Public Comment
Why the Word "Fascism" is Appropriate
Can you imagine? There were five instances of police brutality against black people by the Berkeley police during 2020. A town of 115,000 people. Extended to the whole country, that would be in excess of 12,500 black people brutalized by government agents in that year. And that wouldn’t include Latinxs, or Asians, or Native Americans. Or white people.
These five incidents were presented in a video by Copwatch, using material from street videographers and informed commentary. Here is the link to it. [https://www.youtube.com/
But we can’t call it "fascist." There would be howls of objection. “How can you say that, this is a democray.” Everyone is talking about the need to save “our democracy.” Mention the f-word and you’ll get cut off. “Thank you, next speaker please.”
Here are some highlights from the Copwatch presentation.
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In one video, a black man is sitting on the ground in a storefront doorway, in broad daiylight. Four cops stand around, ten feet back from him, talking to him. A fifth cop has a popgun raised at his shoulder (short barrel, one-inch diameter, for shooting “non-lethal” beanbags or rubber rounds). The man is trying to explain something to these cops. His body language says "no." He gestures say "urgency." Without warning, the cop with the popgun fires. The man screams, a low pitched masculine scream, and falls over on his side. The other four cops descend on him quickly. Wounded by the shot, he can now be approached. We don’t see what happens next.
We later find out that all he refused to do was lie down on the ground, face down, so they could handcuff him – the way the cops had held George Floyd, handcuffed and face down, as they killed him.
Who is this black man sitting in the doorway of an abandoned liquor store on a Saturday (3/14/20) during a pandemic? He is the scapegoat, the man through whom the cops as a team will sanctify themselves.
Why is he the scapegoat? Because he is a member of a subjugated group (lower pay, no housing protection, higher death rate from the pandemic, segregated education and health care, etc.), a group whose role is to obey, to be commanded and humiliated so that they no longer see themselves as people. “Lie on the ground face down; prostrate yourself.”
The second aspect of this event is the team of cops. Five of them stand around, refusing to touch this man. They do not help him up so they can arrest him and put him in their squad car. They were the ones who told him to lie down in the first place, so they could arrest him. They didn’t attempt to arrest him while he was standing up. You don’t treat scapegoats that way.
They call themselves the police. But they are the “armed service” of society. Not the “armed services.” That is something else. Its headquarters is in the Pentagon. They are the “armed service.” Maybe it is more familiar in Spanish. El Servicio Armado. That has the more recognizable initials: SA.
The third aspect of this event is the cops’ response to his refusal to lie down. They shoot him. When he refuses, they use weapons. Their first task was to dehumanize him by ordering him to prostrate himself. Their second task was to incapacitate him so they could arrest him. For that, they use weapons.
He offers no threat, yet they deal with him through levels of technology.
The police demand to have weapons (they say) to defend themselves (they say) against an armed public (they say) that is hostile and aggressive toward them. But this man is not. He is compliant to the point of sitting on the ground, but he will not prostrate himself. So we see why the police have weapons. It is not defensive. Their weapons are for aggressive purposes -- to kill or maim the non-compliant.
The SA is that part of governance to which we [people] cannot say no. They shot this man because that is what the SA does in order to establish its control. Control is not done with discourse (too democratic), or law (too equitable), or reason (too non-hierarchical). It is done through dehumanization, using commands and weapons.
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A second such event in the Copwatch video: same year, same town, same pandemic, same economic crisis, same blackness of victim.
A homeless black man, feeling hungry late in the evening, goes into a CVS, picks up a sandwich, a milk, a potato salad, and goes to the cashier. He empties his pockets -- a dollar, some change, and a return item. It doesn’t amount to the 12 dollars his factory-made dinner will cost. But it is all he has. He puts these things on the counter as an offering and leaves. Someone hits the panic button. The sliding doors lock. He pulls out a bicycle chain, and threatens to break through the glass door to the outside. Someone hits a different button, and the door opens. He leaves. He is not going to grovel for a lousy factory-made sandwich. And the store will lose nothing. The sandwich is insured.
But he wasn’t even "stealing." He was attempting to reduce the economic situation to the level the economic situation had reduced him. Isn’t that what they call equity?
But the panic button had alerted the cops. They find him outside, and shoot him in the mouth. Someone must have told them he had stolen "food."
It is the same scapegoat. He has a different name, but not something the housed people who work "social control" care about. And it is the same SA. They arrive with guns drawn. They will torture him by destroying his ability to eat, rather than let him eat his sandwich.
The cops didn’t tell him to take the sandwich back. They had license to shoot him because he had already been disobedient. He had disobeyed the price printed on the sandwich. That is what the SA does. When you disobey, they shoot you.
These cops do not have weapons for their defense. No one is attacking them. But they do not just have weapons for offense. They also use their weapons for "message."
The message is: “You want to steal food; we will make it impossible for you to eat.” It is something that only a gestapo-like contempt for people could think up.
