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Thursday, July 30, 2015

Racism, Nationalism, Patriotism, Xenophobia and Bigotry

Working class people are tired of living in poverty, tired of living payslip to payslip, tired of seeing the products of their hard efforts evaporate before their very eyes. The times are tough for many of us, where we don't know how we're going to survive. Politician after politician makes empty promises, and still there's no relief for us workers. So we start to look around at who to blame, and it's easy enough... we blame black people, brown people, immigrants. It's simple enough. We're in competition with these people for jobs and resources, so it seems like a logical enough conclusion to come to. Historically, we've always been at odds with foreigners. We can better relate to others born here, no matter how poor or rich. They're more like us, and that's something we can identify with, come to terms with. So, obviously, our natural enemies become those not from here. 

The only problem with this idea is that we've had it wrong for centuries. The lynch-mob approach, the ganging-up on victims defined as of lesser importance, appeals to bullies, whose humanity is stunted and who lack any notion of fair play. We've been kept blind to the true nature of what is really going on. Look around. Who fills council estates and inner city slums with us? Who works in the factories or fast food restaurants with us? Who is beside us working in the fields, picking produce that we'll never really be able to afford? Is it rich people? Hell no, it isn't. It's brown people, black people, yellow people. It's people with different accents than us. They are the people that are in similar situations to us, living paycheck to paycheck, suffering like we do. So why then would we view them as our enemy? When you walk into your workplace tomorrow, where are the majority of the blacks? Or brown-skinned people? Or migrants? Are they in positions of power over us? Sure, a few might be. But where are the majority of those that are at our workplace? That's right: side by side with us, experiencing the same drudgery and wage slavery as us. So, logic might tell us that they should also be side by side with us in our fight for liberty and an end to oppression. Wouldn't that make more sense than working side by side with the same people that rob our paychecks and swindle us out of the products of our labor?

The true interests of workers lie with other workers, no matter what their race or natuonality. Other workers, of all races, are exploited. We are exploited. We work to barely meet our needs, while bosses and the people in charge profit from that labor. We are born and we die in squalor or relative poverty while the rich and the politicians live in the lap of luxury. Who are these rich people? Who are these politicians? Tonight when we go to bed in our overcrowded apartments, our small damp houses they are the ones who will go to bed in luxury, in comfort, with no worries at all.

The blunt reality is that working class people have been used by rich people to colonise for, kill for, work for, and then better the living standards of those same white rich people, all the while sacrificing our own needs, wants, aspirations, and even lives. It really is as simple as that. No one denies the history of what has happened at working people's expenses. Wars, poverty, homelessness, wage slavery... these are all ills created by someone, and perpetuated by us... the same workers who suffer these ills. For centuries we've been used by the rich among our own country to promote their agenda and suffered because of it. Yet, somehow, we've still been convinced that our allegiance is to our nation, to these same rich elite that would just as soon see us die as they would be to help us as fellow citizens. Let's get real, how often do the rich actually give handouts to us poor kin-folk? Do you really think they care at all about our well-being? Where's the allegiance from them, the people that put us in the worst situations we face and spew out the racist, xenophobic speeches?

The heart of the matter is that we've been too busy fighting the people who should naturally be our allies against these injustices. The rich have used our skin colour against us, have blinded us with their nationalism and patriotism into fighting other working people of other nationalities while they sit on the sideline and reap the benefits. For far too long, the ignorant stooges of the wealthy within our own class used words like "red" and "commie" at folk that may have finally started to awaken to the truth of what's really happening. Real socialists hate Lenin, hate Stalin, hate Mao. But we also hate Cameron, Merkel and Obama. These people, all of them, are the ruling elites that we despise, who live in relative luxury while the rest of us work away our very existence to barely eat.

The time is now actually better our lives. It's time to see who our friends must be. For starters, we have to reject the ridiculous notion that immigrants from other countries are our enemy, that they are somehow stealing our jobs, that they somehow really threaten us. Let's get real. Who's really stealing our jobs? Who closes the factories, relocate the offices, off-shore the jobs. Who's really stealing our jobs? Poverty stricken Eastern Europeans or rich CEOs? We're fed ridiculous ideas of the "invading" foreigners. If we're busy fighting asylum seekers at the border, and busy trying to round up all the "illegals" working in restaurants then we're too busy to fight that real enemy, that one that keeps eluding us, the ruling class we keep talking about. If we want to defend our families and our communities, then fight our real enemy, the "enemy within" , our employers and landlords but in reality, we're weakening ourselves even more by attacking fellow workers. The rich people have us so confused that we'd rather be on the border hunting for foreigners than actually fighting those people that create the social conditions that we all collectively suffer in. Our blind hatred of non-native people will continue to be the nails in our coffins (Other nails will be the attitudes we show toward women, the old and the young, people with different sexual and gender identities, people with disabilities, and people of different religions.)

The rich have been very keen on dividing us up as much as they can, by distorting and magnifying existing divisions and differences among those of us that suffer at their hands. We would rather vote for somebody that stands against giving sanctuary to the suffering even though he will still steal our money and exploit us economically.  We consistently get used just to expand the power of those already above us. We'd rather fight against the newcomers than actually organise for higher pay and better conditions.

Deep down, we all know that no matter who we vote for, we're still going to be screwed, and we're still going to be ranting about our jobs being stolen or  the Roma being too ‘criminal’while ignoring the rich that rake in the profits and power. Wake up! We've fallen for this deceit for far too long! No Farage or UKIP is going to save us. Only we can do it... together, as people of all lands and backgrounds that are sick of living like this!

This is an open call to ignore the baiting of the right-wing EDL/BNP, to ignore the racist allegiances that the rich try to get us to buy into, to ignore the illogical and ridiculous calls among the ignorant among us. This is a call to reject the idea that our allegiance is somehow determined by what skin pigment we have or the place of our birth, no matter whether our real life situations are so different. Our enemy is the capitalist class. Our friends are those people who are forced to work for a living. Until we get these simple ideas into our head, then we're doomed. Doomed to repeat everything that's happened for the last centuries. We'll still be here trying to climb out of the squalor we find ourselves in, and our children will inherit that destiny as well, and their children after them, and so on... until finally, a generation of working people realises that we've been tricked. That we've been used by our masters. To meet other working people who really want a life worth living, you can join the Socialist Party.  Hurry. There's no time to lose. We've been losing for too long.


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