Rednecks and Barbarians: Uniting the White and Racialized Working Class

“Houria Bouteldja is one of the most interesting antiracist decolonial activists. Known for her incisive analysis, Bouteldja offers a strong argument for unity between ‘rednecks’ and ‘barbarians’” Françoise Vergès, author of A Programme of Absolute Disorder “Bouteldja throws all our certainties into the air, and with brilliant precision, reassembles them. Clear and uncompromising, she points towards a truly emancipatory future” Alana Lentin, author of Why Race Still Matters “A masterpiece” François Bégaudeau, author of The Class In Europe and North America, the white working class is increasingly 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 insights, 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), requires a project of popular sovereignty, where national identity is transformed through revolutionary love. Looking to the future, Bouteldja imagines antiracism as a redemptive struggle aimed not only at rehabilitating marginalized communities but also at redefining white dignity. 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: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love.