This revolt by the people of New Caledonia against their French colonial exploiters provides crucial insight into what anti-colonialism actually looks like. It’s something tangible, something practical. It comes from a true mass base, one that’s mobilized around a common goal of advancing their clear material interests. It’s a liberation effort that’s effective, is based within the people’s needs, and is therefore compatible with anti-imperialism. Like the freedom struggle of the Palestinians, this effort by the New Caledonians threatens the status of international monopoly capital, and is therefore being attacked through the same means the imperialists target their other enemies. France has banned TikTok within New Caledonia, an act of informational suppression that comes from the imperial hegemon’s desire for countering China and Russia. (We know Russia also relates to this because France has lately been promoting propaganda about “Russian interference.) In this way, New Caledonia’s revolution is already coming to be aligned with these countries.
These things are important to point out because in the United States right now, there’s a push from certain ideological elements to redefine anti-colonialism. To make it mean essentially the opposite of everything I just described. These elements come from the insular place of ultra-leftism, rather than from a mass-based practice, so they view anti-colonialism not as something which originates within the dialectics of history. Instead they see it as simply a project to turn back the clock of history. As an idealist effort to try to undo the ways in which our conditions have changed since the start of colonialism, regardless of whether these reversals are necessary or productive.
Though most of these types of petty-bourgeois radicals would deny opposing industrial development or technology, and indeed the majority of them aren’t that extreme, it is a common thing for them to hold other kinds of reactionary positions. Namely the position that Mexico, and by extension other Latin American states, should be “decolonized” by getting abolished. This is what’s advocated for by Rick Tabenunaka, host of the Decolonized Buffalo podcast: “It’s very simple, Chicano nationalism came from Mexican nationalism & they’re both rooted in Indigenismo, an anti-Black / anti-Indigenous ideology (read Lourdes Alberto). These two nationalisms misappropriated Indigineity to create a ‘settler-move-to-innocence’ nation-wide. Yes, American settlers persecuted Mexican settlers, but it doesn’t excuse the genocide / settler colonialism of Mexican settlers towards Indigenous peoples within ‘Mexico’. ‘Mexico’ is a settler state & needs to be abolished, & its nationalisms.” Which is an argument that logically would also apply to every other Latin American country, since all of them share Mexico’s character as a territory and nationality which was formed due to colonization.
Decolonized Buffalo is worth rebutting because it the others in its ideological camp have been able to fool many developing radicals. They fooled me for years, until I saw how damaging their activities are towards the global class struggle. It’s possible they’ll use the New Caledonia revolt to argue for their position, so we need to make it clear to as many Marxists as possible that their ideas are not consistent with the goals of actual anti-colonial efforts. This is in part because their stance on the Latin American countries has no effect other than to aid U.S. imperialism, as well as the imperialist projects of rich U.S. satellite states like France.
What they do is harm revolutionary solidarity in the way Stalin warned of:
We know where the demarcation of workers according to nationalities leads to. The disintegration of a united workers’ party, the splitting of trade unions according to nationalities, aggravation of national friction, national strikebreaking, complete demoralization within the ranks of Social-Democracy – such are the results of organizational federalism. This is eloquently borne out by the history of Social-Democracy in Austria and the activities of the Bund in Russia. The only cure for ‘this is organization on the basis of internationalism. To unite locally the workers of all nationalities of Russia into single, integral collective bodies, to unite these collective bodies into a single party – such is the task. It goes without saying that a party structure of this kind does not preclude, but on the contrary presumes, wide autonomy for the regions within the single integral party.
The only difference between the “abolish Latin American states” stance, and the national chauvinism Stalin condemns, is that the former stance involves attacks upon other nations on the basis that they’re supposedly not real. Whereas national chauvinists usually argue that the nations they dislike are inferior, these radlibs go even further by arguing that the nations they dislike don’t even exist. This is the same reasoning that certain far-right Zionists use to distract from the genocide of Palestine; they deflect from Zionism’s crimes by saying Palestine isn’t real, on the basis that it’s a “colonial invention.”
To say the same about Mexico is just as undialectical and ahistorical. It reduces the entirety of a national identity to its relationship towards colonization, leaving out important context like the shared experiences and cultural traits of that nationality’s people. This argument also helps the U.S. empire, in that it narratively aids Washington’s hybrid warfare against Latin America. U.S. Marxists need to understand that the Mexican government’s relationship towards the Native tribes within its borders is not of the same nature as the relations between “Israel” and Palestine. The USA’s “anti-colonial” dogmatists point to the ways these tribes have been disenfranchised in order to equate these two things, but here’s the big problem with the comparison: in Mexico, we’ve seen it’s possible for an authentically pro-indigenous leader to come to power. “Israel” has only ever had prime ministers who’ve advanced the agenda of genocide against Palestine. In AMLO, though, Mexico has found a leader who’s done the opposite when it comes to the tribes.
