In the infancy of the Trump presidency, a new community defense network is espousing anti-capitalist politics to build coalitions in cities, small towns, and rural areas across America.
Redneck Revolt recruits predominantly poor and working class white people away from reactionary politics. The organization advances an analysis of their class condition and white supremacy’s role in upholding the wealth and privilege of a small, white elite.
The organization’s growing membership comes as media pundits, the Democratic Party, and the United States’ relatively small socialist parties all grapple with how to address the plight of working class white Americans in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.
It is unfair to let poor white people off the hook for their lack of solidarity with the rest of the working class. But it is only through engagement, recognition of the failures of both political parties, and organizing for a more radically unified working class politic that these issues can be overcome.
Redneck Revolt inserts themselves into overwhelmingly white spaces—NASCAR races, gun shows, flea markets in rural communities, and country music concerts—to offer a meaningful alternative to the white supremacist groups who often also recruit in those spaces.
Capitalism is it has utterly failed to make the vast majority of people free, because it was never really designed to.
It concentrates wealth in the hands of a small portion of the population, it concentrates power and access to resources in the hands of a small portion of the population, and it leaves the rest of us in a state of variable abjection. It doesn’t work for anybody except the people who are exploiting the rest of us.
Redneck Revolt’s anti-racist, anti-capitalist message seems to be taking hold in communities across the United States. The organization had just 13 chapters in January but has nearly tripled its chapters nationally in the last 6 months. The group now has 34 different branches, 26 of which are in states that voted for Trump. Multiple chapters have over fifty members.
Phoenix John Brown Gun Club at a MAGA rally in Arizona.
Redneck Revolt emphasizes the importance of teaching armed self-defense to its members and more marginalized communities.
“People need to be able to defend themselves. [We] live in a country in the world where people of color and LGBTQ people are routinely victimized and systematically victimized by the people who claim to be there for their defense.
They don’t like liberals and they don’t like conservatives. They want to take care of their needs and they’re kind of at the behest of all these other parties that are just jerking them around and they’re just tired of it. That’s part of the demographic that we have a lot of messaging to.
We need to see these things in motion, we need to understand the ways in which we could build a Rainbow Coalition, but one that understands the historic weight of anti-Blackness or one that understands the historical weight of Indigenous Genocide or of U.S. Imperialism in Latin America.
All poor and working class folks suffer at the hands of the rich. We all have trouble — bordering to the point of impossibility — making house rent, paying medical bills especially these days, covering food, making sure that our children and families are cared for and it doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s that way because a vastly small percentage of the population hordes access to resources and they’re able to do this because they’ve managed to get one-half of the working class to turn against the other half in exchange for basically preferential treatment.
It’s in everyone’s best interests that we as quickly and aggressively as possible dismantle that system so that poor and working folks essentially have something resembling a fair shake at a decent life.
Mint Press News.com / AA Magnum Analyst Blog Site News 2018.
