“One Drop” politics – the racist origins of American right wing delusions about social reform.
One
of the more troubling aspects of American right wing discourse to
those living outside that country is the confusion between social
reform and “communism.” (One can only presume, given the low
intellectual level of these people, that by communism they mean
Stalinism.) Thus, almost any level of social reform – say pensions,
or a minimum wage – have been seen as out and out socialism, which
is then equated with Stalinism. Social reformers, and especially
those who detest Stalinism, are derided as communists. A social
Catholic like Pierre Trudeau, none of whose policies would have
contradicted Pope Leo 13's Rerum Novarum, is considered a
communist. So too the moderate – very moderate – social democrat
Tom Mulcair.
The
source of this delusion bordering on psychosis long escaped me until
I began reading the classic work of white supremacy and
anti-Semitism, Madison Grant's, “The Passing of the Great Race.”
He states “...the result of the mixture of two races... gives us a
race reverting to the... lower type. The cross between a white man
and an Indian is an Indian, a white man and a negro, a negro...
between the three European races and a Jew, is a Jew"
The US right fears political miscegenation and has transferred the racial attitude over to the social. Grant once again, ”Bringing half breeds into the world will be regarded as a social and racial crime of the first magnitude. The laws against miscegenation must be greatly extended..."
The US right fears political miscegenation and has transferred the racial attitude over to the social. Grant once again, ”Bringing half breeds into the world will be regarded as a social and racial crime of the first magnitude. The laws against miscegenation must be greatly extended..."
This
is just a more nuanced version of the long-held white supremacist
idea that one drop of Black blood made you Black even though you had
a white skin. Thus, any admixture of social reform into the
capitalist body creates a socialist system, not an ever so slightly
modified capitalist one. Thus, with this ultimately racist
assumption, there can never be any such thing as a “mixed economy”
and a country like Sweden where 75% of the economy is in private
hands is deemed socialist.
Such a delusion has served wonders for the US corporate state as it has traveled around the world subverting and destroying moderate reformist governments, all in the name of combating "communism."