INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
the United States than there are people, and that Americans must wade through the thick air of Second Amendment fetishism on a daily basis,
and social sciences at Northern New Mexico College.Following is the text of the interview:Q: How do you read the serial shootings that have
settler colonialism and white supremacy in the United States
Keeping in mind as well the fact that there are more guns in the United States than there are people, and that Americans must wade through
Take the vaunted Second Amendment for instance
When it was ratified in the late 18th century, the right to bear arms did not apply to the Indigenous populations or the enslaved Africans
It was reserved for the property-owning planter class and the upper elites who were indeed the ones who drafted the U.S
Constitution, Bill of Rights, and so on
get into the hands of these populations, often including many freed Blacks as well as poor, propertyless whites
We often forget this fact.Equally important is to remember the racist application of the Second Amendment in the 20th and 21st centuries as
could no longer openly defend their communities with weapons out in the open
liquidation that founded the U.S., and the Western hemisphere itself
of white supremacy housed in the federal government
violence enacted against Blacks in the 21st century
In 2016, Philando Castile was gunned down on video and in front of his family at a routine traffic stop
attempted to show him his license when he shot multiple times
It is one of the most horrifying displays of police violence in recent memory, though it is not alone
Martin, the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, and other instances too numerous to count
The late liberation theologian, James Cone compared the modern-day lynchings of Black people in this country to the crucifixion of Jesus,
distributed on postcards, photographs, in cinema, and on social media and YouTube as a sort of religious sacrament for the preservation of
The revolutionary Black preacher Nat Turner was ritualistically hanged and dismembered after he revolted against his slave owners in 1831 in
His skull was passed down through the generations of southern white families, like a family heirloom
And similar grotesqueries have occurred throughout the history of the West: Jack Mansong, executed and dismembered in Jamaica in 1781;
Emmett Till, beaten and thrown into a river in Mississippi in 1955; the Black veteran Powell Green, beaten, shot, dragged behind a car, and
hanged in North Carolina in 1919
We may even say there is an unbroken chain stitching all of these events together and running throughout the history of the United States,
inclusive of its prehistory before the 1776 counterrevolution, indeed back into the early 1700s, the 1600s and 1500s
of the Western Hemisphere post-1492
These facts are well-known, though rarely acknowledged in any popular sense.Gun laws making the acquisition of firearms easy, racist police
course, the continuation of U.S
imperialism itself: all of these factors are contemporary iterations of all of the above
which all of these factors cohered, stitching together the symbolic universe of right wing ideology: whiteness and white supremacy,
libertarian hostility to the state, rugged individualism and free-market fetishism, and the fetishism of gun culture and American history
Capitol and stop the certification of the 2020 election
1776 is now a symbol of counterrevolution, passing itself off as universal emancipation
But we all know that 1776 and January 6 were far from universal.In Buffalo, we saw the unambiguous motivations of the white supremacist
ethos of 1776 on full display
seen on the skin of Ukrainian neo-Nazis as of late
Not to mention the disturbing fact that the whole incident was live-streamed on the web, and the obscene feature that the shooter had
And so the laws passed and the violence committed in the name of white supremacy follow therefrom.Q: Some critics claim that gun laws in the
Who is telling the truth?A: First of all, Ted Cruz is a coward and a racist, and so everything he says should be ridiculed and considered in
the context of his freakish insipidity, vacuity, and his obsequious, servile, and sycophantic allegiances to the NRA, Trump, and Texas
suddenly.Those who blame society, on both the left and right mind you, are clearly misguided by the materiality of gun culture and the legal
structure that supports it
Yes, there is evidence that suggests that the slackening of gun laws is correlated with the wave of mass shootings, which we are indeed
witnessing at a pace that is nearly exponential at this point
When an 18-year-old can legally acquire an automatic weapon, like the Uvalde gunman, or indeed when a federal judge can dismiss the charge
of illegal acquisition of a firearm which was levied against the then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, then, yes, it is fair to say that the
structure of law must be indicted and indeed implicated as part of the ongoing violence we are seeing at the end of the barrel
However, to say that loose gun laws alone are the sole cause for this epidemic of violence, or that simple modification in gun legislation
neither provide simple causal explanations
It is hard to accept these premises, however, when mass shootings at the hands of predominantly lone, white gunmen, as well as the police,
saturate the statistics on gun violence in the U.S
to an obscenely disproportionate degree
And I must agree with Slavoj Zizek that violence committed by the state (police forces, military, etc.) is of a totally different order of
violence than other forms of violence
