Who exactly is J Sakai?
Who exactly is J Sakai?
It seems like Settlers is pretty prolific on the left but there's very scant info about him online.
One of the reasons I'm skeptical of him is that he's extremely elusive for such a major (and divisive) figure. For info on the origin of white supremacy and the evils of settler colonialism I steer people towards Gerald Horne, who is a respected black marxist historian.
Gerald Horne is incredibly good, J Sakai has some issues with citations or sharing methodologies as well, imo. However I've found Settlers to be a good "wrecking ball" for dismantling perceptions on history so I tend to recommend people start there and then move on to The Counter-Revolution of 1776 or something similar
Horne's good. I do think the counter revolution of 1776 over plays its hand a little bit though. To me the revolution is more about settler colonial revolt over conceptions of freedom Ala Aziz Rana's the two faces of American freedom, of which a key part is anxiety over slavery law, but not the principle component (and there is no principle component it's a mixture of several).