Trump was ideologically incoherent and crassly transactional. But the threat he posed to American empire and thus the gargantuan security state helps establish a motive for why the FBI and CIA intervened in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. As president, Donald Trump lavished the rich with tax cuts and deregulation. Yet, contradictorily, he also threatened the structure of American global hegemony that does so much to keep the American one percent tremendously wealthy. In fact, Trump undertook the most […]
I know it's Grayzone which has been cringe recently but this is Parenti's son and it's a very good read so.
You could probably say the same about the 2020 George Floyd events. I actually think about that a lot, why was Floyd the straw that broke the camel's back? Police have and continue to murder black people with virtual impunity. What was so significant about Floyd's murder? The conditions caused by COVID lockdowns created a unique situation for sure, but we saw stuff in 2020 that the US hadn't seen since the late 60s, when, apologies to George Floyd, multiple important black leaders were assassinated. I think it's definitely possible that the protests were escalated by the security state in an effort to damage Trump. Trump, being the absolute moron that he is, played right into their hands by escalating right back, but the spooks probably anticipated that. It is depressing to think about how powerful the US security state is. I suppose if there is one silver lining it's that something so globe spanning and insidious has to be a very complex system, and complex systems can be easier to disrupt.
In Portland if there was escalation, it was by the PPB, they were coordinating with SPD to fuck people up from day 1. You don't need the feds for that shit. Cops are dumb enough to do it on their own.
DHS was in Portland egging them on. There are tweets from Chad Wolf in Portland saying how they were going to restore law and order by any means necessary. I know you all hate the PPB, and I'm sure it is well-deserved, but DHS was in Portland ready to murder people and, from what I remember, it was Wheeler and the PPB pushing back against armed DHS agents coming in. I'm sure part of that was a pissing contest between agencies, but it was DHS that was really trying to escalate against the protestors.
Covid was thr first time in a long while people could feel the material changes to their lives. It's hard to remember but it felt like anything was possible. We could just all agree to do things differently and do them. It was intoxicating. That is part of why they had to restore normalcy as soon as possible. So we didn't realize it is all just made up.
The 2020 BLM movement was almost certainly infested with feds at the national level. All the actual leaders of the OG BLM movement were assassinated after the 2014 Ferguson protests. When the Minneapolis protests started, it wasn't the local orgs that had actually organized the initial police protests that were chosen for TV and interviewed, it was members of a national organization that had nothing to do with those protests. The same thing went for the online discourse, the #BLM stuff felt extremely astroturfed at first until it caught on with the mainstream. Hard to tell with online stuff though, as it is usually incredibly reductive.
That is very interesting, honestly it makes you wonder, to what extent the national security state has to keep a lid on everything all at once, my only guess they arent nearly as competent as we would think, it really seems like the situation is just managed chaos in terms of the George flyod situation. Their are really hard questions to askon, how much longer this thing can work as it is right now trying to contain manage ukraine, but also over throw southamerican goverments, while managing a future upcoming, Taiwan China situation, I belive we are gonna see the limits of the national security state honestly. No king rules forever and no security state can forever repress its internal contradictions forever in a declining hegemonic position.
You could probably say the same about the 2020 George Floyd events. I actually think about that a lot, why was Floyd the straw that broke the camel's back? Police have and continue to murder black people with virtual impunity. What was so significant about Floyd's murder? The conditions caused by COVID lockdowns created a unique situation for sure, but we saw stuff in 2020 that the US hadn't seen since the late 60s, when, apologies to George Floyd, multiple important black leaders were assassinated. I think it's definitely possible that the protests were escalated by the security state in an effort to damage Trump. Trump, being the absolute moron that he is, played right into their hands by escalating right back, but the spooks probably anticipated that. It is depressing to think about how powerful the US security state is. I suppose if there is one silver lining it's that something so globe spanning and insidious has to be a very complex system, and complex systems can be easier to disrupt.
In Portland if there was escalation, it was by the PPB, they were coordinating with SPD to fuck people up from day 1. You don't need the feds for that shit. Cops are dumb enough to do it on their own.
DHS was in Portland egging them on. There are tweets from Chad Wolf in Portland saying how they were going to restore law and order by any means necessary. I know you all hate the PPB, and I'm sure it is well-deserved, but DHS was in Portland ready to murder people and, from what I remember, it was Wheeler and the PPB pushing back against armed DHS agents coming in. I'm sure part of that was a pissing contest between agencies, but it was DHS that was really trying to escalate against the protestors.
Yeah, shit escalated after DHS came in, but it was not them those first few nights.
Besides, PPB has been ramping up since like 2016, beating up Sierra Club types un-provoked.
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Covid was thr first time in a long while people could feel the material changes to their lives. It's hard to remember but it felt like anything was possible. We could just all agree to do things differently and do them. It was intoxicating. That is part of why they had to restore normalcy as soon as possible. So we didn't realize it is all just made up.
The 2020 BLM movement was almost certainly infested with feds at the national level. All the actual leaders of the OG BLM movement were assassinated after the 2014 Ferguson protests. When the Minneapolis protests started, it wasn't the local orgs that had actually organized the initial police protests that were chosen for TV and interviewed, it was members of a national organization that had nothing to do with those protests. The same thing went for the online discourse, the #BLM stuff felt extremely astroturfed at first until it caught on with the mainstream. Hard to tell with online stuff though, as it is usually incredibly reductive.
That is very interesting, honestly it makes you wonder, to what extent the national security state has to keep a lid on everything all at once, my only guess they arent nearly as competent as we would think, it really seems like the situation is just managed chaos in terms of the George flyod situation. Their are really hard questions to askon, how much longer this thing can work as it is right now trying to contain manage ukraine, but also over throw southamerican goverments, while managing a future upcoming, Taiwan China situation, I belive we are gonna see the limits of the national security state honestly. No king rules forever and no security state can forever repress its internal contradictions forever in a declining hegemonic position.