Rednecks and Barbarians

'Bouteldja throws all our certainties into the air, and with brilliant precision, reassembles them' - Alana Lentin

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 by 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 not only at rehabilitating marginalized communities but also at redefining white dignity.