The Imperialism of White Anti-Imperialism
It's CLASS, not RACE!' - Why Jimmy Dore's Confrontation with Cornel West Should be Remembered as a Pivotal Lesson for White Activism.
In a previous article on this topic, I started with a disclaimer that feels equally necessary here. Some of my closest allies in anti-imperial struggles, including contributors to the platforms I will discuss in this article, are classified as white. Many have provided invaluable insights into the mechanics of empire and have shown genuine commitment to opposing Western hegemony. Yet this makes it even more crucial - and perhaps more difficult - to address how ‘whiteness’ continues to structure even activist spaces.
I raise this here precisely because the audience of BettBeat Media has consistently shown itself to be intellectually open and self-critical. This audience's composition - highly diverse yet predominantly white - is actually encouraging, as it suggests a readiness to engage with uncomfortable truths.
The persistence of all-white panels explaining global affairs, the unquestioned authority of Western voices, and the reproduction of racial hierarchies in anti-imperial discourse cannot be ignored simply because it makes us uncomfortable. If anything, our personal connections and respect for individual white and non-white anti-imperialists make this conversation more urgent, not less.
The Fundamental Contradiction
The Western approach to anti-imperialism harbors a paradox so profound it threatens to undermine the entire movement's credibility and effectiveness. This contradiction manifests in the persistent and often aggressive dismissal of what it terms "identity politics" - a dismissal that reveals far more about the critics than the criticized.
This contradiction came into sharp focus during a recent interview, where Professor Gerald Horne dissected Bernie Sanders' analysis of the 2024 presidential election. Sanders had suggested that Kamala Harris's defeat by Trump was partially due to Democrats' overemphasis on "identity politics" at the expense of broader economic messaging. Horne's lamentation was telling - mimicking the sneering tone with which many white leftists pronounce "identitarian politics," he exposed not just their dismissiveness but the deeply ingrained superiority complex that allows them to casually dismiss the lived experiences of billions whose identities shape their daily reality.
This reminds me of another interview where Horne expressed similar dismay at Norman Finkelstein — a Jewish American scholar of Palestine with a long history of principled anti-apartheid positions — and his sudden crusade against 'wokeness,' about which he wrote an entire book. These dismissive attitudes from figures on the Western left represent more than mere oversight - they reflect a fundamental analytical failure that reproduces the very power structures these critics claim to oppose.
Horne's mimicry of that sneering tone serves as both critique and revelation - it exposes how the very affect and rhetoric used by a great deal of white leftists betrays their position within imperial hierarchies. When they pronounce "identitarian" or "identity-" or "woke-politics" with that particular inflection, they're performing their own unexamined privilege to abstract away from identity — a privilege afforded precisely by their position at the imperial center.
Most tellingly, this dismissal seems reserved exclusively for Black, brown, and other marginalized identity politics, while white supremacist identity politics - as evidenced by Trump's continued mobilization of ‘white grievance’ - conveniently escapes their critical scrutiny, revealing the selective nature of their critique.
The Jimmy Dore Precedent: Dismissing Black Expertise
This dismissal of "identity politics" isn't just an analytical oversight - it's a power move. The ability to treat race as optional, as something that can be transcended through class solidarity alone, is itself a function of whiteness. For billions globally, identity isn't an academic abstraction or a "distraction" from class struggle - it's the very mechanism through which class exploitation is enacted and experienced.
The sneering tone Horne often mimics reveals something deeper: the persistence of colonial attitudes even in supposedly anti-colonial spaces. When white leftists dismiss identity-based analyses as "fragmentary" or "divisive" - as exemplified in Jimmy Dore's notorious interview with Dr. Cornel West, where the former leftist lectured Dr. West that his focus on race "distracts" from class issues - they're unconsciously reasserting their right to define the universal - the very same right claimed by colonial powers to impose their particular worldview as universal truth.
The Dore-West interaction serves as a perfect crystallization of how white ‘leftists’ often unconsciously reproduce colonial power relations even while ostensibly opposing them. Dore's attempt to subordinate racial analysis to class analysis — delivered with the unshakeable confidence of someone proclaiming obvious truths while, by his own admission, "hardly reading books"— exemplifies exactly the kind of ideological policing that Horne's mimicry exposes.
The very language and affect used to dismiss "identity politics" — now derided as the “woke virus” — reproduces imperial power relations at the level of discourse. The casual confidence with which many white anti-imperialists and leftists declare what is and isn't relevant to anti-imperial struggle reveals their unexamined assumption of their right to be the arbiters of revolutionary theory and practice.
