False Nationalism False Internationalism

This study is a radically different investigation into one of the most critical--and least understood--zones of revolutionary work: the struggle for solidarity between the left in an oppressor nation and rebellions against that nation from the oppressed. In other words, the difficult solidarity between colonizers and colonial subjects. Continued now in perhaps even more chaos in the dusky end time of imperialist neo-colonialism. This work explores political questions of pro-capitalist classes and opportunism, of euro-centrism and settler colonial privilege. Between peoples and organizations trying to guide revolutionary armed struggle.

This critical history between radical forces within both oppressor and oppressed, has played out most significantly in the u.s. empire between the white left and Black revolutionaries. But the book begins first with reviewing earlier major revolutionary efforts at solidarity and joint international work in early 20th century Russia, and then the protracted overthrow of neo-colonial capitalist China in the 1920s-30s. Also bringing into view how u.s. solidarity for the anti-fascist fighting then in both the Spanish Civil War and Ethiopia's resistance to Italian invasion was handled in a way that both defused and handcuffed domestic Black anger to white "Communist" leadership.

All before moving to the study's main contested battleground in the great 1960s violent rebellions in the u.s. empire, ebbing but continuing even into the early 1980s. This book was published in 1985, and was not intended for any general readership at all (it only appeared in paperback book form to facilitate being mailed into prisons). If its language is harsh, and the analysis blunt and unsparing in its anger, they reflect a time when revs were dealing with deaths and fugitive lives and mass incarceration and the smashing of organizations and communities.