Arzu chaired this event for IHRC and IHRC Bookshop, on Thursday 6 February, unpacking the latest book from Houria Bouteldja, ‘Rednecks and Barbarians Uniting the White and Racialized Working Class’ with the author.
Details of the book below the video. You can buy it from the IHRC Bookshop here (all profits to charity).
About the book:
In Europe and North America, we see a trend of the white working-class tempted by right-wing political parties. Fascistic candidates and ideas seem to reap the fruits of social unrest everywhere. With her usual thought-provoking and unyielding analyses, Houria Bouteldja shows how the history of the left explains this conundrum and how we can overcome it.
Drawing from Black radical and decolonial Marxism, she shows that by privileging white constituencies, unions and left parties laid the foundations for a racial contract that binds workers and the poor to the state.
However, there may still be a way out of this trap. Uniting ‘rednecks’ (the white working-class) and ‘barbarians’ (the racially oppressed), will require a project of popular sovereignty, where national identity is reworked through revolutionary love. Looking to the future, Bouteldja pictures anti-racism as a redemptive struggle aimed not only at rehabilitating non-whites but also at redefining white dignity.
About the author:
Houria Bouteldja is a French-Algerian political activist and writer. She served as spokesperson for the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic until 2020. She is the author of Whites, Jews and Us: Towards a Politics of Revolutionary Love. The author lives in Paris, France.
