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Last summer, pictures almost indistinguishable from these (and others from around the US) -- of police using excessive force against protesters who clearly posed no threat -- were coming from Moscow. It's worth taking a moment to think about that.
(A rather long thread)
/1 https://twitter.com/joeguillen/status/1266563974658744321
(A rather long thread)
/1 https://twitter.com/joeguillen/status/1266563974658744321
Police brutality against protesters is, of course, hardly a new phenomenon in America. This isn't a story about dictatorships and democracies; democratic regimes are fully capable of beating the sh*t out of their citizens (and even killing them).
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What strikes me looking at these pictures alongside footage from 2019 Moscow, though, is not just the similarity in the violence itself: it's the similarity in the _strategy_ of violence.
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Violence can (rightly or wrongly) be deployed locally to gain control of a situation, to capture territory and to force an opponent into submission. But it can also be deployed in a more 'global' sense, strategically, to send a message.
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Last summer, I argued that the violence against peaceful protesters in Moscow was designed less to get the protesters off the streets, than to send a message. That message, moreover, was targeted not at the opposition, but at Putin's supporters. https://moscowonthames.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/escalation/
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Putin's most important supporters, of course, aren't ordinary Russians (though they matter, too). They're the elite, the people at the top of the political and economic food chain, who have amassed tremendous power and privilege with Putin's help.
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The message the Kremlin was sending to its key supporters was this: "We've got your back. All of the power and privilege you have enjoyed depends on us. Only we can defend it. And rest assured: we will not shy from a fight."
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Why did Putin want to send this message to his supporters? Because if they began to think that he lacked the courage of their convictions, they might seek new leadership and a new defender, and that would be the end of his rule.
So it is in Trump's America.
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So it is in Trump's America.
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African Americans, I imagine, are keenly aware of one of the messages of American police violence: "You have no rights." That message is driven home with every murder, every stop-and-frisk, every pointed gun, and every Black Lives Matter rally met with tear gas.
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The message to African Americans is a very old and consistent one, stretching from slavery through Jim Crow to the present day.
But there is, and I suppose always has been, a second message -- one meant for white Americans.
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But there is, and I suppose always has been, a second message -- one meant for white Americans.
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The message for white Americans is identical to the one Putin sent his backers last summer: "We've got your back. All of the power and privilege you enjoy depends on us. Only we can defend it."
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To be clear, while there is something distinctly Trumpian about this message and while he would certainly endorse it, Trump did not create it.
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Every lynching was designed to send this message of reassurance to white Americans. Every cop allowed to kill and walk free. But also every unintegrated school, and every redlined neighborhood.
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When violence is perpetrated once, it can be written off as situational, chalked up to passion or misjudgment. But not this violence.
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When violence is repeated -- and especially when it is perpetrated and recorded and broadcast and then perpetrated again in the full knowledge that it will again be broadcast -- that violence is calculated to send a message.
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Why am I bringing this up? And why draw the comparison to Russia?
Because the Russian experience reminds us that violence is a poor messenger.
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Because the Russian experience reminds us that violence is a poor messenger.
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Humans are visceral creatures, and very few things move us as deeply as violence, and the fear of it. In fact, authoritarian regimes are frequently brought down by the unintended message of escalatory violence: "If you want a better future, it's now or never."
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Last summer's violence in Moscow does not appear to have appreciably improved Putin's fortunes among his supporters; by most accounts, while loyal, they remain deeply skeptical of his ability to handle everything from Covid-19 to Russia's long-running economic malaise.
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But the violence did galvanize Russia's opposition and further delegitimized the country's police and judiciary in the eyes of an increasing number of citizens. Russia has not reached a 'now or never' moment, but the violence has brought it closer.
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This is where Trump comes in. Unlike Russia, America has a highly decentralized police system. When it comes to police violence, the buck stops with chiefs, sheriffs, mayors, elected prosecutors -- but not generally with the president.
Until now.
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Until now.
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The violent message to white Americans -- "we've got your back" -- is indistinguishable from Trump's campaign platform. Trump knows it. His voters know it. The police know it.
As a result, messages to Blacks and whites that had been diffuse (if resounding) become focused.
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As a result, messages to Blacks and whites that had been diffuse (if resounding) become focused.
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Thanks to Trump's embrace of its core refrain, it is no longer possible to pretend that this chorus of violence is emerging haphazardly, unbidden. It begins to feel coordinated, centralized and purposeful.
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Trump's evident calculation that America's long history of violence against Blacks and in defense of whites is in his interests gives that violence a stunning new scale and aspect.
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With Trump, violence against Blacks and in defense of whites risks becoming the overt purpose of American power in ways it has not been since the Civil War.
If that's not a 'now or never' moment for those of us who imagine a different American future, I don't know what is.
/END
If that's not a 'now or never' moment for those of us who imagine a different American future, I don't know what is.
/END
