Showing posts with label black history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black history. Show all posts

New Song: Racism is a Weapon, in The Class War.

It is PRECISELY because most people think of Racism as a personal flaw, a petty hatred,  a weakness rather than as the social weapon system created by the Ruling Class, that Racism persists within Western Democracies.

We need to up our game.

#ToryRacism 

Here's why.

MP Kim Johnson sat on the Education Select Committee, which issued it's report this week.

First Report: The forgotten: how White working-class pupils have been let down, and how to change it

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/203/education-committee/publications/

"In the name of championing the white working class, the Tory-led Education Select Committee report released this week picks up the mantle of the government’s highly discredited Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.

The report calls for public bodies – including schools and charities – to ‘seriously consider their responsibilities’ when promoting the term ‘White Privilege’. 

This was watered down from the preferred recommendation from some committee members, which called for financial penalties for public bodies doing this work. It was taken off the table after legal advice that it would contravene human rights legislation by having a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

It’s a shameful attempt to limit the freedoms of ethnic minorities to articulate their experiences of racism, and to stoke the culture war by scapegoating them for the poverty endemic in ‘left behind’ communities.

The report also pushes a free schools agenda, despite plenty of evidence to suggest that academies do not reduce the attainment gap for disadvantaged children in comparison to local authority-run schools.

Since 2010 there have been 92 Education Committee reports and only two of these reports have explicitly focused on a named ethnic group – both on white pupils.

Instead of focusing on the multitude of evidence that shows that cuts, lack of investment and stark poverty has on the opportunities of so many communities, the Tories once again take the cowards way out by pointing the finger at the red herring of ethnic minority communities.

The use of data and language is highly selective in the report, allowing it to make misleading assertions that the white working class as a whole is achieving less than disadvantaged ethnic minority students."

https://leftfootforward.org/2021/06/kim-johnson-mp-i-sit-on-the-committee-behind-the-white-working-class-education-report-its-a-disgrace/

In short, the English Government are trying to assert that efforts to address Racism and Misogyny are the root cause of the difficulties of poor white schoolchildren living in areas where unemployment, low wages and cuts to funding for social programs are contributing to poverty. The English Government are using skin tone and gender as weapons to sow social discord and prevent grass roots solidarity emerging. 

They are broadcasting this via vexatious abuse of their majority in parliament and it's select committees, and they are quite deliberately targeting the alt-right amidst those  impoverished by 12 years of Austerity who are on  low incomes or are dependent on benefits, the poorer sector of the English population, 14 million strong and growing due to callous Conservative policy. They are saying to those people that the difficulties their children face are being caused by too much concern about Racism and Misogyny and not enough concern about them and their condition. 

They omit that Austerity has harmed children of every ethnicity in England.

The recent Sewell Report which asserted that there was no such thing as Institutional Racism in England is part of this campaign. Denial and then the allegation that those who seek to address the 'non existent Institutional Racism' are creating a distraction that is harming poor white children. 

This is using Race as a weapon. Which is how Racism was invented in the 1600s, by the British Colonial plantation owners and ruling class, as a device to thwart emergent worker solidarity, which they perceived as a mortal threat to their power, privilege and status. The legalisation and Institutionalisation of Racial discrimination was a grooming operation that took 4 decades to engineer, and the ill effects are with us still  400 years later.

I have written a song to articulate this.

Race is a Weapon in The Class War - a brief historical outline



Australian Aboriginals - Genocidal Racism Exported by The British Empire

The Curse of Ham was taken as the basis of the definition of Race, and Superiority in Colonial America.


The Colston Statue in Bristol was Removed  by Activists


England's Players were booed for making a public anti-Racist symbolic gesture


A new song, fresh from the studio. As usual, a rough mix.

Race is a weapon, in the class war.

This is the story of the co-opting of Biblical myth, and the re-invention of Race and skin colour as a tool of discrimination and then the crafting of legalised Racism, in the British Colonies, in the 1600s.

Prior to this period, discrimination was largely religious or cultural, and rooted in war fare, with slavery as part of the 'booty' of war.

The conquered of the colonies would be enslaved by the conquerors, although it often turned out that native peoples were unsuited to enslavement and they mostly died out rapidly, burned out by the trauma of conquest. They did not have much to live for.

This was why the Spanish Empire started to import slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and to South America. They basically genocided the local populations through over working them as slaves.

In the British Colonies it was different : the development of indentured worker systems which included free citizens, usually too poor to pay their way, who worked for a contract that paid their passage, and convict workers, imported from Europe and from Africa, was dominant in the early period.  There were also cases of Africans who had been enslaved by the Spanish, and were on board Spanish ships which were attacked by English Privateers. The English would bring the Africans to the colonies, and they would be sold as indentured workers, who would be freed at the end of their contract, and allowed to enter into society as free people, equal citizens, they could own land, develop businesses and so on.

This was a time in the British Colonies when African and European indentured workers worked side by side on plantations, and were routinely freed at the end of their indenture, and given land and tools to develop their own futures as equals. They formed villages, towns and communities, inter marriage was common enough.

It was not multicultural in as much as it was not an issue because they were all part of the same culture, a new culture growing in the colonies. Pioneers. Breaking new land together. There were various languages spoken, there were enclaves of various European ethnicities. Irish people, Dutch, Germans would live close to each other.

Life was incredibly harsh. Many, many people died during their indenture, and from time to time, the indentured 'rebelled' and took out their frustration and pain on their 'employers'.

It was this that frighted the Plantation owners - that the working class - indentured and free - might unite, and together in solidarity, undo them, take them down from their positions of absolute power as a reaction to the owners cruelty and oppression. The owners needed a plan to protect their long term prospects, a plan for many generations.

Thus the concepts of Race and then Racism were developed over time slowly, bit by bit, to divide the working class of the colonies.  A political grooming operation over a 40 year period, starting from the Pulpit, concocting themes to marginalise, dehumanise and then legalise the oppression of freed black folk,  culminating in the legalisation of Slavery of African people, with conversion to Christianity offered as a 'mercy' to those who were enslaved, for life. 

A mercy denied the Native peoples, who were ethnically cleansed, in a multi-century genocide.

Race and Racism, Xenophobia and Religious bigotry continues to split the working class across the Earth, and all of these protects the Oligarchy, the owner class, even still, and will continue until the working class as a whole figure this out - honest history is crucial to effective political organisation and action.

Slavery - essentially free forced labour - was the primary human 'resource' that generated the wealth that seeded the Industrial Revolution.and funded the Capitalist Oligarchy that emerged from that set of circumstances.

From the initial back breaking toil of clearing of land by hand, through to planting, harvesting and processing sugar, tobacco. coffee, cotton and other materials that generated the first immense merchant fortunes and Oligarchy networks which became political power centers in their own right, to the first investments into factories and the development and expansion of the factory system, Racism and class continues through to the present as a thread of oppression and extraction upon which the wealth of Europe and America is founded, with European and American controlled colonial assets protected by military and political dominance. This is why England and America and France, and others, are engaged in combat operations continuously .

Racism is a weapon in the class war.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/05/racism-is-not-xenophobia-both-are.html

MP3 version:



CD version:




FOR FIVE LONG YEARS YOU WORKED SIDE BY SIDE
FOR FIVE LONG YEARS YOU BOTH SHARED THAT LIFE
FOR FIVE LONG YEARS YOU WORKED THE MASTERS FIELDS
AFTER FIVE LONG YEARS YOU BOTH WERE FREED

YOU WERE GIVEN A PLACE ON WHICH TO BUILD A HOME
BUILDING A NEW COUNTRY, YOU WERE NOT ALONE
YOU WERE GOOD NEIGHBOURS, YOU WORKED YOUR OWN FIELDS
YOU WERE HOPING FOR A FUTURE, A FUTURE YEILD


YOU FELLED TREES, YOU DUG WELLS, YOU SHAPED STONE
YOU BUILT FARMS, VILLAGES, TOWNS, AND YOU BUILT HOMES
YOU OPENED SHOPS, BLACK SMITHS, CHURCHES AND HALLS
AFRICAN,EUROPEAN FREED WORKERS ALL

BUT IT WAS NOT ALWAYS EASY, THE LIFE WAS VERY HARSH
THE MASTERS WERE CRUEL, THEY MADE CRUELTY AN ART
MANY NEVER MADE IT THROUGH, MANY FELL, MANY DIED
THE CONDITIONS WERE AWFUL, HOW YOUR HEARTS CRIED

TREAT US LIKE PEOPLE, TREAT US WITH RESPECT
DON'T HOPE TO EXHAUST US, TO KILL US WITH NEGLECT
SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO FREE US, GIVE US OUR AWARD
LISTEN TO OUR COMPLAINT, HEAR OUR HONEST WORDS

WHEN THE MASTERS DID NOT LISTEN, TURNED THEIR HEARTS AWAY
THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT FOR THE WORKERS TO SAY
THEY TOOK UP THEIR TOOLS, THEY STOLE THE MASTERS GUNS
THEY FOUGHT FOR THEIR LIVES, THEY MADE THE MASTERS RUN

AFTER BACONS REBELLION, THE MASTERS MADE A PLAN
ELEVATE THE EUROPEAN TO OPPRESS THE AFRICAN
THIS DIVIDED THE WORKERS, THEY WOULD PROTECT THEIR PLACE
AS LORDS OF THIS LAND THAT'S WHY THEY INVENTED RACE.

