Last night, on the 19th of April, year 2019/5579, over 30 comrades and their children gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover in Houston, Texas. We were inspired by some Red Sidarim in the recent past, and the subsequent proliferation of these across the world, resulting in over 35 known Red Seders this year, gathered by our diasporic comrades in jewdas. The internationalism and solidarity of this diaspora was truly felt in our Seder last night. 

Below is our Haggadah which was made for this event. There are a couple of typos, we include it here in its original form regardless. We hope this is of use to people who study Haggodot, or are writing their own. It contains a great deal of original content, after reviewing several Soviet, feminist, social justice, humanist, minimalist, etc., Haggadot and not finding exactly what we needed. Our version of "who knows one" was particularly popular and fun. However, as the newest jewdas Haggadah recently came out, we could not help ourselves but to read from it, specifically pages 36, 53-56. It is a hilarious Haggadah, diaspora and revolution inspired, and likely very offensive to Zionists and Philo-Semites alike. Highly recommended to read this at your Zionist family's Seder, if you have the chutzpah. Without it, we would have indeed had less moments of laughter than we did, and we were grateful to read from the same book as so many others like ourselves around the world last night. 

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom,

Space City Red Seder

The class struggles on a number of sites as a part of institutions, these are workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods, but also within the home, in prisons, as patients, etc. It is within these institutions, the class society reigns supreme, the ownership class uses these to maintain systems of exploitation. On occasion, when under attack, the exploited within these institutions organize to fight for themselves, which can look a number of ways and take a ton of different strategies, the net can still be cast very wide here.

    More specifically this would have us actually building fighting formations against rent hikes, tuition hikes, evictions, workplace discrimination and harassment, wage theft, cuts to race and gender studies, landlord neglect, police brutality, campus bathroom policies, deportations and a myriad of other forms of direct attacks on working and poor people's livelihoods and labor. Fighting formations are groupings of militants who are prepared to take up struggles and fight alongside working class people for demands against targets, over common grievances we have with the capitalist class. A class struggle approach to community defense in line with RR's network principles and current capacities, looks as simple as finding one or more people under attack in the above situations that is/are willing to fight and use people power as their main resources. We facilitate them doing outreach, and match supporters of their broader communities from that of our own, we help form demands and deliver them with such displays of people power, and escalating the campaign and socializing the struggle, as it goes, and try to reproduce ourselves as organizers in working and poor people unaffiliated with the left. That is making something usually much more complex with many more nuts-and-bolts sound very simple.

    This kind of organizing is not the easier, softer way either. However, the methods, when carefully and critically deployed, are tried, tested and proven. Direct action gets the goods. Also, I am not in theory an advocate of “non-violence”, but this work tends to be within most workable understandings of “non-violence” and also “above ground”. Seattle Solidarity Network is one of many examples from recent memory. In the first 2 years, there was at least 50 victories, usually around a wage theft or housing grievance. I am in no way proposing a copy-paste of the SeaSol model into Redneck Revolt, that would not work, nor would that be necessarily desirable, however their method and experience is useful as a starting place for what is possible within our own work. [2] Later in the piece, I will elaborate on starting small and how to get the most class struggle out of a small capacity. I can attest personally that I have also been a part of and central to multiple moments when we fought back and won, and I will say there are few experiences that have brought me greater joy. I've been in workplaces where average working class people have overcome prejudices to fight alongside each other in ways that are more meaningful than any idealistic call out. I've seen real results that also make a difference in people's lives, and I've seen people grow and become revolutionaries.

