July 10, 2016 Editor

State Terrorism and Racist Violence in the Age of Disposability: Expanded Version

Sunday, 10 July 2016 00:00 By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

photo above: Demonstrators record a crowd of police officers on hand in New York’s Times Square, where a large crowd protested after fatal police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, July 7, 2016. (Photo: Christopher Lee / The New York Times)

an excerpt:

Note from Henry Giroux on July 10, 2016: The racist killing machine is in full bloom in the age of domestic terrorism. Once again, Americans and the rest of the world are witness to a brutal killing machine, a form of domestic terrorism that is responsible for the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.

Castile and Sterling were both shot point-blank by white police officers who follow the script of a racist policy of disposability that suggests that Black lives not only do not matter, but that Black people can be killed with impunity since the police in the United States are rarely held accountable for such crimes. What we are witnessing is not simply the overt face of a militarized police culture, the lack of community policing, or the toxic consequences of a culture of violence that saturates everyday life. We are in a new historical era, one that is marked by extreme violence and a policy of disposability fueled in part by a culture of fear, a deeply overt racist culture that is unapologetic in its racism, and a culture of cruelty that is the modus operandi of neoliberal capitalism. This culture of cruelty is a cage culture, a culture of combat, a hyper masculine culture that views killing those most vulnerable as sport, entertainment and policy.

We are witnessing not simply the breakdown of democracy but the legitimization of a society in the grips of what might be called a politics of domestic terrorism. The US is deep into the entrails of fascism, and until that is recognized, the violence will escalate, people of color will be killed, whites will claim they are the real victims and the discourse of racial objectification will continue to be a visible if not embraced signpost of our politics at every level. The face of white supremacy — with its long legacy of slavery, lynchings and brutality — has become normalized, if not supported by one major political party.

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Editor

Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.

Always appreciate constructive feedback! Thanks.