Film Sessions: Beefing with White Supremacy in Online Left Spaces

NinaIllingworth November 1, 2021September 1, 2023 1492 Land Back Lane, against white supremacy, anti-racism, anticapitalism, antifascism, Caleb Maupin, capitalism and white supremacy, casual white supremacy, colonialism, colonialism and genocide, debate bros, debate culture, decolonization, Eurocentrism, FA1, fascism and colonialism, faux left, film sessions, Frantz Fanon, genocide, Indigenous Land Rights, Indigenous Sovereignty, Jimmy Dore, John The Duncan, Land Back, MP6, Nina Illingworth, Peter Coffin, Racism, Raphael Lemkin, resisting genocide. capitalism and colonialism, reverse racism myth, settler colonialism, Social Justice, social media, ST2, Theory, Vaush, Video, WD7, white genocide conspiracy theory, white grievance, white supremacy, whiteness, Youtube, YouTube left

Editor’s note: welcome back to Film Sessions; a monthly feature here on NIDC in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of YouTube.

If you’re wondering why I’ve moved these posts over from Media Madness, check out this mid-October content update notice.

First Impressions

Speaking personally, I’m always excited whenever we get to add a new creator to our study rotation on Film Sessions. Given YouTube’s notable function as a teeming hive of reactionary thought (more on this later), it’s not always easy to find content you can trust on the platform; as I’ve noted on more than one occasion in my writing.

Today then, I’m thrilled to be re-introducing John the Duncan, a wicked smart left wing academic we first discussed in a late September roundup post over on Media Madness. And when I say wicked smart, I’m not exaggerating here; from that piece:

“In answering the seemingly simple question of “how useful is online debate culture” our presenter is forced to break down the structurally capitalist nature of the YouTube platform, and how that structure exerts pressure to privilege certain types of knowledge, ways of knowing, and (dramatic) forms of discourse. While these debates may generate easy and exciting content, they demonstrably lack the requisite intellectual rigor and sincerity to function as a legitimate teaching tool. Finally, John illuminates how both of these pressures result in the replication of a neoliberal capitalist, Western-centric, and deeply patriarchal lens through which we understand what knowledge even is.”

After viewing precisely four of his videos, I’d describe Duncan’s specialty as using established theory and scholarship to unpack compound issues that generate emotional responses in the larger left wing discourse. In particular, he’s extremely good at presenting each of the individual conflicts and ideas that form these discussions, and then demonstrating how they inform the correct response to those debates. As someone who tries to do something similar in my own work, let me tell you this is no easy task; having to teach the theory behind complex issues of political economy before you can even start a discussion can be exhausting and frustrating.

In terms of production value, everything I’ve seen from John has an aggressively low-tech, garage studio vibe that might be off-putting to some, but I find authentic and charming. The same can be said for his low-key, dryly ironic sense of humor. Truthfully however, we’re not really here for any of that fluff. We’re here because Duncan knows his shit, and his video essays come with credible receipts.

Beef Notice

As you may have guessed, the video we’re studying today opens with spicy beef, and a boiling pot of what might legitimately be piss. You guessed that, right? Specifically, Duncan starts his feature by examining the debate around some shockingly obtuse statements made by assclown faux left dipshits like Vaush, Peter Coffin, and Caleb Maupin. If you have no idea who any of those muppets are, thank your lucky stars and please accept my assurances that it’s not even remotely important. I don’t waste time cataloguing pointless YouTuber drama, and clearly neither does John the Duncan.

What is important, is that in debunking the brainwormed cracker argument that decolonization and the Land Back movement represent reactionary policies of ethnic cleansing and ethno nationalism, John opens up a vital conversation about whiteness, and the low-key propagation of white supremacist ideology, in some online left wing spaces. Given the reactionary right’s attempts to both recruit left, and redefine movements towards social and economic justice as treason under a new type of Hooverism, I think this issue is of vital importance to pretty much the entire Pig Empire left right now. That’s the heart of the discussion I’d like to focus on here today.

The Picture Show

Over the course of its forty-two minute runtime, Left Wing White Supremacy broadly focuses on four major points; which Duncan helpfully lists at the start of the video:

Framing decolonization as genocidal is straight up wrong.
Why violent resistance to colonizers is justified, and what demands of the colonized actually are.
How whiteness as an oppressive social object is created through colonialism and slavery.
How so many on the left are still committed to white supremacy.

In a better world, or perhaps just a better community, I don’t think the first two points would merit much serious debate. There is simply no way that a man with Vaush’s education (such as it is) sincerely believes decolonization and the struggle against colonial oppression ends in an ethno-state and the ethnic cleansing of white people. Even allowing for his clear ignorance of what anti-colonial struggle is about, envisioning a world where colonized people can conquer and in turn colonize the Pig Empire is nazi science fiction nonsense that belongs in another century.

