Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon podcast

October 17, 2024 Divide and Rule: The Elite’s Playbook to Control America

In this electrifying episode of Connecting the Dots, I sat down with Jon Jeter—two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, former Washington Post bureau chief, and Knight Fellowship recipient—who pulled no punches as we unraveled the hidden dynamics of America’s class war. Drawing from his explosive book Class War in America, Jeter revealed how the elite have masterfully weaponized race to keep the working class fractured and powerless, ensuring they stay on top. He delves into the ways education is rigged to widen inequality, while elite interests tighten their grip on public policy. With gripping personal stories and razor-sharp historical insight, Jeter paints a vivid picture of the struggle between race and class in America and leaves us with a tantalizing vision of a united working-class revolution on the horizon. This is an episode that will shake your understanding of power—and inspire you to see the potential for change.

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Wilmer Leon (00:00:00):

I'm going to quote my guest here. We've been watching for a while now via various social media platforms and mainstream news outlets, the genocide of the Palestinian people, what do the images of a broad swath of Americans, whites and blacks, Latinos, Arabs and Asians, Jews and Catholics and Muslims, and Buddhists shedding their tribal identities and laying it all out on the line to do battle with the aristocrats who are financing the occupation. Slaughter and siege mean to my guest. Let's find out

Announcer (00:00:40):

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history

Wilmer Leon (00:00:46):

Converge. Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which many of these events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur, thus enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue before us is again, quoting my guest. When the 99% come together to fight for one another rather than against each other is the revolution. Na, my guest is a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. His work can be found on Patreon as well as Black Republic Media, and his new book is entitled Class War in America. How The Elite Divide the Nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? Phenomenal, phenomenal work. John Jeter is my guest, as always, my brother. Welcome back to the show.

Jon Jeter (00:02:07):

It's a pleasure to be here. Wilmer.

Wilmer Leon (00:02:10):

So class war in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? You open the book with two quotes. One is from the late George Jackson, settle Your Quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation. Understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying, who could be saved that generations more will live. Poor butchered half lives. If you fail to act, do what must be done. Discover your humanity and love your revolution. Why that quote? And then we'll get to the second one. Why that quote, John?

Jon Jeter (00:02:50):

That quote, really that very succinct quote by the revolutionary, the assassinated revolutionary. George Jackson really explains in probably a hundred words, but it takes me 450 pages to explain, which is that the ruling class, the oligarchs, we call 'em what you want. Somewhere around the Haymarket massacre of 1886, I believe they figured out that the way that the few can defeat the many is to divide the many to pit it against itself, the working class against itself. And so since then, they have a embark on a strategy of pitting the working class against itself largely along, mostly along racial or tribal lines, mostly white versus black. And it has enveloped, the ruling class has enveloped more and more people into whiteness. First it was Italians and Germans and Jews, or Jews really starting after World War II and the Holocaust. And then it was gays and women, and now even blacks themselves have been enveloped in this sort of adjacency to whiteness where everyone sort of gets ahead by beating up, by punching down on black people. And so George Jackson's quote really sort of encapsulates the success that we, the people can have by working together. And I want to be very clear about the enemy is not white people. The enemy is a white identity.

(00:04:48):

Hungarians and Czech and the Brits and the French and the Italians are not our enemy. They are glorious people who have done glorious things, but the formation of a white identity is really the kryptonite for working class movements in this country.

Wilmer Leon (00:05:07):

In fact, I'm glad you make that point because I wanted to call attention to the fact that a lot of people listening to this and hear you talk about the Irish or the Poles or the Italians, that in Europe, those were nationalisms, those were not racial constructs. Those were not racial identities. And that it really wasn't until many of them came to America and or post World War ii, that this construct of whiteness really began to take hold as the elite in America understood, particularly post-slavery. That if the poor and the working class whites formed an alliance with the newly freed, formerly enslaved, that that would be a social condition that they would not be able to control.

Jon Jeter (00:06:11):

It was almost, it was as close to invincible as you could ever see. This coalition, which particularly after slavery, very tenuously,

(00:06:24):

But many, many whites, particularly those who were newer to the country, Germans and Italians and Irish, who had not formed a white identity, formed a white identity here. As you said in Europe, they were Irish Italians. Germans. One story I think tells the tale, it was a dock workers strike in New Orleans in 1894. I read about this in the book, and the dock workers were segregated, black unions and white unions, but they worked together, they worked in concert, they went on strike for higher wages, and I think a closed shop, meaning that if you worked on the docks, you had to belong to the union and they largely won. And the reason for that is because the bosses, the ship owners tried to separate the two. They would tell the white dock workers, we'll work with you, but we won't work with those N words.

(00:07:22):

And many of the dock workers at that time had just come over from Europe. So they were like, what are you talking about? He's a worker just like me. I worked right next to him, or he works the doc over from me or the platform over from me. He's working there. So what do you mean you're not going to work with, you're going to deal with all of us? And that ethos, that governing ethos of interracial solidarity was one that really held the day until 20 years later, 20 years later, by which time Jim Crow, which was really an economic and political strategy, had really taken hold. And many of the dock workers, their children had begun to think of themselves as white.

Wilmer Leon (00:08:06):

In fact, I'm glad you referred to the children because another parallel to this is segregated education. As the framers, and I don't mean of the constitution, but of this culture, wanted to impose this racial caste system, they realized you can't have little Jimmy and little Johnny playing together sitting next to each other in classrooms and then try to impose a system of hierarchy based on phenotype as these children get older. What do you mean I can't play with him? What do you mean I can't play with her? She's my friend. No, not anymore. And so that's one of the things that contributed to this phenotypical ethos separating white children from black children.

