Charlottesville: Who Are the True Faces of White Supremacy?

The catastrophic events in Charlottesville, Va. where white Neo-Nazis, KKK members, and other white nationalists galvanized and violently clashed with counter-protesters has resulted in several condemnations from leading U.S political figures.  These condemnations force us to reexamine exactly what white supremacy is.

George Bush and George W. Bush issued a statement,”America must always reject racial bigotry, anti semitism, and hatred in all its forms.” referencing  Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of independence as the moral foundation for their statement.

Similarly, Bill Clinton stated that, “Even as we protect free speech and assembly, we must condemn hatred, violence and white supremacy.”  Bernie Sanders argued that, “The violence in Charlottesvile was caused by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists attempting to spread their hateful and racist ideology.”  My question is: Who on earth do these politicians think they are fooling?

A very simple answer comes from a line in the Malcolm X Movie, “I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what He does.”

Those who applaud the Bush family for their ‘anti-racist’ statement that references Thomas Jefferson, a man who sexually assaulted his slave Sally Heming, considered Black people to be intellectually inferior, advocated for genocide against Native-Americans, as a moral authority, do not truly understand what white supremacy is. What James Alex Field did in Charlottesville is tragic but child’s play compared to the criminal war that George W. Bush perpetrated in Iraq, his torture camp in Abu Ghraib where Iraqi prisoners were tortured with angry dogs, stacked upon each other, tied to leashes like animals, and murdered.  

It’s child’s play compared to George Bush’s complete neglect of the Black community.  Rewind your mind to the floods from Hurricane Katrina.  Centuries of racist housing policies that intentionally placed Blacks in areas most prone to flooding, where they were left helpless, drowning and many stranded on the top of roofs begging for help which often times never came.  That entire Bush presidency can be summed up with the famous line of Kanye West, “George W. Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”   The fact that we have a big, big time geo-strategic white supremacist George W. Bush, quoting another big time geo-stategic  white supremacist(Thomas Jefferson) to condemn a baby white supremacist(James Alex Field ) only shows how soaked white supremacy is in this country.

Next is Bill Clinton, who many Blacks love.  For him to condemn white supremacy based upon the events in Charlottesville without ever acknowledging his own culpability in perpetuating white supremacy throughout his political career is a joke.  Remember, he is the one that initiated the rise in Black mass incarceration, encouraged the use of Black prison labor  as slaves to perform various jobs in the governor’s mansion, his three strike policies ruined the lives of Black men and his criminal bombing of the pharmaceutical plants in Sudan based upon completely faulty intelligence lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent Black people due to medical neglect.  There’s more but he is just one more example.

Even as we protect free speech and assembly, we must condemn hatred, violence and white supremacy. #Charlottesville

— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) August 12, 2017

Political Scientist, Charles Mills  explains that defacto white supremacy is predicated upon the assumption that, “the pretense that formal, juridical equality is sufficient to remedy inequities created on a foundation of several hundred years of racial privilege.” As a direct result of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and enduring racial discrimination, it would take Black people hundreds of years to have  equal amounts of household as whites  at current trends.  Reparations would solve some of these problems.  Despite this reality, Senator  Bernie Sanders  opposed reparations for the descendants of African slaves stating that it was” divisive.”

The reality is, to oppose reparations is to support the current system of white supremacy that inflicts massive structural violence on Black people resulting in Black people having the worst health care, living in poorer neighborhoods,  having lower life expediencies and having a much more substandard living condition than white people. In opposing reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans  is Bernie Sander’s admission that he believes whites have a right to wealth they stole from slavery. It is his de facto approval of an unjust socio-economic arrangement  

What was not “divisive” to Bernie Sanders is his continued support of the Israeli occupation and theft of Palestinian land, adding further to his track record of white supremacy.  Since 1948, a  settler-colony named Israel was imposed upon the Palestinian people by white supremacist institutions like the  British Empire and United Nations, as well as Zionist terrorist groups completely displacing native Palestinians from their native homeland.  What the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people with the full support of the United States government is part of a continued pattern of white supremacist settler colonialism that robs indigenous people of their homeland.

Even further, is that the settler-colonial Israeli Regime fully supported  another settler colony, the apartheid South Africa regime and refused to support Nelson Mandela.  Moreover, Israel had no qualms with helping the racist, apartheid government of South Africa acquire nuclear weapons When Bernie Sanders was asked if he supports boycotting Israel, Sanders downplayed Israel’s human rights violations,  responding, “No, i’m not a supporter of that,” and offered no alternative solutions for the decolonization of Palestine.

To quote brother Malcolm X again,”the Zionist argument to justify Israel’s present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.” To believe that Israel has a right to occupy even a single acre of Palestinian land is a form of white supremacy.

It is time that we look at white supremacy as a global political structure in which whites, through violence, catapulted themselves to the top of the social hierarchy, creating a trans-generational power structure which guarantees them a higher standard of living, wealth, political, military, and social power, at the expense of non-whites. This political system exists all around the world.   In Australia, the descendants of European settlers have more political and economic power than the indigenous Australian Aboriginals.  In Israel political power is in the hands of European settlers and not the indigenous Palestinians.  In the United States, the descendants of European settlers have more political and economic power than indigenous Natives.  It exists in Canada where political power is in the hands of the European settlers and not in the hands of indigenous natives.   White supremacy is a global politcal system. 

The problem is when most people think of white supremacy, they typically conjure up images of  “hate groups”  such as Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, Klu Klux Klan members, and the like. However, such groups are actually insignificant compared to the globalized political destruction that white supremacy continues to inflict upon the world and this should be our true focus when it comes to discussions of white supremacy.

When we talk about white supremacy and white supremacists, if we are to truly make progress in our political analysis, we need to start thinking of governments and politicians, not just  “hate groups.” The Bush family, Bill Clinton, and Bernie Sanders  should be seen as equally as indicative of white supremacy as Richard Spencer and  David Duke.  To only discuss “white supremacy.”   by just focusing on fringe “hate groups” like the KKK, Neo-Nazis and their leaders distracts from seeing the more powerful white supremacists.  

White supremacists rule world governments,  occupy indigenous land in Turtle Island (what is now called the United States), Palestine, Australia, as well as run institutions like the World Bank and the IMF whose neo-liberal economic institutions maintain African nations in poverty.  White supremacy cannot be eradicated by impeaching Trump. It is time to correct our analysis.  Don’t be duped by these big time white supremacist politicians condemning their small time white supremacists counterparts: white supremacy is white supremacy.