The terrible burning of three historic Black Churches in St. Landry Parish was intended to inflict racist terror and trauma throughout the state. This follows the lead of the Trump administration who has welcomed the inclusion of white supremacists in the government and whose sympathies for white supremacist organizations have unleashed a torrent of racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant attacks across the country.
This white supremacist attack fits the historic pattern of attacking Black churches as a way of intimidating and politically controlling Black communities. The Black church represents one of the only social institutions owned and controlled by Black people. The Black church has served not only as a house of worship but as a community meeting space where Black people can discuss and debate their response to their oppressed condition. Many churches have been active in the Black liberation struggle and have produced good leaders in the Black freedom struggle. The white supremacists unleashed by the rich white ruling class are bent on preventing the Black community from organizing to advance the social and political position of Black workers.
Once again, politicians have responded to the church burnings by offering prayers for the terrorist, by trying to cover up the racist purpose of the attack with phony psychiatry and by trying to paint it as an isolated event. Finally, they admitted what the whole world already knew: that this is a hate crime. They have yet to call it terrorism.
All these crocodile tears distract from the real story, which is the ongoing link between white supremacy, the police, the military, corporations and politicians. Although the ruling class mainly fosters racism through “legal” means of mass incarceration and economic and housing segregation, they’ve always relied on the existence of “extra-legal” white supremacist groups to foment division among the multi-national working class and to guard their own fortunes.
DEFENDING CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS, POLITICIANS AID KKK TERRORISTS
These politicians praise monuments to the confederacy and slavery and resist efforts to take them down. Why? Because they—hand in hand with the super-rich—want to maintain the current state of institutional racism that divides the working class of Louisiana. They turn a blind eye to the eight highly armed white supremacist groups functioning in the state. Many of these groups have members and friends in the police as well as links to the U.S. military.
After the civil war, the KKK and its allies, such as the White League, were used to terrorize Black people. Their aim was to prevent Black freedmen from voting and adopting socially progressive policies. During Reconstruction, the Louisiana legislature was majority black and had a Black Governor. The northern bankers and industrialists wanted more than anything to reach a new unity with former slaveholders. Lynchings and church burnings were rampant and voting rights were taken away from the Black population. The new white politicians were secretly or openly in the KKK. Several members of the U.S. Supreme Court were in the KKK. In just one century, 64 Black churches were burned.
Today nearly all white politicians in Baton Rouge are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) an organization which pays legislators to promote racist ALEC-drafted laws. On behalf of the oil companies and war profiteers, ALEC has been working to disenfranchise Black voters all across the country.
These politicians may distance themselves from openly white supremacist groups, but they share a common ideology. And across the country, they’ve allowed Klan-type groups to proliferate.
WHITE SUPREMACY IS PART OF CAPITALISM
The capitalists—who are few—can only maintain their undemocratic accumulation of huge wealth by dividing the workers, who are many. When the working class is divided, all sectors suffer from lowered wages and benefits, greater poverty, and fewer social programs. This is true for white workers although Black workers suffer much more. This is the legacy of racism and national oppression in the south, where workers are the poorest, the minimum wage lowest, and every indicator from infant mortality to educational quality is at the bottom.
Because the masses are currently quiet—despite ever worsening conditions—the bosses and politicians are moving ahead with even harsher assaults on the social and economic life of workers. They’re ramping up racism, scapegoating immigrants, vilifying other countries—all to distract from their thievery and their war profiteering.
The capitalist rulers’ insatiable drive to amass more wealth is the basis for the renewed growth of white supremacist and other racist groups. The more that wealth is concentrated in their hands, the more the capitalist system is endangered from below. That’s why they lean on extra-legal repression to maintain control.
This is true not only in the U.S. One has only to look to the outright fascist governments with whom the U.S. government is allied, including Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines, Israel and others.
COPS & KLAN WORK HAND IN HAND
It is for this reason that one cannot rely on the capitalist state to stop racist terrorism. To combat white supremacist terrorism, workers and oppressed people must organize their own self-defense. When various Nazi and white supremacist groups announced they were coming to New Orleans to defend confederate monuments, the government headed by liberal democrat Mitch Landrieu allowed them total freedom—even to brandish arms in so-called “safe zones.” Take Em Down NOLA confronted the NOPD, asking why they weren’t enforcing the legal restrictions. The answer from former Police Chief Harrison was, “we don’t have the police able to do it.”
WORKERS & OPPRESSED PEOPLE MUST ORGANIZE THEIR SELF DEFENSE
It was the emergence of armed Black groups in the south that pushed the KKK back, including here in Louisiana. In 1964 the KKK burned down five churches in Jonesboro and carried out horrific assaults. This led to the formation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice which soon had 20 chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Many were workers with combat experience.
Even Dr. King employed armed body guards and had guns in his house during the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party armed herself.
In North Carolina, Robert Williams led the arming of the NAACP chapter in Monroe to combat Klan terror. While the KKK and others were never—not even to this day—labeled domestic terrorists, the FBI and local police targeted Black civil rights and armed self-defense groups, labeling them terrorists for protesting their oppression and for defending their community.
We need to continue mass organizing and we need to increase our efforts to defend our communities, individuals, churches and unions from the instruments of capitalist terror.
