The current neoliberal ideology that much of the world is governed under leads to more fascist rules of governments that push state police violence against the people. The narrative of Afro-Americans being responsible for more crime than others are based on one set of facts and one set of fascist racism pushed into the power of government. The fact refers to somewhat higher crimes in poverty areas, with a demographic higher for Afro-Americans, this then fuels prejudice from the police against them. The reasons for poverty are the socio-economic factors that echo down from earlier segregation laws and ideologies going back decades. Something like that doesn't just end when laws disappear. With those facts fueling the local and individual police prejudice/racism against Afro-Americans, the fascist factors fuel them even further by creating narratives for the general public through media and right-wing lobbyism which skew the public view of the conflict.

The current violence erupting now isn't the result of the police killing one Afro-American person, that was just the spark that blew the keg of gunpowder that has been filling up by peaceful protests over many years. We've seen all the kneeling, the hashtags, the peaceful requests to open a dialogue. We have seen all the movements trying to enlight how fascism is growing, how the alt-right and racist movements have risen. But no got damn person is actually doing any actions to battle it. Normal, regular people go back to their lives, they don't care, they don't do anything and then they are surprised when all of this blows up.

I'm not going to condemn the violence of the protestors. The apathy and indifferent attitude among the people make room for fascism to grow and the violence and destruction seen now is as much a blow towards that as towards the state violence. If years of peaceful protests and requests don't lead to anything, while fascist movements and white supremacists grow loud, then it's no damn surprise that these kinds of destruction and violent protests occur. I cannot condemn the current protests because society had it fucking coming.

So what is so different in: Norway, Netherlands,
Finland. — ssu

The difference is that political protest as a means to effect political process is viable. Laws can be changed through political action, which may or may not include protest.

You have pictures of police dealing with protesters.

You don't have pictures and video of Nordic police murdering people in the streets, drive by pepper spraying protesters, running them over with police vans, shooting people on their porch, arresting and shooting at journalists.

People protesting in Nordic countries know they won't be killed and they're message will be seriously considered by politicians and the public in general, the state can be negotiated with effectively (union strikes), and elections can be affected by the protests.

Sure, Nordic countries aren't perfect and you can find flaws, crimes, racists and police managing protests as best they can, but the idea that Nordic states aren't viewed as a result of legitimate political process by the large majority of people that live in them is silly.

True, lot's of reasons to protest about, but the difference with the situation in the US is that there's genuine elections to look forward to; protest and civil disobedience are an effective tool of communication in a legitimate state and genuine democratic process. Protest and civil disobedience are not effective tools of political power. If the dialogue breaks down, only power remains.

I'm not going to condemn the violence of the protestors. — Christoffer

Not even the ones trying to turn this into their own revolution? Fuck them. I hope they all get arrested. I hope the legitimate protesters continue kicking them out and turning them in.

I don't really want to pursue that line of questioning in thread, seeing as we both see it as a tangent. The only remarks I'll offer are there are differences in degree of police militarisation and the intensity of reliance upon police disciplinary function as part of societal structure. White supremacist terrorism is not analogous to anti-racist protests motivated to obtain policing and judicial reform, and the police response to each should clearly differ.

Yet I feel that now you put the US to be quite different from other countries. Wouldn't there be some general factors in the civil/police relations that are factors here?

Or do you think that the police in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands or Finland abide this kind of similar agenda and structure in the society? Or is your answer that the American situation is totally different? — ssu

Wacquant refers to the US as a 'laboratory' in which certain factors were in place that enabled and encouraged this kind of use of police terror as pivotal and widespread social policy. It was among the first to preach deregulation and privatization, and thus the cutting back of the welfare state and social provisioning. This also happened in conjunction with the emphasis on 'individual responsibility' over social responsibility, and thus with the atomization of society in line with the neoliberal view of individual as selfish market actors. It also allowed the state - while deregulating the economy - to find purchase elsewhere, by massively regulating, instead, the lives of the poor. All these factors and more combined to make the States an ideal place for all police violence to become a pillar of social policy in a way it has not really been anywhere else.

