The secret origin of white people

This is more like notes toward a post rather than a proper blog post. I have these links burning a hole in my pocket and want a place to put them.

It starts with an essay Yo, Pundits! Here’s What’s Up With the Republicans, which submits that the two tribes of American politics thesis which many people (including me) tend to favor is too simple. Drawing upon David Hackett Fischer’s book Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, it says that what is now the backbone of the Republican party is grounded in the Borderer ethnic group from the Scots-English highlands.

The more we study the Borderers’ folkways in Britain and in America, the more we see how thoroughly the Republican Party has adopted this culture's worldview and purged itself of incompatible elements.

To begin with, right-wing authoritarianism has fertile soil in two aspects of Borderer rank ways: “tanistry” and “macocracy.” Tanistry is the selection of a “thane,” or warlord, to lead a clan. “By the rule of tanistry, one man [⋯] was chosen to head the family: he who was strongest, toughest and most cunning,” Fischer writes. “The winner became the elder of his family or clan, and was honored with deference and deep respect. The losers were degraded and despised” ₍₆₉₄₎. The Borderers had no fixed social order, and they treated all outsiders alike, with what was seen as “insolence,” “impudence,” “forwardness,” “familiarity,” “unruliness,” “licentiousness” and “pride” ₍₇₅₅₎
[⋯]
“Macocracy” is a coinage derived from the “Mac-” prefix on the names of Scottish clans, defined by Fischer as “a structure of highly personal politics without deference to social rank”. In other words, it's not a man's title that gives him power, but rather his personal leadership and ability to influence others. Charismatic leaders drew fanatical personal followings among Borderers, who placed a heavy premium on personal loyalty. We see this in elected officials' deference to media figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, to organizational leaders such as James Dobson and to political operatives such as Karl Rove.
[⋯]
Also, Borderer culture was intensely conformist. Those who broke the rules of Borderer society were “hated out,” or ostracized; “;[d]eviance from cultural norms was rarely tolerated[, and] opposition was suppressed by force” ₍₇₈₁₎. The Borderers’ libertarian conception of freedom did not include the right to disagree or dissent.

This combination of cultural factors produces a political culture in which people can take marching orders and “talking points” and follow them day in and day out without deviation
[⋯]
Today’s Republican Party tolerates inequality of wealth because Borderers have historically experienced more of it than any other culture in America.

The historical quotes describing Borderer culture are striking in how contemporary and fresh they seem. This stuff dates back to the colonial experience before white racial identity was invented.

It brings to mind an old favorite of mine, the screed Revenge Of The Mutt People from Joe Bageant which I have blogged before.

We the mutt faced sons and daughters of the republic. Born to kick your chicken breast meat to death for you in the darkest, most dismal corners of our great land, born to kill and be killed in stock car races, drunken domestic rows, and of course in the desert dusty back streets at the edges of the empire. Middle class urban liberals may never claim us as brothers, much less willing servants, but as they say in prison, we are your meat. We do your bidding. Your refusal to admit that we do your dirty work for you, not to mention the international smackdowns and muggings for the republic — from which you benefit more materially than we ever will — makes it no less true.
[⋯]
With the “fighting tradition” of Scots Irish behind us, we smashed upon each other ceaselessly in trailer court and tavern, night and day in rain and summer heat until finally, we reach our mid-fifties and lose our enthusiasm (not to mention stamina) for that most venerated of borderer sports.
[⋯]
liberal refusal to see white people as also being diverse, and seeing that some of them indeed need their own sort of affirmative action is exactly the kind of thing that helped the neocons lead these working white people by the nose

Updates

I found some lively criticism of Albion’s Seed …

Fischer creates a Frankenstein’s monster of “Borderers” out of bits and pieces of anecdote of specific events from the 18^th to 20^th centuries, mostly getting his methodology and analysis directly from pre-1920 sources, and ignoring most research contemporary to his own publication. His section on “Borderers” is meant to create an image of a race of uncivilized whites who are habitually violent, chaotic, stupid, and resist attempts by others to “civilize” them, when in fact the Scots-Irish often sought integration, while rural, poor Appalachianers were more often the victims of violence from these supposedly civilized groups. While Albion’s Seed was initially hailed in popular and academic reviews, when people looked closer as I did, they began to see that the “Borderers” section is one big fib.

