When Race Burns Class: Settlers Revisited: "So i decided to write an article (famous writer's
delusion) on how this white supremacy started in the u.s. working class. i didn't know - maybe it was in
the 1920s?, i thought. So Settlers was researched backwards. i knew what the conclusion was in
the mid-1970s, that white supremacy ruled the white working class except in the self delusions of the
Left. "No politician can ever be too racist to be popular in white amerikkka", is an amazingly true
saying. Settlers was researched going back in time, trying to find that event, that turning point
when working class unity by whites had dissolved into racial supremacy. 1930s, 1920s, pre-World War I,
Black Reconstruction, Civil War, 1700s, 1600s, i kept going back and back, treading water, trying to
touch non-white supremacist ground. Only, there wasn't any!" (available HERE, purchase HERE)
Stolen at Gunpoint: Interview with J. Sakai On the Chicano-Mexicano National Question: "The United
States is a unique nation because it's always been an empire. It's never been just a nation with
ordinary people. From its very beginnings, it has been an illegitimate nation in the sense that, in
order to become a nation, it had to conquer other people, take their land and enslave them. There
literally has been no point in American history where that wasn't true, because that's the basis of what
being American is - which is, of course, the whole problem in the social character of the question of
justice." (available HERE)
Know Your Enemy? Q&A on Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and the CIA with Butch Lee (available HERE)
What’s crucial is the mentality of conquest and occupation (available HERE)
ALSO BY J SAKAI
BOOKS/LONGER PAMPHLETS
The Shape of Things to Come: Selected Writings & Interviews (2023) purchase HERE.
The Dangerous Class and Revolutionary Theory (2017) purchase HERE.
Learning from an Unimportant Minority (2015) purchase HERE.
Basic Politics of Movement Security (2014) purchase HERE.
The Ideas of Black Genocide in the Amerikkkan Mind (2009) with Butch Lee, from Amazon
Nation or Aryan
Nation: White Women and the Coming of Black Genocide. purchase HERE.
The Shock of Recognition (2002) from Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a
Militant Movement. text available HERE, purchase the collection HERE.
OTHER
Jane Austen Goes to School with the Lumpen/Proletariat (2022) purchase HERE.
Beginner's Kata: uncensored stray thoughts on revolutionary organization (2018) text available
HERE, purchase HERE.
The Green Nazi: an investigation into fascist ecology (2002) text available HERE, purchase HERE.
Comments on “Looking at the White Working Class Historically” (2002) text
available HERE.
Aryan Politics & Fighting the W.T.O. (2001) from My Enemy's Enemy: essays on globalization,
fascism and the struggle against capitalism. text available HERE, purchase the collection
HERE.
Exchange on “Thoughts” (2000) with Bromma, text available HERE.
When Race Burns Class: Settlers Revisited (2000) see interviews above.
Original Introduction to Settlers (1983) text available HERE.
...Reviews AIDS Conspiracy Theories (date unknown) text available HERE.
From MC5 of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (August 1990): "MIM has distributed many
copies of Settlers, as the text has profoundly contributed to the party's line on the reactionary
nature of the white nation, including the white nation working class, in North America. MIM does,
however, have some criticisms of Settlers." (available HERE)
From David Gilbert: "Even for those of us who think we understand the white supremacist core of
U.S. history, reading Settlers is still quite an education." (available HERE) (J. Sakai's response "Comments on..." above)
From JMP (September 2014): "We often forget that Marx wrote Capital for workers and not the
academic elite (otherwise he would have published the Grundrisse instead), that Mao wrote for peasants,
that Lenin was addressing revolutionaries and not marxologists. If Settlers belongs in this vital
tradition, then it is the job of those of us who are "leftwing scholars", if we truly believe our
political principles, to treat Sakai's theory seriously." (available HERE)
From Kuwasi Balagoon (pub. Jan/Feb 1995): "Settlers caused quite a stir in the
anti-imperialist
white left and among nationalists of the Third World nations within the confines of the U.S. empire as
well as anarchists and Moslems of this hemisphere. In short, among all of us who are ready and willing
to smash or dismantle the empire, for whatever reasons, and whatever reasoning. This is in spite of the
fact that it is a Marxist work, because it isn't out of the stale, sterile, static, mechanical mode of
the vulgar sap-rap that has carried that label." (available HERE)
From Clyde in Slingshot #52 (1994?): "Settlers should be widely read and
discussed as a base in the political education of North Amerikan radicals. I do have a couple
criticisms. First, Settlers does a weak job of addressing patriarchy and women's liberation, waiting
until page 150 to let us know that "Women's Liberation is an essential part of the world revolutionary
future". Second, Sakai needs to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes around his praise of vanguard
partyism, but anti-authoritarians should not let this political difference distract them from the great
contributions made by this book." (available HERE)
From Enaa - Doug Greene (July 2011): "It is Sakai's contention that the United States was founded
as a settler society and that whites in it were a parasitic group exploiting those of subjected
nationalities. However, Sakai's thesis is marred by an unclear use of class and some cherry-picking of
data. Despite this, Sakai's work is a pioneer in serious Marxist analysis of the national question in
the United States." (available HERE)
From M. A. Krul (September 2008): "Sakai's thesis is absolutely important as a heuristic for
understanding the complicated and idiosyncratic relationships of race and class in America now and
historically, as well as for any attempts to build a serious working class movement there."
(available HERE)
From S. Rosedale in Antidote #1 (date unknown) (review of "When Race Burns Class" mentioned
above): "Predictably, most of the left misread the point of the book completely, using it to justify the
application of race-only strategies against organized white supremacy. Within the first paragraph of his
interview here, Sakai sets the record straight: "It wasn't about race, but about class. Although people
still have a hard time getting used to that - it isn't race or sex that's the taboo subject in this
culture, but class." (available HERE)
From the Utah Revolutionary Students Union (December 2014):
From Sebastian Lamb of New Socialists (2003): "Unfortunately, the ideas of Settlers
are so flawed that they are an obstacle to developing the kind of anti-racist working-class politics
needed today. Because its ideas have some influence among anti-capitalists, they deserve to be
challenged. People committed to a strategy of social change based on the self-organized struggles of
workers and oppressed peoples should clearly repudiate the kind of analysis and politics found in
Sakai's writings and develop an alternative."
(available HERE)
From Tyler McCreary in Upping The Anti (January 2005): "However, despite Settlers'
vitality, Sakai's critical inquiry is hobbled by certain critical lapses and overly strict conceptual
categories." (available HERE)