    The most recent wave of fascism and reaction generally, when put through a class analysis, reveals a great deal of factors that cannot be covered in full here. However, let's touch on a few. Would-be reactionaries turn towards the far right out of a perceived loss of power. It's 2018 and the situation is dire for all working and poor people, to an increasing degree, and standards of living across the board are starting fall across the class quickly. Racism, ultra-nationalism, and misogyny provide would-be reactionaries a narrative to explain the attacks that are listed above. One cause of this has been the historic decline of class struggle organizing: there are no organizations fighting for these people on a basis where class interests can prevail over racial interests, where white people are offered a path to betraying their interests as white people, by uniting with the demands of black and brown workers. There has been a complete void of political organizations that unite the interests of the racialized working class, as a force capable of fighting. We've viewed counter-recruitment a great number of ways, intervening against them at gun shows, trying to drive at the cracks in the militia movement, and develop relationships with individual militia formations, and strategically weaken the alliances these groups have with the far right. However, I think the most meaningful intervention we can make will be in developing our locals as fighting formations.

    The organization recently engaged in conversations over if we should change our propaganda and literature from a “white working class” focus to that of a purely working class rhetoric. The white working class, when organized as such, is mostly a dangerous and reactionary element, however this is never what I have seen RR as. Such a change on paper, especially when we have simply been radio silent on the question for so long, would be a somewhat surface level, superficial change. I do not see the point of revolutionaries coming together in America without specific politics and a way of thinking about race. This has been the central question for all revolutionaries in America. It also would leave the counter-recruitment strategy in a very odd place. I suggest a much longer, harder road, to becoming a class struggle organization which deploys a “treason to whiteness” strategy based on currently existing conditions and the potential for people to break out of them. 

    I see reaction as a part of a historical process, and counter recruitment as a strategy of intervention for all the stages prior to fighting them head-on in the street as emboldened Nazis. With all respect due to nazi-punching, fascism is built on our failed interventions and defeats. By the time we are fighting fascists head on, the most viable stage at which to intervene has largely passed. RR has thus far seen counter-recruitment as a vast array of activities, however building class struggle fighting organizations is the best long-term strategy for counter-recruitment. A common phrase of the early German Social Democrats (which was a “big tent” organization) prior to Hitler’s rise to power was “anti-semitism is the socialism of fools”. While I think there’s more nuance to unpack here, and it’s not a clean transfer, but the idea is the same. Reactionaries thrive in times and places where class struggle has failed them.

    The following is from the founding political document from an organization that existed from 2001-2012 called Bring the Ruckus. The group came from the fall out of the Love and Rage Anarchist Federation [3], and was heavily informed from debates on race inside and outside of Love and Rage:

    “...White supremacy, then, unites one section of the working class with the ruling class against the rest of the working class. This cross-class alliance represents the principle obstacle, strategically speaking, to revolution in the United States. Given the United States' imperial power, this alliance has global implications.
The central task of a new organization should be to break up this unholy alliance between the ruling class and the white working class by attacking the system of white privilege and the subordination of people of color. This is not to say that white supremacy is the "worst" form of oppression in this country, nor is it to imply that if white supremacy disappears then all other forms of oppression will magically melt away. Instead, it is a strategic argument, based on an analysis of U.S. history, designed to attack the American death star at its weakest point. The glue that has kept the American state together has been white supremacy; melting that glue creates revolutionary possibilities.”[4]

    It is on the terrain of class struggle I think where we have the best shot at “melting the glue” that Bring the Ruckus is talking about. I think Bring the Ruckus mostly wanted to deploy this in formations made up of mostly non-white people, as seen in their organizing criteria [4], and all of their specific positions aren’t easily transferable to RR. However we do come from the same point of departure, it is an objective fact. Is there any way to avoid this reality? The cross-class alliance can only be liquidated by an organization that deploys class struggle in a way which challenges the alliance, with targets and demands and mobilizing a network of working class people. I think the preference is for this to be a multi-racial organization, but in RR’s case, one which prioritizes the process by which white people betray their interests as white people. ​

​Why should we make this shift now?

