Re: [Marxism] Counterpunch: The new rhetoric of racism

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Brown writes:

> In the current Reaganite period, it is the majority of white US
> voters who have shifted to supporting Reaganite racism. The DP can't win
> until a new White anti-racist majority becomes conscious.

Fred Feldman writes:

> But the core problem is that the advocates of change forget -- almost as
> though it were irrelevant or simply a pure trick -- that there is no
> bigger
> change possible in this election than the election of a Black president.
> This will be history in the real.  Not because I have "illusions" in Obama
> but because I have "illusions" in the white working people and youth in
> this
> country, I tend to think Obama will win this election and that the event
> itself and the complex and certainly not revolutionary results will
> advance
> the struggle for revolution in the United States of America.
====================================
Just a brief footnote to the perceptive comments by Charles and Fred on the
Obama campaign: Even should it fall short, it's a harbinger of the rapidly
changing demography of the US which has vast political implications for the
future.

Obama is massively supported by young black, white, and Hispanic men and
women. The older white population, the bedrock of Republican party support,
is declining. By mid-century, whites are projected to be a minority, and
already are in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Hawaii. The fastest change
is occuring in the previously lily-white suburban enclaves and small cities
like Scranton PA, Hagerstown MD, and Charlotte NC, which the Democrats now
regard as "in play".  It's hard to see how the Republicans can maintain
their ascendency as a party of threatened white folks wrapped in the Stars
and Stripes even if McCain-Palin should squeak by in this election.

These demographic changes, paralleled by the growth of the Muslim and other
non-white populations in Europe, suggest limits to the growth of any
race-based fascist parties should there be a comparable situation to the
30's when the North American and European populations were much more
homogenous. But it doesn't preclude wrenching ethnic and racial conflict in
the meantime as the balance shifts and the divisions recede over subsequent
generations.



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