Scandalous Bros

Available now from Common Notions. Finally Got the News: The Printed Legacy of US Radical Left, 1970-1979 Edited by Brad Duncan and Interference Archive, featuring over 250 rare radical publications, from flyers to posters to newspapers. Alongside these incredible archival images are original essays by leading historians and movement veterans including Akinyele Umoja, Silvia Federici, Dan La Botz, Emily Hobson, Johanna Brenner, Bill Fletcher, and many more. This book is an absolute treasure trove of radical history! Order a copy today. 

1950′s ☭ – Bookshop in the Moscow Metro.

1974 ★☭ – Long live the People’s Republic of China.

1920′s ☭ – Flags of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

While it’s true that the number of black workers in communist organisations grew, such growth was accompanied with another racist line of thinking: the white communist saviour bringing “liberation” to black workers. White communists saw (and still see) themselves as the leading figure, almost messianic, to lead revolutionary parties in the global north. Once non-white communist parties appeared, white communists chose to openly oppose them and denounce their ‘ideology’. What sense of solidarity is expected to develop from this sort of attitude? Perhaps the question you should be asking is why white “allies” so easily disregard black movements when they don’t receive praise for participating in them in the first place. Perhaps you should be asking why white “allies” so often attempt to effectively gentrify the movements of the oppressed peoples they claim to support. Why white “allies” so often speak over those they claim to be there to defend.When chants such as ‘black lives matter’ at police brutality marches so often get drowned out by crowds of white “allies” shouting ‘all lives matter,’ when white “allies” so often attempt to start violence that leads to those they claim to support being beaten and arrested at an even higher rate than the usual for simply being there, when white “allies” have been causing harm in these movements for decades, it shouldn’t be surprising that so many black activists are weary when more white “allies” show up.This isn’t to say that every white person who shows their support will only cause harm, but that it is not by any means unjustified for black activists to not want them there. These aren’t white movements, they’re not on white terms. Complaining about not being treated nicely, that your allyship isn’t being ‘accepted’ aligns you with the reactionaries far more than it aligns you with those you pretend to be fighting for.