Re: <nettime> Another killer cop

Dear Allan,

You are right about the imprint which slavery has left on the United States, that has been the single most important national discussion over the last year and there is always more to understand about it - especially the specific histories of particular places, histories that people who live in those places would rather not know about. It is vitally important to tell these true tales - for instance, the story of the KKK sheriff of Hennepin county. The slave patrols of the old Southern planters are at the origin of today's police, and that is a US history, the ugliest and most damaging one. Whoever ignores it is complicit in the devastating recrudescence of an ideology that has never died, but only bided its time, awaiting fresh opportunities.

But I suggested that these histories are not so specific to the US, because of life experience.

I lived in France for 20 years and like most French people, I believed the myth of equality. Although I was well aware of racism in the US, I did not notice that despite all the grand principles, the French police consistently arrested, beat, imprisoned and killed people of African origin at the slightest pretext. That state of willful ignorance held tight until the so-called "revolte des banlieues" in 2005, which I read about in the papers while visiting Chicago, then experienced first hand when I returned home to France. I went out to demonstrate one afternoon in solidarity with the banlieues - but almost no one came to that demo, especially not the institutional left, whose keywords are equality and solidarity. In fact, France is absolutely as racist as the US, and this is becoming increasingly clear to younger people in that country over the course of the last year or so. Despite that rising awareness, mainstream French society turns a blind eye to its own violence, its own radical exclusion of racialized Others, and refuses to ask why France has become the major target of terroism in the Western world today. Meanwhile the doctrine of the "Great Replacement," forged by the French racist Renaud Camus, has become the central dogma of American white supremacists.

Now, you are right that everywhere is unique. But the slave trade was begun by Europeans. And colonialism was big business in Europe up to the 1950s. Today, the EU is walling itself off against the migratory waves caused in large part by the violently unequal economic and symbolic relations between white Europe and its near neighbors. The murder that protects European lifestyles today is the harbinger of a much more violent future, if nothing changes. So I would like to hear other unique stories from other European countries.

There is a strong temptation, where I am concerned, to attribute this racist violence to the maintenance of class difference. How to make some people work for almost nothing, so that others can enjoy the cheap and sickening delights of consumer societies predicated on freely exploitable labor? If I did not know how China treats its minorities, I would think this kind of capitalist domination was a specifically European thing, due specifically to that civilization which dominated and plundered the entire world, before unleashing such destructive conflagrations in the twentieth century that finally, the European countries had to choke back their murderous rage and cloak it in the humanistic veils that prevail today. You'd be nuts to think that Europe is immune to racism. And yet one can say the same thing about China and India, and probably a whole lot more places.

Whether it's capitalism, or some deeper atavistic drive that makes people act in these ways, I don't know. But I do think everyone, everywhere, ought to inquire more deeply into the foundations on which their own privilege, or lack of it, is based.

in solidarity, Brian

On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 11:27 AM Allanmini2 <allan@allansiegel.info> wrote:

Hello
Thank you Brian sharing your outrage; besides the points you mention, we should also be clear about the origins and purposes of policing; while globally there are obvious similarities there are also distinctions and these can be telling. Without going into all the details, in the U.S. the origins are connected to slavery and the posses that marauded and ran wild throughout the South and parts of the North; the Underground Railroad was not only a train that led to freedom but also the means to avoid slave-catchers - early incarnations of the modern police. Here lies the immorality and cultural bedrock that underpins most (if not all) police forces in the U.S.. The absolutely wanton hand-out of military equipment from the U.S. Pentagon just adds fuel to the fire - exponentially.
best
allan

Sheriff Earle Brown, founder of the city where Daunte Wright was murdered, was a longtime member of the KKK

"This country has history. It has context. And if you simply scratch and sniff the surface of almost any period of American history, you’re bound to get a big whiff of racism and white supremacy. And that’s exactly what we see in the town where police shot and killed 20 year old Daunte Wright this past Sunday.

Until Sunday, I had never heard of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota before. Like so many American towns, its founding was literally rooted in white power on the farm of a Klansman named Earle Brown. Of course, that fact alone could color how we see Brooklyn Center, but it’s so much deeper than that. Earle Brown was not simply a racist farmer who kept to himself, he was the Sheriff of all of Hennepin County - home to Minneapolis. Under his watch, the KKK thrived in Hennepin County, burning crosses and having hooded marches all over town" Shaun King - The North Star

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