Rednecks and Barbarians

In Europe and North America, we see a trend of the white working-class tempted by right-wing political parties. Fascistic candidates and ideas seem to reap the fruits of social unrest everywhere. With her usual thought-provoking and unyielding analyses, Houria Bouteldja shows how the history of the left explains this conundrum and how we can overcome it. Drawing from Black radical and decolonial Marxism, she shows that by privileging white constituencies, unions and left parties laid the foundations for a racial contract that binds workers and the poor to the state. However, there may still be a way out of this trap. Uniting ‘rednecks’ (the white working-class) and ‘barbarians’ (the racially oppressed), will require a project of popular sovereignty, where national identity is reworked through revolutionary love. Looking to the future, Bouteldja pictures anti-racism as a redemptive struggle aimed not only at rehabilitating non-whites but also at redefining white dignity.