Vaush knows all this, he just doesn’t give a shit because arguing these points allows him to chalk up debate bro points against a marginalized content creator he disagrees with. Unfortunately however, the hollow fears and reactionary ideas about potential white genocide he’s using to win an argument, are pervasive in virtually all white spaces; including on the left. Let us then take a moment to state the obvious for educational purposes.

Genocide is a clearly defined process, characterized by both physical and cultural extermination, with an inherently colonial character. Decolonization is about stopping the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples, and dismantling the apparatus (including the mental apparatus) of colonialism. Conflating decolonization with genocide, is the same sort of reactionary categorization “error” as conflating anti-racism, with racism, or anti-fascism, with fascism. Yes, all types of resistance to an ongoing genocide are justified, but literally nobody in the Land Back movement is talking about killing all the white people or sending them back to merry old England; it’s about honoring land treaties and respecting Indigenous sovereignty.

All of these things are pretty much about “knowing what words mean” and talking to marginalized people about their struggles instead of inventing your own reductive definitions because you’re a know it all cracker on fucking YouTube. You didn’t need me to tell you Vaush and his ilk are self-centered egomaniacs who literally don’t read books or engage in actual activism, but there it is anyway. What I think is more interesting here is why these folks arrived at the reductive definitions they did, and who those definitions ultimately serve; which brings us to the second pair of points in Duncan’s outline.

Whiteness, White Supremacy, and the Online Left

To understand the whys, Duncan correctly turns to an obvious culprit, whiteness. As I’ve noted previously, whiteness is an ideological concept, not a biological reality. It is ultimately a Eurocentric understanding of, and way of interacting with the world that places white culture, experience, and feelings at the center of normative reality. Perversely, white people are often unable to notice whiteness precisely because of this normalization. Non-white people by contrast, cannot escape whiteness; its existence racializes their experiences, creating a state of otherness or separation from the default white experience.

In practice then, whiteness is about stigmatizing, delegitimizing, and dehumanizing non-white people in an extremely pervasive, everyday sort of way. This tracks well with history, because whiteness is not a naturally occurring concept; it was invented to justify genocide and slavery while greasing the wheels of settler colonial capitalism. Of course, this chain of links between capitalism, settler colonialism, and the exploitation or extermination of the other, for profit, is all held together by white supremacy. Ultimately then, whiteness becomes inseparable from that white supremacy; it’s literally just the casual, normalized expression of the same racialized dominance foundationally tied to settler colonial nations all across the Pig Empire.

As such, Duncan really isn’t exaggerating when he accuses white moderate YouTubers of dabbling in white supremacy; particularly in light of the nazi conspiracy theories about the genocidal extermination of white people that low-key underpin their arguments. This is made all the more dangerous by these debate bros decision to position themselves as expert left wing analysts, thereby lending a kind of bipartisan credibility to nazi propaganda that sounds so much like their arguments against decolonization and resisting genocide by any means necessary. I don’t know if Vaush is a fascist, but fascists sincerely don’t give a damn; either way, they’ll be more than happy to repurpose his navel gazing bullshit for the glorious cause of white Volkish supremacy.

Why This Matters

Listen; I know that for some of you this conversation is going to be frustrating and exhausting. Please allow me to apologize, and assure you that in this small way, you are not alone.

Like John, I too am disappointed that “listen to the colonized about their own oppression” remains controversial to some white people who inexplicably call themselves leftists. I find it enraging and appalling that a left wing influencer would validate fascist paranoia about ethnic cleansing against white people, to win an utterly meaningless debate on YouTube. Like many of you, I’m also tired of explaining basic theory to lumpen crackers who get their leftism from cretin crypto-fascists like Jimmy Dore. It would be a lot easier to just write off guys like Vaush as reactionary blowhards and never speak, or think, of them again.

Unfortunately I can’t, and if you’re white, and an actual leftist, neither can you. Not only does the primary responsibility for dismantling white supremacist structures fall on white people, there is simply too damn much riding on our collective success to excuse a passive approach. The planet is being murdered, and we can’t stop that without dismantling capitalism. Well, you can’t stop capitalism without eliminating its handmaiden, white supremacy. It is literally impossible to overstate the stakes we’re talking about here; there is no acceptable future for humanity in which whiteness still makes the world go ’round.

I’ve said it before; the future of the Pig Empire left is a young, majority non-white coalition that conceptualizes the struggle against capital and oppression through an intersectional lens. The way you nurture that coalition, is to build solidarity. Telling colonized people to subordinate their resistance to white feelings isn’t building solidarity; it’s reinforcing oppressive structures. You build solidarity by attacking those structures, even at personal cost, and in this case that means pushing back on reactionary YouTube debate bro nonsense like we have here today.

To learn more about how to fight back against white supremacist ideology in left wing spaces, check out “Left Wing White Supremacy” from John the Duncan by clicking on the header or the video box below: