Charlottesville happened over the weekend, and one can
already foresee, as I write on this Monday morning, the week’s CNN obsessions: Trump’s
statements, and the fate of the murderer. Each of these, in its own peculiar
way, distracts from the underlying dynamics of the situation.
As I write on this Monday morning, Trump is being vilified
for his late and lukewarm condemnation of the white supremacists who marched
and killed. This is fair enough, but it is also beside the point. Whatever
Trump says, we know where he stands. After a lifetime of racist actions and
rhetoric, after a Presidential campaign of racist dog-whistling, after stocking
his cabinet and staff with racists and outright white supremacists, and after
absurd proposals like his election commission and an investigation into
supposed discrimination against whites, Trump has made himself the perfect
figurehead for, and enabler of, a resurgent white supremacist power structure.
He could reject David Duke to his face, on national television, and Duke would
understand that it was only for show.
As I write on this Monday morning, our racist Attorney
General is hinting that the murder of Heather Heyer may be prosecuted as domestic
terrorism. One can only hope that Sessions will feel pressured enough in the
weeks to come to follow through with this decision, against what are no doubt his
native prejudices. At the same time, there is a sense in which the decision is beside
the point once again. Had the marches occurred without physical violence—had
the white supremacists occupied campus and street with their Tiki torches, Nazi
salutes, assault rifles, and nothing more--would this not have been, nevertheless,
an act of terrorism? What is the purpose of torches and racist slogans except to
create terror? What has it ever been?
There is another problem with focusing on the murder as the
one and only terrorist act. People are irredeemably violent. There will always
be someone, on any side of an issue, willing to throw a punch, squeeze off a
shot, or drive a car into a crowd. Focusing on acts of violence can be
strangely de-politicizing. For every neo-Nazi willing to kill a Heather Heyer,
there is someone willing to shoot a police officer in Dallas. More importantly,
whenever one points to a James Alex Fields, or to neo-Nazi marchers, the more
quietly racist supporters of Trump are provided an avenue for evasion. “I’m not
a killer; I’m not marching with torches; I just want people on all sides to be
treated fairly, with equality and justice, including whites.” But of course
this is not what they want. If they did, they would not be supporting a racist
regime.
Finally, one has to beware of sloppy language. Slogans are
always reductive and must always be avoided. “Love conquers hate” is from one
perspective a meaningless platitude, from another, a misleading analysis. It
implies that one is guided by either one or the other emotion, when this is
clearly not the case in human affairs. The white supremacists are as clear
about what they love as what they hate. The problem is not their emotions, but
their ideology; the problem is not that they hate rather than love, but that
they love and hate the wrong things. As Zizek puts it: “Soldiers are not bad
per se—what is bad are soldiers inspired by poets,
mobilized by nationalist poetry.” The same principle holds for the other side. Everyone
knows what Guevara said about love, but he also wrote: “a people without hatred
cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.” Or as Nietzsche puts it: “I love the great
despisers.”
Okay, that Nietzsche quote is taken out of context. But you
get the idea. Cut me a break. It’s only Monday morning.
John Rosewall, Bargain, 2017
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