The issues with activist-based organizing aren't exclusive to RR. There's lots of other organizations and general sections of the left which have seen a lot of growth without turning to class struggle based organizing. People are dressing up in black bloc and handing out ice cream and fixing up potholes. The DSA has locals that are hundreds strong, whose central campaigns in many places is changing brake lights. I don't think the DSA should stop changing brake lights because this practice creates an important culture of mutual aid and relationship with the general public, however we can see how this practice poses no challenge to the capitalist system. Right now, we’ve seen a growth of interest in anti-capitalist politics, but all at once, people do not know what to do next. We have to begin thinking around the next corner.

    Every organization has seen it's “trump bump” and RR is somewhat related to this phenomenon as well. We've been heavily supplied by thus far by a wave of mostly-leftist joiners who agreed with the organizations politics on paper, at a time in history where people flocked to leftist organizations, seeing the rightward turn in mainstream politics and the reactionaries coming out from the fringes. We have been supplied with recruits via some very good press (although we know they almost always get at least one thing wrong) and optics, combined with these historically politicizing events (the election, Charlottesville, police brutality, etc.) have moved thousands in recent years which are sort of beyond our control. That is great: we made an organization of 400+ like-minded working and poor people most whom would consider themselves revolutionaries, in a very short time, and that it is quite the accomplishment. However, I think we're pretty much at where we're at, I can't perceive another wave that is going to bring more of the same into the organization. Whatever pink cloud we had around the conference last year, has long since evaporated. We need to start having some serious big picture, long term conversation about what we should do as an organization of 400+ revolutionaries, because I think we can do a lot as this many people, and we're at where we're at. I don't have a crystal ball, but the “join a leftist organization” wave is winding down, and we are in serious trouble if we don’t have a critical look at how we can effectively fight with what we have. Fortunately, we can figure this out. We’ve taken a critical look at our vetting structure and found that it needs some expansion in order to maintain a quality of incoming organizers.

    Most of us perceive Redneck Revolt as a long-term organization, which is good because that is all the more reason for a shift. I am optimistic that we can maintain this as a long-term organization (pending !bylaws), however I am of the opinion that much of the service-work is not sustainable long term. We saw a very active local leave recently (and this isn't meant to be anything personal to them, I wish them the best regards) because their service project had outgrown their capacity as an RR local, and they needed to pursue an NGO path essentially. Others have left RR as well to focus on other NGO/Non-profit work. We need to prove to the class (without being hard sellers) that we are not only people who care deeply about our neighbors and co-workers, friends and families, but also people they can trust to fight and win alongside them. Recruitment this way (and we will still attract leftist joiners when they see good work as well) will undoubtedly lead to recruiting better militants, and our relationships with each other will also deepen. We will ultimately build an organization of people willing to fight and win.

    Armed struggle is not right around the corner. No aspect of our armed orientation should change as a result of this, but I am talking less about activity that we can do a lot of weaving of guns into; RR's future hinges on people power, rather than fire power. I definitely have been grateful to see all the development; everyone's aim and knowledge has likely improved, and while I have always “liked” guns, RR has taken that to another level. We should not look to downgrade our armed work, but if we're talking community defense, gentrification and poverty wages are an increasingly pervasive threat to working people. Regardless, we already have a great deal of knowledge and skills contained within the organization, but we do also need the kind of worker with the heart and willingness to fight that we have, and to arm them and ourselves not just literally, but also with the kind of action that confronts those structures directly. ​

​How do we implement a turn towards class struggle organizing?

By Gus Breslauer


It's 2017, and white supremacy is baring its teeth. Its most overt form has America in uproar. However, we are not in agreement on what to do about this or think about it, and generally why and how this happened.

What's the current state of whiteness though? I'm talking about the relationship that's more between white people and particularly the white working class, rather than white supremacy, which we've understood as white people oppressing black people and what we would understand as the racial social order all Americans live under. There's a lot more gray to it, like there is to white supremacy, but we're begged to ask again and again, why does the white worker side with the ruling class generally, or even worse "blood and soil", rather than defend the black worker?

