entitled "For May Day and Beyond: White People Step up for Immigrant Rights!" The article is eye-catching because it implies that white people's supporting migrants' rights is so unusual as to be newsworthy, which it would be. In actuality, the article is an open letter that calls for "white communities to take to the streets for immigrant rights." Telling half the truth about the Euro-Amerikan role in the anti-migrant movement, the letter says that "the most visible participation by white people is coming from the racist and right wing leaders who are defining and dominating the debate in the Federal government and in the news, radio and opinion pages." However, the letter's definition of "community" is unclear. Are the authors expecting whites to mobilize as a class, rather than as traitors to their own oppressor class and nation? In fact, they are. We're told that the "rightwing racists" don't represent whites and that the U.$. ruling is leading the anti-migrant movement to "divide working people," in which the letter includes vague "white communities." In reality, the anti-migrant movement is a crime perpetrated by the bourgeoisified white working class and extremely reactionary imperialists and other imperialists pandering to the labor aristocracy. Politicians are acting as their representatives. Beside having an incorrect class analysis and evoking a white identity politics centered around reclaiming whiteness from "white racists" who are not "us," the open letter outrageously applies the sentence, "The land is for those who work it!," to whites, taking it out of its original context and suggesting that North America is for the workers of the settler Euro-Amerikan nation.

By calling on "anti-racist white people" to play their "role" in struggles for justice and equality, the open letter also evokes a White Man's Burden type of "race traitor" politics that ignores the fact that progressive change within the United $tates, when it is not justly imposed from the outside by Third World peoples, mainly comes from the struggles of internal semi-colony oppressed nation peoples and youth. Struggle requires correctly identifying the oppressors, not flattering their pretensions of being oppressed for the sake of attracting a few white liberals.

There is nothing progressive about obscuring the class struggle against exploiters, who include the Euro-Amerikan working class, a labor aristocracy. Denying the extent of parasitism and exploitation leads to adopting increasingly conciliatory attitudes toward imperialism, and in fact encourages whites to stay at home while others -- such as media mouthpieces who criticize temporary-worker policies but not anti-migrant repression and immigration restrictions -- carry out their dirty work.

An article published on VOANews.com, Web site of the U.S. Government international broadcasting mouthpiece, blames migration in general, not just undocumented migration, on the Mexican government.(1) The article is entitled "Mexico is Key to U.S. Immigration Woes." "All along the more than 3,500 kilometer border, there are people pouring out of Mexico into the United States seeking better jobs and a new life. And nothing seems to be able to stop them." The article quotes a reactionary think tank and portrays Mexican migrants as reconquistas. Instead of criticizing imperialism, the article criticizes Mexico for not "opening" up enough to the imperialist economy policy called "neoliberalism." The United $tates already controls the Mexican economy and has protectionist policies that are harmful to Mexican workers. Articles such as this VOA one give Euro-Amerikans another reason not to protest attacks on migrants. Reactionaries masquerading as leftists, attempting to demobilize opposition to the anti-migrant movement, have written articles with almost identical ideas and posted them on Internet sites frequented by white liberals.

A powerful movement of millions totally rejecting the anti-migrant movement is possible and would strike a more powerful blow against fascism and imperialist repression than any piecemeal attempt to strike a deal with the labor aristocracy to legalize some undocumented migrants while reinforcing the overall repression of migrants. Trying to reason with white nationalism within this so-called immigration reform debate is a dead end. In the first place, the whole debate is reactionary. It arose not from migrant proletarians and oppressed nations, but from the reactionary labor aristocracy allied with the imperialists and its incessant efforts to repress Third World workers while keeping them in exploited conditions. The exploitation benefits the bourgeois Euro-Amerikan working class.

Euro-Amerikans in general have proved themselves incapable of opposing the anti-migrant movement on the basis of chauvinist reasoning alone about the benefits of migrants to white workers and the Euro-Amerikan nation as a whole. They also ignore opportunist calls for unity between white workers and oppressed-nation workers against the "bosses." Most white-worker support for legalization of undocumented migrants is perversely based on the idea that migration, documented and undocumented, into low-wage sectors hurts whites' middle-class living standards. Some also reason that legalization will stop migrants from turning into terrorists. But a progressive movement cannot be built on reactionary fear-mongering, and such fear-mongering neatly dovetails with arguments for further immigration restrictions. The U.$. media, which has served as a platform for similar sentiments before, has reported on statements by ultra-reactionaries in France to the effect that immigration restrictions stop racism by allowing other migrants to integrate more easily.(2) When there is such a close affinity between the views of ordinary Euro-Amerikans and the views of brazen reactionaries, the unwillingness of Euro-Amerikans to participate in mass independent protests against anti-migrant attacks is not surprising.

May 1st boycotts, rallies and marches will be a milestone in already massive protests against the anti-migrant movement. For the most part, demonstrators will not be pandering to the Euro-Amerikan majority, but rather sending an angry signal to the oppressors and a wake-up call to the oppressed. Some demonstrators will be boldly carving out a path for an internationalist movement -- putting forth indigenous, Aztlán, Mexican, Latino and Asian national unity slogans while uniting different oppressed-nation peoples -- independent of decrepit and bankrupt Euro-Amerikan politics. For this reason, Euro-Amerikans except for a handful of progressives will once again fail to attend or support the demonstrations in significant numbers.

Notes:

1. Jeffrey Young, "Mexico is Key to U.S. Immigration Woes," VOANews.com , 27 April 2006, #60;http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/Mexico2006-04-27-voa61.cfm> (27 April 2006).

2. Associated Press, "France Says New Bill to Tighten Immigration Will Fight Racism," FOXNews.com , 27 April 2006, <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193371,00.html> (27 April 2006).