It strikes me that as we continue plodding through the so-called culture wars, confronting as always systemic racism, anti-LGBTQ sentiments, and all the sprawling noise of white supremacist thinking, now stoked by the ginned-up outrage over critical race theory, the biggest lie about efforts toward equality in America is that those who engage those efforts are “anti-American.” This has long been the white supremacist catch phrase, trotted out over and over to undermine the struggle for dignity and equality, be it in the streets of Chicago where workers were massacred in Haymarket Square, or in the California fields where Cesar Chavez affirmed the humanity of migrant farm workers, or in the collapsing mines of Kentucky and West Virginia where organizers called for safety and security, or during the anti-Vietnam protests and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, or in the Black Lives Movement of today, the fight for human rights and those who wage it are always called anti-American. This phrase is wielded like a bludgeon to beat down and oppress those opposing white supremacy (and, yes, anti-labor views help sustain white supremacy) by those who espouse a belief in American Exceptionalism—the idea that of all nations on earth, the United States is the perfected state. But the slur of anti-Americanism is fundamentally a lie, conjured as most lies are to protect the interests of the liar, and then repeated ad nauseam by those who’ve been conned to believe the white oligarch loves America more than the young Black woman protesting police brutality does.

The current attack on critical race theory is one more example of white supremacy serving the agenda of the oligarchy. Peeling back each onion layer moves us closer and closer to a clear understanding of the real agenda. Are oligarchs necessarily white supremacists? It hardly matters, because white supremacy is merely the means by which they reinforce the false consciousness of the people. More method than philosophy, white supremacy keeps the American population in a gravitational pull toward made-up problems and so-called enemies while the obscene accumulation of wealth and resources by a precious few goes largely unattended. After all, the United States is a country that in the last year was more resentful of George Floyd than of Jeff Bezos increasing his wealth by over 70 billion dollars—during a pandemic.

For its survival, white supremacy depends on a complete and reflexive denial of its existence.