Amiri Barksdale provides the best summary of whiteness framed in 2017 in "Whiteness Again":

"Without getting too psychological, I want to emphasize what I think is the most important aspect of whiteness today, given the fact that the positive material benefits have been declining. I guess it has to be called a privilege, but it is hard to make the case ultimately. The plight of white workers is just the same as that of the working class in general: dire. Consider that the decline in material benefits is not only evident in job prospects and economic security for “unskilled” workers, but also the wealth lost by white families in the two bubbles and the generally out of control indebtedness of workers. That’s the New Deal heritage out the window, and that’s the last positive piece of “White Man’s Democracy,” given that capital is reaching deeper into workers’ lives and pockets than ever before. Now that I have said that, here’s this last so-called privilege, a deadly poison: it is the sine qua non of whiteness, and it is the annihilation of solidarity: this is the privilege not to know and therefore not to care." Amiri Barksdale, 2017 [1]

Barksdale beautifully elaborates, for the skeptical, the essay is highly recommended and there does not exist a comparable evaluation that is current. It should be understood that this current fragility is totally not beyond redemption and reconciliation, this is one of whiteness's main characteristics, it has to be routinely renewed and recuperated throughout history, as if it were America's biggest unspoken contract. However, it should also be understood that this is concurrent with restructurings rather than declines in white supremacy; deportations, mass incarceration, police brutality and so much more have withstood a great deal of direct opposition. The main understanding of whiteness has become more and more so a "non-experience", white workers (sometimes narrowly) dodge the most head-on attacks the class faces today.

The cracks producing this fragility have been also been made deeper and wider by leftists in very small but very meaningful ways, like Redneck Revolt's role in splintering militia movements [2] such as the Oathkeepers and 3%ers, in a way that strains what appears to be an already tense relationship with the alt-right. In Houston, we saw known local Alt-Rightist William Fears get choked out of a protest for “being too racist”. It seems they have a long way to their dreams of dropping the communists out of helicopters. We're not saying that the two scenarios have much to do with each other, but both express a potentiality. Can we frame tension against the current state of whiteness?

Meanwhile, liberal democracy has spent the last week soaking up the piss and vinegar in average Americans over the events in Charlottesville. This is nothing new, and the hardest thing about fighting fascism is building and maintaining the class forces actually capable of doing this, and defending these against liberal recuperation. We should be inclined to agree with Ross Wolfe [3] that we cannot "extrapolate an entire political perspective from opposition to fascism”. We've seen, as others have said, numerous examples in history at the eve of revolution, such as the Spanish Civil War, where we have joined fronts in the name of fighting fascism, which only led the class to the fascist slaughterhouse instead of a more human society that we envision. This has come with some valid critiques of where anti-fascism has taken us. [4]

However, we are in a bit of a paradox here, and I do not think it is Karl Popper's [5], nor one that we cannot break out of. Communists are the only ones who can make fascism impossible, we are the best equipped to effectively fight it if it continues to grow, we are the ones who can confidently say we not only want to destroy fascism, but all which makes it possible. The following quote from Trotsky in 1934 that has been circulating a great deal, speaks a lot of truth to the Charlottesville moment:

"It would be the worst stupidity to hope that a democratic government, even headed by the social-democracy, could save the workers from fascism by a decree prohibiting the fascists to organize, to arm, etc. No police measures will help if the workers themselves will not learn to deal with fascists."
--Trotsky, 1934 [6]

We wish this was as easily done as said here, as we should agree with Trotsky here. The terrain of class struggle and getting workers to learn to deal with fascists is not a paved road in America. Where again, does whiteness and treason come in here? Is there room for that here, or are we stuck in liberalism's ham-fisted “coming together”?