As I wrote about here, this dynamic is starkly illustrated in figures like George Galloway and Scott Ritter, who have positioned themselves as arbiters of how the Arab and Muslim world should behave and express themselves under the boot of US/Western imperialism. Their self-appointed role as interpreters and judges of proper anti-imperial resistance in these regions perfectly exemplifies this colonial mindset - even, or perhaps especially, when it comes wrapped in anti-imperialist rhetoric. They demonstrate how white anti-imperialists can simultaneously oppose Western imperialism while unconsciously reproducing its paternalistic logic of speaking for and over the very populations they claim to defend.
Another revealing example comes from the Grayzone. In a segment on Ukrainian refugees' racism in Western Europe - specifically covering a white British woman's discomfort with the anti-Muslim and anti-Brown racism expressed by the Ukrainian refugees she had welcomed into her home - hosts Aaron and Max focused solely on critiquing liberal and progressive hypocrisy - how liberals denounce racism while supporting Ukrainian refugees known for their, at times, extremely bigoted views. While this hypocrisy merits discussion, they overlooked the far graver threat: how this influx of racist attitudes could further endanger marginalized communities in Europe.
Some would say, ‘but that's not the point of their segment, Aaron and Max wanted to highlight the ignorance behind not knowing the kind of bigotry they were importing from Ukraine’. I get it. And that is exactly my point. That racism in and of itself is often ‘not the point’ of these content creators when touching on issues of racism. Other 'points' merit more emphasis according to them.
I sat through the episode waiting for outrage about the actual racism and its real-world impacts. That outrage never came. Instead, the hosts seemed more invested in exposing liberal/progressive hypocrisy than addressing the genuine harm to vulnerable populations. What's particularly striking is that those they reflexively labeled as "liberals/progressives" were simply white anti-racist Britons who had opened their homes to Ukrainian refugees—their political affiliations never mentioned in the segment—who demonstrated more genuine concern for marginalized people than their "anti-imperialist" critics.
This pattern - where white leftists prioritize attacking liberal inconsistency over addressing concrete racial harm - reveals how white anti-imperialism often subordinates anti-racism to its broader ideological project.
“It’s class, it’s CLASS!” — Don’t Mention the R-Word
The problem runs deeper than simple prejudice or oversight. It reflects a profound misunderstanding of how power operates in our global system. When predominantly white voices in the anti-imperialist movement dismiss identity-based analyses, they demonstrate a startling inability to recognize how identity - particularly racial identity - has served as the primary organizing principle of global power relations for centuries.
This dismissal takes various forms, each more revealing than the last. Sometimes it manifests as eye-rolling condescension toward discussions of racial dynamics in geopolitics - especially when one mentions "racism," which has become almost a taboo word in and of itself. Other times, it appears as an insistence that class analysis alone is sufficient to understand global power structures. Most perniciously, it often shows up as a kind of intellectual sleight of hand - acknowledging racism's existence while simultaneously arguing that focusing on it "divides the working class" or "distracts from real issues."
Such positions reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how imperialism actually operates. The global system of imperial power wasn't built on economic exploitation alone - it was constructed on a foundation of racial hierarchy that justified that exploitation. The transatlantic slave trade, colonial exploitation, and modern economic imperialism — whether through 19th century "civilizing missions," third-world "development programs" or contemporary "democracy promotion" — all required racial justification to function. These same racial logics persist within Western societies themselves, where domestic inequality and police violence are justified through coded racial discourse about "crime," "culture," “Islamization” and "merit."
The irony is that many of these same critics can readily analyze how economic systems intersect with and reinforce each other, yet struggle to apply the same intersectional analysis to racial systems of power. They can understand how neoliberalism supports militarism, or how finance capital enables imperial expansion, but balk at examining how white supremacy undergirds and enables these very systems.
This analytical failure becomes particularly glaring when we examine how these critics engage with contemporary political movements and figures. Their approach to understanding Trump's support base serves as a perfect illustration of this blind spot.
The Trump Phenomenon: ‘Protest Votes’ Devoid of Racism
The defense of Trump voters against accusations of racism represents perhaps the most glaring example of this analytical failure. When white anti-imperialist commentators rush to explain away Trump's support as purely economic protest — or, better yet, ‘anti-establishment’ — they're not just oversimplifying — they're actively participating in the erasure of racism's central role in modern political mobilization.