Jon Jeter (00:09:01):

Education has been such a pivotal instrument for the elites, for the oligarchs, for the investor class in fighting this class war. It's not just been an instrument, a tool to divide education in the United States. It's largely intended to reproduce inequality, and it always has been, although obviously many of us, many people in the working class see, there's a tool to get ahead. That's not how the stock class sees it.

(00:09:35):

But beyond that even it is the investment in education. This is a theme throughout the book from the first chapter to the last basically where education, because it is seen as a tool for uplift by the working class, but by the investment class, it's seen as a tool to divide. And increasingly really since about really the turn of the century, this century, the 21st century, it's been seen as an investment opportunity. So that's why we have all of these school closures and the school privatization effort. It's an investment opportunity. So the problem is that we're fighting a class war. We've always been fighting a class war, but it's something that is seldom mentioned in public discussions in the media, the news or entertainment media, it's seldom mentioned, but schools education, you could make an argument that it is the holy grail of the class war, whoever can capture the educational system because it can become a tool both by keeping it public or I guess making it public now, returning it to public. And so much of it is in private hands by maintaining its public nature, and at the same time using it to reduce inequality as opposed to reproducing inequality

Wilmer Leon (00:11:08):

And public education and access to those public education dollars is also an element of redistribution of wealth because as access to finance is becoming more challenging, particularly through the neocolonialist idea using public dollars for private sector interest, giving access to those public education dollars to the private sector is another one of the mechanisms that the elite used to redistribute public dollars into private hands.

Jon Jeter (00:11:49):

One of the things that I discovered and researching this book was the extent to which bonds sold by municipalities, by the government, those bonds are sold to investors. That is more and more since really the Reagan era, because we've shipped manufacturing offshore. So how do you make money if you are invested, if you've got surplus money laying around, how do you make money? You invest it, speculate. Loan tracking essentially is what it is. One of the ways that you can make money. One of the things that you can invest money in is the public sector. So schools become an instrument for finance. And so what we see around the country are schools education becoming an investment vehicle for the rich and they can invest in it and they're paying higher and higher returns. Taxpayers.

(00:12:57):

You and I, Wilmer, are paying more and more to satisfy our creditors. For as one example, I believe it was in San Diego or a school district near or right outside San Diego, this was about 20 years ago, but they took out a loan to finance public education there, I believe just their elementary schools in that district. And it was something like a hundred million dollars loan just for the daily operations of that school district. And that had a balance due or the money, the interest rate was such that it was going to cost the taxpayers in that district a billion dollars to repay that loan, right? So that is an extreme example. But increasingly what we've seen is public education bonds that are used to pay for the daily operations of our municipalities are the two of the class war are an instrument of combat in the class war because the more that cities practice what we call austerity, what economists call austerity, cutting the budget to the very bare minimum, the more investment opportunities it creates for the rich who then reap that money back.

(00:14:15):

So they've got a tax cut because they're not paying for the schools upfront, and it becomes an investment opportunity because they're paying for the schools as loans, which they give back exorbitant interest rates, sometimes resembling the interest rates on our credit card. So a lot of this is unseen by the public, but it really is how the class war being waged in the 21st century speculation because our manufacturing sector has been shipped offshore, and that's how we made the elites made their money for more than a century after World War ii, after the agrarian period. So yeah, it's really invisible to the naked eye, but it is where it's the primary battlefield for the class war.

Wilmer Leon (00:15:00):

The second quote you have is Muriel Rukeyser. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. And I know that that resonates with you particularly because as a journalist, one who tells stories, why is that quote so significant and relevant to this book?

Jon Jeter (00:15:26):

This book is really, it took me almost a quarter of my life to write this book from the time that the idea first occurred to me, to the time I finished almost 15 years. And it's evolved over time. But one of the biggest setbacks was just trying to find a publisher. And many publishers, I think, although they did not say this, they objected to the subject matter. And my characterization, I have one quote again from George Jackson where he says, the biggest barrier to the advancement of the working class in America is white racism. So I think they objected to that. But I also faced issues with a few black publishers, one of whom said that after reading the manuscript that it didn't have enough theory. I would say to anyone, any publisher who thinks that theory is better than story probably shouldn't be a publisher. But I also think it's sort of symptomatic of today's, the media today where we don't understand that stories are what connects us to each other, Right? The suffering, the struggle, the triumphs of other people of our ancestors,

Wilmer Leon (00:16:48):

The reality Of the story

Jon Jeter (00:16:51):

reality, yes,

Wilmer Leon (00:16:52):

Juxtaposed to the theoretical.

Jon Jeter (00:16:56):

That's exactly right.

Wilmer Leon (00:16:57):

In Fact,

Jon Jeter (00:16:59):

The application of the theory,

Wilmer Leon (00:17:01):

I tell my students and when I was teaching public policy that you have to understand the difference between the theoretical and the practical, and that there are a lot of things in policy that in theory make a whole lot of sense until you then have to operationalize that on a daily basis and then have it make real sense. Big difference between the theoretical and the practical.

Jon Jeter (00:17:26):

No question about it. And you see this over and over again throughout the book, you see examples of, for instance, the application of communist theory. And I'm not advocating for anyone to be a communist, just that there was a very real push by communists in the United States encouraged by communists and the Soviet Union in the 1930s to try to start a worldwide proletarian revolution, the stronghold of which was here in the United States. And so the Scotts Corps boys, nine teenage boys, black boys who were falsely accused of rape, became the testing ground for communism right now, communism. It was something that sparked the imagination of a lot of black people. Very few joined the party, but it sparked the imagination. So you found a lot of blacks who were sympathetic to communism in the thirties and the forties.

Wilmer Leon (00:18:21):

Rosa Parks's husband Rosa.