As my fellow traveler in the communist movement Rodolfo Cortes wrote this year, there are efforts from both the right and the left to portray AMLO as anti-indigenous, but their accusations aren’t reflective of what he’s done:
As a Mexican living in the United States, it can be tough to voice support for Mexico’s 65th President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”). Throughout his Presidency, attacks have come from all sides—from the right, from the left, from those with and without Mexican ancestry, etc. One of the most common line of attacks is the claim that AMLO and the political party that he co-founded, the Movement for National Regeneration (MORENA), are opposed by the indigenous population. But is that truly the case? The claim has always seemed odd to me. For one thing, the speeches delivered by AMLO every week, all around the country, have a great showing of indigenous peoples in support of his presidency, including the notable event his first day in office in which indigenous groups came together to support his presidency. AMLO, a mestizo (mixed Indigenous/European descent), actually began his career as a public official working within the indigenous community in his home state of Tabasco. He made national news in 1995, when he stood with the indigenous community against pollution caused by oil drilling.
These and the other things Cortes points out about AMLO’s role within Native communities discredit the essence of Decolonized Buffalo’s argument about Mexico. They show that Mexico, and therefore the rest of the Latin American countries, do not need to be abolished for the hemisphere’s Native peoples to become free. With anti-imperialist leadership, they’re absolutely capable of achieving equality for Native peoples. And that Rick and the others in his tendency deny this reveals something insidious about their agenda. Because what’s implied within the idea that no Mexican leader could ever be a legitimate one from an indigenous perspective, no matter how much support from the tribes they receive or how much they help Natives? The suggestion is that we shouldn’t focus on U.S. imperialism, and the ways in which it perpetuates Native oppression; rather we should primarily focus on destroying the Latin American countries themselves. Which is precisely what the U.S. empire wants, because breaking up these countries Yugoslavia-style would be the perfect way to destroy the hope for freeing the hemisphere from neo-colonialism.
These “anti-colonialists” could say they want to abolish these countries in a way that doesn’t let U.S. imperialism take contol, but this isn’t realistic in the least. They’ve taken on the equivalent role to the Iranian pro-regime change agitators who call for Iran’s government to be overthrown by any means necessary, then swear that they aren’t advocating for the U.S. and “Israel” to take over within the region. They so deeply want that plausible deniability, where they can make it look like their goals can be separated from the goals of the imperialists and the Zionists. But the inescapable reality is that if you carry out regime change in an anti-imperialist country, a tremendous opportunity will appear for imperialism to prevail within it. And this risk of victory for the hegemon is even more pronounced if one of these countries gets split apart into multiple different territories, which is absolutely what will happen in places like Mexico if these “anti-colonialists” get their way.
Washington would be glad to give these radlibs what they want throughout Latin America, if the hemisphere’s anti-imperialist countries were weak enough to be successfully shattered. The U.S. empire has a history of weaponizing the idea of “anti-colonialism” against these countries. It’s nurtured a project by certain Nicaragian Natives to fight against the Sandinista government. The idea that Evo Morales was harming Native peoples made up a massive part of the narrative behind the CIA’s 2019 coup in Bolivia. That we’re seeing calls to abolish Mexico from U.S. radlibs signals a recently growing push from the State Department, and its “leftist” front groups, to apply the same destabilization methods to Mexico. Because these radlibs aren’t acting in a vacuum, their rhetoric is indicative of what the U.S. government wants at the moment. We must demolish the narrative behind this destructive project.
AMLO’s presidency, the Movement for Socialism party in Bolivia, and Latin America’s other leftist governments have proven that when anti-imperialism triumphs in a given one of these countries, Native liberation gets advanced. The remaining obstacles towards Native liberation in places like Mexico exist not because of leaders like AMLO and the anti-imperialist movements they represent, but in spite of them. The big factor that’s preventing the full liberation of Native peoples within these places is the ongoing existence of U.S. imperialism. When the imperialist beast gets defeated, these countries will become enabled to totally pursue their own interests, without sanctions or foreign meddling to hinder them. Which means their Native peoples will be able to fully have the injustices towards them rectified.
At that stage, when the U.S. government has been overthrown by an internal anti-imperialist movement, it’s highly implausible that the anti-colonial movement will go in the direction of wanting to abolish the Latin American countries. The interests of Native people will be better fulfilled the more powerful the Latin American anti-imperialist movement becomes; why would the hemisphere’s Native people suddenly start campaigning for the overthrow of these same governments which have shown such respect towards them? Which have effectively subordinated themselves to the tribes, as AMLO has done? The Decolonized Buffalo camp may argue that U.S. imperialism is only the main contradiction at this stage, and that once it’s gone, the primary battle will be between the Latin American governments and the tribes. But this simply would not make sense.
Mexico’s recent events have shown us that Latin America’s anti-imperialist movement isn’t going to become increasingly in conflict with the tribes, it’s going to become increasingly intertwined with them. The anti-imperialist movement is the most practical and feasible way for the tribes to advance their interests, which contradicts the idea that these tribes will only be satisfied once all the Latin American countries no longer exist. There’s no material incentive for the tribes to want to abolish these countries, especially when anti-imperialists are in power. And getting anti-imperialists into power within these countries is the best way to advance anti-colonialism.
What does make sense, what’s truly consistent with the principles of history, is when a group of people rise up to fulfill a real set of material needs. That’s why Palestine, New Caledonia, and other nations like Burkina Faso have recently been posing such a tangible threat towards the empire. That’s why these anti-colonial struggles have momentum and mass backing, while the “abolish Mexico” cause absolutely does not. The latter type of “anti-colonialism” will never gain a popular mandate, because it’s detached from the interests of the masses. It’s an idealist project whose basis is in the layer of radical liberals who mainly populate the core imperialist countries. The future is to be found not in these radlibs, but in the places and people which are actually making progress.
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