WHITE WORKERS RESISTING CAPITALISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY: AN INTERVIEW WITH REDNECK REVOLT

This article originally appeared in The Hampton Institute, and was also run on It's Going Down.

Below is the transcript of an interview I had with an admin of Redneck Revolt, where we discuss the history of the page/organization, white working-class resistance to capitalism, and how the white working class is being manipulated by Trump.

So, what exactly led you to create Redneck Revolt?

Redneck Revolt came out of the original work of the John Brown Gun Club, a working group of the Kansas Mutual Aid Collective based out of Lawrence, Kansas from 2002-2008. The John Brown Gun Club focused on attempting to simultaneously grow a militant and armed culture within already existing liberatory and revolutionary movements, and attempting to stem the tide of right wing reactionary recruitment within white working class communities. Our work had two main focuses then: providing armed community and tactical defense trainings to build the capacity of our movements and demystify the firearm, and to be present at social and economic gatherings of white working people where groups like the Klan, Minutemen, and white reactionary militias recruited. Over the course of several years, we trained hundreds of members of social movement organizations from across the country, as well as attended dozens of gun shows and similar events to head off racist recruitment.

When Kansas Mutual Aid ended its work in 2008, the John Brown Gun Club went with it. In early 2009, Redneck Revolt was founded in Colorado, and enjoyed a limited life within local gun shows as well as being present at Tea Party rallies in the Denver area. Redneck Revolt started to focus less on armed defense within already existing social movement organizations, and to refocus on the other goal of the John Brown Gun Club: to engage in anti-racist movement building within the white working class.

Redneck Revolt went on