Hi all,
In all the conversations about this insurrection/mob/coup attempt or whatever you want to call it (including whether it should be property understood as a directionless, disorganized act of white rage, or as an early warning/test of a more organized fascist
coup), I just think it’s worth keeping in mind that those things are not mutually exclusive and the numbers of precedent in US history are just, well, all too available.
Sure, an attack on the US Congress itself may be novel, but the use of both organized and unorganized/spontaneous violence, is a well established tactic in the US. That includes violence with implicit and explicit support from sitting politicians.
An example I have posted here before, exactly 100 years ago throughout the state of Florida.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://medium.com/florida-history/ocoee-on-fire-the-1920-election-day-massacre-38adbda9666e__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!4H0GaxNLg7LJBYwBzXvtIjbqpjevBQJmqIxDevQSi6Q5Ee-RfDBOGKqX-UQIJ0k$
There are, of course, other examples both before and after Ocoee, from Tulsa to Chicago to Wilmington, NC.
I’m certainly not denying the usefulness of the insights and analyses offered by others that speak to the specifics of the current moment, especially as it relates to the intersections of international fascism, conspiracy theories, and the expanded media environment,
and I sincerely hope that my repetitiveness does not come off as some kind of arrogant dismissal or smug statement of “this is nothing new.” I certainly am not trying to say anything like that.
It’s just that I can’t look at the images and read the reports and not think of Ocoee, FL in 1920. Not only did white supremacists “get away with it” then, they successfully re-asserted a regime of terror and violence that would only start to be undone with
the passage of the Voting Rights Act more than 40 years later. I mean, this is in the decades following a f*cking civil war, in the territories that lost! Personally, I believe we are still in the process of undoing that regime, and that those that stormed
Congress this week are the spiritual descendants of those that burned Ocoee, Tulsa, and Wilmington. They are clearly not “anti-state” actors, they are *defenders* of the state, for which they feel they are the rightful inheritors.
Ibram X Kendi was on the PBS Newshour last night saying that the only *potential* difference between this history and what we are seeing now rests on whether or not there will be anything remotely resembling accountability. Viewing the potential of the state
to hold these people accountable is, he argues, only properly viewed from the perspective of those that disproportionately suffer the violence of the state on a regular basis, whose mere existence has been treated as an affront to our “democracy," a fact reiterated
multiple times daily. Where is the power for that accountability going to come from and what can it look like?
Take care everyone,
Ryan
Ryan Griffis
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