Jon Jeter (00:18:23):

That's correct.

Wilmer Leon (00:18:24):

Rosa. Rosa Parks's husband, Rosa Parks, the patron saint of protest politics.

Jon Jeter (00:18:31):

Yes. Coleman Young, the first black mayor of Detroit. I write about very specifically. It was a thing, right? But it was the application of it. And ultimately, I think most of the blacks, many of the blacks certainly who tried to implement communism would argue not only that they failed, but that communism failed them as well. So I don't, again, not an advocacy for communism, but that idea really did move the needle forward. And I think our future is not in our past. So going forward, we might sort of learn from what happened in the past, and there might be some things we can learn from communism, but I think ultimately it is, as the communist say, dialectical materialism. You can't dip your toe in the same river twice. So it is moving like it's gathering steam and it's not going to be what it was. Although we can take some lessons from the past, from the Scottsboro boys from the 1930s and the 1940s.

Wilmer Leon (00:19:29):

You write in your prologue quote, I cannot predict with any certainty the quality of that revolution, the one we were talking about in the open, or even it's outcome only that it is imminent for the historical record clearly asserts that the nationwide uprisings on college campuses' prophecy the resumption of hostilities between America's workers and their bosses. I'm going to try and connect the dot here, which may not make any sense, or you may say, Wilmer, that was utterly brilliant. I prefer the latter. Just over the past few days, former President Trump has been suggesting using the military to handle what he calls the enemy from within, because he is saying on election day, if he doesn't win, there will be chaos. And he says, not from foreign actors, but from the radical left lunatics, he says, I think the bigger problem are the people from within. And he says, you may need to use the National Guard, you may need to use the military, because this is going to happen. Now, I know you and Trump aren't talking. You're about two different things. I realize that different with different agendas, but this discussion about nationwide uprisings, and so your thoughts on how you looking at the college protests and what that symbolizes in terms of the discontent within the country and what Trump is, the fear that Trump is trying to sow in the minds relative to the election. Does that make any sense?

Jon Jeter (00:21:18):

It makes perfect sense. You don't say that about warmer Leon, all that all.

Wilmer Leon (00:21:21):

Oh, thank you. You're right.

Jon Jeter (00:21:22):

It makes perfect sense. But no, and actually I would draw a pretty straight line from Trump to what I'm writing about in the book. For instance, Nixon, who was a very smart man, and Trump was not a very smart man, it's just that he used his intelligence for evil. But Richard Nixon was faced with an uprising, a nationwide uprising on college campuses, and he resorted to violence, as we saw with Kent State.

Wilmer Leon (00:21:52):

Kent State, yes.

Jon Jeter (00:21:53):

Very intentional.

Wilmer Leon (00:21:54):

Jackson State,

Jon Jeter (00:21:55):

Yes, it was

Wilmer Leon (00:21:56):

Southern University in Louisiana.

Jon Jeter (00:21:58):

Yes, yes, yes. But Kent State was a little bit of an outlier because it was meant white kids as a shot across the bow to show white kids that if you continue to collaborate with blacks, with the Vietnamese, continue to sympathize with them and rally on their behalf, then you might get exactly what the blacks get and the Vietnamese are getting right. And honestly, in the long term, that strategy probably worked. It did help to divide this insurgency that was particularly activated on college campuses. So what Trump, I think is faced with what he will be faced with if he is reelected, which I think he very well may be, what he's going to be faced with is another insurgency that is centered on college campuses. This time. It's not the Vietnamese, it's the Palestinians, and increasingly every day the Lebanese. But it's the very same dynamic at work, which is this, you have white people on college campuses, particularly when you talk about the college campuses in the Ivy League.

(00:23:13):

These are kids who are mostly to the manner born. If you think about it, what they're doing is they are protesting their future employer. They're putting it all on the line to say, no, no, no, no, there's something bigger than my career than me working for you. And that is the fate of the Palestinian people. That's very much what happened in the late sixties, early seventies with the Vietnamese. And so Mark Twain is I think perhaps the greatest white man in American history, but one thing he got wrong. I don't think history rhymes. I think it does indeed repeat itself, but I think that's what we're seeing now with these kids on college campuses, that people thought that they dismantled these campus, these encampments all across the nation during the summer, the spring semester, and that when they came back that it would be over squash.

(00:24:07):

That's not what's happening. They're coming back loaded for bear. These college students, that does not all go well for the establishment, particularly in tandem with other things are going on, which is these nationwide, very likely a very serious economic crisis. Financial crisis is imminent, very likely. And these other barometers of social unrest, police killings of blacks, the cop cities that are being built around the country, environmental issues, what's happening in Gaza that can very much intersect. We're already seeing it. It's intersected with other issues. So there is a very real chance that we're going to see a regrouping of this progressive working class movement. How far it goes, we can't say we don't know. I mean, just because you protest doesn't mean that the oligarch just say, okay, well, you got it, you want, it doesn't happen that way. But what's the saying? You might not win every fight, but you're going to lose every fight that you don't fight. So we have a chance that we got a punch a chance like Michael Spinx with Mike Tyson made, but we got a shot.

Wilmer Leon (00:25:26):

And to that point, what did Mike Tyson say? Everybody can fight till they get punched in the face. Yeah,

Jon Jeter (00:25:32):

Everybody's got to plan until they get punched in the nose right

Wilmer Leon (00:25:35):

Now. So to your point about kids putting everything on the line and the children of the elite, putting it on the line, there was a university, a Bolt Hall, which is the law school at University of California, Berkeley, Steven David Solomon. He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that the law firm of Winston and Strawn did the right thing when it revoked the job offer of an NYU law student who publicly condemned Israel for the Hamas terrorist attacks. Legal employers in the recruiting process should do what Winston and Strawn did treat these students like the adults they are, if a student endorses hate dehumanization or antisemitism, don't hire 'em. So he was sending a very clear message, protest if you want to, there's going to be a price to pay.

