I read that President Trump is planning a visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Jacob Blake was shot in the back 7 times at close range by the police. Subsequent to that, it has been the site of protests and some violence. Most recently Kyle Rittenhouse, a white youth from Illinois, showed up armed with an AR-15 type rifle and ended up killing two people. After the shootings, there is video of him walking towards the police with his hands up and they basically ignored him. Do you really think that if that were a black man walking towards police armed with the same hardware Rittenhouse had that he would have been ignored? Or, if he were black and doing the exact same thing, do you think Tucker Carlson on CNN would have made the same ridiculous statement that he was just “maintain[ing] order when no one else would.” If you want examples of systematic racism – these are prime examples. But let’s move on.
Saturday night, there was a clash between Trump supporters and protestors for Black Lives Matter which resulted in the death of one person. According to a NYT reporter, the man who was killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Portland. No doubt, Tucker Carlson, Fox News and possibly even Trump will make this individual out to be some kind of martyr who was doing nothing wrong but trying to maintain ‘law and order.’
Everyone needs to understand, it is in Trump’s best electoral interests to fan the flames of division and directly or indirectly instigate more violence. The more violent it gets and the more riots there are, the better his ‘Law and Order’ message will resonate. He knows, regardless of what he says, he can’t run on his abyssal response to the COVID crisis. Likewise, he knows the economy is in trouble which used to be his ‘ace in the hole’, as it were. He needs a new issue and that issue is ‘Law and Order.’ The only way that ‘Law and Order’ makes any sense as a winning strategy is by ensuring there is a lot of violence. And that is exactly what you can expect.
In the 2016 election, Russia deployed a massive campaign to promulgate divisive messaging with the intent of pitting one group against another with the end goal of getting Donald Trump elected. The Mueller report and Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee report agree on this point – there is no doubt that Russia meddled in the 2016 election and you can bet that they are doing the exact same thing this time around.
With Russia in full swing to disseminate divisive and well-targeted information to certain groups, non-governmental paramilitary ‘militias’ feeling more emboldened to engage protesters to keep ‘law and order’ and Trump willing to deploy Federal personnel against US citizens (even when not requested by local governments), you have all of the makings of a violent two months leading up to the election.
A ‘normal’ President who was truly interested in the well-being of the UNITED States of America would be doing everything in his power to calm things down. Most would agree that Trump is not a ‘normal’ President and many who have worked closely with him tell a consistent tale – he is only interested in whatever it takes to get reelected. In this case, he knows his best bet is ‘Law and Order’. As far as Trump is concerned, more rioting and more violence is his ticket to reelection. And just like his response to the pandemic, he doesn’t really care about how many American lives it will cost.
Trump’s actions and threats “bear striking resemblance to the actions taken by politicians in several Central American countries following the implementation of Mano Dura (“Iron Fist”) policies. … Eventually evolving into a set of stricter legislation launched by President Antonio Saca [El Salvador] (of the ARENA party) under the appropriate title of Supér Mano Dura in 2004, these policies are most markedly defined by “discretionary crimes, constriction of due process rights, [and] involving the military in policing” and have led to increased arrests and prosecutions of suspected gang members — often on the basis of appearance alone. These policies have proven ineffective and, in several locations, have resulted in higher homicide rates.1
“Both Mano Dura and American law and order policies began as electoral strategies. In the same way that Trump’s show of protest repression has represented a manifestation of law and order ideals, Mano Dura policies exhibit how conservative party leaders manipulate the cross-cutting nature of human security as a priority of all classes and ideologies to further political goals of controlling the lower class. “1
“The way politicians like Trump and Saca insist on the prioritization of tough-on-crime policies despite their proven ineffectiveness should serve as a warning—law and order as we know it does not protect people, it protects power. “1