It should be noted that “traditional” modern anti-fascism, epitomized as "Antifa", is really not what was seen in Charlottesville. Militants seeing this as your typical “Antifa” are missing a big part of what is a break with the “mode” of anti-fascism. Any photo montage of counter-protesters in Charlottesville will reveal a large lack of masks. What good are masks when we are seeking to build a broader class movement? This is a step in the right direction, while masks shouldn't be sent to the dustbins of history just yet, they put dangerously more space between us and the class in the “spaces between”. We should show that are fearless and willing to stand openly, but also that we are people worth trusting.

It seems more apparent though that the hard-line communist critique of anti-fascism is somewhat broken, if we are to leave uncertainty to its business. This is not how I understand revolutionaries to relate to critique, at least not when these questions are raised in the current historical context. Critique is an activity that should be implemented, as a participatory practice. This author was not present in Charlottesville, but would have been, and there is a not a good reason for a prescribed or principled abstention here. There are no decisive fronts for us to avoid or question joining. The liberals will try to absorb what they might, but what harbingers of class struggle (and opponents of fascism) are we if are not able to cast them down as farce?

We should be present and provide clarity, we should make it clear that fighting the fascists head on is very limited, but this isn't irreconcilable with making genuine efforts to fight alongside today's anti-fascists. Critiques must be raised in the course of struggle or they are meaningless. These can be informed and translated from our historical positions, no doubt, but there is no clean or exact replication of these. Instead, we can bring knowledge to locating these questions within the self-activity of the class, rather than a paternalistic view that we must protect their activity from the question. Lastly, the social movements we participate in are routinely contradictory, ridden with failure and defeat. Class struggle is expressed in a great deal of impure ways, anti-fascism isn't class struggle either, but there's absolutely nothing that exist that seems to preclude a relationship.

Noam Chomsky calls modern Antifa a "gift to the alt-right"[7], and surely this is considerable, but “gift” is a certain hyperbole. We really do not have "control" over what the alt-right does, and what they receive as a gift, and shouldn't seek to. Our best practices will not come out of what we defend from the fascists, but what we are able to give the class.

The community self-defense strategy is probably the best thing being advanced currently by American communists, looking back to Robert F. Williams and his struggles against the Klan in Monroe, NC and today with formations like the IWW borne General Defense Committees, Redneck Revolt, and a great deal of other groups who find it extremely necessary to consolidate the most militant forces and energy mobilized against fascism and use them to bring the whole system down. Easier said than done, and we are still learning.

Supporting groups that are intervening with a counter-recruitment strategy is crucial, as fascism exploits what are already our failed interventions. We should actively recruit those who would otherwise join with fascists and offer to them treason, Redneck Revolt and John Brown Gun Clubs (to clarify, virtually the same organization) is the best current formation seen doing this. Redneck Revolt is even a multi-racial organization, something large sections of reactionary threat (militia groups, Proud Boys) also seem to be. We should work to build all different kinds of vehicles of treason, and celebrate a history and legacy of treason.

The questions I'm trying to bring together here involve things that aren't being brought into relationship to each other in the conversations I am seeing: 1.) a confused whiteness in crisis in America and the current state of “the deal”, which Amiri Barksdale describes as “a protection racket that used to provide material bonuses”; 2.) a fascism that is phenomenon in a way, looking more "traditional" in the European sense, meanwhile "alternative" and modernist, without losing the character American reactionaries; 3.) and last but certainly not least, America's full blown white supremacy, the most grotesque attacks on the vulnerable sections of the class, deportations, mass incarceration and a racist police state, which seems the least unlikely of going anywhere.

The sum of these things brings us to an utmost urgency, when contextualized, we can seen racist America is starting to shake up, shift and shake. There are a myriad of opportunities for treason to whiteness and the advancement of a conscious and generalized class struggle. Noel Ignatiev gave some points of discussion in 2014 to the Unity and Struggle Ferguson symposium, which although it does not address fascism, however its destabilizing feature is what we want to put into context here:

“The system of racial oppression did not arise out of a bourgeois plot but out of specific historic circumstances; once it developed it became part of the U.S. social formation. Only value production is essential to capital; racial oppression is contingent, although under some circumstances it may become so vital to bourgeois hegemony that its fall would decisively weaken the entire system.” Noel Ignatiev, 2014 [8]

How much longer is liberal democracy going to be able to expel fascism with one hand and retain white supremacy with the other?