Jon Jeter (00:26:30):

Yeah, I think those measures actually are counterproductive for the elites. It really sort of rallies and galvanizes. What we saw at Cornell, I'm not sure what happened with this, but a few weeks ago, they were talking about a student activist who was from West Africa, I believe, and the school Cornell was trying to basically repatriate, have them deported. But I think actions like that tend to work against the elite institutions. I hate to say this because I'm not an advocate of it, although I realize it's sometimes necessary violence seems to work best both for the elites and for the working class. And I'm not advocating that, but I'm just saying that historically it has occurred and it has been used by both sides when any student of France, Nan knows that when social movements allow the state to monopolize violence, you're probably going to lose that fight. And I think honestly speaking, that the state understands that violences can be as most effective weapon. People don't want to die, particularly young people. So it becomes sort of a clash between an irresistible force and an immovable object. Again, that's why I say I can't predict what will happen, but I do think we're on the verge of a very real, some very real social upheaval

Wilmer Leon (00:27:54):

Folks. This is the brilliance of John Jeter, journalist two time Pulitzer Prize finalists. We're talking about his book Class War in America, how the Elites Divide the Nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? As you can see, I have the book, I've read the book, phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal writer. Writer. You write in chapter one, declarations of War. And I love the fact you quote, Sun Tzu, all warfare is based on deception.

Jon Jeter (00:28:24):

That's Right.

Wilmer Leon (00:28:25):

You write on the last day of the first leg of his final trip abroad, his president with Donald Trump waiting in the wings, a subdued Barack Obama waxed poetic on the essence of democracy as he toured the Acropolis in Greece. It's here in Athens that so many of our ideas about democracy, our notions of citizenship, our notions of rule of law began to develop. And then you continue. What was left unsaid in Obama's August soliloquy is that while Greece is typically acknowledged by Western scholars as the cradle of democracy, the country could in fact learn a thing or two about governance from its protege across the pond. What types of things do you see that we still could learn from them since we're being told in this election, democracy is on the ballot and all of those rhetorical tactics? Yeah, a minute, a minute, a minute. Especially in the most recent context of Barack Obama helping to set the stage of a Kamala Harris loss and blaming it on black men.

Jon Jeter (00:29:43):

Yeah, that's exactly what he's doing. He's setting us up to be the scapegoats,

Wilmer Leon (00:29:48):

One of the does my connecting the dots there. Does that make sense?

Jon Jeter (00:29:52):

It makes perfect sense. And one of the themes of this book that I guess I didn't want to hammer home too much because it makes me sound too patriotic, but in one sense, what I'm writing about when I talk about the class war, what I'm writing about is this system of racial capitalism, right? Capitalism. Capitalism is exploited. Racial capitalism pits the workers against each other by creating a super exploited class that would be African-Americans and turning one half of the working class against the other half, or actually in the case of the United States, probably 70% against 30% or something like that. Anyway, but the antidote to racial capitalism is racial solidarity, which is a system of governance in which black men are fit to participate in, because we tend to be black men and black women tend to be the most progressive actors, political actors in the United States, the vanguard of the revolution, really, when we've had revolution in this country, we've been leaders of that revolution. And so what I was really trying to lay out with that first chapter where I talk about this interracial coalition in Virginia in the late 1870s, early 1880s, is that this was a century before South Africa created the Rainbow Nation, right? Nelson Mandela's Rainbow Nation, which didn't produce the results that the United States.

Wilmer Leon (00:31:32):

There was no pot of gold. There was no pot of gold.

Jon Jeter (00:31:34):

Yeah, not so far, we've seen no sight of it. And Brazil hadn't even freed its slaves when this readjust party emerged in Virginia. And so what I'm saying is that this interracial coalition that we saw most prominently in Virginia, but really all across the nation, we saw these interracial coalitions, political coalitions, were all across the Confederacy after the Civil War, and they had varying degrees of success in redistributing wealth from rich to poor, rich to working class. But the point is that no country has really seen such a dynamic interracial rainbow coalition or racial democracy, such as we've seen here in the United States, both in that period after the Civil War, and also in the period between, say, I would say FDRs election as president in 1930, was that 31, 33? 33.

(00:32:36):

So roughly about the time of Ronald Reagan, we saw, of course there was racism. We didn't end racism, but there was this tenuous collaboration between white and black workers that redistributed wealth. So that by 1973, at the height of it, the working class wages accounted for more than half of GDP. Now it's about 58%, I'm sorry, 42% that the workers' wages accountant for GDP. So the point I'm making really is that this racial democracy, this racial democracy has served the working class very well in the United States, and by dissipating that racial democracy, it has served the elites very well. So Barack Obama's plea to black men, which is really quite frankly aimed at white men, telling them, showing them, Hey, I've got the money control. His job is to sort of quell this uprising by black men, and he's trying to tell plea with black men to vote for Kamala Harris, knowing that the Democratic Party, particularly since 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected, has not only done nothing for black men, but in fact has sought to compete for white suburban voters, IE, many of them racist has sought to compete with the GOP for white suburban voters

(00:34:04):

By showing they can be just as hard on black people as the GOP. People think that the 1995, was it 1994, omnibus crime Bill 94, racial 94, the racial disparities were unintended consequences. They weren't unintended at all. They weren't in fact, the point they wanted to show white people, the Democratic Party, bill Clinton, our current president, Joe Biden, and many other whites in Democratic party want to show whites, no, no, no, no. We got these Negroes in check. We can keep them in control just like the GOP can. And that continues to be the unofficial unstated policy today, which is why Kamala Harris says, I'm not going to do anything, especially for black people. It's why, for instance, nothing has changed legislatively since George Floyd was lynched before our eyes four years ago. Absolutely nothing has changed. That's an accent that is by design. So there's some very real connections that could be made. There's a straight line that can be made from the read adjuster party in Virginia in the 1880s, which had some real successes in redistributing wealth from rich to the workers and to the poor. And it was an interracial collaboration to Barack Obama appearing, pleading with black men to come vote for Kamala Harris, despite the fact she's done nothing for black men or for black people.