But as Wacquant says elsewhere, the US has been also been really successful in exporting this model. Neoliberalism goes hand in hand with the expansion of what is now often called the 'carceral state' and the decline of state provisioning - the two being two sides of the same coin. There is an astounding inverse relationship - an exact trade off - between state provision and the explosion of police and prison industries. One example:



The same inverse correlation holds other social welfare provisions like public infrastructure, healthcare, and welfare payments. All beginning around the 70s - the start of the Neoliberal era. The more the State recedes in it's responsibility to take of its citizens, the more it imprisons and polices them. And the US figures are fucking insane compared to the rest of the world:



(source)

And that's just the rate of incarceration. The absolute figures are mind-blowing. I can't find a nice chart, but put it this way - it has a prision population of 2.3m, and the next biggest is China - that authoritarian monster state - with 1.6m. (source). Or as the article puts is: "The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners." Police terror in the US is quite literally off the charts. In that, it is absolutely unique, and absolutely terrifying. And this is not even to begin to bring in the figures of how many of these prisoners are PoC.

Edit: I forgot the moral of the story - there is systemic incentive to fuck the poor and the black by way of police: it is a social policy, unprecedented in scale. That's why it's so hard to 'reform the police'. This is not a story about police and 'bad apples'. It is a social-political-economic story, driven by neoliberal design.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/05/outside-agitator-racial-justice-protests-minneapolis-george-floyd

The “outside agitator” trope is today often accompanied by a tirade against “white anarchists” or “Antifa” carrying out the rebellion — while people of color don’t. This is an attempt to isolate and weaken protesters from each other, to make the “good” protesters distrustful and paranoid about “infiltration” by white radicals. (Radicals of color, meanwhile, are nowhere to be found.) Fostering distrust among developing coalitions is a quick and easy way to ensure their swift demise.

...In 2020, the phrase, and these tactics, have once again reared their ugly head. The myth of “outside agitators” is being simultaneously weaponized by conservatives and liberals to demean and intimidate protesters. We shouldn’t let them — it’s an accusation designed to downplay the widespread anger so many are feeling and acting on in this country. King warned us, “We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.” Don’t fall for defenders of the status quo continuing to blame “outside agitators” for the rebellions sweeping the country right now — they want us to perish together as fools. — Jacobin - Don’t Fall for the Myth of the “Outside Agitator” in Racial Justice Protests

Not even the ones trying to turn this into their own revolution? Fuck them. I hope they all get arrested. — Marchesk

The ones hijacking the protests, or the white people who use the protests as excuses to ventilate their destructive tendencies in no relation to the reasons for the protests, or the ones destroying stuff and doing violence in an attempt to further their alt-right white supremacist agenda with labeling destruction on the protests by doing it themselves, yes, fuck them. Because they are part of the problem the protests are against. The violence I don't condemn is, for example, the ones beating the guy who took out a bow and arrow to shoot people around him. That is a fascist poster boy if there ever was one and he had it coming, he had it coming for years.

The myth of “outside agitators” is being simultaneously weaponized by conservatives and liberals to demean and intimidate protesters.

It's hard for them to weaponize it if there are numerous observations of white supremacists instigating violence. It's in the best interest of fascists to instigate violence during protests.

That is a fascist poster boy if there ever was one and he had it coming, he had it coming for years. — Christoffer

Well yeah, it was also really stupid. What did he think would happen?

Charlotte black clergy understand anger about George Floyd, but preach peace and solidarity:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article243136806.html

Something that can be done.

https://www.policeempathy.com/?fbclid=IwAR2xXlsoOstXTuxkJspy7mddc0AQQq-Xv_jL6v__-d4oYR6nkVurxG-joec

If one only recognises that the problem is not people rioting...

It should also be said: if Trump designates antifa as a terrorist organization, this can only be a good thing. The US government will then be obliged to provide it with weapons and money.

Charlotte black clergy understand anger about George Floyd, but preach peace and solidarity: — Marchesk

The problem is still that the peaceful approach has had no significant impact on society, the fascist state machine still grows. This is why violence and destruction from protestors cannot be condemned by anyone having insight into what is actually going on. If people peacefully protest for years and still get brutally killed by police violence, then they will move on to violent and destructive ways, because the former peaceful methods don't work.

If society ignores or is indifferent to suffering and problems in a part of their community, then they have no right to condemn the violence and destruction erupting.

There is no logic to ignoring people's peaceful protests and requests for help in changing things and then condemn violence and destruction that happens because nothing changes. It's the same as asking them to just accept that they might get murdered by the police one day and there's nothing they can do or change. Nope, people will stand their ground against such indifference, ignorance and downright fascism and anyone condemning that need to examine things much closer.

