They call it "Class War"

They call it class war only when we fight back.



In the months since I last saw fit to open my yap on this here soapbox, the political landscape has been rocked by classic Republican over-reach. I've been poked and prodded by friend and enemy alike, urged to spew forth some wit and wisdom, some nugget of insight on what was happening, as if I had some expertise or inside scoop, instead of just rank speculation and opinion.

Anyhow, quite simply, the GOP, for years, have sold themselves as limited government types, which is popular in the boonies amongst the meth lab, dog- and cock-fighting, and copper-still types, who prefer to be left alone for obvious reasons.

Yet, in practice, they've proven to be as beholden to the leviathan as their Democractic colleagues to shove their ultra-extremist culture wars down our throats. With so many examples of their hypocritical, fascist behavior coming to the fore, it has simply been quite hard for this here redneck to concentrate on just one case when there were so many examples to point out.

So, I leave it to a New York liberal named Rachel Maddow (whom I crush on despite the obvious barriers) to come up with a perfect 11-minute dissection of the Republican "small government" myth:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I don't blame my teabagging brothers and sisters for falling prey to this myth -- they've been sold a raw deal based on a lifetime of fear and uncertainty.

Whether they be manipulated to fear shadows after 9/11, or to mistrust an American-born President with a foreign-sounding name (in a country built by immigrants, we're all kinda foreign-sounding!), they've been expertly duped by billionaires and their proxies -- it keeps the poor saps distracted, keeps them fearing their neighbors more than the corporate executive who is the REAL danger to their lives and livelihoods.

And, let's take a moment to remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which claimed the lives of 146 garment workers -- 129 women and 17 men -- who died from the fire or jumped to their deaths on 25 March 1911, just 100 years ago.

Weeks before, many of the workers -- mostly young, mostly recently-immigrated -- had tried to organise for better working conditions in the factory, and had been beaten and arrested by the cops, who, like now, served to protect the rich from the poor. The factory owners -- captains of industry who made millions off the labor of these poor women -- refused to provide a safe working environment in favor of more profits, and 146 people lost their lives to greed as a result.

The tragedy inflamed public passions and jump-started the American labor movement. Industry, unwilling to provide labor with a sliver of the wealth it had created, was forced to reluctantly bend slightly, giving workers the barest crumbs of benefits, benefits they've sought to take back piece by piece over the years.

And just 100 years later, the Republicans in Congress and in statehouses across the country seek to destroy organised labor -- which would have died an inglorious death on its own if left to its own devices -- at the behest of billionaires. And just as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire jump-started the American labor movement, so to the Republican/Corporate fascist over-reach will revive the American labor movement.

To that, I gotta give thanks to them short-sighted sumbeaches who done more for organised labor in a few short months than 100 years of shop-floor organising.

21st century nativism, or, Arizona, find yourself another country to be part of....

A lot to be said about SB1070, the anti-minority law passed in Arizona. If it was just a simple matter of a rogue state testing the limits of states rights versus primacy of federal law, it would be a simple matter of striking down the law as unconstitutional and telling Arizona, a la Phil Ochs, that it needed to find itself another country to be part of.

But it's not just about Arizona -- the old spectre of nativism has once again risen its ugly head from restless slumber and has spread across the nation like a cancer. Arizona is not the cause of this, it is (and I hate being cliche, but...) just the symptom.

21st century nativism isn't any nicer, or any less racist, or more refined than 19th century nativism, and the whelps of immigrants long dead should be ashamed at becoming the ugly hateful xenophobes that kept our immigrant ancestors "in their place," forcing assimilation as a "benefit" of living and working at reduced wages than their native-born neighbors, which further bred resentment and division amongst the working class, deflecting attention from what should have been the true target of working class resentment.

I don't really need to spend a lot of time detailing the racist agenda of the authors and supporters of SB1070 -- those racist roots are indisputable. The law was conceived of by far-right organisations, meant to specifically target poor Latinos, the leadership of the Arizona GOP has actively supported -- and been supported by -- openly-racist white separatists and supremacists. This is fact. The evidence is there from multiple sources. And more troubling is that direction and support wasn't just anchored in Arizona, but also in Washington, where the intent is to spread this fascism to other states.

