This is a deeply important article by one of my heroes. May Henry Giroux
and other courageous truth-tellers inspire us to increasingly open our eyes,
care, act. We are all in this together. Another world is possible. ~ Molly
*******
A police officer atop an armored vehicle looks through the scope of a rifle towards a crowd of demonstrators gathered to protest the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 12, 2014. The militarized police response to the protests over the shooting of an unarmed teenager has elicited a broad call from across the political spectrum for America’s police forces to be demilitarized. (Whitney Curtis/The New York Times)
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed
If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever. - George Orwell
The larger reasons behind Eric Garner's execution seem to be missed by most commentators. The issue is not simply police misconduct, or racist acts of police brutality, however deadly, but the growing use of systemic terror of the sort we associate with Hannah Arendt's notion of totalitarianism that needs to be explored.
When fear and terror become the organizing principles of a society in which the tyranny of the state has been replaced by the despotism of an unaccountable market, violence becomes the only valid form of control. The system has not failed. As Jeffrey St. Clair has pointed out, it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is to punish those it considers dangerous or disposable - which increasingly includes more and more individuals and groups. Hannah Arendt was right in arguing that, "If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination." (1)
In an age when the delete button and an utterly commodified and privatized culture erase all vestiges of memory and commitment, it is easy for a society to remove itself from those sordid memories that reveal the systemic injustices that belie the presence of state violence and terrorism. Not only do the dangerous memories of bodies being lynched, beaten, tortured and murdered disappear in the fog of celebrity culture and the 24/7 entertainment/news cycle, but the historical flashpoints that once revealed the horrors of unaccountable power and acts of systemic barbarism are both disconnected from any broader understanding of domination and vanish into a past that no longer has any connection to the present. (2)
The murder of Emmett Till, the killing of the four young black girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair, in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the killing by four officers of Amadou Diallo, and the recent killings of countless young black children and men and women, coupled with the ongoing and egregious incarceration of black men, in this country are not isolated expressions of marginalized failures of a system. They are the system, a system of authoritarianism that has intensified without apology.
Rather than being viewed or forgotten as isolated, but unfortunate expressions of extremism, these incidents are part of a growing systemic pattern of violence and terror that has unapologetically emerged at a time when the politics and logic of disposability, terror and expulsion has been normalized in US society and violence has become the default position for solving all social problems, especially as they pertain to poor minorities of class and color. If police brutality is one highly visible expression of the politics of disposability, mass incarceration is its invisible underside. How else to explain that "the United States incarcerates a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did [and that in] America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid." (3) Or that 77 percent of all inmates out of a population of 2.3 million are people of color.
When ethics and any vestige of social responsibility and the public good are trampled beneath the hooves of the finance state, there is no space for democratic values or justice. We live in an age of disposability - an historical period of increasing barbarism ruled by financial monsters, who offer no political concessions and are driven by a death-drive.
Under assault are those individuals and populations considered excess such as poor youth of color and immigrants but also those public spheres such as public and higher education that offer a space for critical ideas, thoughtfulness, informed exchange and the development of modes of democratic solidarity. Democratic values, commitments, integrity and struggles are under siege in the age of neoliberal misery and disposability. The aim of the terrorist state, as Arendt argues, is not only to instill fear, but to destroy the very capacity for convictions. Under such conditions, power is not only unaccountable, but it is free from any sense of moral and political conviction. Hence, the rise of the punishing state as a way to govern all of social life. In this context, life becomes disposable for most, but especially for poor minorities of class and color.
I think bell hooks is right when she states that "the point of lynching historically was not to kill individuals but to let everybody know: 'This could happen to you.' " This is how a terrorist state controls people. It individualizes fear and insecurity and undercuts the formation of collective struggle. Fear of punishment, of being killed, tortured, or reduced to the mere level of survival has become the government's weapon of choice. The terrorist state manufactures ignorance and relies on induced isolation and privatization to depoliticize the population. Beliefs are reduced to the realm of the private allowing the public realm to sink into the dark night of barbarism, terror and lawlessness. Without the ability to translate private troubles into public issues, Americans face a crisis of individual and collective agency as well as a historical crisis.
As an endless expression of brutality and the ongoing elimination of any vestige of equality and democratic values, the killing of innocent black children and adults by the police makes clear that Americans now inhabit a state of absolute lawlessness and extreme violence, one that both fills the Hollywood screens with prurient entertainment and a culture of cruelty and, unfortunately, provides testimony to the ravaging violence that marks everyday life as well.
Of course, this is not simply a domestic issue or one limited to the United States. As Arif Dirlik points out, "Life in general is being devalued for entire sections of populations across the globe. Let's not forget the callousness with which people are being murdered by drones, US troops, Israel, Han Chinese (Tibetans, Uighurs). The assassination of blacks by the police across the US gives the impression of a vulnerable population being used as guinea pigs, to warn the rest of what to expect if we get out of line." (4) Totalitarianism is on the rise across the globe just as a growing number of populations that are vulnerable are becoming more disposable due to modes of governance wedded to militarism, unchecked market forces, corporate sovereignty and updated forms of disorder.
Calls for minor reforms such as retraining the police, hiring more people of color, equipping police with body cameras (5) or making the grand jury system more transparent will not change a political and social system that has lost its connections to the ideals, values and promises of a democracy. (6) Just as calls for punishing the Wall Street crooks who caused the financial crisis will not reform the system that produced the financial debacle. In fact, the pleas for reform are often made by apologists for the punishing state in the aftermath of highly publicized examples of police brutality, botched executions, the shootings of unarmed black teenagers and the numerous reports of torture, solitary confinement and the ongoing criminalization of social problems.
For example, President Obama responded to the police violence and national uprisings by chastising blacks for looting and rioting. This is not merely another blame-the-victim narrative; it is an act of moral duplicity coming from a president that makes George W. Bush look liberal when it comes to violating civil liberties and punishing whistleblowers while expanding the indiscriminate killing of civilians through the use of drone warfare. In addition, there is Eric Holder who refused to prosecute Wall Street criminals and yet assures the US public that the government will conduct independent investigations in the interests of the powerless. Credibility is more than stretched in this instance.
Please continue this article here: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27832-state-terrorism-and-racist-violence-in-the-age-of-disposability-from-emmett-till-to-eric-garner
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