If we’re going to build socialism on the North American continent, we’ll need to take the civilizational question seriously. This means rejecting the dogmas which the “Land Back” theorists have been putting forth. As I’ve made clear in my other critiques of these theorists, that I oppose their interpretation of “anti-colonialism” doesn’t mean I’m against anti-colonialism; the opposite, in fact. The whole reason why I’ve come to reject the “Land Back” orientation, and urge other Marxists to do so, is because taking on this orientation sets one up against the material interests of the masses. And a mass base is what anti-colonialism relies on in order to be something real, something effective that can actually drive history forward.
The reason why what we call “Land Back” works against such historical progress is that the core ideological drivers of “Land Back” take fundamentally reactionary positions on territorial matters. I’m mainly talking about the question of Mexico, and how the most radical of Land Backers have essentially come to the consensus that Mexico should be abolished. One of these actors is Rick Tabenunaka, the Land Back podcaster who was my main theoretical source during my ultra-leftist phase.
These are the individuals who developing radicals are liable to fall in with, like I did, should they invest themselves in the “Land Back” orientation. And their conclusion about how Mexico is a “Zionist” state that should be destroyed the same way the “Israeli” state needs to be looks like it makes sense when you only listen to their side of the story. Indigenous people within Mexico have continued to be oppressed following Mexican independence, and there’s a layer of fascists within Mexico who only want lighter-skinned Mexicans to have rights.
Yet when you conclude from this that the solution is to abolish Mexico, to be consistent you also need to say that all the other Latin American states must be ended. Including the ones with anti-imperialist governments that have been making great progress for Native peoples, one of which exists at this moment in Mexico. And though AMLO is leaving office this year, that he’s managed to make such progress and earn support from the great majority of indigenous Mexicans shows Mexico doesn’t need to be abolished; it instead needs to be freed from imperial control, which is the true obstacle towards full Native rights within the country.
If Marxists act like virtually every state in the Americas is an equivalent to “Israel,” then we’ll only end up ensuring the balkanization of these two continents, and the triumph of the corporate monopolies which seek to fully re-feudalize society. Those Mexican fascists and their imperialist backers would prefer to see the country abolished, rather than see it remain intact and build upon AMLO’s progressive gains.
To argue for the country’s dissolution on the basis that this would fulfill a mass mandate by Native people is to ignore how most of these Mexican Natives actually feel. As my fellow communist Rodolfo Cortes has written about, even Natives within the state where the Zapatista revolt happened overall strongly support AMLO: “When we look at the State of Chiapas, 73% of indigenous people voted for AMLO. That is to say, AMLO was even more popular among indigenous people in the state that saw the Zapatista uprising than he was among indigenous people in other parts of the country…The numbers above suggest that AMLO and MORENA are quite popular among the indigenous population of Mexico. This runs counter to the narrative that is common in the United States, which pits AMLO against indigenous people. In reality, the great majority of the indigenous population of Mexico are strongly in support of AMLO, his government, and the MORENA political party.”
This shows that when AMLO leaves, and the country’s proletariat continues its struggle under the more centrist leader who will replace him, the direction this struggle will take is not going to be one of national dissolution. If the indigenous population has massively embraced AMLO, rather than following the national nihilist vision of the ultra-lefts where all Mexican leaders should be rejected, then the country’s next progressive or revolutionary government will be able to gain the same level of indigenous support.
It’s telling how the narrative that these Land Back theorists put forth, where indigenous Mexicans are the vanguard of a coming mass effort to abolish Mexico, is fully consistent with the lies the U.S. government is promoting about the country. These theorists are just the logical conclusion of the ideas about Mexico which the imperialist narrative managers are putting forth. To want to abolish Mexico while believing you’re simply coming from a pro-Native perspective, you first need to accept the U.S. empire’s anti-Mexican psyops. And the success of these psyops depends on Marxists in the U.S. promoting them. Because their purpose isn’t just to weaken and destroy Mexico; it’s also to prevent proletarian revolution in the United States, and across the wider continent, by dividing the land’s workers along ethnic barriers.