So when you hear xenophobic supporters of the law insist it is not racist, they are either lying or willfully ignorant. They may wax philosophical about the basis of SB1070, they may try to put an intellectual spin on their racism, but there is no way around it -- the law they support was specifically intended to target Arizona's minority community.

The first victims of this law -- even before it officially goes into effect -- have been American-born Hispanics, caught without birth certificates, detained, handcuffed, and arrested for being unable to prove, on the spot, their country of origin. Fellow Americans are being asked for "papers, please" -- that old bogeyman we were warned about when criticising Nazi Germany, Soviet Europe, and Apartheid South Africa -- and true to form, 21st-century nativists in positions of power have now adopted these tactics.

The issue in Arizona isn't about so-called "illegal" immigrants, it goes back to working class resentment towards cheaper labor, and xenophobia, and the old school nativism rearing its ugly head once again is unbecoming the mutts of America, and a betrayal of our roots as a nation, where we welcomed -- with open arms, and frankly with ulterior economic motives -- those coming to America to make a better life. It's the image we've projected as a nation, and we can't credibly turn that back now that we're "all filled up".

My ancestors came from Ireland and Poland. The Irish and Polish experience in America was one of forced and dehumanizing assimilation. But at least outwardly we fit in, so long as we behaved like little croppies and lay down. That experience isn't specific to the Irish and Polish immigrants, of course -- Italians had their own period of forced assimilation, the Chinese brought in to build California had their own period, and so on.

I embrace the promise and privilege of immigration to the United States -- the promise of new-found religious, social and political freedom, the privilege of living in arguably the best (ideally, if not realistically) country in the world.

I also embrace the notion that no person is illegal, and borders are artificial man-made socio-political constructs, nothing more than gang warfare writ large on national scales, with each gang "protecting" their turf. In that context, "legal" immigration is simply a matter of getting permission from a gang to live and work in their territory, on their terms and conditions.

An early exchange I had with someone about SB1070 had the other person mentioning the so-called "social contract" that "we have agreed to." It was argued that we do not get to go to a buffet of laws and cherry-pick which ones we agree to and which ones to ignore -- it is an all-or-nothing deal. Examples of immigrant myths were given -- double-dipping of unemployment insurance and benefiting from infrastructure upkeep, all while being allowed to immigrate illegally.

Now, if you are going to bring up this "social contract" which "we all have agreed to," let's apply it absolutely and universally. Let's not exempt the ruling class and their lapdog allies and target the working class when it is convenient, "buffet style." I never signed or agreed to this social contract, and I don't know anybody else who did. Frankly, if we're living under the provisions of this mythical contract, I want a do-over, because it absolutely is not applied fairly, or absolutely, or universally, and most of the inequitable application is done according to class and race.

America benefits from the presence of immigrants, illegal or otherwise. The work and services they provide (hard work for lower pay, with little to no safeguards), the taxes they pay (sales tax, for instance), the money they pump into local economies (from rent, purchases, etc), would absolutely be missed if they suddenly and magically vanished and we woke up to a whiter shade of America tomorrow.

But this isn't meant as a defense of illegal immigrants. It is an attack on 21st century nativism, born and bred in racist xenophobia. That is more of a threat to America than the spectre of hard-working, law-abiding immigrants. As a nation of immigrants, we are obligated to be better than that, collectively.

The working class -- our class -- must not give aid and comfort to the ruling class, the sole beneficiary of artificial divisions within the working class. Fascism must burn. It must not be given respite in attacks from progressive elements. This IS class warfare, masked in racism. The ruling class really isn't worried about illegal immigration -- their primary concern is fear that the working class -- our class -- will unite against them, rise up against them, and break our chains of wage slavery that keep us in their bondage. THAT is why false divisions are created and fostered, and why we must work hard to break down those walls that divide us.

Is it all bleak? Widespread outrage at this law, within Arizona and from most other states, at least gives us hope that correct-thinking people recognise the futility of an America based on exclusion and discrimination, and hopefully serves as a warning to other 21st century nativists that we are not going to peacefully go back to the America of the 1800s. It remains to be seen if Arizona is really a lost cause, but hopefully it is at least a fire-break against similar cancerous legislation worming its way through other states.

Vigilance!