Why? Well, violence that is committed by representatives of the law, those tasked and sworn to uphold the law, exposes the violence of the
law itself: the fact that the enforcement of law in the U.S
most often means the extermination of people of color is vital to keep in mind
Violence between regular citizens, many of whom are facing extreme economic violence and a manifold other social problems, is vastly
different from violence committed in the name of white supremacy, the ideology which undergirds both right-wing extremism and police
I already mentioned that there are more guns currently in the United States than actual human beings
What accounts for this ridiculous statistic? The gun lobby, the systematic deregulation of licensure and background checks required for gun
It is really no mystery.There are also those on the left who think that legal reform would have no effect at all, and I think this is
The truth tells itself on this front
Every American citizen, and, indeed, the entire world bears witness to the violent gun culture of the United States
In 2020, the UN Human Rights Council issued a rather scathing report assessing police brutality and human rights violations in the United
border, which continues to be a serious problem under Biden
What we are really dealing with are so many obfuscations and rituals of concealment with regard to this very simple truth
Ted Cruz, Governor Abbott of Texas, the corpulent, Oliver Hardy-esque Uvalde district chief of police Pete Arrendondo, and countless other
officials inside and outside of Texas strategically mask the root causes of the kind of violence we are seeing behind a veil of political
kind of violence systematically throughout the decades, which means mostly white demographics are being exposed more to these things, or, at
least, are less and less able to disavow the reality of this violence, which seems to have been the tendency for many decades
Again, if we look back at history, we are indeed looking at the genocide of the indigenous, the violent subjugation of Haiti, and numerous
The Monroe Doctrine in 1823 gave the U.S
a self-justified monopoly on colonial violence, enshrining it in policy, and therefore legitimizing its use of coercive, economic, and
ideological violence for the next two centuries.We are seeing the rate of a certain type of violence perhaps, allowed white youth who have
been influenced by white supremacist ideology; Dylann Roof; Payton Gendron; Kyle Rittenhouse; James Holmes; Salvador Ramos
Tolerance is probably the wrong word altogether.Q: How do the American people see the decisions and policies adopted by the authorities? Do
they seem rational to the American public?A: As we might expect, opinions are divided
I know that Biden has the lowest approval rating since I think Jimmy Carter
Biden, who may have just sleepwalked into World War 3, is generally not viewed as rational, or indeed as competent, by many on the left and
nuclear war and American involvement in Ukraine
Trump made similar statements
Now, this is not to say that these two deserve our respect or are to be taken seriously even
What this should illustrate to us is the absurdity of those who are generally deemed to be the rational actors in the United States: the
democratic branch of our two-party political system
But it is concerning that a war criminal like Kissinger and a racist neo-fascist like Trump can utter a single rational statement with
regard to current global affairs while the Biden administration seems absolutely incapable of rationality at every turn
example then you understand how baffling the Biden administration really is.I should note also that there was a rare moment of unconscious
rationality expressed recently by George Bush Jr
He essentially acknowledged that he is a war criminal for the War in Iraq in front of a huge audience, who chuckled perhaps a bit
uncomfortably at the whole thing
When Trump, Kissinger and G.W
Despite promises by Democrats, it seems that there is no real motive to regulate gun control laws
What are the main causes of this failure?A: Although I agree that the Democrats, especially since the Trump era (which we are very much
still in despite the results of the last election) have been largely ineffectual in many ways
This is not to give Obama a pass, and certainly not to let Clinton off the hook either
The failure to pass signature infrastructure legislation, to pass abortion protections, and the failure or probably unwillingness to keep
These things will be remembered as his contribution to American politics: failure at nearly every level of governance
with regard to Russia-Ukraine and China-Taiwan recently
These things really add up
incapable of any sort of rational political realism is very concerning.However, with all of this said, we also need to keep in mind that
when we vociferously critique the Democrats for their incompetence or cowardice we risk disavowing the more pressing enemy of our already
limping democracy: the Republican party
I am certainly not pledging allegiance to the Democratic party in any way
Rather, I agree with Horne that when we aim our critical tools at the Democrats for their many failures, we often neglect to analyze certain
features of the Republican wing in this country, which has always been a safe haven for white supremacy and neo-fascism
The party is dominated by whiteness; by characters out of a Quentin Tarantino movie
nationalism wholeheartedly
national and international network of neo-fascist populism that his movement and the Republican party are stitched into, we are indeed
require another set of questions and answers to effectively broach
