Now here is a thought to wonder over: "...in contrast to
"pseudo-patriotic" white nationalists -- in Thomas Jefferson, George
Washington and other "founding fathers." But white nationalism is intrinsic
to US state crafting and the liberal mythologies around what it means to be
patriotic. Pledging allegiance to the US state necessarily means an
alignment with the ideological edifices born out of centuries of settler
colonial violence, namely enslavement and Indigenous genocide."
When I sing our national anthem or pledge my allegiance to the flag,
am I supporting the bad and the ugly along with the good? Can we have
"good" in the midst of Evil? It's a bigger puzzle than that of
laughing at the comedian, Bill Cosby, and feeling disgust at Bill
Cosby the pervert. How do I swear allegiance to a nation that sets
high standards even as it allows racists and Bullies to take over the
leadership of an incompetent Federal government?
As a boy in grade school, I was taught that George Washington chopped
down the Cherry tree, and when confronted by his father, he said, "I
cannot tell a lie, I did it!"
We never heard little George say, "When I'm head of this show, I'll
make sure no one is allowed to own another person."
Can we honor the Cherry tree and chop down the statue of dear old George?
Carl Jarvis
On 8/24/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Think about this carefully.
Miriam
Piecemeal Reforms Won't Stem the Tide of Fascist Politics
Thursday, August 24, 2017
By Zoé Samudzi, Truthout | Op-Ed
A woman makes a peace sign before a line of police preparing to advance
upon
demonstrators after a rally by President Donald Trump at the Phoenix
Convention Center on August 22, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo: David
McNew / Getty Images)
The far-right assembly in Charlottesville, Virginia, represented a social
and political crisis of consciousness for many people. Between Jimmy
Fallon's uncharacteristically morose words on the gravity of the event
(despite playfully ruffling President Trump's hair on his show just months
before), growing criticisms about free speech absolutism (with the ACLU
slightly modifying its defense of the "Unite the Right" with a new refusal
to defend armed hate groups), a slowly growing mainstream acceptance of
anti-fascist confrontation, and accelerating removals of Confederate
statues, the value and values of liberalism in the face of increasingly
publicly articulated fascistic politics are being more frequently and
loudly
contested.
The American liberal democracy that is constantly cited as providing a
framework for safeguarding our rights and liberties also provides a
constitutionally defensible framework for legal expressions of violent
white
nationalism and racial supremacism. Many people, including Virginia Gov.
Terry McAuliffe, have pointed to "real" patriots -- in contrast to
"pseudo-patriotic" white nationalists -- in Thomas Jefferson, George
Washington and other "founding fathers." But white nationalism is intrinsic
to US statecrafting and the liberal mythologies around what it means to be
patriotic. Pledging allegiance to the US state necessarily means an
alignment with the ideological edifices born out of centuries of settler
colonial violence, namely enslavement and Indigenous genocide.
If Washington was a true patriot standing for "American" ideas of equality
and egalitarianism, why did a godlike portrait of the slave-owning first
president flank Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German American Bund (a
20th-century German-American Nazi organization), as he sang the praises of
both Washington and Adolf Hitler at the party's 1939 convention in Madison
Square Garden? If the Union's father, Washington, is distinctly different
from the Confederate hero General Robert E. Lee, then how are their
legacies
and names linked in the name of a Lexington, Virginia, institution,
Washington & Lee University, beyond both having been benefactors of the
school? While President Trump asked in horror whether statues of Washington
would be toppled next, the removal of all statues of the white nationalists
that laid the ideological and material frameworks for centuries of racial
violence and socioeconomic inequity is a politically consistent notion
rather than an incredible one. Within this vein of consistency, the US
government should also return the Black Hills land housing the Mount
Rushmore National Memorial to the Lakota people.
If the United States' political foundation allows for the emergence of
fascistic and authoritarian governance, does it not behoove us to
interrogate the state's foundation and the definition of democracy in the
past 241 years of the United States' existence rather than idealizing an
ethos of "equality" and "liberty" that has never come to be? Rather than
grasping at, and attempting to reclaim and revive a nonexistent democracy,
can we not confidently acknowledge that "democracy" as we have come to
understand it is incapable of delivering the rights-related promises made
by
its founding documents?
