poor white Republicans

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Feb 27 09:01:32 PST 2003


Catherine:
> complex people, and I don't
> know that shallowness is a preserve of the poor or the
> American. Amongst the
> close members of my family are Norwegians, and English and
> Irish men, and i
> guess they count as European. It's not only insulting but
> wrong to presume
> that poverty or non-European-ness are any kind of index for not
> being "addled" or for having "inner resources". Wasn't Wotjek
> adding arrogance
> to his list of offensive qualities?
>

Good point. The people I was refering to are not necessarily poor. Some of them are relatively well off - they are lawyers, government employees, teachers, technicians, computer programmers, firefighters and the like - not rich and well educated, but comfortable and having some level of education. The fire-breathing reactionaries tend to come from that background.

By contrast, the "lumpenproletariat" - the unskilled, unemployed or marginally employed, high school dropouts, forty-year olds living with their mothers, druggies etc. - tend to be asocial and apolitical (see also Barbara Ehrenreich, _Nickel and Dimed_). They do not give a shit about what is going on in their neighborhood, let alone state, nation or the world. The specimens I happen to know are quite dismissive of both parties, but they have no clue about positions these parties represent - they do not even watch the news (let alone vote) - they spend most of their time waching or playing videos, listening to rap, hanging out with their buddies, occasionally getting high, and trying to pick up girls. They have no knowledge of- or any interest in- anything that is social or political. They tend to be apprehensive of the outside world i.e anything and anyone they are not familiar with (which is about everyone but their buddies) but the only group they ostensibly and systematically despise is gays.

This clearly suggest that poverty and despreation is NOT the main reason behind political reactionism. The poor and unemployable are often nihilistic and apathetic, sometimes aggressive if they feel threatened, but usually they are NOT fire-breathing reactionaries. The fire-breathing reactionaries come form a different social class - petit bourgeoisie, which is relatively well off, even by the US standards. Needless to add that this is not limited to the US, the European variety can be equally venomous. The only difference is that the US society as a whole tends to be more petit bourgeois than its European counterparts, hence reactionism is more pervasive here than in Europe.

Wojtek



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