Train Keeps a Rolling

Rolling Stone has just published a piece detailing the degree the FBI has been lying about what it knew prior to Jan. 6. You may, instead choose to believe incompetence is the problem, but it's not less damning, and it doesn't change the conclusions to be reached.

In the past, I've written pretty extensively about the right leaning bias of law enforcement, with a specific focus on what is and isn't considered "legitimate protest." Because I'm familiar with what the environment and examples have been from the last fifteen or so years, this isn't shocking. You can read this piece I wrote about it in 2018. The Rolling Stone piece is evidence the situation is not getting any better in response to a threat the FBI and DHS have publicly acknowledged, which should be enlightening. This isn't just about fairness, as in law enforcement treating "both sides" fairly. It's about the fact that the threat from the far right to the stability of the nation is very real, and our institutions are either too sympathetic to measure the threat or are acquiescent to it.  

Prior to Unite The Right, the white nationalist riot in Charlottesville where Heather Heyer was murdered, activists tried to sound every possible alarm about the significance of the violence which was going to be perpetrated. They did so on social media, they did so by alerting law enforcement (including providing evidence of the plans to commit violence), they did so through ever possible means available. After Unite The Right, federal law enforcement, Virginia state lawn enforcement and govenrment and Charlottesville law enforcement all said, "We didn't see this coming." Despite the fact that numerous activist groups in Virginia, and nationwide provided evidence to the contrary, the public and major news outlets accepted that explanation. Despite the thousands of hours of video shot during Unite The Right showing Virginia State Police and local law enforcement standing around, watching what was essentially hours of white supremacists assaulting anyone they wanted to, the public and our major news outlets accepted this explanation.

The FBI, it seems, learned from this example. 

We're often treated to atomized analysis of subsections of news and current events in the moment. What these miss, and what too many people with the platforms to address it seem to be unwilling to recognize, is that when considered as a whole, the results of the strategies of the far right are destabilization. The "culture wars" aren't just about "wedge issues," as is so popular to say. They're about insuring there is a loyal population, already motivated by fear, who are contributing to this destabilization, and will support them as the shock of chaotic conditions deepens those fears and entrenches prejudices. Your uncle, your neighbor, they might not necessarily intellectually support this, but they're not intellectually engaging with where they're being lead either. It's called reactionary politics for a reason. 

Critiques of "identity politics" which suggest targeted communities are just helping to deepen the divides as they advocate for themselves miss a critical point. The reactionary politics of the far right, which at this point is the conservative movement, aren't going to "settle down" if targeted communities come to the table in good faith. This is going to continue until they feel they've institutionalized subjugation enough to soothe those reactionary sentiments. When LGBTQ+ people stop advocating for themselves, the far right isn't going to stop calling them groomers and pedophiles. They're calling them groomers and pedophiles to stop them from advocating for themselves and stop straight people from listening when they do. The far right isn't going to stop employing their claims that the sociology of Blackness is criminality, while also attempting to criminalize the study of racism as a sociological phenomenon because Black people stop advocating for themselves. Subjugation is the goal. Part of achieving the goal is insuring the violence which is necessary to enforce that subjugation takes place away from the public eye and awareness. 

It's one element, and when included with the economic policies of the far right, which are already destabilizing the economy and have resulted in historic levels of inequality, as well as their clear distaste for anything relating to liberal democracy, it's pretty clear destabilization is the goal. Crisis is opportunity, of course, and part of what they're doing is preparing for it. 

Law enforcement could be one mechanism to subvert this, if law enforcement as an institution were what the popular imagination sees it to be, the collected effort to protect what we consider civil society. The problem is that law enforcement, by the nature of its institutions, favors the far right and its goals. Where destabilization exists, the deeper the belief in the need for law enforcement to uphold order. Rhetorically deifying law enforcement means the order law enforcement wants to preserve is the one where they are rhetorically deified. It also means the individuals with the kinds of wealth and power who could do the most in preventing continued advancement and empowerment of the far right, aren't interested in preventing it. The economics of the far right have benefitted them. They've used the same rhetoric to sell the ideas to the American people. 

There is no cavalry coming. 

For those who claim a belief in non-violence, it must be pointed out that non-violence as a strategy to advance the goals of egalitarianism when it is employed pro-actively, not reactively. I purposely say "a belief in non-violence" because if we haven't already, we're soon going to reach a point where our institutions are going to be too shot through with far right adherents and scam artists for those institutions to wield the power they have to protect themselves from a domestic faction with is openly hostile to liberal democracy.