The Redneck Manifesto [Anglais] [Relié]

Jim Goad, The Redneck Manifesto (Simon and Schuster, 1997)

Three years before the publication of The Redneck Manifesto, Jim Goad was self-releasing the magazine ANSWER Me! on his own press, Goad to Hell Publications (who also published Peter Sotos' first collection, one of the only books I know of that was actively suppressed before being challenged through official channels), and standing trial for obscenity for issue #4. Fast-forward to 1997, and he's getting a hardback first-printing for a book I wouldn't have thought a major publisher would touch with a ten-foot pole.

Maybe there IS some small hope for the world.

That, ultimately, is what The Redneck Manifesto is about-- hope. Most people probably won't figure that out from reading it, though.

The Redneck Manifesto is a two-hundred-fifty page rant, I grant you, but it is a savagely intelligent, well-researched, and downright laugh-out-loud funny rant, and like all the best rants throughout history, it has at its core both a simple truth, that the redneck is the last subsection of American society against which it's permissible to be prejudiced, and a solution to that truth, which in this case is that the rednecks, and the people who oppress the rednecks, have a common enemy who has manipulated them into being enemies.

This is nothing new, of course. The power elite have been manipulating segments of the great unwashed against each other throughout human history. They're still doing it. (The Israelis and the Palestinians, anyone? The Orange Irish and the Green Irish? Shiites and Sunnis? The Tutsi and the Hutu? We could keep going like this all day.)

Goad has a plan to get everyone clear-headed, but to say it's confrontational would be understating the case somewhat. His thrust in the first segment of the book is to make you aware that the word "redneck" is as much a slur as are many other words that we recognize as slurs now (and are thus unprintable in an Amazon review), and he does so by using them. A lot. For most people, there's going to be a shock factor, though it's surmountable-- especially if you're paying attention to what Goad is driving at.

From there, he launches into a very well-researched history of the redneck, which further clarifies a point he made in the beginning: that the modern redneck, contrary to popular wisdom, is not the architect of American race-hatred; quite the opposite. It's the book's most "scholarly" section, but it still reads like a rant, and that's a wonderful thing.

After that, three chapters on the culture of the redneck. It should be no surprise to those who know Goad's work that they come off kind of like a rapper telling N-word jokes; "it's okay, because I'm a member of the oppressed group." There's more to it than that, though; Goad is a misanthrope more than he is a redneck, and you can't just turn off the jaundiced-eye filter. This, ultimately, is what gives the book its highest street-cred marks; Goad doesn't make the same mistake other oppressed-minority writers do in confusing a desire for equality with a desire for revenge. He's not talking about the redneck rising supreme to put its boot on the neck of any other oppressed minority, he's talking about all of them, with all their many faults, rising up as one to overthrow The Man.

The book concludes with a strenuous, energetic dissection of those groups who really need to be brought down with extreme prejudice. If you don't get fired up after reading the chapter on the banking industry, pal, check your pulse.

This is an important piece of work, and it's especially relevant in the post-2004-election atmosphere of restless natives presently pervading the country. If you're breaking your back for The Man, be you white collar, blue collar, no collar, redneck, black neck, white neck, jobless, homeless, whatever, read this book. It is, potentially, a life-changing experience. *****

...basically, I think Goad's put his finger on something very real and important; being a working-class white male myself, I must confess to turning one or another shade of crimson (and not just on my neck) whenever I hear some rich, Harvard-educated, brownstone-dwelling, cigar bar-frequenting, cappucino-sipping (and usually lily-white) "limo-lib" lovingly preserving his (or her) most cherished Archie Bunkerian stereotypes about us blue-collar slobbereenies. But I think there's a huge difference between pointing out the hypocrisies and rhetorical excesses of overclass pseudoradicalism and making a sweeping dismissal of the entire liberal enterprise. Goad has hit upon one of the most neglected truths in American society: racism, sexism, homophobia, and other leftist bugaboos notwithstanding, class is by far the biggest and most entrenched of social dividers. But rather than use this insight as a springboard for a more class-conscious approach to positive social change, Goad chooses (and seemingly encourages his readership to choose) to retreat into a world of political apathy, unrelenting self-pity, and perverse "pride" in some of the more tragic manifestations of trailer-park poverty. He sees his earlier attempts to improve his socialeconomic footing as not only futile (which may or may not be true) but also as somehow a betrayal of his heritage (which, I'm sorry, is just plain pathetic; it's like the ghetto-dweller who attacks his "overachieving" neighbors as "acting white.") The last thing the poor of any race need, however, is to embrace their poverty as a badge of honor. For a more thoughtful (and far less vitriolic) consideration of many of the same issues, I would suggest "The Revolt Of The Elites" by Christopher Lasch.

If you decide to read this book, you are in for a major treat. This is a book unlike any other. As I read the book, I kept wondering how it ever got published. Jim Goad is one angry redneck, to be sure. His goal is to show how poor white trash has become the only acceptable scapegoat left in this country. Along the way, he rides roughshod over every type of politically correct supposition known to man. Goad doesn't care a whit about whiny blacks or liberal do-gooders. He doesn't give a fig about conservatives with their big-business loving mentality, either. Goad is concerned with one thing: the mistreatment of people, regardless of their skin color.

Goad reduces the ills of poor white trash to one simple formula: economic exploitation by the wealthy. Goad believes that the rich, throughout history, have consistently played off classes against each other in order to maintain their privileged status. The recent black vs. white warfare is just the latest incarnation of this exploitation. Goad disproves the widespread belief that blacks suffered alone. The majority of whites in America got here as indentured servants, many of whom were kidnapped and tossed on a boat against their will. America also served as a dumping ground for poor white criminals. The indentured servants were often treated worse than black slaves. Owners of indentured servants knew that they only had a limited amount of time to exploit these white slaves, so they worked them to a frazzle. Goad cites statistic after statistic to show that the vast majority of whites had it as bad, if not worse, than blacks.

Most of the book concerns razor sharp insights into white trash values. Goad looks at Elvis, Bigfoot and snake hugging Christians and sees within them new religions of the trash class. Militias and conspiracy addicts are also examined and shown to have somewhat of a basis for their paranoia. Probably the best part of the book, in my opinion, is when Goad describes a night out on the town in a poor white bar. His observations on the denizens of this bar are hilarious and sad at the same time. Most of the time that is the charm of this book: it is thigh-slapping funny. I would love to quote to you some of the witty aphorisms contained in this book, but I can't because they are so obscene. If you are not a fuzzy-wuzzy liberal, you'll laugh at this gem of a book too. After reading this book, I'm sure my reparations check is only a trip to the mailbox away. Highly recommende