This oversimplification takes several forms. First, there's the false dichotomy between economic and racial motivations, as if humans can't simultaneously harbor economic grievances and racist beliefs. Second, there's the patronizing assumption that Trump voters couldn't possibly be making conscious choices based on racial antipathy - they must be merely expressing economic anxiety in misguided ways. Finally, there's the stunning unwillingness to take Trump supporters at their word when they explicitly express support for racist policies and rhetoric.
Consider the evidence: Trump launched his political career with birtherism - a nakedly racist conspiracy theory about America's first biracial president. He began his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. He called for a "complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." His supporters chanted "build the wall" and "send them back" at rallies. And as of today he encircles himself with rabid Zionists amid an ongoing genocide by Israel against the Palestinian people. Yet somehow, we're asked to believe that race played no significant role in his appeal.
This willful blindness extends far beyond Trump. Take the Alternative for Germany (AFD) party, which has seen a surge in support that many Western leftists struggle to properly analyze. When commentators like Patrick Henningsen describe the AFD as merely "moderate with some leftover right-wing tendencies," they're not just underplaying the threat - they're actively participating in the normalization of neo-fascist politics.
The AFD's platform isn't subtle. They called for "remigration" - a euphemism for the deportation of immigrants and their descendants, including German citizens. They've argued for shooting refugees at the border. Their leaders have called for rehabilitating Nazi-era terminology and concepts. Yet some anti-imperialist voices continue to portray them as merely representing legitimate ‘grievances against the establishment’.
This pattern repeats across Europe and beyond. Viktor Orbán in Hungary receives praise for his stance against NATO and the EU, while his systematic dehumanization of refugees and migrants is treated as a mere footnote. Marine Le Pen's National Rally in France is portrayed as anti-establishment while its fundamental racism is downplayed. Italy's far-right government under Giorgia Meloni is analyzed primarily through the lens of its economic policies, with its xenophobic agenda treated as secondary.
White Privilege
What's particularly revealing is how this selective blindness aligns perfectly with white privilege — another taboo definition. For white analysts, it's possible to view the AFD's rise as primarily about economic sovereignty because they're not the ones targeted for "remigration." They can celebrate Orbán's defiance of Brussels because they're not the ones facing abuse at Hungary's borders. They can downplay Le Pen's racism because they're not the ones who would suffer under her policies.
The Media Ecosystem and Institutional Blindness
The problem becomes even more apparent when we examine the anti-imperialist media ecosystem. What we find is a nearly perfect reproduction of imperial power structures within spaces that claim to oppose them. This isn't just ironic - it's deeply revealing of how whiteness operates even in supposedly radical spaces.
Take prominent platforms like The Grayzone, The Duran, or Judge Napolitano's show. A careful analysis of their guest lists reveals a startling pattern: an overwhelming predominance of white, Western voices speaking about global issues. This isn't just a representation problem - it's an epistemological one. When 90-100% of your analysis comes from people positioned at the heart of empire, you're not really offering an anti-imperial perspective - you're offering an imperial perspective that happens to be critical of specific imperial policies.
The problem goes deeper than guest lists. These platforms often display a particular pattern in their coverage: they'll rightly criticize Western imperial actions but consistently downplay or ignore the racial dimensions of global power. They'll extensively cover NATO's expansion but have little to say about global racial capitalism. They'll analyze military interventions in detail but remain conspicuously quiet about the racial hierarchies that make these interventions possible.
Consider their treatment of figures like Tucker Carlson, who once described Iraqis as "semi-literate primitive monkeys." When anti-imperialist platforms celebrate Carlson for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy while ignoring his explicit racism — or, as seen on the Grayzone, mock those who highlight it — they're not just making a tactical alliance - they're actively participating in the whitewashing of white supremacy. The same pattern appears in their coverage of Tulsi Gabbard, whose connections to Hindu nationalist groups and support for the ‘war on terror’ get minimized because she professes to ‘oppose’ regime change wars.
This selective blindness reveals a deeper truth: many Western anti-imperialists understand imperialism primarily as a set of policies rather than as a system of racial and economic hierarchies. They can oppose specific wars while remaining comfortable with the racial order that both enables those wars and results from them. They can criticize NATO expansion while accepting the white supremacist logic that makes Eastern European lives more valuable than African or West Asian ones. This becomes starkly visible in the obsessively prominent status given to the Ukraine war in white anti-imperialist spheres, especially when compared to their relatively muted coverage of conflicts in Sudan or even Palestine.
