Reviewed by Oreja.
In these times of media irresponsibility and meaningless sound-bites, it's hard for anti-racists to arrive at a realistic understanding of the radical right. Are the militias getting a bum rap, as commentators like Alexander Cockburn argue? How much influence do hard-core white supremacists have inside mass movements such as the anti-choice movement? Are the various right-wing movements closely connected or fragmented? What is the real relationship between the government and all the apparent anti-government violence?
White Lies, White Power, the new book by Turning the Tide editor Michael Novick, turns high-powered binoculars on the radical right, and the news is not good. In a clear and readable style, Novick documents the growing influence of nazis, Klan- types, White Aryan Resistance and Christian Identity followers, "militia" terrorists and other white extremists within the broader right-wing upsurge. He details their successful pursuit of strategies to find a home and a base for racist politics in anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-environmental, anti- immigrant, and other reactionary upsurges, pushing them toward the use of violence. Even more tellingly, he shows the active connections between the so-called fringe elements and mainstream U.S. political institutions, the police, the military and the media.
Regular readers of Turning the Tide know that Novick has been collecting and analyzing intelligence about white supremacists for years. And in fact his book is chock-full of information -- enough to make it a practical resource for anti-racists anywhere, and especially in California. But White Lies is more than a factual report. Novick argues passionately that white supremacy in the United States is the product of fundamental economic and political oppression rather than just ignorance or habit. "Because racism is rooted in colonialism and empire," he writes, "it can only be ended by physical and mental decolonization." He makes a persuasive case that the violent right is actually a "natural" outgrowth of how U.S. society is organized and ruled; that it represents one of the options that the power structure maintains in readiness, to be built up or pushed back according to the interests of big capital.
In an early chapter of White Lies, Novick bolsters this contention by examining the history of the Ku Klux Klan. He shows that the Klan's fortunes rose and fell according to the economic and counter-insurgency needs of the ruling class. After Reconstruction, with the old Southern power apparatus in shambles, the Klan filled the gap, helping re-establish the color line through "illegal," state-sanctioned terror. But by 1872, with new Jim Crow laws and a sharecropping system in place, former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the organization, issued a call to disband the Klan. Its services were no longer required.
"Once again, suppression of Black people's freedom, and control of dissident elements among whites, was carried out directly by the state. There was no need for the full KKK organization, although lynchings, beatings, killings and other extra-legal attacks continued to take place."
Later, during a period of Black struggle, labor insurgency and anti-war sentiment in the early twentieth century, the Klan rose from the crypt. It's attempts to terrorize African Americans and radicals, restrict non-European immigration and train European immigrants to become "white Americans" dovetailed perfectly with the needs of the monopoly capitalists as they were preparing to project U.S. power around the globe. At its violent, reactionary height, KKK members included Congressmen, Governors, a future President (Harry Truman) and a future Supreme Court Justice (Hugo Black). The Klan marched by the thousands in hoods and robes down the streets of Washington D.C. in 1924. Nevertheless, Novick writes:
"At this point the state began to pull the plug on the Klan, feeling that the group had fulfilled its purpose and was beginning to overstep its bounds... Once government support was withdrawn, the Klan began to deflate as rapidly as it had swelled up. Anti-mask laws were passed in a dozen states. Indictments were brought against leading Klan figures for financial irregularities and violence. ... Leaders and politicians abandoned the KKK, and its membership dwindled.
Novick points out that the Klan was at its greatest height in the economic boom years of the 1920's, casting doubt on the common argument that the KKK grows in hard times, when white workers are looking for a scapegoat. Even during the worst years of the Depression, he writes, the KKK had limited strength.
Since the late 'seventies, the Klan has turned toward an alliance with "consciously nazi, radical elements, this time with a 'revolutionary' strategy...and a commitment to developing a clandestine terror apparatus." Novick sees history repeating itself. "Again," he says, "the government has played a pivotal role in this new alignment."
Novick certainly does uncover alarming ties between violent racists and both law enforcement and the military. He gives abundant examples of Klan-Nazi operations inside the armed forces, police departments and the prisons, police protection of illegal right-wing activity, and the lack of prosecution of violent white supremacists.
Overall, Novick's exposure of the intimate connections between the state and the violent right is well-aimed, breaking through the fog of disinformation about "independence" and "grass-roots populism" that the radical right often loves to hide in. He insists that anti-establishment posturing within the right-wing movemement is phony. "The right's intent to re-criminalize abortion, and its willingness to use terror to accomplish that goal, gives the lie to its libertarian rhetoric. The racist right is marshalling its forces in attacks on women and gays, and on immigrants, for a wholesale increase in the repressive powers of the state."