What the state and police is doing is a form of long term entrapment of an entire community, they push and push and when the keg blows up it's the "thugs" of the community that are the criminals. Nope, entrapment is a crime committed by the police and murdering people in those communities and hiding behind the state violence monopoly of the police will push the entire community to commit crimes when things have gone too far. The protestors committing violent acts cannot be blamed if viewed through the idea of entrapment, which the entire society is guilty of.

They can't really since it's not an organization and has no leadership. It's a movement based on action against fascism. It acts against active forms of fascist growth. Compared to fascists, they do not continue doing either violence or acts against fascism when fascism disappears. But fascists will never stop what they're doing until the groups they aim attacks at disappears completely, which is hard when those groups generally are of color. Anti-fascists disappear when the fascists disappear and fascism is a choice, compared to being of color. The blame they get is so obviously out of the interest of alt-right lobbyists and neoliberal capitalists, it's an easy way to block anti-fascist movements and stigmatize their activism against their interests.

Something that can be done. — unenlightened

The only thing that can be done on individual police levels is to educate them in psychology and philosophy. A police officer who understands segregation, socio-economics, class struggles and the psychology of the persons they encounter will be able to do their job in a way that respects the community they invade.

However, it's hard for them to do so if the state orderers more militant actions. You, as an officer, only have a choice of putting down your weapon or complying with the state fascism.

Yes, I know. It's pretty funny to me. It's like declaring the 'alt-right' a terrorist organization. It's so stupid, its funny.

Yes, I know. It's pretty funny to me. It's like declaring the 'alt-right' a terrorist organization. It's so stupid, its funny. — StreetlightX

You are also a part of the anti-fascist movement if you do things like informing a company that they are in business with white supremacies, if you work against an alt-right politician who's close to being elected into power etc. All active forms of anti-fascism will put you into that movement.

So it's just another tool for the racist fascist fucks to control the narrative. Get regular people to think it's an act of terrorism to stand up against fascism and you've laid out the carpet for that fascism.

We need to push forth the "appeaser" phrase, make it a hashtag or whatever. An appeaser is a word for anyone who just let fascism happen, who doesn't do anything and never acts to block it's growth. Society is filled with appeasers and they are far worse than the fascists because, without them, fascism will never grow or happen.

Anti-appeaser movement = AntiApp movement unite.

:up:

Somewhere else, someone mentioned that if we can't be antifascists, then we can be Fascisn'ts instead. I quite like that.

Shit, National Guard shot someone in Louisville. That's not good.

Yes. It's almost like major political support among national guard for a president who wanted the national guard to shoot protesters has predictable effects.

Supposedly they were shot at. But who knows. And yeah, Trump is very bad for this situation. Good things he's incompetent.

However, it's hard for them to do so if the state orderers more militant actions. You, as an officer, only have a choice of putting down your weapon or complying with the state fascism. — Christoffer

Yes. Hence, Malcolm X "by any means necessary". And it is not an accident that things are coming to a head as the last of the WW2 generation is passing away. Personally, I would prefer a few riots to a 6 year global conflagration, but I've always been a bit of a softie.

Gee, who could have fucking seen that mobilizing the national guard to put down protests for civil rights would have gotten someone killed!



How fucking unexpected!

Someone remind me again how incremental change works again?

Good things he's incompetent. — Marchesk

The base isn't your "average republican", the base is the kind of national guard that would shoot into a crowd. Or a journalist. Or sweep through neighbourhoods with no protests in them and shoot people standing in their door.

That is who he is appealing to. It isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Edit: also, it's not about Trump. This is a side issue, he's just a concentrated form of political legitimisation for the kind of fuckwit that would fire on a crowd of anti-racist protesters. Will the guard be punished? Will there be reforms of the national guard? Or is it more likely that the national guard being called in and shooting dissidents is business as usual? History sides with the latter.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/31/politics/trump-underground-bunker-white-house-protests/index.html

Does this mean it's nearly the end of the war already? What is it with fascists and bunkers?

Yes. It's almost like major political support among national guard for a president who wanted the national guard to shoot protesters has predictable effects. — fdrake

In this case they were returning fire.

Does this mean it's nearly the end of the war already? What is it with fascists and bunkers? — unenlightened

Fascist mancaves?

All the better to put their fucking brains through their skulls. Less mess. Very considerate.

:up:

I'm surprised a surprise shot didn't kill an officer.