The contrast becomes clear when we look at analysts from the Global South or those deeply engaged with anti-racist scholarship. Scholars like Dr. Gerald Horne don't treat racism as an unfortunate byproduct of imperialism - they understand it as fundamental to how imperial power operates. Analysts like Dr. Assal Rad, Mouin Rabbani, and Vijay Prashad are further examples of individuals who bring analytical frameworks that naturally integrate racial and imperial power because their lived experience makes such integration impossible to avoid.
This is not to suggest that white analysts are incapable of developing a sharp racial analysis. Notable exceptions like Matt Kennard, Michael Hudson, Alexander McKay, Miko Peled, and Dimitri Lascaris (the latter, like myself, occupying a space between whiteness and non-whiteness) demonstrate that such understanding is possible. However, they remain exceptions rather than the rule in Western anti-imperialist discourse.
Theoretical Implications and Systemic Analysis
The theoretical implications of this racial blind spot are far-reaching and demand deeper examination. What we're witnessing isn't simply a failure of inclusion - it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how power operates in the modern world. This misunderstanding stems from what could be called the 'white epistemology of anti-imperialism' — for those unfamiliar with the academic term 'epistemology,' it simply refers to a 'way of knowing' or 'way of understanding the world.
This white epistemology manifests in several key ways. First, it tends to treat imperialism as primarily a matter of state policy rather than a comprehensive system of racial-economic domination. Second, it often assumes a false universalism where "working class solidarity" can somehow transcend racial hierarchies without directly confronting them. Third, it frequently reproduces colonial patterns of knowledge production, where Western analysts remain the primary interpreters of global events, even when critiquing Western powers.
White Christianity and Islamophobia
Consider how this plays out in practical analysis. When Western anti-imperialists discuss China, for instance, they often focus exclusively on geopolitical competition with the U.S., missing how racial hierarchies shape both Chinese policy and Western responses to it. Their analysis of Russia similarly tends to ignore how Putin's regime has weaponized white Christian identity, preferring to focus solely on his resistance to NATO expansion and military dimensions.
This analytical framework becomes particularly problematic when addressing complex situations like the Modi government in India. Western anti-imperialists might celebrate India's participation in BRICS or its refusal to join Western sanctions against Russia, while minimizing or ignoring the BJP's Hindu nationalist ideology and its implications for Muslims, Dalits, and other marginalized groups. Indeed, it is exceptionally rare to hear Western anti-imperialists discuss Modi's virulent Islamophobia, or Islamophobia in general for that matter. This selective analysis reveals how white anti-imperialism often mistakes any opposition to Western hegemony for genuine anti-imperialism.
The problem extends to how these analysts understand resistance movements. They might support Palestine's struggle against Israeli occupation but struggle to connect it to broader patterns of racial capitalism. They might oppose U.S. intervention in Latin America while failing to understand how white supremacist racial hierarchies within Latin American societies are maintained by U.S. imperialism and shape these conflicts. This disconnection from racial analysis leads to incomplete and sometimes counterproductive conclusions.
Moreover, this white epistemology of anti-imperialism often fails to recognize how imperial power has evolved in the 21st century. Modern imperialism operates not just through direct military intervention but through complex systems of financial control, cultural hegemony, and yes, racial hierarchy. The inability to integrate racial analysis makes it impossible to fully understand phenomena like the IMF's structural adjustment programs, which disproportionately impact communities of color globally, or the racial dimensions of climate change and environmental imperialism.
Towards Anti-Racist Anti-Imperialism
The path forward requires nothing less than a complete reconceptualization of anti-imperialism itself. This isn't merely about adding diversity to existing frameworks - it demands fundamentally rethinking how we understand and analyze global power structures.
First, we must recognize that any authentic anti-imperialism must be intrinsically and consciously anti-racist. This isn't an optional add-on or a matter of "intersectionality" - it's fundamental to understanding how imperial power operates. The very mechanisms that enable imperial exploitation are built on racial hierarchies that determine whose lives matter, whose resources can be extracted, and whose sovereignty can be violated.
Consider for a moment: when was the last time you encountered a deep analysis of anti-imperialist struggles in sub-Saharan Africa? How often do you find substantive discussions about current developments in Burkina Faso, where Ibrahim Traoré is implementing significant changes, or about Black communist movements in South Africa? What about detailed coverage of the ongoing genocide in Sudan? The scarcity of such coverage in Western anti-imperialist discourse reveals how deeply embedded these racial hierarchies remain, even within spaces that claim to challenge imperial power.
