Rednecks and Barbarians: Uniting the White and Racialized Working Class

by Houria Bouteldja Pluto Press 11/20/2024, paperback SKU: 9780745349558   In Europe and North America, the white working class is increasingly 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 insights, 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 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) requires a project of popular sovereignty, where national identity is transformed through revolutionary love. Looking to the future, Bouteldja imagines antiracism as a redemptive struggle aimed at rehabilitating margi