The United States' liberal democratic political framework was created to
maximize liberties in resistance to British monarchial impositions, and
also, quite explicitly, around notions of empowerments and citizenship
rights afforded only to white, landowning men. Even within the 1776
declaration of the apparently self-evident equality of all men, a
declaration that in no way contradicted the flourishing institution of
slavery, the universally assured unalienable rights were not applicable to
everyone: Blacks -- then categorized as chattel -- were neither citizens
nor
recognized as fully human, and Native peoples were enduring a genocide that
is still ongoing.
This outright exclusion and conditional inclusion of individuals from the
social contract facilitated the creation of a society wherein rights could
be denied to communities as swiftly as they were extended. The free speech
absolutism inherent to the American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty
Law Center and other liberal organizations' insistence that violent white
supremacists have the right to speech and assembly (however indignantly
these groups might condemn white supremacist politics) is a part of this
social order that insulates and protects whiteness.
Protection of First Amendment rights should not entail an extension of
constitutional protections for hate speech, demonstrably violent assemblies
or incitements to future violence: Free speech, arguably, is supposed to
protect individuals from government censure and censorship, though these
purported protections have been inadequate where rights and liberties can
be
suspended according to the state's will to protect "order" and "public
safety."
Following the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, and in
anticipation of white nationalist events in San Francisco and Berkeley on
August 26 and 27 respectively, the Berkeley City Council passed an
emergency
ordinance that empowers the city manager to selectively disband permit-less
gatherings within city limits. The city, thus, has criminalized gatherings
of all natures in a legislative move that was as much to prevent the
assembly of white nationalists as well as reactive community protest and
self-defense. This step may increase the likelihood of violence from white
nationalists against a far smaller turnout of counter-protesters; we have
seen white supremacist gatherings effectively disbanded by overwhelming
displays of community resistance (as was the case in Boston). In light of
historical white supremacist participation in law enforcement and police
departments' historical tendency to crack down on leftist protesters and/or
fail to respond to outbreaks of violence by white nationalists, the refusal
of the state (in this case, the Berkeley municipal government) to intervene
is indicative of its non-disagreement with white nationalist politics,
particularly given President Trump's own politics and response to
Charlottesville, which was widely praised by white supremacists.
First Amendment rights entail protection from government retribution, but
counter-protesting communities are not the government. The construction of
social-political engagement between white supremacist rally-holders and the
anti-fascists and community members countering them is that of a debate
where each position -- one of violence and community annihilation, and the
other of community defense and support -- holds equitable merit.
In calling for a defense against white supremacy, William C. Anderson
writes
that an individual or community that "defends themselves by any means
necessary when they are being attacked is not the one bringing violence
into
the world. There is nothing violent about defending your life or the life
of
your loved ones." Yet in a liberal imaginary where all speech or uses of
force are equal and equally protectable regardless of content or the
subject
position of the speaker, white supremacists' desire for
community-extinguishing violence and the forms of violence they enacted
were
functionally equivalent to the resistive forced used by anarchists,
anti-fascist coalitions and community protestors -- despite clergy and
community leaders in Charlottesville, most notably Dr. Cornel West,
acknowledging that antifa saved their lives. If the state existed to
protect
minoritized communities, uses of force to defend communities would not be
necessary. However, because the function of this state is to protect
capitalist interests, coalitions of community groups and political
organizations are forced to protect themselves from existential threats.
The murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville will likely be the first of
many homicides if these violent white nationalists are not contained. While
white people standing in solidarity with ethno-racial minority communities
have also historically been targeted by white supremacists, the primary
targets of white supremacist violence are not white and are not similarly
mourned, as was stated by a chorus of non-white activists and commentators,
as well as Heyer's cousin Diana Ratcliffe. Heyer's mother, Susan Bro,
called
for the murder of her daughter to be met with "righteous anger": a call to
action for so many Americans still mired in liberal complacency.
It is glaringly apparent that cautious proposals such as "dialogue" and
piecemeal reforms brought about by elected officials (whose elections
remain
suspect, due to voter suppression and disenfranchisement) will not stem the
surge of fascistic politics sweeping through this country. The only
question
is how much more violence marginalized communities will endure before
neo-fascisms are confronted with the urgency and decisiveness they warrant.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Zoé Samudzi
Zoé Samudzi is a womanist and researcher interested in how hegemonic gender
and racial constructs influence public health outcomes. Follow her on
Twitter: @ztsamudzi.
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