This racial blind spot becomes even more glaring when we observe how easily ruling classes can weaponize racial divisions to fragment solidarity movements. We saw this dynamic play out clearly during the protests against the Palestinian genocide. It took only a few incidents - the New Orleans and Trump Tower attacks - coupled with a billionaire's strategic use of social media to amplify narratives about "Pakistani grooming gangs," for a significant segment of the white population to abandon class solidarity in favor of racial allegiance across class lines with figures like Elon Musk. Race remains the most potent tool not only for oppression but for preventing the very unity that could challenge that oppression.
Conclusion - Reimagining Resistance
Movement building in this context takes on new dimensions. Creating genuine partnerships between Western and Global South movements means moving beyond performative online ‘Twitter solidarity’ to actual power-sharing and mutual accountability. Leadership models must center those most impacted by imperialism, not just in theory but in practice. This requires establishing accountability structures to prevent the reproduction of imperial power relations within our own movements. Even our communication infrastructure needs rethinking, developing networks that don't depend on Western ‘Elon Muskian’ technological infrastructure and its inherent biases.
The challenges outlined in this analysis might seem overwhelming, but they also point toward unprecedented opportunities for reimagining resistance. The very recognition of these blind spots represents a potential turning point in how we conceptualize and practice anti-imperialism.
What emerges from this examination is not just a critique of current anti-imperialist frameworks, but the outline of a more complete and effective resistance. This new framework would understand that the struggle against imperialism cannot be separated from the struggle against white supremacy - not because they're parallel struggles, but because they're the same struggle viewed from different angles.
When we understand how racial blindness has hampered anti-imperialist analysis, we can better comprehend why so many resistance movements have fallen short of their goals. We can understand why certain alliances have reproduced imperial power rather than challenging it, and why some victories have turned out to be pyrrhic.
Looking forward, this understanding demands new forms of organization and resistance. It requires us to move beyond the false choice between class solidarity and racial justice, beyond the limiting framework of nation-states, and beyond the artificial separation of domestic and international struggles. Instead, we must build movements that naturally integrate these dimensions because they understand them as inherently connected.
In the end, this is not just about better analysis - it's about more effective resistance. By understanding how racial blindness has limited anti-imperialism, we can begin to build movements capable of actually challenging imperial power in all its forms. The future of anti-imperialism lies not in ignoring or minimizing racial dynamics, but in fully incorporating them into our understanding of how power operates and how it can be challenged.
- Karim
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Thanks for all the many excellent observations. I too have taken issue with the pronouncements of white commentators like Finkelstein and Ritter, and made a point of seeking out and centering non-white intellectuals, and journalists and scholars in my efforts to keep abreast of issues. So often it’s a matter of directly answering the question, “Who’s on the front lines, here?” Regardless of issue, it's almost always the same answer. I also agree it’s seriously and dangerously myopic to discount the ways that white, right-wing constituencies can so readily be mobilized by racist rhetoric.
At the same time one must acknowledge that we’ve watched many non-whites, particularly in the liberal centrist (Democratic Party) crowd, sign off on, raise their hands for and apologize for, imperialist necropolitics and its enablers… indeed, some have been key enablers. And that started long before 10/7/23.
I think the legitimate problem with “woke” politics concerns the ways it’s at the service of decidedly non-woke capitalism and imperialism. I don’t see “woke” political culture as connected to the kind of rigorous anti-racist/imperialist/colonial analysis you rightly advocate, but as a politically engineered distraction and diversion from that very synthesis. Imperialism comes to us wrapped and laundered in anti-racist trappings as well.
Thanks for bringing this painful problem up. I wish that I could claim that I’ve attained clarity about it. Maybe another point is that that’s something nobody attains on their own, but that we have to work on reaching together.
I have been extremely frustrated for sometime at how so many people I follow keep interviewing the same handful of people you pointed out in this article and how very few people like you, Robbie and Abbie Martin have been getting diversified people on their media outlets.
Dr. Horne and Dr. Hudson are living legends in my book and rarely seen on "left" shows.
The people you listed have one thing in common that can be missed if you don't follow them long term, and it is that they are all closeted libertarians especially the hosts of the Duran. Galloway is a very conservative Catholic with no tolerance for people who do not share his religious views. Ritter and Napolitano are full blown libertarians. Max Blumenthal is a want to be standup comedian and feels Dore is his mentor and both just love to shit on other leftist like code pink.
The Grayzone does some very good work, and the others do as well but they need to be critically examined like corporate news.
I hope you reach out to Max and others to see if they are willing to come on your show to defend themselves.
Again, this was a amazing article that I have been waiting a long time for someone to do and you hit it out of the park!