(PHOTO CREDIT: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)
By Modesty Sanchez
The election of Donald Trump has often been attributed to poor, undereducated white voters who, it’s been implied, either didn’t understand the implications of Trump’s vulgarity, or were willing to overlook his bigotry because it aligned with their underlying beliefs. This demographic has been severely maligned by liberals, who are usually affluent or at least financially stable, and this repulsion felt by them towards white working class voters manifests itself in slanderous, petty insults. There are memes that make fun of people who live in squalor and immiseration, simply because they voted for Trump — the irony is lost on those applauding the memes that these types of ignoble living conditions are possible in the richest country precisely because of the politicians and government that these jokesters sycophantically praise and defend. Not to say that Trump is any better or worse at alleviating these circumstances, despite what he claimed on the campaign trail, but these types of memes and jokes are perfect reflections of liberal elites’ incapability of understanding why Trump’s anti-establishment stance and politically indecorous behavior would attract those who have been continuously marginalized by corrupt political governance. Instead, these liberals laughed at the squalid state working class people — white and black — live in, they joked that because of these poor whites’ lack of education and purportedly bigoted belief system, they were more than deserving of these types of living conditions.
Of course, this tireless berating and deriding is completely devoid of any type of awareness: history has shown time and time again the necessity of propagandistic slander to maintain the power of the ruling class. In 1671, when a wealthy landowner in Virginia, Nathaniel Bacon, wanted to drive Native Americans out of the incipient colony, he drew upon the frustration workers felt at their conditions in order to organize them in a revolt against the governor, William Berkeley. After what became known as Bacon’s Rebellion, the nascent capitalist class was terrified by the interracial solidarity between white indentured servants and enslaved black people because that unity showed how powerful and expansive the working class was, and how dependent upon their labor the capitalists were. To sever any links between white workers and black slaves, as well as to justify the brutal colonist practices of violently forcing Native Americans off their land and kidnapping then enslaving Africans, the foundations of modern racism were laid. A fierce propaganda campaign disavowing the humanity of anyone that wasn’t white was unleashed. Myths surrounding the intelligence and the potential of black and brown people were propagated as a way of fueling white people’s sense of superiority and to manufacture a distrust of non-white people. The white workers who had before banded together with their fellow black and brown workers, now looked upon their comrades in disgust. They were now thoroughly convinced that, while they were still being exploited by the ruling class, their position was temporary, and that, on virtue of their race, they were destined for greater things, while black and brown people were exactly where they belonged. This propaganda has proven to be successful, and the division of the working class is still present today.
Since Bacon’s Rebellion, this ambient propaganda has dictated the society we live in, and has been intensified depending on the point of history. Even Martin Luther King, Jr., in his address at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March, cited this divisive rhetoric as one of the leading factors of Southern segregation following the Civil War: as a response to the emerging Populist Movement that was uniting white workers and formerly enslaved black people, the threatened capitalist class “... began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society...Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.”
New threat, same solution: whenever there are indications of laborers working together, despite race or gender, the intimidated capitalist class resorts to a racially charged narrative that has been proven to be successful in stultifying any dissent by discouraging any type of working class unity. When white workers are led to believe they have more in common with capitalists than their fellow workers, the ruling class can more easily pass laws that not only persecute lower-class individuals (black people especially), but that also codify this bigoted propaganda. As MLK stated, this rhetoric has been solidified through legislation such as the Jim Crow Laws, but more recently through the passage of bills during the War on Drugs (like the ‘94 Crime Bill) that disproportionately disadvantaged black people while also seeming to “prove” the inherent savagery of this demographic.
The legacy of this propaganda campaign is still resonant within our own media class, which continues to use this divisive rhetoric to serve the interests of the ruling class. The only difference is the substance: whereas before this narrative consisted of outwardly racist, white supremacist claims, now it espouses declarations of racial tolerance and concern toward the multitude of social injustices. Suddenly, media pundits are vilifying low-income people, specifically white people, for their “backwards” and “bigoted” beliefs; nevermind that this same demographic is forced to work in horrific conditions for very little compensation, and they’re too focused on their own personal immiseration to get started on their anti-racist reading lists. They’re also, understandably, fed up with these media elites who shame workers using pretentious and condescending jargon before returning to the luxuries of their affluent lives, completely insulated from the harsh reality of capitalism.
While these elites go on and on about the importance of “reconciling with America’s racist history” and creating a “radically tolerant society,” they remain incapable of sacrificing any of the prestige and comforts afforded to them by a capitalist society that runs on the exploitation and disenfranchisement of an interracial working class. Rather than acknowledge the factors contributing to the prejudices they claim comprise the working class, liberal pundits would rather reprimand white workers who are simply trying to make a living and have subscribed to the false propagandistic campaign that has been fed to them since imperialism and colonialism became major fixtures of the Western economy. The only job of the ruling class, it now seems, is to stir up superficial moral outrage at any type of racial injustice as a way to distract from the politicians (who now attempt to sway voters by disavowing interpersonal prejudices and promoting tolerance) that continue to pass policies deepening the economic crisis felt by so many Americans.
Of course, as a way to express the ruling class’s newfound commitment to representation, now black and brown people have been granted the authority to perpetuate this repulsive austerity. By diversifying the people responsible for bombing Middle Eastern countries, or for cutting Social Security, the government has inoculated themselves from any real critique. If one were to express frustration at the increasingly worsening material conditions of everyday citizens, they can be repudiated by this supposedly tolerant and understanding liberal establishment using extrapolating claims of racism, sexism, or bigotry. It’s more than clear, and at this point redundant and boring to point out, that this new mainstream media social justice narrative that champions issues of representation is merely another way to placate Americans into accepting their oppression, making anyone that rejects this narrative a narrow-minded chauvinist.
Though this contemporary media narrative isn’t outwardly racist or white supremacist, it still serves the same goal in maintaining the legitimacy of the ruling class, and does not, contrary to its outward appearance, care about creating a tolerant society in which everyone is equal. It is still just as divisive though, as shown by the persistent ridicule of the white working class, to which America’s existing backwardness is attributed. Even if it were true that this immiserated and impoverished demographic was just as openly bigoted as it’s claimed to be, any interpersonal prejudices its members hold do less damage than what liberal and conservative politicians enact on a daily basis through the passing of legislation that prioritizes corporate interests over those of everyday, working people. If people who use this morally righteous jargon truly do want to help alleviate the wretched living conditions affecting black and brown people, they should stop myopically venting their frustrations on white workers who are struggling to put food on their plates, and instead focus on dismantling a capitalist system that will always depend on the exploitation of working people in America and abroad
