by Fred Logan
MAGA-USA, Make America Great Again-USA is Trump’s botched coup against the US federal government. It is the recent US congressional hearings on flying saucers. It is without question Marjorie Taylor-Green and George Santos actually getting elected to the US Congress. It is Donald Trump actually getting elected to the White House, and it is much more.
But most of all MAGA-USA is the tens of millions of White folks in the United States of America who embrace and support all of the national dangers and absolute stupidity just cited.
These people are the end-products of 400 years of White racism institutionalized in religion, law, and habit. All of this has been to justify the murder, robbery, and genocide of Native American peoples and African peoples.
Today in MAGA-USA the word “woke” is a synonym for the “N-word.” That’s why it is so wildly popular among the MAGA masses. That is why it is a major political asset for MAGA politicians. It is not a dog whistle to rally the racist dogs. It is clear-cut, absolutely precise, no confusion.
Saying “Woke” in MAGA-talk is chanting the N-word at a Klan rally. MAGA politicians are campaigning for office on the well-established White racist “Southern Strategy.” The Southern Strategy put Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, George Bush II and Donald Trump in the White House.
Way before then, it was the politics of Benjamin Tillman, South Carolina’s governor 1890-1894 and US senator 1895-1918. “Pitchfork Ben” campaigned for office in support of lynching Black people. He bragged on the floor of Congress that he had killed some African Americans himself.
Look for the Woke howling to intensify and escalate as MAGA politicians—Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are two examples—compete to out-WOKE each other in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Recently, DeSantis has been in the news badmouthing US Vice President Kamala Harris and Florida US congressman Tim Scott. Harris is a Democrat. Scott is a Republican. Both are Black.
Trump is in the news, almost every day, badmouthing DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is afraid to attack Donald Trump in the media. So, he howls and chants “Woke! Woke! Woke!” In effect, he attacks the Black community
Trump is facing possible jail time. He is very worried, and he will move even further to the right. To outdo a desperate Donald Trump, DeSantis may have to campaign for the White House in a Klan robe.
After he lost one of his early campaigns, the civil rights era arch-segregationist George Wallace reportedly said that he promised himself to never let another segregationist opponent “out-seg” him for the White racist vote in a campaign.
There is a clear political logic to the US rights-wing frontal attacks on Black Studies. The front-line battles in education—in the US Social Sciences—are fought over who does and who does not have power. The “Campus and Community,” Black Studies Movement is at the very forefront of “Cultural Studies’ which directly pose this challenge to the US race, class and gender status quo. That’s why the US right is banning Black history books, storming school board meetings, threatening educators, salivating “Woke! Woke! Woke!”
Question: If MAGA-USA has put African American Studies on trial, then what does it imply for the status of Irish American Studies, Italian American Studies, Polish American Studies, for European American Ethnic Studies? In the fray, we ask in the allocation of power, wealth, status and privilege who will be the whitest in politically polarized MAGA-USA, German Americans, Polish Americans, Irish Americans, etc.? It has only been 100 years since the US immigration struggles of the 1920s made many Europeans-ethnic groups officially USA-White.
The MAGA blatant open White racism will further intensify and consolidate African American opposition to the overall rise of right-wing reaction. Here is one example of this: this year, the Black-led Association for the Study of African American History and Life will hold its annual (108th) conference in Jacksonville, Florida, Ron DeSantis home state. The 2023 ASALH theme is “Black Resistance”
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