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| Photo Credits: Gabriele Galimberti |
Authoritarianism breeds violence, and revels in its use as a weapon of fear, division, and terror. The Republican Party in its white supremacy incarnation now holds firm to an absolutist view of the second amendment and argues that freedom is synonymous with unlimited gun rights.
For instance, in Texas, where 19 elementary children and two teachers were murdered by an 18 year-old with an AR-15 type assault weapon, Governor Abbott defines freedom by putting into place laws that allow individuals to buy and carry guns without a permit. This is the wild west of violence and a signpost of the power of gun lobbies, the arms industry, and the power of gun-defense-military industrial complex to buy off politicians in order to get their support.
For instance, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas receives more money from the gun lobbies than any other Senator. His response to the horrific mass shooting of children in Uvalde, Texas was to arm teachers. The conservative playbook does more that deflect anger after such shootings, it actively creates the conditions that produce them.
Yet, the answer to such violence cannot be restricted to gun regulation, however important. The US is plagued by a culture of violence and corruption, the roots of which lie deep in a form of gangster capitalism that elevates profit, greed, and self-interest over human needs. Under neoliberal authoritarianism, violence is not merely legitimated and used in the interest of political opportunism. It is also used by the Republican Party and its followers to destabilize American society. The latter is made all the easier as the Republican Party elevates violence to an organizing principle designed to address all social problems.
A less visible expression of such violence can be found in a society that has lost its vision and punishes children through zero tolerance policies in schools, creates the largest prison system in the world, militarizes the police, and uses the language of war to address social issues.
For the Republican Party, violence is a political tool to instill mass fear, spread hate and racism, and strengthen its path towards fascism and destruction of democracy. This is a form of domestic terrorism.
The Republican response to the shootings in Buffalo and Texas is to pray for the victims and their loved ones, assign pure evil to the killers, and then do nothing to address such violence except to hide from view how they produce it.
In the age of fascist politics, youth are no longer viewed as a marker of the future. In fact, they no longer have a future in the playbook of authoritarianism. They have become non-existent as viable public concerns and resources for the future. They are mocked more than treasured and are increasingly written out of the script of democracy.
The good news is that many young people refuse to have their future cancelled out and are fighting back recognizing that without a struggle there is no future for them.
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