When Democrats Support War, They Enforce White Supremacy

When Democrats help carry out U.S. wars and imperialism, the Americans they harm the most are the black and brown communities who they claim to be allies for. This is because white supremacy is the consequence of economic exploitation, which is enforced by militarism.

This truth about the source of racism and economic injustice is centuries old, since slavery was a crime of capitalism and colonialism. And it’s what Democrats are ultimately trying to distract Americans from as they focus on Russia, partisan politics, and Trump-related controversies. To see this truth, we only have to trace towards the factors that keep institutional racism in place.

The severe poverty that African Americans are in, for instance, comes from the corporate capitalist economic system, which has massively deepened black poverty in the last four decades. As does the mass incarceration that terrorizes the black community, which came from the corporatist drive towards expanding for-profit prisons. (The Democratic Party, naturally, represents these things in addition to imperialism.) Much of the racism in our society is, essentially, a crime of capitalism.

And capitalism is enforced by imperialism and war. Martin Luther King Jr. identified the racist effects of U.S. wars, having stated that “the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation” are what work together to keep blacks, and everyone else in the lower classes, oppressed. The central role that wars and militarism have had in expanding corporate profits, propagandizing the population into obedience, and using up money that could be used for social spending has proven this connection. The rule of the corporations and banks, and the subjugation of black people that this rule entails, depends on the existence of the U.S. military empire.

This connection between capitalism and racism is not vague or theoretical. It’s as direct as it was in earlier centuries. France still collects colonial taxes from fourteen African countries. The United States is still occupying 53 out of Africa’s 54 countries. Rich white families like the Clintons can still pillage poor black countries like Haiti. Imperialism still perpetuates black slavery, like how Obama and Clinton’s 2011 invasion and destabilization of Libya has created a massive slave trade in the country. The global power dynamic has changed little since modern western colonialism started six centuries ago.

This is how the Democratic Party holds its nonwhite constituents hostage to a racist system. It pressures vulnerable groups to vote for it under the threat of electing Republicans, and silences those who oppose its institutionally white supremacist policies. When Democratic operative Sally Albright tweeted last week that “History will view the Bernie Sanders phenomenon as the death rattle of the last vestiges of white supremacy in the Democratic party,” she was insulting the millions of black Sanders supporters who are trying to free themselves from her party’s imperialism and corporate capitalism. Or, more accurately, she was insulting them for trying to free themselves.

The rich whites in power, not like it’s anything new, don’t want their system to be upset. When will we carry out the uprising that they fear?