If the imperial state can convince U.S. Marxists that supporting indigenous sovereignty means antagonizing Mexico, and by extension Mexican diaspora workers in the USA, then the continent’s whole class struggle will be undermined. Or at least this will be true in all places north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Because though Mexico’s class struggle won’t be ruined if U.S. Marxists follow a wrongheaded path, this would absolutely be catastrophic for the struggle in both the U.S. and Canada.
It’s obvious how making an entire racial or ethnic group into an enemy is counterproductive. And this is what Marxists will do if they advance the idea that Mexico needs to be abolished, and that Mexican or Chicano nationalism are inherently bad (which Tabenunaka also argues). Doing this will separate us from the vast majority of continentally indigenous people, because very few people with Mexican heritage will be receptive to the aggressive attacks these Land Backers are directing towards their historic nationality. Like how these ultra-lefts also expect to be able to win the U.S. masses while loudly decrying the patriotic sentiments of the country’s people, they’re applying the same self-defeating practice when it comes to the Mexican patriotic identity. And the number of U.S. citizens with a connection to that identity is growing as the country’s demographics change. Simply from the perspective of numbers, the practice that the Land Back orientation leads Marxists to is one which ensures our cause’s defeat on this continent.
We have a responsibility to avoid such needless conflicts, and put forth a program that’s designed to bring together proletarians across the Americas of all ethnicities and nationalities. To be an anti-imperialist in America, to be a communist in America, you need to be pan-American in your practice. Which means refraining from the ethnic gatekeeping around the class struggle that defines so much of the rhetoric from the Land Back crowd, and that our government is seeking to make more prevalent. It’s of the same nature as what J. Sakai did: use selective facts to craft a narrative wherein workers of a certain ethnic or racial background are supposedly incompatible with any revolutionary project. Except whereas Sakai only did this with the white workers, these modern “Land Back” polemicists are also doing this with the Latin workers. The only white or Latin workers who they’ll accept into their circles are ones who’ve embraced their aggressive opposition towards U.S. and Mexican patriotism. Which is not a viable strategy for winning the masses.
We’ll win not by loudly proclaiming ourselves to have the most radical, transgressive stances, but by showing ourselves to be aligned with the people’s material interests. That’s the foremost concern of the majority of the workers: how they can attain better lives for themselves, how they can end the unacceptable circumstances the system keeps them in. We can’t let identitarians play the game with us that they try to play; the rhetorical tactic where they see us working to appeal towards the people on such an economic basis, and then accuse us of “class reductionism.” Is it racially chauvinistic simply to take on the strategy for mass mobilization that works? To do what’s practically necessary for manifesting the socialist development which our society so desperately needs?
We’ll never get that great future if we invest ourselves in the practice that these identitarians cling to, where they’ve committed themselves to antagonizing essentially everyone for the rest of their lives. This is why I’ve decided to no longer use the “Land Back” slogan, even though I in principle want the tribes to regain their territorial sovereignty. It’s because just by tying yourself to this phrase, you necessarily come to fall within the social circles which these identitarians gatekeep. Then they’ll pressure you into agreeing with their ethnically divisive stances, funneling you into a radicalization pipeline that’s in effect anti-worker and anti-revolutionary. We need to choose a different path, the path of pan-Americanism and international proletarian solidarity.
Through this practice of unifying the hemisphere’s workers, we’ll be able to defeat the forces of reaction. We who are north of the border will be able to overthrow our monopoly capitalist dictatorship, reach a territorial solution based on scientific analysis of what our regional conditions need, and construct socialism. It’s possible that the circumstances will then call upon us to take military action against Canada, whose settler-colonial project actually much more resembles that of “Israel” and may require outside intervention in order to be defeated. Regardless, the story of North America over the next hundred years is going to be one of civilizations which have been forcibly disunited finding cohesion, and progressing towards communism because of this. And the tribes can absolutely come to work in unison with the other elements of society throughout the continent, despite what the reactionaries say.
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