… where, unusually, replies to the post are worth digging into … though I have a huge caveat about the commenting community.

Aaron Barlow at Academe Blog has a related post Want to Understand the Tea Party? Look to How They See Themselves:

These are primarily people of European ancestry who see themselves as simply “American,” with no ties to other nations or other cultures. They do not descend from post-Civil War immigration; ties to any “old country” were broken long ago, probably even before the age of steam. Many of them are associated with the Borderer culture that rose between Scotland and England and that was hardened on Ulster Plantation in the 17th century, either by descent or incorporation–and all of them see themselves as being the “real” Americans who created the United States.

They do not feel that they have been treated well by the federal government, of late. In fact, they may never have felt themselves treated well (they were the rebels of the War of the Regulation in the 1760s and the Whiskey Rebellion thirty years later–not to mention, many were the stalwarts of the Confederate States of America, though few would have been counted among the rich slave owners).

Colin Woodard’s “Eleven Nations” thesis

In his book Eleven Nations, an elaborate website, and countless articles, Colin Woodard argues for several distinct North American cultures with geographies which emerge from our history. In an article about the surprising geography of gun violence he starts with a good capsule summary:

The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself. The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional, cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed.

Those colonial projects — Puritan-controlled New England, the Dutch-settled area around what is now New York City; the Quaker-founded Delaware Valley; the Scots-Irish-led upland backcountry of the Appalachians; the West Indies-style slave society in the Deep South; the Spanish project in the southwest and so on — had different ethnographic, religious, economic and ideological characteristics. They were rivals and sometimes enemies, with even the British ones lining up on opposite sides of conflicts like the English Civil War in the 1640s. They settled much of the eastern half and southwestern third of what is now the U.S. in mutually exclusive settlement bands before significant third party in-migration picked up steam in the 1840s.

[⋯]

In the process they laid down the institutions, symbols, cultural norms and ideas about freedom, honor and violence that later arrivals would encounter and, by and large, assimilate into. Some states lie entirely or almost entirely within one of these regional cultures, others are split between them, propelling constant and profound disagreements on politics and policy alike in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, California and Oregon.

Another article, Up In Arms also explores the connection between these different cultures and their implications for guns, violence, and contemporary politics.

Among the eleven regional cultures, there are two superpowers, nations with the identity, mission, and numbers to shape continental debate: Yankeedom and Deep South. For more than two hundred years, they’ve fought for control of the federal government and, in a sense, the nation’s soul. Over the decades, Deep South has become strongly allied with Greater Appalachia and Tidewater, and more tenuously with the Far West. Their combined agenda—to slash taxes, regulations, social services, and federal powers—is opposed by a Yankee-led bloc that includes New Netherland and the Left Coast. Other nations, especially the Midlands and El Norte, often hold the swing vote, whether in a presidential election or a congressional battle over health care reform. Those swing nations stand to play a decisive role on violence-related issues as well.

More on “Real Americans”

I realized that I should just consolidate this post with another post of links & quotes I originally did a week earlier:

The group of Americans we currently call the Tea Party believe that they are the only real Americans. When they wail that “our country is being taken away”, their conception of “us” does not include people who are not in their group.

