Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Ferguson Versus the Counter-Insurgency State

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Ferguson Versus the Counter-Insurgency State

Click here to access article by Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report.

Ford explains that what we are now witnessing in the US is a counter-insurgency state, and it has been created over many decades starting in the 1960s when the ruling class felt threatened by the Black Power Movement. This is very true, but an incomplete analysis as far as it goes.

Ford should be congratulated for recognizing the police state that we now live in by identifying it as a "counter-insurgency state". Counter-insurgency as a concept has been employed by ruling class media to describe Empire operations in many parts of the world since the Vietnam War. It has been used to overturn governments that did not comply sufficiently with Empire demands to open their nations (Ukraine is the latest victim) to corporations based in the Empire, or to protect their existing dictator friends, who have been complying with neoliberal policies, from their own populations. But I've previously never heard the term used to describe their use of military-grade weapons technology to control active dissent within the US. Empire elites are globalists. They have no more regard for Americans than they do for Mongolians, Nigerians, etc. The application of this concept to Americans is a major step forward in understanding the world we live in. However, it is not sufficient.

First, of all domestic counter-insurgency operations are not merely targeting African-Americans, they are targeting anyone or any group that engage in physical resistance against their policies. The mostly white Occupy Movement experienced the same kind of response even though they engaged in mostly peaceful protests. Surely I don't need to review the long history of ruling class actions to brutally crush worker strikes and the massacres of mostly white workers. By exclusively framing their current operations as racist only serves to divide workers which the ruling class loves to do.

Second of all, by framing these operations in exclusively racial terms diverts attention away from the underlying dynamics of capitalism which, of course, likewise serves ruling class interests.