The Militarization of Racism and Neoliberal Violence - Truthdig
ICMYI: The Militarization of Racism and Neoliberal Violence
The recent killing of an unarmed 18-year-old African-American,
Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer has made
visible how a kind of racist, military metaphysics now dominates
American life. His subsequent demonization by the media only confirms
its entrance into the public consciousness as a form of vicious
entertainment. The police have been turned into soldiers who view the
neighborhoods in which they operate as war zones. Outfitted with full
riot gear, submachine guns, armored vehicles, and other lethal weapons
imported from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, their mission is
to assume battle-ready behavior. Is it any wonder that violence rather
than painstaking, neighborhood police work and community outreach and
engagement becomes the norm for dealing with alleged “criminals,”
especially at a time when more and more behaviors are being
criminalized?
But I want to introduce a caveat. I think it is a mistake to simply
focus on the militarization of the police and their racist actions in
addressing the killing of Michael Brown. What we are witnessing in this
brutal killing and mobilization of state violence is symptomatic of the
neoliberal, racist, punishing state emerging all over the world, with
its encroaching machinery of social death. The neoliberal killing
machine is on the march globally. The spectacle of neoliberal misery is
too great to deny any more and the only mode of control left by
corporate-controlled societies is violence, but a violence that is waged
against the most disposable such as immigrant children, protesting
youth, the unemployed, the new precariat and black youth. Neoliberal
states can no longer justify and legitimate their exercise of ruthless
power and its effects under casino capitalism. Given the fact that
corporate power now floats above and beyond national boundaries, the
financial elite can dispense with political concessions in order to
pursue their toxic agendas. Moreover, as Slavoj Zizek argues “worldwide
capitalism can no longer sustain or tolerate . . . global equality. It
is just too much.” Moreover, in the face of massive inequality,
increasing poverty, the rise of the punishing state, and the attack on
all public spheres, neoliberalism can no longer pass itself off as
synonymous with democracy. The capitalist elite, whether they are hedge
fund managers, the new billionaires from Silicon Valley, or the heads of
banks and corporations, is no longer interested in ideology as their
chief mode of legitimation. Force is now the arbiter of their power and
ability to maintain control over the commanding institutions of American
society. Finally, I think it is fair to say that they are too arrogant
and indifferent to how the public feels.