THEY MISUSED THE BIBLE, SPUN THE STORY OF HAM
SET THE WHITE RACE AS SUPERIOR TO THE AFRICAN
MADE LAWS AGAINST THE FREE BLACKS, APARTHEID VERSION ONE
THEN THEY LEGALISED SLAVERY, THAT'S HOW THE JOB WAS DONE!
~~

RACE IS A WEAPON, IN THE CLASS WAR

SO WHEN YOU ARE BOOING AS THE TEAM TAKES THE KNEE
KNOW YOU ARE WAGING WAR ON BEHALF OF THE ELITE
THE OWNERS HAVE CONVINCED YOU TO TAKE THEIR SIDE
USING THE LIE THAT BLACK IS INFERIOR TO WHITE        

THEY SOLD YOU A LIE 

RACE IS A WEAPON, IN THE CLASS WAR

RACE IS A WEAPON, IN THE CLASS WAR





Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Black Lives Matter, and why All Lives Matter does not matter that much, yet does matter, a bit.

Why 'all lives matter' doesn't matter. And why it matters that we know and understand that it does not mean anything. It is merely a marketing tactic - a manipulative, reactionary, childish and ultimately feeble attempt at a come-back. It is empty, void, dull and inept.

'All lives matter' is nothing more than 'nah-nah nah-nah-naaah' - it is a childish, immature reaction to a genuine banner, a feeble riposte to a global movement that is precise, that is clear in it's origin and purpose. The 'all lives matter' banner is not emerging from the thinking and concern of ordinary folk - it does not reflect any genuine emergent grass roots organising phenomenon that has been created to confront some real and serious abuse of power or any systemic oppression. Oppression of ordinary white folk does exist, of course. But it has nothing to do with skin colour or physiology. Poverty is a common structural oppression that afflicts all of us. All Lives Matter is a scam. ALM was created as a way to attack 'Black Lives Matter', to cast confusion about the messaging of BLM, to gaslight a portion of the white population, who are distressed, angry, who feel their genuine concerns are not being represented within the political system, whose pain is being exploited by the ruling classes in order to obscure the conversation. The conversation should be about hierarchies of power and violence, it ought to be about structural poverty and class, rather than Race. Race does not exist other than as a concept and a prejudice.

In a video interview with Laura Flanders, Black Lives Matter movement co-founder Alicia Garza said that "changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter is a demonstration of how we don't actually understand structural racism in this country". 

She went on to say that "other lives are valued more than black lives, and that to take blackness out of this equation is inappropriate". ALM therefore functions as a reactionary counter-punch to a genuine movement that emerged in 2013 in response to the 2012 killing of an innocent teenager, Trayvon Martin, who was only 17. Black Lives Matter and Trayvon Martin

Trayvon was killed by an armed Neighbourhood Watch volunteer. Trayvon was innocent of any crime at the time of the killing, and he had no record of any criminality or other evidence of bad behaviour. The killer was acquitted in a trial, in 2013, under a vague piece of legislation, 'stand your ground'.

The movement 'Black Lives Matter' began as a hashtag - #BlackLivesMatter - that coalesced online response to that acquittal, because it was not the first time this had happened, and many felt it was unlikely to be the last. The feeling was that because Trayvon was black therefore his life did not matter, that his death was yet another crime that was not being accounted for, and this was felt and understood as an injustice by many, many people.
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter became a media focus around other cases of race related police brutality that occurred in the years that followed.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is today an organized movement dedicated to non-violent civil disobedience in protest to police brutality. "Black Lives Matter" exists as a decentralized network with over 30 chapters worldwide. The broader movement and its related organizations typically advocate against police violence towards black people, as well as for various other policy changes considered to be related to Racist and associated inter-sectional oppressions.

Racism is both a falsified logic and a real problem.
Racism was invented, it did not emerge as a natural social phenomenon. There are no racist genes.

The White Race as a concept, was invented by the White European Christians who were the wealthy owners of plantations, the elite of the early colonies of Virginia and Maryland, while they were still British Colonies, under British Rule, protected by British Troops. Racial superiority was a Protestant invention. It was invented to divide the working population within the colonies, and to prepare the legal ground for a massive expansion of institutionalised slavery in order to generate vast wealth.

