Bread, circuses and assassination attempts in the U.S. – an essay
Minutes after the murder of George Floyd, Derek Chauvin said to a passerby that “he was too big, too excited, certainly high on something.” The police officer’s defense was early on that he, white and supremacist, was the only victim that day.
After the Black Lives Matter protests shook the U.S. in the wake of Floyd’s death and when the arbitrary police execution of Raynard Brooks took place in Atlanta, the police there (and elsewhere in the U.S.) decided they were demoralized by all these police-haters and stayed home under the pretext they had the “blue flu.” They knew their best defense was to present themselves as victims — and right they were, because they were given a royal bonus: “Cop City.” Today there are over 60 cop cities throughout the country.
When [Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as] Tortuguita was shot down by Georgia State Troopers in Weelaunee Forest with, as a second independent autopsy shows, their hands raised — the official version has remained that this nonviolent, beloved leader and forest defender endangered the police by shooting at them, so here again the police were presented as innocent victims.
When the majority Black and elder casualties of the Buffalo Massacre in 2022 were counted and the manifesto written by the perpetrator read, it became clear he felt threatened, indeed victimized, by an alleged theory of replacement.
When police from over half a dozen Texas police departments did not budge in the school hall of Robb Elementary, their lame defense became that they felt “victimized” by a single AR-15. The parents and relatives of the real victims — 19 children and two teachers — are still fighting to have them memorialized and justice rendered.
When the liberation movement of Gaza shook the world on October 7, Israel decided that the best defense for its committing genocide was the right to defend itself against becoming victims — albeit technologically mighty victims, but who cares about such niggly contradictions when the real victims are Brown and poor and live on mineral– and oil-rich land.
Victimhood confiscated by far right
We live in a world where our real victimhood, a victimhood we fight to prove legally and transform existentially, has been confiscated and weaponized by the right and far right.
As Mumia Abu-Jamal just commented from his prison cell: “But guess what? It is a continuing episode of the Trump Show. And it ain’t over. Recent events have only galvanized the Trump campaign. It gave a boost like rocket fuel. Now that ain’t conspiracy theory. It’s a fact. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche once said, ‘that which doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.’ 48 hours ago, the Trump campaign began anew.” (PrisonRadio.org, July 15)
Since we are speaking of the police and the super police, the FBI, surely their profilers know that the first suspect in a crime is the person who stands to gain from that crime. In this case, it is the victim who stands to gain the most from the attempted crime against him.
The well-paced and adeptly edited script showed a Trump just victimized enough to live to see it … and bank electorally on it … with just enough real blood (not ketchup mind you, too Keystone cop) to show how miraculous, maybe even saintly, victimhood can be.
I remember a teenager interviewed in the streets of poor suburban Paris during the riots when the young North African Nahel was shot dead during a police check almost two years ago. The teenager said something I never forgot: “They need to steal our concepts, our words”.
The question is why. Why does the far-right jealousy covet our victimhood?
Perhaps white supremacy believes that if it can take our victimhood away from us — and the human rights gained from establishing it in the arena of international law — we will be defeated. Alsok we recall that the mass killer mentality hides like a chameleon behind the mask of victimhood when it can — like Ted Bundy using a false cast, the better to lure.
Going back to the psycho-pathology of the bully, one often finds bullying is a defense mechanism against a sometimes real self-identification with victimhood. The bully has a love-hate relationship with victimhood and everything it reminds him of. Many kapos [Nazi prisoners assigned to supervise forced labor] leaned over backwards the better to torture their own.
However, what white supremacy does not understand is that we do not define winning our struggle for liberation by identifying with the victimhood at their lethally bullying hands. Understanding we are victims of capitalism, colonialism and neo-colonialism is only a first stage. We cannot remain stuck at that stage. And just because we were once victims, we will not become bullies.
Trump, the bully, hangs on to victimhood as a mask he is practiced in weaponizing.
But for us, the root meaning of the word “victim” is only the passive form of to win. Winning is going beyond that understanding of passive victimhood and standing up fiercely, as the independent agents of our change by all means possible and necessary against occupation, siege, settler colonialism and apartheid.
Our indigenous lands were stolen the world over. The Zionists say they own the rain in Gaza the better to prove those collecting rainwater in Gaza are stealing it.
But let the white-supremacist elites steal the very roots of communication — our concepts and words — we have already moved ahead and invented others.
(c) Julia Wright
July 19, 2024. All Rights.
This article was lightly edited.
