Re: Another killer cop

[Brian Holmes]

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  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
> 

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Another killer cop

[Allanmini2]

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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