The superiority of the white race over the black race was based on a false interpretation of Biblical scripture to give it weight. Laws were passed to institutionalise that superiority, bit by bit, over a 40 year period. The false interpretation of Biblical scripture has led to many other inequities and atrocities. Thus the invention of the White Race and their supposed superiority over black and native peoples was a political, social and economic commercially oriented invention.

False prophets for profits, if you will allow the pun. 400 years later and it is still the case that White on Black Racism, or White Supremacy, is still very much alive and active within the USA and the UK, and in many other countries.

There is a problem, and it does revolve around the issue of whether or not the lives on non-Caucasian people's matter to the ruling classes of Caucasian origin, and it is a matter of structural Racism and of grass roots Racism.

Leading members of the ruling classes might not be individually actively Racist, (Obama, for example) yet they do permit Racism to persist in order to more easily divide the working people of the population among ourselves, where we might otherwise find political solidarity and act in coordinated democratic ways to elect officials who would change the legislation that keeps the Established Hierarchy in place. Rulers lives matter? It is also true that the lives of all ordinary folk matter less to the ruling classes than the sense of the Rulers assumed entitlement to rule, The Rulers desire to retain, maintain and enhance their artificial power over the majority of the population supersedes all other concerns. This is what Rulers do. Rulers lives matter, and their power as a class matters more. Virus Spread The fact that the UK Conservative government are planning to return homeless people to the streets by de-funding programs for their temporary housing during the corona virus epidemic, or that they were going to cease funding free meals for 1.3 million vulnerable children during summer holidays, until a public campaign by a footballer pushed back, whilst at the same time paying for the Prime Ministers military operated jet to be painted with the Union Jack as a £900,000 PR stunt, gives a topical account of that lack of care for the lives of ordinary folk. Another pertinent example is the disgraceful behaviour of setting up a contact trace app that the Government knew was not going to be trusted (they were warned, and went ahead). They then set up a person to person contact chasing system that could not be effective, run by an un-elected official with no public health experience. Given that effective apps already existed (Germany had them) and were offered, for free, to the UK Government who rejected the offer, this translates into millions of pounds given to friends of the Government being wasted. Importantly, this diversion has wasted precious time and guaranteed more spread of the virus infection. Clearly, vulnerable peoples lives do not matter to the Rulers of the UK.