A militarized police is the darling of those who dream of autocratic rule. What is the dream of the Berkeley City Council that they can’t even express an opinion about the police chief’s inability to curb the militarization of his police force? When a proposal for a “no confidence” vote was put on the agenda, even though it was about opinion, they said they could not “make policy” for the police in that way. Which side are they on?
Do you suppose that white people are treated the same way? Or did Jim Crow just change his name? (To SA?)
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A scapegoat is a prop in a theatrical performance by a group sanctifying itself before a mirror. In the US, there are white people who use the scapegoat to purify their supremacy. The SA is a relation of force and social control between that self-sanctifying group and the props they set in that mirror for themselves. The SA tries to hide behind the rhetoric of law enforcement. But that is not what it is about. It is about weaponry, and the terror it can generate by pointing guns at people and pulling the trigger.
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A third case, nighttime, Dec 17, 2020, 9:20 pm, a traffic stop in West Berkeley. Another black man. Another scapegoat.
The cops flash their lights for the car to stop. It starts to stop and then doesn’t. It chugs ahead a block ot two and starts to stop again. It does all that again. Evidently, the driver had some problems with his car. Almost enough for the cops to conclude that he was trying to escape. Apparently they did. The two cops in the squadcar order him out of the car. They don’t even demand his license and registration. He’s black, so isn’t he already on the far side of the law?
But he is a big man in a small car. He doesn’t respond quickly enough to the commands to "step out of your vehicle, sir". So they decide to pull him out. These two cops open his door and start to try to pull him out. They don’t talk to him. They yell, and curse him out. They punch him a few times. He still doesn’t get out of his car.
What’s wrong with this picture? For some reason, every other time there is a traffic stop, the cop says, “remain in your vehicle, sir.” Not this time. Why not? Well, of course, it’s a black man. A scapegoat. They aren’t going to treat him like a person, and give him a ticket. No, they want him out of the car so they can handcuff him. This is the SA.
But he’s bigger than the two of them can handle. More cops arrive. Eventually there were 8 cop cars on the scene. With two cops on the passenger side of the car with guns drawn, and three at the open driver’s side, they progress to the next step. Weapons. Is it finally becoming clear why the police want weapons?
This one cop takes a long baton, and starts to hit this man. It’s as if he’s taking baseball practice. He hits the driver again, and again. They stop and try pulling him out again. Then they hit him again. When they finally get him out of the car, they throw him on the ground and handcuff him. Then they pick him up. He leans against the hood of the cop car, and starts to keel over.
It’s the usual scene. A scapegoat, the SA, and weapons. Did someone just bring up the issue of “our democracy”?
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There are two more incidents on the Copwatch video. One of them is a real nut case.
A single cop is parked in a supermarket parking lot, and sees a couple of black teenagers loading stuff into a car in front of a CVS across the avenue. The car had been pulled up to the front doors, and stuff was being loaded into it. The cop decides that this is a heist in progress, drives across the avenue, and rolls up on the black teenagers loading the car. The cop then advanced on these kids with gun drawn. The driver has his hands in the air. He’s 19 years old. The cop yells a few contradictory commands, and tells the kid to get in the car. The kid finds this unexpected, but gets in the car. So there they are, some black kids in a car in front of a store and a white cop point a gun at them.
The driver opens the door to ask something. “Stay in the car,” comes the preemptive command. The kid starts the car. The cop is looking at the plates, looking at the car, doing nothing but holding a gun on some kids. There’s no complaint; nobody from the store says anything to this cop. There had been no heist except in the cops fevered imagination. The cop is yelling to “turn off the car.” You don’t “turn off cars.” That’s an absurd expression. But the cop is yelling it anyway, louder and louder. The car starts to drive away, and the cop pumps three shots into the car, not caring that there are people in that car who could have gotten killed.
Five felonies were committed by that cop in one short minute. The worst was shooting at a moving vehicle. But that’s the way they are trained; you see a black man, you issue commands, when they ask why, you shoot. No disagreement or non-compliance will be allowed. Back in the old days, that used to be called dictatorship. Today, with the largest prison system in the world, the US refers to it as “SWAT tactics.” And we are not allowed to call it fascist.
Can you imagine, four instances of brutality against black people by the police in one small town of 115,000 people in one year? That would amount to 12,500 black people brutalized by the police over the whole country for that year. That wouldn’t include Latin@s, or Asians, or Native Americans. Or white people.
All of this occurs in a society in which there are people in the streets demanding justice for the victims of police brutality. And the police response is to continue dealing with people through dehumanizing commands and a use of weapons. If people have to get out in the street in order to get justice, then there is none. If there was law enforcement, the law would be enforced, even on the cops. But the SA are not interested in law enforcement. They are interested in social control. That’s what they were interested in during the 1930s. That is what they are interested in today in Berkeley. That is what fascism means.
