Come on: Wolfe’s opening tirade before he posts the Ignatiev article is trash. There is nothing even approaching an argument in it and he demonstrates his refusal to read and think. For example, he approvingly cites McCreary’s review and Lamb’s review. I criticized these, demonstrating how they both didn’t even read the material they criticized (they attributed claims to Settlers that were not in Settlers), in a review that Wolfe links to but: a) doesn’t even represent the arguments made in that review or bother responding to them; b) misrepresents the review (implying that I endorse Settlers 100%); c) gets my name wrong, implying that he can’t read or is just an asshole.
I know McCreary from labour activist circles: he is the typical white activist academic brocialist who didn’t do any real on the ground stuff, wrote a review for an activist journal on a book that has to do with areas he hasn’t studied in the least, and so shouldn’t even be seen as authoritative on the issue. Sebastian Lamb, who is really David Camfield, is another Canadian white brocialist asshole who hates anything that mentions the possibility of a labour aristocracy, and is a Draperite who thinks all radical critiques of white supremacy in the labour movement can possibly “divide the working class”––his review was also trash motivated by his trash politics. So for Wolfe to just cite these people as authorities, when they are not, to ignore people who are authorities on this (such as myself whose PhD directly concerns anti-colonial Marxist literature and the debates around it), is goddamn insulting.
The author has every right to be dismissive of someone who has, for the entire time his blog has been up, been dismissive of non-white and anti-colonial Marxism of all types. There are critiques to be made of Settlers but Wolfe is motivated by white-racism and always has been; this isn’t the first time his politics in this area have been critiqued. I have no patience for Eurocentric Trotskyite trash who thought that “Platypus” was a viable institution and still believes Chris Cutrone is an exciting thinker.
