Empire:

For us, Empire encompasses both the historic process of Imperialism and the resulting present-day systems of oppression, including capitalism, the carceral state, white supremacy culture, racism, heterosexism, ableism, eugenics, misogyny, whorephobia, transphobia, fatphobia, rape culture, and more. The structures that uphold Empire today range from the concrete (like police, prisons, class divisions, nation-states, the World Bank/International Monetary Fund/World Trade Organization, etc) to the conceptual (like productivity, scarcity, urgency, and more). Much of what we think of as ‘normal’ social structures and organization is the result of bureaucratically and violently enacted cultural shifts that originated during the middle ages in Europe. European royalty/ruling classes, the Catholic/Christian Church, and bourgeois worked together to strategically and systematically repress European peasants, in direct response to their growing social and economic power. Many of the tools that were used then are still being used today: social division, the creation of an ‘other’, the protestant work ethic, etc. In many ways, Empire enlists us as foot soldiers, promising us rewards in exchange for upholding and enforcing its rules in what is akin to a multi-level marketing scheme of social power and violence. By learning to see, name, and question power relationships we are better able to recognize the ways we participate and replicate them, and ultimately undo our complicity and create new/return to older ways of being. To undo Empire we must first face and recognize the ways we are privileged within it, our histories and our current social and economic position. Once we understand and come into relationship with our role within Empire, we can begin to dismantle it in the world around us.

White supremacy culture:

(From https://www.dismantlingracism.org/white-supremacy-culture.html) 

​White supremacy culture is the idea (ideology) that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to People of Color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions.

White supremacy culture is reproduced by all the institutions of our society. In particular, the media, the education system, western science (which played a major role in reinforcing the idea of race as a biological truth with the white race as the "ideal" top of the hierarchy), and the Christian church have played central roles in reproducing the idea of white supremacy (i.e. that white is "normal," "better," "smarter," "holy" in contrast to Black and other People and Communities of Color. 

White supremacy culture is an artificial, historically constructed culture which expresses, justifies and binds together the United States white supremacy system. It is the glue that binds together white-controlled institutions into systems and white-controlled systems into the global white supremacy system. [from Sharon Martinas and theChallenging White Supremacy Workshop]