Rebellious posturing is blatantly hypocritical in the case of "wise use" anti-environmental right-wingers, who are obviously acting in the direct interest of corporate polluters and resource-grabbers.
But in its emphasis on the complicity of the state in right-wing activity, and the falsehood of many right-wing claims to be anti-government, White Lies may be missing an important part of the story. The rise of the right is not quite the same now as during other times in U.S. history. A serious contradiction between privileged white masses and the ruling class is emerging. Capital's new mobility in the world, its massive use of immigrant labor forces, its need for flexible neo-colonial arrangements, its gradual evolution away from dependence on African-American labor -- all these are calling into question the old "arrangement" between the white population and corporate America.
Part of the anti-government rebelliousness of the far right is based on the objective realization that imperialism's need for white "settlers," white overseers and an overwhelmingly-white labor aristocracy is fading within the globalizing economy. White racists know that they may eventually become small fish in a big pond. It's no accident that "One World Government" has become the right's demon, that white supremacists opposed GATT and NAFTA, or that they insisted on promoting Proposition 187, against the wishes of many of the biggest capitalists. The old Klan didn't blow up federal buildings or make a practice of targeting government agents. So the assertion in White Lies that "what we are seeing today is similar to the 1920's, when the KKK became a mass organization, entrenched in both the Democratic and Republican parties" may turn out to be a significant over-simplification.
Being on the defensive doesn't make white supremacy any less dangerous to oppressed peoples today. The state will continue to use white racism as a weapon against them. Some capitalists will favor, and fund, white supremacists. Under certain circumstances, the ruling class as a whole may promote genocidal race wars and nazification. But multicultural, global, neocolonial politics is on imperialism's long-term agenda, and U.S. elites won't necessarily be held to the old white ways of doing things.
One minor weakness of White Lies is that Novick is not always clear about when and how he thinks the law should be used against white supremacists. At times he castigates the state for not cracking down on them. Other times, he is critical of anti- racist activists who place any faith at all in the legal system. Of course this is not Novick's problem alone: much of the U.S. left is conflicted about whether it's good or bad when people organize for governmental reforms. Does a particular demand--say, to fully prosecute violent racists--function to build an anti- racist movement, or rather to breed illusions about the nature of the state?
Although it makes no claim to be comprehensive, White Lies is impressively complete. It takes a close look at the activities of white supremacists in the anti-choice, anti-gay and -lesbian, anti-environmental and anti-immigrant movements. One consistent theme in the book is that hard-core racists are using such movements to build united fronts, to recruit, to gain legitimacy and to provide cover for violent activity. As their internal influence grows, they also push the movements as a whole to the right.
Novick devotes a full chapter to Bo Gritz and the Populist Party. Gritz, a former Green Beret, is heading up the organization of a disciplined right wing para-military organization (SPIKE). At the same time he is manipulating electoral and other forums to promote a slippery, constantly-changing white populism. Novick is concerned because some progressives, new age advocates and conspiracy theorists have been taken in by Gritz's rap. So he carefully documents Gritz's financial and political ties to the violent racist right, as well as the Populist Party's sleazy role as a well-funded springboard for white supremacists. This material is very relevant to current debates over the militias and the "Patriot" movement.
Novick also includes a discussion of white supremacist activity in the mass media and on the Internet. He carefully pulls the covers off Warren Christopher, the long- time counter- insurgency specialist whose career has been spent "trying to put out the fires of the Black liberation struggle," who helped the Los Angeles Police Department with damage control after the Rodney King beating. Novick even provides information about infiltration of the peace movement by the right.
In all its commentary, White Lies encourages discussion of the principles that must underlie anti-racist action in the U.S. Novick's point of view identifies white supremacy as a key feature of a sick society, one firmly held in the grip of capitalist commodification and addicted to colonialism. He has no illusions that white supremacy can be simply educated away or turned over to law enforcement. Novick is concerned with the underlying trends, not just the superficial appearances; the spiritual as well as the political; the ways power flows in society, not just individual pathological behavior. Another positive aspect is that the book begins with a discussions of solutions. Despite the evils and dangers that Novick looks at, this is not a pessimistic book. As a result, his vision of anti-racist struggle links it to a deep process of social change -- a process that is anti-imperialist and unavoidably revolutionary in nature. Long after the specific facts and events described in White Lies White Power recede into history, this will be the book's most important contribution.
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