J. Sakai

J. Sakai (Maoist Standard English: J. $aKKKai) is an author and likely federal agent whose real name is unknown. He is best known for writing the historical nihilist screed Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat which promotes anti-revolutionary sentiments trying to divide the working class against itself along racial lines. It was largely irrelevant when published but has been astroturfed by two groups: the MIM (the leader of this group was a friend of Obama) in the 90s and 2000s and rhizzone.net after Trump won the election in 2016.

Despite using Marxist language throughout, Settlers is not in fact a Marxist book. The MLM Kevin Rashid Johnson puts it this way:

J. Sakai’s Settlers and anti-Marxist analysis of race (which replaces race for class as the principal form of oppression in Amerika). Settlers cites episodes from the extensive history of “white” racial oppression of people of color in Amerika and the relative privileged status that “whites” at all social-economic levels have enjoyed at the expense of peoples of color, and which has allowed even working class and poor whites to betray the interests of their counterparts of color. The main theme of Settlers is “white” racial treachery, betrayal, brutality and privilege that claims to know no class distinction. The conclusion being that these factors combine to create a uniform class of “whiteness” that has no proletarian sector.

We contrast Sakai’s narrow work with the broader and exhaustive works of Marxist proletarian intellectual Theodore Allen, particularly his two volume study The Invention of the White Race. Applying a political economic analysis he demonstrates that race and racism were/are created and manipulated by the ruling class as a tool to divide the working class against itself and only to the benefit of the ruling class.

Sakai’s work is geared more to the incitement of visceral reactions to the horrors of the practice of white supremacy and driving home the subjective theme of inherent treacherousness of “whites”. This to the end of inciting people of color to look upon all “whites” as a collective oppressor class and to erase the class lines that exist between and separate ruling class and working class “whites”.

Federal agent

It's commonly asserted that J. Sakai is a federal agent. This is likely for two reasons:

(1) There's virtually no proof "J Sakai" exists outside of a voice interview from 2003. Everything else by him is text-only and could have been produced by anyone. The only other thing that ties him down to the real world that's known is that his PO Box in 1983, for the first publication was in Langley, Virginia. For the 3rd edition from 1989, his address moved to N. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL 60602, which is less than 3 miles away from the local FBI HQ.

(2) It would be hard to produce a book more theoretically harmful to the working class movement in the U.S. So ultimately, even if he isn't a fed, he's working towards the same end that they are.

Distortion of history

Eugene Debs & the Socialist Party

Sakai also distorts history and selectively quotes to make various white socialist figures look as bad as possible multiple times throughout the book. For instance, he says

These Japanese laborers were subjected to the most vicious persecution and exploitation, with the bourgeois politicians and press stirring up mob terror against them constantly. Both the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and the A.F.L. unions helped lead the anti-Asian campaign among the settler masses.

"Socialist Party of Eugene Debs" seems to imply Debs was responsible for or involved with this chauvinism. Yet this was a policy pursued by the right wing of the Socialist Party and Eugene Deb always opposed it.

Eugene Debs was outraged by the Party's debate on immigration. His views were published in the International Socialist Review shortly after the Congress- which, typically, he did not attend. Debs felt that the majority report represented a thorough capitulation to the AFL-"civic federation unionism." He called it "utterly unsocial istic, reactionary, and in truth outrageous," and warned, "If Socialism, international revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare."

Was William Z. Foster a white supremacist?

A notorious example of misquoting that's been pointed out for years is his attempt to portray William Z. Foster as some sort of white supremacist would-be lynch mob leader.

In his 1920 history of the strike, Foster (the supposed "communist") repeated the lie that Afrikan workers had "lined up with the bosses." In fact, Foster even said that in resolving the differences between Euro-Amerikan and Afrikan labor "The negro has the more difficult part" since the Afrikan worker was becoming "a professional strike-breaker." And militant white workers knew what they were supposed to do to a "professional strike-breaker.

Foster's lynch mob oratory was only restrained by the formality expected of a Euro-Amerikan "communist" leader. His white-supremacist message was identical to but more politely clothed than the crude rants of the Ku Klux Klan. He warned that the capitalists were grooming Afrikans as "as race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the Cossacks to keep in subjugation the balance of the Russian people." It's easy to see how Foster became such a popular leader among the settler workers.

But let's read this quote, where Foster says that he's confident that black workers won't become dedicated strikebreakers, in full:

They know little of the race problem in industry who declare that it can be settled merely by the unions opening their doors to the negroes. It is much more complex than that, and will require the best thought that conscientious whites and blacks can give it. The negro has the more difficult part to solve, in resisting the insidious efforts of unscrupulous white employers and misguided intellectuals of his own race to make a professional strike-breaker of him. But I am confident that he will win out and will take his place where he belongs in the industrial fight, side by side with the white worker.

Now more Sakai:

No longer was it just a question of some Afrikans not following the orders of the white labor. Now Foster was openly saying that the entire Afrikan "race" was the enemy. Could the imperialists have asked for more, than to have the leading "communist" trade-union leader help them whip up the oppressor nation masses to repress the Afrikan nation?

The Cossacks were the hated and feared special military of the Russian Czar, used in bloody repressions against the people. Only the most twisted, Klan-like mentality would have so explicitly compared the oppressed Afrikan nation to those infamous oppressors. And was this message not an incitement to mob terror and genocide? For the poor immigrants from Eastern Europe (much of which was under the lash of Czarist tyranny) to kill a Cossack was an act of justice, of retribution. The threat was easy to read.

In case Afrikans didn't get Foster's threat (which was also being delivered in the streets, as we know), Foster made it even more plain. He said that if Afrikans failed to obey the decisions of settler labor: "It would make our industrial disputes take on more and more the character of race wars, a consummation that would be highlv injurious to the white workers and eventually ruinous to the blacks."

And Foster clearly saying that the capitalists were trying to stir up a race war that would be mutually ruinous and must be opposed by a working class united across racial lines, with white workers opposing racial chauvinism in their own ranks:

So serious was the race situation in the steel strike that the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers requested President Gompers to arrange a conference between prominent negro leaders and trade-union officials, to the end that the proper remedies may be indicated. The need for action looking towards better relations between whites and blacks in the industrial field should be instantly patent; for there can be no doubt but that the employing class, taking advantage of the bitter animosities of the two groups, are deliberately attempting to turn the negroes into a race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the Cossacks to keep in subjection the balance of the Russian people. Should they succeed to any degree it would make our industrial disputes take on more and more the character of race wars, a consummation that would be highly injurious to the white workers and eventually ruinous to the blacks.

For the tense situation existing the unions are themselves in no small part to blame. Many of them sharply draw the color line, thus feeding the flames of race hatred. This discriminatory practice is in direct conflict with the fundamental which demands that all the workers be organized, without regard to sex, race, creed, politics or nationality. It injures Labor’s cause greatly....

Faming this as "lynch mob oratory" is clearly extremely dishonest. If one accepts that Sakai is a fed then he certainly did this with ill intentions. If one thinks he was a hack and non-Marxist but not a fed, it just shows he's retarded.