Wilmer Leon (00:35:31):

And to your earlier point, offering nothing but rhetoric and the opportunity economy where everybody, what in the world is, how does that feed the bulldog? So we've gone from, at least in terms of what they're, I believe, trying to do with black politics. We've gone from a politics of demand. We've gone from a politics of accountability to just a politics of promises and very vague. And this isn't in any way, shape or form trying to convince people that Donald Trump is any better. No, that's not what this conversation is about. But it's about former President Obama coming to a podium and telling black men how admonishing black men, how dare you consider this. But my question is, well, what are the specific policies that Vice President Harris is offering that she can also pass and pay for that are going to benefit the community? Because that's what this is supposed to be about, policy output.

Jon Jeter (00:36:55):

And that's the one thing that's not going to happen until the working class, we, the people decide, and I don't know what the answer's going to be, if it's going to be a third party, if it's going to be us taking control of the Democratic Party at the grassroots level, I don't know what it's going to be. But the philosophical underpinnings of both political parties is black suffering, right? Black suffering is what greases the wheel, the wheel, the political wheel, the economic wheel of the United States, the idea that you can isolate blacks and our suffering. What Reagan did, what Reagan began was a system of punishing blacks in the workplace, shipping those jobs overseas, which Reagan began, and very slowly, Clinton is the one who really picked up the pace,

Wilmer Leon (00:37:44):

The de-industrialization of America.

Jon Jeter (00:37:47):

The de-industrialization of America was based on black suffering. We were the first, was it last hired? First fired. And so we were the ones who lost those jobs initially, and it just snowballed, right? We lost those jobs. And think about when we saw the crack epidemic. Crack is a reflection of crises,

(00:38:12):

Right? Social crises. So we saw this thing snowball, really, right? But you, in their mind, you can isolate the suffering until you can't. What do I mean by that? Well, if you have just a very basic understanding of the economy, you understand that if you rob 13% of your population buying power, you robbed everybody of buying power, right? I mean, who's going to buy your goods and services if we no longer have buying power? We don't have jobs that pay good wages, we have loans that we can't repay. How does that sustain a workable economy? And maybe no one will remember this, but you've probably heard of Henry Ford's policy of $5 a day that was intended to sustain the economy with buying one thing, the one thing

Wilmer Leon (00:39:07):

wait a minute, so that his workers, his assembly line automobile workers could afford to buy the product they were making. There are those who will argue that one of the motivations for ending slavery was the elite looked at the industrialists, looked at this entire population of people and said, these can be consumers. These people are a drag on the economy. If we free them, they can become consumers.

Jon Jeter (00:39:45):

You don't have to be a communist to understand that capitalism at its best. It can work for a long time, for a sustained period of time. It can work very well for a majority of the people. If the consumers have buying power. We don't have that anymore. We're a nation of borrowers.

Wilmer Leon (00:40:07):

It's the greed of the capitalists that makes capitalism consumptive, and there's another, the leviathan, all of that stuff.

Jon Jeter (00:40:19):

Yes. And again, black suffering is at the root of this nation's failure. We have plunged into this dark hole because they sought first to short circuit our income, our resources, but it's affected the entire economy. And the only way to rebuild it, if you want to rebuild a capitalist economy, and that's fine with me, the only way you can rebuild is to restore buying power for a majority of the Americans. As we saw during the forties, the fifties, particularly after the war, we saw this surge in buying power, which created, by the way, the greatest achievement of the industrial age, which was the American middle class. And that was predicated again on racial democracy. Blacks participating in the democracy.

Wilmer Leon (00:41:10):

You mentioned black men and women tended to be incredibly progressive, and that black men and women were the vanguard of the revolution. What then is the problem with so many of our black institutions that, particularly when you look at our HBCUs that make so many of them, anything but progressive,

Jon Jeter (00:41:42):

That's a real theme of the book. This thing called racial capitalism has survived by peeling off more and more people. At first, it was the people who came through Ellis Island, European Central Europeans, Hungarians checks, and I have someone in the book I'm quoting, I think David Roediger, the labor historian, famous labor historian, where he quoted a Serbian immigrant, I think in the early 1900's , saying, the first thing you learn is you don't wanna be, that the blacks don't get a fair chance, meaning that you don't want to be anything like them. You don't want to associate with them. And that was a very powerful thing. That's indoctrination. But they do. They peel off one layer after another. One of the most important chapters in the book, I think was the one that begins with the execution of the Rosenbergs, who were the Rosenbergs. Ethel and Julius Rosenbergs were communists, or at least former communists who probably did, certainly, Julius probably did help to pass nuclear technology to the Soviet Union in the late forties, early fifties.

(00:42:52):

At best. It probably sped up the Russians. Soviet Union's ability to develop the bomb sped up by a year, basically. That's the best that it did. So they had this technology already. Ethel Rosenberg may have typed up the notes. That's all she probably did. And anyway, the state, the government, the US government wanted to make an example out of them. And so they executed them and they executed Ethel Rosenberg. They wanted her to turn against her husband, which would've been turning against her country, her countryman, right? She realized that she wouldn't do it. I can tell you, Ethel Rosenberg was every bit as hard as Tupac. She was a bad woman.

