the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
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ok gotta comment again, I read their statement and JESUS CHRIST THEY CITED SUPPORTING WW1 AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS.
ILA is fucking depraved. anyone who doesn't shut up eternally over not opposing WW1 is stupid, but I cannot even fathom bringing it up as a positive. Their reasoning is that they also love america, like holy shit this goes beyond settler mindset, that was literally returning back to protect the old world the settlers fooled themselves into thinking they had broken off from for their own destiny. this shit just threw american boys into a meatgrinder against their will for NOTHING, and they are PROUD of it?
I wouldn’t say nothing. Before the US entered the war, it was looking like the Central Powers were gonna win. England and France had a ton of loans outstanding with the US in order to finance the war effort. Had they lost to Germany, then those loans would have never gotten paid. So those red-blooded Americans died for a good cause - making sure American capital didn’t lose that money.
anyone who wants to learn more on this check out the Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry
The Central Powers were also assholes. Germany invaded neutral countries (one of the reasons the war kept escalating), there was the Armenian Genocide conducted by the Ottomans, and they were the first to use chemical weapons and mostly against civilians.
Of course, the Entente was in it for imperialism as they would divide the carcasses of their enemies between themselves. The US was no different. I can see how people could draw conclusions about involvement in WWI as justified, but those justifications go out the window once you look at what happened post-war. It becomes obvious the entire conflict was a meaningless slaughter all so bourgeois could eradicate what was left of the nobility, then take their place as the boot stepping on the proletariat.
The sad thing is, the american populace far and away saw the actual reason the Entente was involved. Before, during, and after American involvement.
For sure. But like WW2 they could fool themselves that it was about fighting evil, WWI England could say it was about fighting for Belgium at that was at least true if not missing the entire context prior to that, Russia in WW1 could say it was about supporting their fellow Slavs which was something their success would have accomplished if things went well. There was nothing tangible for american troops. The most we got was the Zimmerman Telegram
yeah idk what OP means about settlers this seems to have very little to do with settler-colonialism this is basic-becky social chauvinism a la the collapse of the second international and communist split due to the lack of will to stop WWI. These guys are openly (embarrassingly) direct descendants and inheritors of that exact legacy of the failure of the second international. These pro-war social chauvinist imperial unionists were being railed against by Lenin in Europe for supporting their nations imperialist war machine for the opportunist job security and benefits provided compared to other labor (or fighting at the front), at the expense of the international proletariat, by acting as collaborators of war. It's more a symptom of the dynamics of basic old-style imperialism than an internal settler-colonial relationship. Every European labor and communist parties had splits over this in the mid-late 1910s.
Social chauvinism like this occurs even without or in spite of any settler-colonial relationships, because it's a function of basic externalized imperialism not of an internal settler-colonialism, as was demonstrated historically by this occurring even in non-settler-colonies in 1900s Europe. There are reasons that unions are not sufficient for revolutionary societal change and are not inherently progressive even in non-settler-colonies; and a reason too that the ILA has a huge portion of its rank and file and chapter leadership that are black proles also still backing this to the hilt, because they benefit from imperial spoils the same in the context of the job and union itself; as as 'essential-for-empire workers,' they are inherently 'overvalued' (in the sense of when compared to the exchange value of labor-power for other workers, in the value they generate and their importance in 'keeping the machine' of imperialism running and all the downstream externalized contradictions from coming back to the mainland).
The way this is connected to settler colonialism is only distantly or indirectly, in that the expanse of empire, by being rooted in the initial primitive accumulation through settler colonialism, means the US empire could reach farther and out-compete other empires previously, meaning larger returns for a labor-aristocratic imperial-collaboration can expand to more people than for a poorer imperialist nation, and remain stably such due to the hegemonic power of global empire that these unionists facilitate; which completely obscures the settler-colonial relationship for these workers by dulling the contradiction to invisibility, by those contradictions being exported (through the imperialism, war, that they facilitate).
This shit would happen with or without settler-colonialism in an imperialist nation because it always did. And for these workers in particular the settler-colonial dynamic between them only might become relevant again in the sense OP is alluding to if those externalized imperial contradictions were reimported and the internal contradictions sharpened by those spoils of empire they all collaborate for shrinking to a smaller amount than could serve to buy all of them off like it currently does; and a struggle for "who got to remain in the empire's war machine" began between them. There are implicit social dynamics in a settler-colonial context like this but those have nothing to do with the existence of social chauvinism and unions supporting imperialism itself.
The book settlers talked at lenght how the European settlers in America lacked proletarian characteristics and often compromised with the bourgeoise to help them repress non-white nations.
https://readsettlers.org
Lotta words to use and still be wrong about the historical importance of settle colonialism
Anyway read Settlers
I agree, tho as others are pointing out, the social relation of settlerism is fundamental to this phenomenon in the US. No surprise that the big union at the end of the american frontier is like this consistently. I wouldn't say it is indirectly connected to settler colonialism, just that like you said at the end, there is more at play here.
As some aholes on twitter are happily pointing out, a lot of the ILA members are African American. Not only does the gains of settlerism also impact them even as they are mistreated, but the social chauvinism inherent to this union and most craft unions would seal the deal even without that. I am essentially being a centrist on this because I think people should recognize the impact of what Sakai was talking about on this, as well as the shortcomings of unionism and that even in a third world country or among largely oppressed populations in the US, there is a material incentive beyond settlers that makes this kind of chauvinism prevalent