“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..."

 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."