Friday, December 6, 2019

“The rust-spattered American bloodlands…”

“Hinterland – America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict,” by Phil Neel, 2019


This book illuminates what is going on in what the author calls ‘the hinterlands’ – U.S. areas beyond the chosen central cities dominated by capital.  These mostly U.S. coastal cities are now surrounded by suburban areas of logistics, small factories and growing poverty (the near hinterlands), then extending along transit and interstate lines through exurbia (the middle hinterlands) into the far hinterlands, mostly rural and mostly ignored.  Neel grew up in a rural part of Oregon and his reflections, poetic and literary at times, show an understanding of what is going on in the intermountain west of blasted towns and dying industries.  He spent time in Seattle with Occupy and visited Ferguson, Missouri during the riots and tries to give a geographic understanding to the new conditions of riot and resistance.


One of his key insights is about rural right-wingers like the Patriots, Oathkeepers, 3%ers and various kinds of Christian Dominionists and Sovereign Citizens that ride the rural Northwest. In one county in Oregon’s Rogue Valley the state is now so weak due to layoffs that rightists are offering protection as a new police force. These groups are also trying to provide other social services, as the local economy and governments nose-dive.  For leftists paying attention, that means the beginning of ‘dual power' and activities similar to programs run by the Black Panther Party or Occupy.  These rightist groups get their support from the sprawling European-American exurbs and hinterlands.  He makes the important point that these movements are led by local businessmen not poor proletarians.  Because these bosses show ‘strength’ they can lure the local working-class into supporting them.  Most rural workers are actually tuned out of politics - apoliticals who don’t vote and are instead patching together scanty and sometimes illegal livelihoods.  The phrase he uses several times is:  “political support follows strength.”

This is well known to Marxists, as vacillating people follow those with the best organization.  Neel maintains the present left ignores the issues of physical and social power, instead focusing purely on program and in this way fail to attract support.

The other insight Neel has is something the rebellions against the racist police murders in Ferguson, Missouri and Baton Rouge, Louisiana heralded.  Ferguson is not a central city but instead a failing near hinterland suburb of St. Louis in which both the geography of dispersed streets and dispersed state power meant the rebels could hold out for a long time. The mostly whitish government lived on fees and tickets from the darker population due to their falling budget.  The rebels were able to resist both police and national guard state power, as well as the soft-power brought from St. Louis – NGOs, liberal politicians, black misleaders and pacifists.  For instance Jesse Jackson was booed when he got to Ferguson. Neel calls this a new turn in the class-based hinterland geographic resistance to capital’s racism.  However, his narrative is not able to fit Baltimore’s rebellion into that geography, nor Cairo’s.

Livin' Logistics

As to the uprising in Cairo, Egypt, Neel points out the street-fighting role of football ‘Ultras’ – people used to violence who were able to combat Egyptian police and thugs hired by the government, leading the larger crowd.  This led to citizens’ committees taking control of many proletarian neighborhoods in Cairo for a time.  His attitude towards these football ‘ultras’ (who appeared in other European 'square' revolts) seems to favor some kind of U.S. ‘black bloc’ tactic - though he never says so explicitly.  He also points out that the urban gangs in Baltimore actually worked with police against the street rebellion against another police murder.

Occupy Seattle moved out of a central city park to a college campus park and then slowly disintegrated due to anaconda pressure.  I.E. a combination of police actions and relentless but low-key opposition by the government and school. Neel describes the somewhat dystopian near hinterlands south of the city of Seattle inhabited by the dispossessed working class and a familiar sprawl of logistical warehouses, ports and freeways.  He sees this area as the coming battleground where global supply chains can be crippled, the population is not friendly to the state and repressive power is weakest.

What Neel doesn’t mention is that in order to develop a real opposition in the U.S. it must take permanent organizational forms, not just spontaneous and short-run rebellions.  Nor does he mention the need to be inside ‘the final wall of the fortress.’ I.E. the tactic of the strike is never mentioned.  Strike and riot can be combined, as we've learned from the French and others.  Neel is an anarcho-communist, so this doesn't occur to him.  He does note the polarization in the working class between the decreasing number with decent health care, housing, pensions and 401Ks versus those who work for weekly wages and few benefits, but he can’t seem to bridge that gap.  Which is admittedly a rather large one.

Among his many well-written poetic impressions, Neel points out the odd character of the present:  “There is no final crisis, just the management of a wider collapse.”

This book blends with other recent books on the subject that look into conditions in the rural and marginal U.S.  Other reviews on this topic below, use blog search box upper left:  “Riot, Strike, Riot,” “This Land,” “On New Terrain,” “What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?” “Angry White Men,” “Damnation.” “Red State Rebels,” “The Invisible Committee,” “The Football Factory,” "Value Chains."  


And I bought it at May Day Books for a bigger discount than you will get anywhere else in town!

Red Frog

December 6, 2019

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