1.) http://insurgentnotes.com/2017/08/whiteness-again/
​
2.) The best example of this so far best demonstrated by this facebook post, but it really doesn't reflect how instrumental the organization was and has been in many circumstances, to chip off pieces from the block, wherever they may fall:https://www.facebook.com/RedneckRevolt/posts/611906929197946

3.) https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/08/18/solidarity-after-charlottesville/

4.) This view is typically proliferated by left communists and ultra-leftists, they have valid points which raise important questions:
https://internationalistperspective.org/antifa-no-thanks/
https://libcom.org/library/fascism-anti-fascism-gilles-dauve-jean-barrot

5,) “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”Karl Popper, Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4

6. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/01/planning.htm

7.) http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/noam-chomsky-antifa-is-a-major-gift-to-the-right/article/2631786

​8.) http://unityandstruggle.org/2014/12/09/points-for-discussion-on-race-in-the-united-states-from-noel-ignatiev/

We are excited to announce our new study, with help from our friends at the Communist Research Cluster, "Revolutionary Feminism". The study is centered around a reader produced by CRC, now on its second edition. The reader contains excerpts and essays from a vast array of feminists throughout history. To view the reader in a PDF format, click here. We have also added three texts from contemporaries (written in the past 5 years) in hopes of weaving the history from this study to the thoughts about the present moment. The use of this reader will help us with an introduction to this very important history, while not being exhaustive, it will hopefully give a comprehensive background with which to make sense of the situations ahead. Our hope is not just to gain new insights to the historical oppression of women and resistance to patriarchy, but rather the centrality of women to revolutionary struggle for human emancipation as a whole.

At the present, our gathering time and location will remain the same, Fridays, at 7pm, at the Montrose Center, 401 Branard St. Houston, TX 70006, Room 328 on the Third Floor. This may be subject to change and I would follow our blog for any updates. We would still prefer you contact us and let us know you're coming. Please also do so if you have any questions. This study begins June 24th, 2016.

As usual, we have a few open "bad weather" days, which may get used, but will be occupied by texts decided through the course of the study if they are not used. Here you will find the syllabus and a map to where we are gathering.

Hello friends,

The Q1 study has been delightful thus far, with many high-points and fun moments. We will be continuing our Q2 study in largely the same way, with little change in page weight, time, location, etc. Please contact us if you are interested.

The next study has a very loose theme binding together some perspectives, particularly "negative" ones, that we wanted to explore. These ideas are not so much ideas we endorse, as they are ideas we find interesting. Please see the study to find more. We hope to see everyone "in the void".

Also, this blog may or may not come to serve as an outlet for participants in the study to publish their thoughts and findings in conjunction with the study, or beyond. We have also discussed doing some events. More to come soon.

Hello again!

Thank you for all of the interest thus far. Those of you who expressed this should already be in receipt of this information by now. This is the public announcement for anyone who might not have yet, for lack of logistical information.

The Study Project will be commencing Fridays, at 7pm, at the Montrose Center, 401 Branard St. Houston, TX 70006, Room 328 on the Third Floor. This begins January 8th, 2016. The Study Project page has been altered to reflect this.

If you are interested, we may decide to "cap" this at some point, so I would contact us to let us know you're coming and any questions you may have.

Greetings, dreamers!

We are embarking on something we hope will be special here. The Guy Debord Club of Houston is a young grouping of Houston fighters and thinkers seeking to learn and grow by way of new dreams and new adventures.

For more information, see our about page, look at our current study, and contact us with any questions.