Wilmer Leon (00:43:40):

But was she as hard as biggie?

Jon Jeter (00:43:41):

I dunno, that whole east coast, west coast thing, I dunno. But that was a turning point in the class where, because what it was intended to do, or among the things it was intended to do, was the Jews were coming out the Holocaust. The Jews were probably, no, not probably. They certainly were the greatest ally blacks. Many of the communists who helped the Scotsboro boys in the 1930s, and they were communists. Many of them were Jews, right? It was no question about, because the Jews didn't see themselves as white. Remember, Hitler attacked them because they were non-white because they were communists. That's why he attacked them. And that was certainly true here, where there was a very real collusion between Jewish communists and blacks, and it was meant execution of the Rosenbergs was meant to send a signal to the working class, to the Jewish community, especially. You can continue to eff around with these people if you want right,

Wilmer Leon (00:44:43):

but you'll wind up like em.

Jon Jeter (00:44:44):

Yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, you think right after the Rosenbergs execution, this figure emerged named Milton Friedman, right? Milton Friedman who said, Hey, wait a minute. This whole brown versus Board of Education, you don't have to succumb to that white people. You can send your kids to their own schools or private schools and make the state pay for it. So very calculated move where the Jews became white, basically, not all of them. You still have, and you still have today, as we see with the protest against Israel, the Jewish community is still very progressive as a very progressive wing and are still our allies in a lot of ways. But many of them chose to be white. The same thing has happened ironically, with black people, right? There is a segment of the population that's represented by a former president, Barack Obama, by Kamala Harris, by the entire Congressional black office that has been offered, that has been extended, this sort of olive branch of prosperity.

(00:45:40):

If you help us keep these Negroes down, you can have some of this too. Like the scene in Trading Places where Eddie Murphy is released from jail. He's sitting in the backseat with these two doctors and they're like, well, you can go home if you want to. He's got the cigar and the snifter of cognac, no believe I can hang out with you. Fell a little bit longer, right? That's what you see happening now with a lot of black people, particularly the black elite, where they say, no, I think I can hang out with you a little bit longer. So they've turned against us.

Wilmer Leon (00:46:13):

Port Tom Porter calls that the NER position.

Jon Jeter (00:46:17):

Yes. Yes.

Wilmer Leon (00:46:19):

And for those that may not hear the NER, the near position that Mortimer and what was the other brother's name? i

Jon Jeter (00:46:28):

I Can't remember. I can see their faces,

Wilmer Leon (00:46:30):

Right? That they have been induced and they have been brought into this sense of entitlement because they are near positions of power. And I think a perfect example of that is the latest election in New York and in St. Louis where you've had, where APAC bragged publicly, we're going to invest $100 million into these Democratic primary elections, and we are going to unseat those who we believe to be two progressive anti-Israel and Cori Bush in St. Louis and Bowman, Jamal Bowman in New York were two of the most notable victims of that. And in fact, I was just having this conversation with Tom earlier today, and that is that nobody seemed to complain. I don't remember the Black caucus, anybody in the black caucus coming out. That article came out, I want to say in April of this year, and they did not say a mumbling word about, what do you mean you're about to interfere in our election? But after Cori Bush lost, now she's out there talking about APAC, I'm coming after your village. Hey, home, girl. That's a little bit of aggression, a whole lot too late. You just got knocked out.

(00:48:19):

Just got knocked the F out. You are laying, you are laying on the canvas, the crowd's headed to the exits, and you're looking around screaming, who hit me? Who hit me? Who hit me? That anger should have been on the front end talking about, oh, you all going to put in a hundred million? Well, we going to get a hundred million and one votes. And it should have been exposed. Had it been exposed for what it was, they'd still be in office.

Jon Jeter (00:48:50):

And to that point, and this is very interesting. Now, Jamal Bowman, I talked to some black activists in New York in his district, and they would tell you we never saw, right? We had these press conferences where we're protesting police violence under Mayor Eric Adams, another black

(00:49:11):

Politician, and we never saw him. He didn't anticipate. In fact, one of them says she's with Black Lives Matter, I believe she says, we called him when it was announced that APAC was backing this candidate. He said, what can we do? Said they never heard back. Right? Cori Bush, to her credit, is more from the movement. She was a product of Michael Brown. My guess is she will be back, right? That's my guess. Because she has a lot of support from the grassroots. She probably, if anyone can defeat APAC money as Cori Bush, although she's not perfect either.

Wilmer Leon (00:49:44):

But my point is still, I think she fell into the trap.

Jon Jeter (00:49:51):

No question. No question. No question. No, I don't disagree at all. And that again, is that peeling off another layer to turn them against this radical black? That's what it really is. It's a radical black political tradition that survived slavery. It's still here, right? It's just that they're constantly trying to suppress that.

Wilmer Leon (00:50:10):

And another element of this, and I'm trying to remember the sister that they did this to in Georgia, Congresswoman, wait a minute, hang on. Time out. Cynthia McKinney. The value of having a library, Cynthia McKinney.

(00:50:31):

Most definitely!

(00:50:33):

They did the same thing. How the US creates S*hole countries. Cynthia McKinney, they did the same thing to her. So it's not as though they had developed a new strategy. It's that it worked against Cynthia and they played it again, and we let it happen.

Jon Jeter (00:50:57):

Real democracy can immunize these politicians though, from that kind of strategy.

