The pipeline of hatred that begins with the alienated worker and ends with fascist boots on the ground is especially effective on working whites because the entire system of the United States has been designed since its inception as a bastion and generator of white supremacy. White people and people of color alike are subversively indoctrinated into uplifting and even defending the white supremacist system by the capitalist hegemony. Mass media is the modern tool of the always-fascist United States of America in its efforts to brainwash, therefore doing the work of upholding capitalism and all its interlinked evils. Prior to the modernization and digitization of media, religion was subverted to this same effect. Now, the damage is done and both religion and the fourth estate are used to entrench the raging status-quo.
Of course, being rewarded by the system limits one’s ability to see flaws with it. Even those that see the flaws and recognize the dire need to replace it may not be willing to sacrifice the comforts their (potentially) newly-perceived white or wealth privilege buys them. This is an ancillary effect that further catalyzes the pipeline of workers to fascists. This particular contradiction leads to systemic white rage.
Recently, a mass grave of indigenous children was found at a facility used to ethnically cleanse Canada’s indigenous peoples. That is the purpose of every historical program – to ‘educate‘ native youth after seizing them from their lands and tribes and people in both the United States and Canada, as well as other places like Australia. Of course, the mainstream coverage glosses over this by calling the facility a school (technically it was), and then dismissing the 215 dead children as some sort of unthinkable tragedy. Writing the narrative this way purposely keeps people from thinking on ‘the issue’ or even beginning to ponder on the ongoing genocide of native peoples by settler-colonial governments like that of the USA and Canada.
Poor to comfortable whites have long been used as a shield for the ruling class here in the United States. From slave overseers to modern police forces, the brutality and opportunity offered to be a part of the system while looking down on black and brown humans keeps working whites enthralled in the system while they actively serve to perpetuate it. Even without being a deputized enforcer of the state, predominantly white management-class people serve in much more subtle ways to uphold the violence of the status-quo. Simply put, racism, ableism, xenophobia, transphobia, et al, are all used as weapons in service of the ruling class.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
Additionally, so many of those comfortable whites bred in the United States have fully embraced transactional consumption as civics. The more comfortable you are, and the whiter you are, the more you tend to embrace this ‘consumerification.’ People see their status and privilege, as well as their civic power and duty, reflected in their shopping experiences. It is why they possess a craven need to diminish service workers and grouse to the workers’ managers for every slight, imagined or otherwise. Capitalism has not merely rendered human life and human needs commodities, it has made a commodity of time and every concept of ‘life.’
This explains why so many predominantly white, comfortable but working-class to managerial-class people have been against any form of COVID-19 containment, because it means shutting down high traffic areas such as stores, which – to them – is a direct attack on their power and duty as citizen-consumers. What personhood these comfortable liberals (whether they are team red or team blue) still possess feels violated, caged. In addition, the shutdowns were done haphazardly, and in a manner that systemically restricted civil liberties even further for anyone with any type of disability. It also resulted in crackdowns furthering the erosion of the first amendment right to freedoms of assembly and speech.
From the Tulsa Massacre and Klansmen burning crosses to modern school shootings and manifesto-dump mass shootings, white rage and the associated violence is ingrained into the very fabric of the United States. The soul of this nation is, truly, white supremacy.
I ran for president for three reasons: to restore the soul of the nation, rebuild the middle class, and unite the country. pic.twitter.com/LibS0bX1R6
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 26, 2021