Governments claim to themselves a monopoly on organized violence. This is exercised via police agencies and military forces. Nobody is supposed to be more powerful than the state which has a fundamental duty to respond to such challenges.
Only not in Charlottesville on Saturday.
Plenty of observers watching the chaotic violence commented on the apparent absence of any police presence. There were about a thousand local and state police on the scene but they were nowhere to be found where they were needed. They abandoned the protesters to the fascist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist horde. Many paid for that with injuries. Some were critically injured. One woman lost her life.
The explanation? The fascist side showed up with assault rifles. The cops, outgunned, kept their distance. The gutless bastards in blue folded.
Virginia governor, Terry McAuliffe, was long on excuses.
“You saw the militia walking down the street, you would have thought they were an army ... I was just talking to the State Police upstairs; [the militia members] had better equipment than our State Police had,” McAuliffe said. “And yet not a shot was fired, zero property damage.”
McAuliffe's response that law enforcement's handling of the violence was successful because there were no bullets fired and "zero property damage" would appear to ignore that dozens were left injured and a 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when an apparent white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd.
Does this mean that protesters now are on their own? Should they start showing up, militia-style, their own assault rifles "locked and loaded"? Is America regressing to the era of the settlement of the West when newcomers had to organize vigilante forces to exterminate the lawless that preyed upon them?
It turns out there's a Virginia national guard armoury right there in Charlottesville. If it was firepower the local authorities needed McAuliffe merely had to pick up his phone.
I don't think that McAuliffe and other leaders expected events to unfold as they did. Now they know. We can be sure that other Governors will face this. Will they call out the Guard?
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ReplyDeleteI don't buy that, Toby. On "Real Time" Friday night, Bill Maher went on at some length about the horde of these fascist groups that were descending on Charlottesville. If Maher knew, McAuliffe had to have known and he could have very easily put the Guard on standby Friday in preparation for the Saturday demonstration. That's his job. He didn't do his job. State and local police didn't do theirs. They surrendered law abiding citizens to an armed mob.
That's a fair comment, Mound. I'm learning about this after the dance.
ReplyDeleteBack when Lincoln Rockwell was their leader Americans either ignored neo-Nazis or threw tomatoes at them. That they get support all the way to the White House is appalling.
Think of the recruits to the South African police forces a few years ago. Racists and sadists knew where to go to satisfy their libidos. Don't think this is not happening in US cop recruitment today and for the past few years.
ReplyDeletehate bust con theories but if you really believe that the cops were complicit by not wading in we would have known in a leak of a memo or gossip from the command centre.
ReplyDeleteNope this was a decision made not to get involved to avoid clashes, but the decision to move was made too late - obviously erring on the side of caution. BTW why only 2nd degree murder I have not seen a greater display of premeditation and intent than this on - the car into the crows.
Folded, bullshit. The cops are ambivalent about these scum at best. If that many blacks had marched with assault rifles there wouldn't have been a thousand cops, there would have been ten thousand, or as many as necessary, and they would have brought out their tanks and snipers and screamers and blind-you lasers and all their shiny military-surplus gear and weapons, and those protestors would have been shut down if it took a bloodbath.
ReplyDeleteWhite supremacists, though . . . many of the cops ARE white supremacists. Many of the rest are . . . not white supremacists themselves, but accepting of the people who are as a mainstream ideology. They treat the fuckers with kid gloves. Look at Portland just a little while ago.