The policy of allowing the infectious virus SARSCOV2 to spread across the population, rather than do as new Zealand has done, and stop the spread, eliminate community transmission to protect the vulnerable portion of their population, and their economy is deliberate. Whose lives matter? In addition to all the other work being done to address this issue of Racism - and I think Black Lives Matter is doing this work really well and that they need much wider support - I think that a ruthlessly honest history curriculum in all schools and libraries within all former colonial States and their former colonies is essential. The truth will set us free. A lot of people who are racist do not really understand why they are racist, they do not know how they became racist. Honest educative exposure could liberate a lot of those people from their prejudice. Honesty in education could eradicate Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia and Homophobia from our grass roots communities within a generation. Police brutality and Race. Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups. There are similar patterns in other countries, not least the UK. Black Lives Matter has developed into a global activist organisation, with solid, serious work being done to seek justice for cases of police brutality against black citizens, globally and to confront the history of Racism where it is not being addressed. Black Lives Matter has grown and developed many campaigns, and is dedicated and active. There is no 'All Lives Matter' activism, anywhere There is no known organised 'all lives matter' activism anywhere on Earth that is focused on all oppression that causes death and harm to any people, by one group onto another. There is no 'all lives matter' organisation or movement in any nation seeking to draw attention to oppression against any and all people - nada, diddly squat, zilch, zero, a void, empty space, nothing, Not a single cent or penny is being spent on such activism under the banner 'all lives matter'. Nobody is funding and organising a grass roots movement 'all lives matter' that is actively confronting for example anti-Gypsy or anti-Roma abuse, or confronting lethal homophobia or seeking to stop the invasion of Indigenous inhabited undeveloped lands by miners, loggers, prospectors, or confronting genocides, or protesting global poverty or confronting child trafficking. There is no activist group under the banner 'all lives matter' seeking justice through the court systems in any state or country to protect the lives of any group. The entire impetus of the slogan ALM is coming from groups who have plenty of power - white supremacist ruling class - who want ordinary folk to fight among ourselves, who want to undermine the message of Black Lives Matter and use it as a weapon among us - and they are using every technique and every platform available to spread this puerile reactionary slogan, including massive micro-targeting on-line. Micro-targeting “user data is feeding artificial intelligences whose objective is to manipulate the attention and behavior of users without their knowledge or approval.” and "Microtargeting in political advertising: Facebook, in particular, enables advertisers to identify an emotional hot button for individuals that can be pressed for electoral advantage, irrespective of its relevance to the election. Candidates no longer have to search for voters who share their values. Instead they can invert the model, using microtargeting to identify whatever issue motivates each voter and play to that. If a campaign knows a voter believes strongly in protecting the environment, it can craft a personalized message blaming the other candidate for not doing enough, even if that is not true. In theory, each voter could be attracted to a candidate for a different reason. In combination with the platforms’ persuasive technologies, microtargeting becomes another tool for dividing us. Microtargeting transforms the public square of politics into the psychological mugging of every voter.” and “Zeynep Tufekci, the UNC scholar who is one of the world’s foremost experts on the impact of emerging technology in politics, has observed that internet platforms enable the powerful to affect a new kind of censorship. Instead of denying access to communications and information, bad actors can now use internet platforms to confuse a population, drowning them in nonsense. In her book, Twitter and Tear Gas, she asserts that “inundating audiences with information, producing distractions to dilute their attention and focus, delegitimizing media that provide accurate information (whether credible mass media or online media), deliberately sowing confusion, fear, and doubt by aggressively questioning credibility (with or without evidence, since what matters is creating doubt, not proving a point), creating or claiming hoaxes, or generating harassment campaigns designed to make it harder for credible conduits of information to operate, especially on social media which tends to be harder for a government to control like mass media.” Use of internet platforms in this manner undermines democracy in a way that cannot be fixed by moderators searching for fake news or hate speech.” ― Roger McNamee, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe The pattern of use of All Lives Matter falls into this category, as a distraction, a means to confuse, distort, shout down, drown out and thus counter genuine voices seeking justice and an end to racist violence, and an end to Structural Racism. 'ALM' is being worked in conjunction with white supremacist political grooming operations. Questions to ask So if anyone cries 'all lives matter' you might want to ask them these questions: "What are you doing to stop the oppression of all and any lives anywhere? What funds are you donating to what 'all lives matter' activist organisations or campaigns and what are they doing to prevent abuse, and what are they doing to protect the lives of any group of people under threat? What charities or NGOs operating under the 'all lives matter' banner are you supporting that are directly confronting lethal abuse by any party against another? If 'all lives matter' to you, are you actively working to abolish poverty, everywhere? Do you support the immediate abolishing of poverty for all people, everywhere, without exception?" Because if 'all lives matter', and then they do not support these aims, then clearly, they do not really mean that 'all lives matter'. It could also mean that they have not thought this through - it may mean they have been misled, and thus by posing the questions one might offer them a pathway towards helping them work that out for themselves. This is a task for white people, a white in white non-violent action. Either way, Black Lives most certainly do matter - Racism is disgusting invention and a dysfunctional behaviour at every level; it is based on falsehoods that can only be sustained by indoctrination and dishonesty within the social structures around us. We must deal with both, and we must with the violence inherent in one group claiming superiority over another.


Aboriginal people, the oldest living culture on Earth then, and now, in chains, in Australia.
Estimates suggest that a total of 2 billion Aboriginal people have lived in that time span, and until the white Christian Europeans arrived, they were a stable, diverse, egalitarian culture, with 500 language groups, spread all over Australia. The last uncontacted group emerged from the bush in the 1960s. They have suffered horror upon horror, and are still profoundly oppressed by the invading culture.

Black Lives Matter.

Racism and White Supremacy was well established, as an international phenomenon, by the time the European Christians arrived. It remains a serious problem within Australia to this day.

It is one of the English speaking worlds most shameful situations.

It is one few speak honestly about.

It is a crime against Humanity.
What to do, a thought exercise.
1. Acknowledge that all Hierarchy of Violence Cultures are toxic, abuse ridden cultures. Just admit it. Say it out loud, now. Get it off your chest. Be honest.
2. The monuments and structures such cultures construct are therefore monuments to pathological abusive behaviour. They may be very well made, beautifully crafted. But being stabbed by a kitchen knife or a bejewelled, golden blade made by superior Japanese craftsman makes no difference. It is still being stabbed. Harm is harm.
3. Take them down, all of them. Dis-establish them.
4. For example, take the stone of the Pyramids, or the Norman Castles, and re-purpose it to build social housing to last centuries. These are both monuments to Power Disparity that was built to enable, justify and rationalise atrocity and abuse. They do not deserve to stand.
5. Create scale models of these monuments for museums, so that we can look back on the odious history and understand the crimes committed, the harms caused, the realities of the lives lived under such duress. And we can say 'never again' and mean it.
6. Be aware of all and every Artificial Power Disparity that permits abuse to occur, and dismantle all of them. A police man with  gun, and a bad attitude. Not a healthy social entity.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received