Wilmer Leon (00:51:01):

Absolutely. Absolutely. In chapter six, the Battle on the Bay, you talk about 1927, you talk about this 47-year-old ironworker, John Norris, who buys this flat, and then the depression hits and he loses everything. You talk about Rose Majeski,

Jon Jeter (00:51:24):

I think I

Wilmer Leon (00:51:26):

Managed to raise her five children. You talk about the Depression. The Harlem Renaissance writer, Langston Hughes wrote, brought everybody down a peg or two, and the Negro had but few pegs to fall. Travis Dempsey lost his job selling to the Chicago defender. Then you talk about a gorgeous summer day, Theodore Goodlow driving a truck and a hayride black people on a hayride, and someone falls victim to a white man running into the hayride. And his name was John Jeter. John with an H. Yours has no H

Jon Jeter (00:52:13):

Legally it does.

Wilmer Leon (00:52:14):

Oh, okay. Okay, okay. All right. Anyway, so you make a personal familiar connection to some of this. Elaborate,

Jon Jeter (00:52:26):

My uncle, who was a teenager at the time, I can't remember exactly how old he played in the Negro Leagues, actually, Negro baseball leagues was on this hayride. And I know the street. I'm very familiar with. The street. Two trucks can't pass one another. It's just too narrow, and it's like an aqueduct. So it's got walls there to keep you. Oh,

(00:52:52):

Viaduct. I'm sorry. Yeah. Not an auc. Yeah, thank you. Public education. So basically what happened is my uncle had his legs sort of out the hayride, like he's a teenager, and this car came along, another truck came along and it sheared his legs off, killed him. I don't think my father ever knew the story. I think my father went to his grave not knowing the story, but we did some research after his death, me and my sister and my brother, my younger brother. And there was almost a riot at the hospital when my uncle died, because the belief, I believe they couldn't quite say it in the black newspaper at the time, but the belief was that this white man had done it intentionally, right? He wasn't charged, and black people were very upset. So it was an act of aggression, very much, very similar to what we see now happening all over the country with these acts of white, of aggression by white men, basically young white men who are angry about feeling they're losing their racial privileges or racial entitlement.

(00:53:52):

So anyway, to make the story short, I was named after my uncle, my father, my mother named me after my uncle, but I think it was 1972. I would've been seven years old. And me and my father were at a farmer's market in Indianapolis where I grew up. And this old man at this time, old man, I mean doting in a brown suit, I'll never forget this in a brown suit. He comes up to us and he just comes up to my father and he holds his hand, shakes his hand, and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And my father's said, no, it's okay. You didn't know. It wasn't your fault. Nobody blamed you. And come to find out that he was the driver of that hay ride, right? I think a dentist at the time, he was the driver of that hayride in which my uncle was killed.

(00:54:38):

And he had felt bad about it, I guess, the rest of his days. So yeah, it's really interesting how my life, or at least the lives of my parents and my grandparents, how it intersects with this story of the class war. And it does in many, many aspects. It does. And I suspect that's true of most people, I hope, who will read the book, that they will find their own lives and their own history intersecting with this class war. Because this class war is comprehensive. It's hard to escape from it. It is all about the class war to paraphrase Fred Hampton. And yeah, that story really kind of moved me in a lot of ways because I had personal history, personal connection.

Wilmer Leon (00:55:25):

You mentioned when you just said that there was almost this riot at the hospital. What a lot of people now today don't realize is how many of those incidents occurred during those times. And we know very little, if anything about 'em, we were raising hell. So for example, you listened to some kids today was, man, if I had to been back there, I wouldn't have been no slaves. I'd have been out there kicking ass and taking names. Well, but implicit in that is a lack of understanding that folks were raising hell, 1898 in Greenwood, South Carolina, one of my great uncles was lynched in the Phoenix Riot. Black people tried to vote, fight breaks out, white guy gets shot, they round up the usual suspects,

Jon Jeter (00:56:23):

Right

Wilmer Leon (00:56:23):

Of whom was my great uncle. Some were lynched, some were shot at the Rehoboth Church in the parking lot of the Rehoboth Church, nonetheless. And that was the week before the more famous Wilmington riot. It was one week before the Wilmington Riot. And you've got the dcom lunch counters. And I mean, all of these history is replete with all of these stories of our resistance. And somehow now we've lost the near position. We've lost. We've lost that fight.

Jon Jeter (00:57:02):

We don't understand, and I mean this about all of us, but particularly African Americans, we don't understand. We once were warriors. And so one of the things I talk about in the book I write about in the book is the red summer of 1919. Many people are familiar with 1919, the purges that were going on. Basically this industrial upheaval. And the white elites were afraid that blacks were going to sort of lead this union labor organizing movement. And so there were these riots all across the country of whites attacking blacks. But what people don't understand is that the brothers, back then, many of them who had participated in World War, they were like Fred Hampton, it takes two to tango, right? And they were shooting back. And in fact, to end that thought, some of these riots, which weren't really riots, they were meant to be massacre, some of these, they had scouts who went into the black community to see almost to see their vulnerability. And a few times the White Scouts came back and said, no, we don't wanna go in there. We better leave them alone.

Wilmer Leon (00:58:12):

I was looking over here on my bookcase, got, oh, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Red summer, the summer of 1919, and the Awakening of Black America. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Jeter (00:58:24):

I've got that book. I've got that same book. Yep.

Wilmer Leon (00:58:26):

Okay, so I've got a couple others here. Death in the Promised Land, the Tulsa Race Riot in 1921, and see what a lot of people don't know about Tulsa is after the alleged encounter in the elevator

Jon Jeter (00:58:44):

Elevator, right!

Wilmer Leon (00:58:45):

Right? That young man went home, went to the community, went back to, and when the folks came in, the community, they didn't just sit idly by and let this deal go down. That's why, one of the reasons why I believe, I think I have this right, that it got to the tension that it did because it just came an all out fight.

Jon Jeter (00:59:12):

Oh yeah, Oh yeah!

