Henry Giroux does not pull his punches. Donald Trump, he writes, is fanning white wing violence in an effort to establish a fascist state:
Nobody should justify assaults that lead to needless human suffering and the destruction of neighborhood property, especially in impoverished cities. Nor should violence be used as a rhetorical device to include property damage. Violence is a term that should be limited to assaults, injuries and harm waged against human beings, not property. When talking about violence, it is crucial to make a distinction between the destruction of property and violence against persons.
Trump makes no such distinction. For him, demonstrators are terrorists who threaten the foundation of the nation. And, he claims, he has the solution to that problem -- state violence:
State violence comes in many forms and extends from the criminalization of social problems and the horrors of the carceral state to the militarization of the police and the increasing violence waged against undocumented immigrants, poor youth of color, and anyone who is not white and viewed as expendable, if not disposable.
The examples are everywhere:
Consider agents of the state suffocating, with impunity, a Black man, Eric Garner, on the streets of New York in full view of bystanders. Consider police officers shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice while he was holding a toy gun; consider the police kicking in the door and killing Breonna Taylor while she slept in her bed; consider a cop putting his knee on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes until the last breath passed from his body. Consider a government that separates children from their parents and puts them in cages. Consider that waging violence against Black men and women did not end with slavery and Jim Crow, but continues into the present era, especially under Trump, whose call for “law and order” functions as “an enabling tool for providing an open season on killing Black men.” Moreover, “law and order” as a defining principle of Trump’s mode of governance is best defined by the White House’s ties to criminals, such as the eight associates of Trump arrested or convicted of crimes, including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen.
Trump is setting the foundations for a fascist state. And he might well succeed.
Image: medium.com
2 comments:
Apparently there area also empty-headed "moderates" who respond to civil unrest with a childish desire for a strongman authoritarian who will bring an end to the "tumult."
It's genuinely convenient when the strongman who promises to clampdown on civil unrest happens to be the leader of the fascist goons who are responsible for the bulk of the violence.
It's an old con, thwap. The guy who starts the fire claims he's the only one who can put it out.
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