Most people will be familiar with the idea of institutional racism, whereby some organisation (the police, possibly) discriminates against part of the population on ethnic grounds. It is not just about personal prejudice, but the collective effects of bias.
If you are born non-white in the US, you probably haven’t been born into wealth. The time is indeed ripe for a new social system, and this is what socialists advocate. The only people who are immune from racial prejudice are those who have realised where the interests of the world working class lie—in a system of society based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, and in which all people will stand equally without distinction of race or sex.
While the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the domestic use of military for law enforcement purposes without specific congressional authorization, the Insurrection Act gives the president authorization to do so under certain circumstances. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell demonstrations across the country instigated by the police murder of George Floyd. The Insurrection Act, 10 U.S.C. 251-255, empowers the president to federalize the National Guard and to call out the armed forces domestically, but only in specific circumstances: When requested by a state’s legislature or governor; to address a “rebellion against the authority of the United States” or to hinder the execution of laws such that citizens are deprived of their constitutional rights. No governor or state legislature, Republican or Democratic, has asked Trump to intervene. There has been no insurrection against the federal government. And there are no laws on the books in any state that deprive citizens of their constitutional rights.
While the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the domestic use of military for law enforcement purposes without specific congressional authorization, the Insurrection Act gives the president authorization to do so under certain circumstances. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell demonstrations across the country instigated by the police murder of George Floyd. The Insurrection Act, 10 U.S.C. 251-255, empowers the president to federalize the National Guard and to call out the armed forces domestically, but only in specific circumstances: When requested by a state’s legislature or governor; to address a “rebellion against the authority of the United States” or to hinder the execution of laws such that citizens are deprived of their constitutional rights. No governor or state legislature, Republican or Democratic, has asked Trump to intervene. There has been no insurrection against the federal government. And there are no laws on the books in any state that deprive citizens of their constitutional rights.
Nevertheless, if ordered would regular American troops fire on fellow citizens? President Johnson invoked the act four times to put down riots in Detroit, Washington, Baltimore, and Chicago. In every one of those events, U.S. troops fired on Americans.
Today, we see that the State and its coercive forces are far more ready for confrontation than any act of contrition over the fact that police killed George Floyd. Law enforcement expect immunity and impunity to continue for their violence. Under capitalism, the theory is that the state invests the power to enforce laws in a benevolent police force which exists to “protect and serve” – while a neutral justice system submits alleged violators to dispassionate judgement. It is the police that initially determines who comes before a court or not. And in the case of George Floyd, it was the police that decided upon a summarily execution without a trial. For sure, the government would prefer that law enforcement did not kill unarmed citizens in the street – and in full view of witnesses and on video. Charging Chauvin risks disrupting the system, creating a fault line between the state and the police, one of the state’s most essential agencies. Which is why the indictment of a police officer in these circumstances is such an exceptional event, and has been dictated by the current exceptional outpouring of anger.
The power of the state is justified because most of us have supposedly consented to it. But of course, the state and its legal system is not as neutral or dispassionate as it claims, or as most of us assume. The state exists to uphold the interests of a wealthy elite and to ensure society runs smoothly for the benefit of that elite. The state’s function is primarily to minimize the obstacles facing the capitalists as they seek to maximize their wealth and profits in each state’s territory.
Palliatives and ameliorations have been granted conceded to the working people, those concessions frequently being the bare minimum, so to prevent them from rising up against the privileges of the ruling class. It is why the many nations suffering from the conequences of World War Two introduced the safety nets of the welfare state such as the NHS.
The state needs its police forces loyal and ready to use violence. It cannot afford discontent in the ranks, or that sections of the police corps no longer identify their own interests with the state’s. The state dares not alienate police officers for fear that, when they are needed most, during times of extreme dissent like now, they will not be there – or worse still, that they will have joined the dissenters. The need to keep the security forces loyal is why the state fosters a sense of separateness between the police and those sections of the populace that it defines as potentially threatening order, thereby uniting more privileged segments of society in fear and hostility. The state cultivates in the police and sections of the public a sense that police violence is legitimate by definition when it targets individuals or groups it portrays as threatening or subversive. It also encourages the view that the police enjoy impunity a priori in such cases because they alone can decide what constitutes a menace to society (shaped, of course, by popular discourses promoted by the state and the corporate media).
“Threat” is defined as any dissent against the existing order, whether it is a black man answering back and demonstrating “attitude,” or mass protests against the system, including against police violence. The state approves whatever the police do; while the police repress whatever the state defines as a threat. If it is working effectively, state-police violence becomes a circular, self-rationalizing system.
The challenge to the protesters – either those on the streets now or those who follow in their wake – is how to surmount the state’s violence and how to offer a vision of a different, more hopeful future. Lessons will be learned through protest, defiance and disobedience.
Abridged and adapted from an article by Jonathan Cook
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