Wilmer Leon (00:59:12):

We fought back

Jon Jeter (00:59:14):

tooth and nail.

Wilmer Leon (00:59:16):

We fought back,

Jon Jeter (00:59:16):

Tooth and nail. Yeah, no, definitely.

Wilmer Leon (00:59:18):

We fought back. So Brother John Jeter, when someone is done reading class War in America, how the elites divided the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? And I'm reading it backwards anyway, what are the three major points that you want someone to take away from reading? And folks I've read it, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal. In fact, before you answer that question, let me give this plug. I suggest that usually when I recommend a book, I try to recommend a compliment to it. And I would suggest that people get John Jeter class war in America and then get Dr. Ronald Walters "White Nationalism, Black Interests."

Jon Jeter (01:00:13):

Oh yeah.

Wilmer Leon (01:00:14):

And read those two, I Think.

Jon Jeter (01:00:18):

Oh, I love that. I love being compared to Ron Walters, the great Ron Walters,

Wilmer Leon (01:00:23):

And I would not be where I am and who I am. He played a tremendous role in Dr. Wilmer Leon. I have a PhD because of him.

Jon Jeter (01:00:33):

He is a great man. I interviewed him a few times.

Wilmer Leon (01:00:36):

Yeah, few. So while you're answering that question, I'm going to, so what are the two or three things that you want the reader to walk away from this book having a better understanding of?

Jon Jeter (01:00:47):

Well, we almost end where we begin. The first thing is Fred Hampton. It is a class war gda is what he said, right? It's a class war. But that does not mean that you can put class above race if you really want to understand the battle, the fight,

Wilmer Leon (01:01:09):

Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Lemme interrupt you. There was a question I wanted to ask you, and I forgot. Thomas Sowell, the economist Thomas Sowell. And just quickly, because to your point about putting class above race, I wanted to get to the Thomas Sowell point, and I almost forgot it. So in your exposition here, work Thomas, Sowell into your answer.

Jon Jeter (01:01:30):

Yeah, Thomas. Sowell, and I think a lot of people, particularly now you see with these young, mostly white liberals, although some blacks like Adolf Reed, the political scientists, Adolf Reed posit that it's class above race, that the issues racial and antagonisms should be subordinate to the class issue. Overall, universal ideas and programs, I would argue you can't parse one from the other, that they are connected in a way that you can't separate them. That yes, it is a class issue, but they've used race to weaken the working class to pit it against the itself. So you can't really parse the two and understand the battle that we have in front of us. The other thing I would say too, because like the Panthers would say, I hate the oppressor. I don't hate white people. And it really is a white identity. But as George Jackson said, and I quote him in the book, white racism is the biggest barrier to a united left in United States. That which is true when he wrote it more than 50 years ago,

(01:02:43):

It was true 50 years before that is true today. It is white racism. That is the problem. And once whites can, as we see happening, we do see it happening with these young, many of them Jewish, but really whites of all from all walks of life are forfeiting their racial privileges to rally, to advocate for the Palestinians. So that's a very good sign that something is stirring within our community. And the third thing I would say is, I'm not optimistic, right? Because optimism is dangerous. Something Barack Obama should have learned talking about the audacity of hope, he meant optimism and optimism is not what you need. But I do think there's reason for hope, these young students on the college campuses who are rallying the, I think the very real existential threat posed to the duopoly by the Democratic Party, by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's complicity in this genocide. I think there's a very real possibility that the duopoly is facing an existential threat. People are understanding that the enemy is, our political class, is our elite political class that is responsible for this genocide that we are seeing in real time.

(01:04:03):

That's Never happened before. So I would say the three things, it is a class for white racism is the biggest barrier to a united left or a united working class in this country. And third, there is reason to hope that we might be able to reorganize. And in fact, history suggests that we will organize very soon, reorganize very soon. There might be a dark period in between that, but that we will reorganize. And that this time, I hope we understand that we need to fight against this white racism, which unfortunately, whites give up that privilege. History has shown whites give up that privilege of being white, work with us, collaborate with us. But they return, as we saw beginning with Ronald Reagan, they return to this idea of a white identity, which is really a scab.

Wilmer Leon (01:04:50):

Well, in fact, Dr. King told us in where we go from here, chaos or community, he said, be wary of the white liberal. He said, because they are opposed to the brutality of the lash, but they do not support equality. That was from where we go from here, folks. John Jeter class War in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? After you read that, then get white nationalism, black interests, conservative public policy in the black community by my mentor, Dr. The late great Dr. Ronald Walters, and I mentioned the Dockum drugstore protests. He was Dr. Ron Walters was considered to be the grandfather of,

Jon Jeter (01:05:40):

I didn't know that

Wilmer Leon (01:05:41):

of the sit-in movement.

Jon Jeter (01:05:42):

Did not know

(01:05:43):

The Dockum lunch counter protests in Wichita, Kansas. He helped to organize before the folks in North Carolina took their lead from the lunch counter protest that he helped.

(01:06:01):

I did not know that.

Wilmer Leon (01:06:02):

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Jon Jeter (01:06:03):

I did not know that.

Wilmer Leon (01:06:04):

Alright, so now even I taught John Jeter something today. Now. Now that's a day. That's a day for you. John Jeter, my dear brother. I got to thank you as always for joining me today.

Jon Jeter (01:06:16):

Thank you, brother. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure.

Wilmer Leon (01:06:19):

Folks, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon, and stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, lie a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You'll find all the links to the show below in the description. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter. And we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. And folks, get this book. Get this book for the holidays. Get this book. Did I say get the book? Because you need to get the book. We don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you all again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Y'all have a great one. Peace. I'm out

Announcer (01:07:15):

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

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