Matt Taibbi in The Truth About the Tea Party:

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They’re completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I’m an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I’m a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

Mike the Mad Biologist points to the proto-fascist note here in Misunderstanding Palin and ‘Palinism’: It’s the Politics of the Blood:

Her policy ignorance isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Palin is conceptually and intellectually poor because her politics are not about policies, but a romantic restoration of the ‘real’ America to its rightful place. The primary purpose of politics is not to govern, not to provide services, and not to solve mundane, although often important, problems. For the Palinist, politics first and foremost exists to enable the social restoration of ‘real’ Americans (think about the phrase “red blooded American”) and the emotional and social advantages that restoration would provide to its followers (obviously, if you’re not a ‘real’ American, you might view this as a bad thing…). Practicalities of governance, such as compromise and worrying about reality-based outcomes, actually get in the way. Why risk having your fantasy muddied by reality?

Robert DeNiro’s film The Good Shepherd (content warning — bigoted character saying racist things):

Let me ask you something. We Italians, we got our families and we got the Church. The Irish, they have the homeland. The Jews, their tradition. Even the n****rs, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Carlson? What do you have?

The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

A linkrotted Billmon Twitter thread on herrenvolk democracy:

In a U.S. context, I take “herrenvolk democracy” to mean the sacred principle that all white people (or at least, white men) are equal. [⋯] But key insight I finally had about US herrenvolk democracy (& why our politics is so peculiarly poisonous) is: it’s not just about race. To the populist right wing, liberals — like blacks, Hispanics, gays, Muslims, etc. etc. — aren’t “white.” Not part of the volk. Not “real Americans.” Which means that for the populist right wing, democratic rule by a liberal president (really, any big D Democrat) is a contradiction in terms.

Jim Henley on conservative indifference to Russian election tampering in the US:

Kurt Eichenwald < @kurteichenwald > 11:44 AM - 23 Jun 2017

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How does GOP not get Russia cyberattack is NOT about Trump? It is about a foreign power undermining American democracy.

#PartyOverCountry

Let's talk about what we’re up against here. The GOP doesn’t think they betrayed America because they don’t think we are Americans.

Conservatives have expressed their conviction that they constitute “America” for decades.

They call where they live “Real America.”

James Watt said, I don’t talk about Democrats and Republicans. I talk about liberals and Americans.

The House Unamerican Activities Committee began “investigating” leftists in the 30s.

The American Legion began as a proto-fascist paramilitary group after WWI. They broke strikes & black heads.

Thank God No One In America Can Remember Anything About Anything Ever

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To the hard-core conservative, the rest of us are in America, but that doesn’t mean we are Americans. We are not white enough, or straight enough, or well-off enough, or we pray wrong, or don’t pray. We love the wrong sort of “freedom.” The GOP, from base to pinnacle, thinks they are the country.

Therefore, if Russia is helping the GOP, Russia is helping America. To Republicans, the GOP = Real America so Russian aid & comfort to Republican Party can’t be treason by definition.

And at bottom, nothing about this should surprise us. The US national security complex has done the same thing in other countries for decades. The US intelligence community always finds someone willing to take the money and accept the help. Those people don’t believe they’re “betraying their country.” (For the most part.) Some of them even really have been forces for local good. Others, let’s say not. But someone accepts the help.

Now we get to see it happening in the other direction. My point isn’t “we desurv it lol.” My point isn’t even “UR dumb 2B surprized.” My point is, we could wait a very long time for the GOP to be outraged at treason they don't consider treason.

Of course we deserve it BTW. “The judgments of the Almighty are true and righteous altogether.” I don’t care.

Turnabout is fair play, but that doesn’t mean I want to be on the wrong end of a global white, patriarchal counter-revolution. I don’t want to watch poor folks, black & brown folks, queer folks & others have their lives further blighted to prove a point. Putin’s Russia is the nexus of an international revanchist movement and I want no part of it — not because it’s Russian. Because it sucks.

But to the Republican Party, white revanchism is America. Plutocracy is America. The authority of bosses & dads is America.

What the Trump campaign & GOP congressional leaders abetted may be treason against the America that exists, but not the one in their hearts.

Therefore, do not anticipate them getting unduly upset about Russian “meddling.” To them, Putin isn’t the foreign power.

We are.