Why Are We Repeating History?
by C. A. Matthews
Happy Black History Month!
Last year, we spent several weeks in the month of February
discussing various topics that are of particular interest to
African-Americans—reparations, critical race theory, and what it
must be like to be considered only 3/5 of a human being (according to
the US Constitution). We were still reeling from the deaths of George
Floyd and many others. The Afghan War was winding down about that
same time, but the upcoming proxy war in Ukraine was winding up. I
held out still some hope the war hawk rhetoric would die down and the Minsk Agreements would keep things peaceful.
One year later, we find ourselves in a world of déjà vu.
Critical race theory is under violent attack by right-wing pundits,
reparations are still seen as an impossible (or at least a far-off)
goal, and the police are killing an average of three ordinary
Americans every day, many of them persons of color. (See last week’s
blog about some of the latest police caused deaths, Targets On Our Backs.)
Hundred of thousands have been left homeless or slaughtered in
grueling, needless warfare in Ukraine thanks to a determined lack of diplomacy and billions of dollars of American military-industrial
complex weaponry.
The rich got richer. The poor and POC got shot at and beaten up by
thugs wearing cop uniforms. Endless warfare for control of fossil
fuels continues. The more things change...
It is said, “History repeats itself,” but that statement isn’t
an imperative. We don’t have to keep repeating ourselves,
especially when the event is destructive and immoral. So much of
American history is just that—destructive and immoral. I don’t
pull punches anymore. There’s no use lying about the filthy
propaganda US government officials spew forth from their mouths like
volcanoes full of molten shit. There’s no use lying about our
blood-soaked history of killing our own and others across the globe
simply for the sake of lining the pockets of capitalists who desire
ever more blood money.
We don’t need militarized police forces or killer cops—we need
social services and Medicare for All. We don’t need to pretend any
longer we’re doing anything except money laundering for Raytheon,
General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, etc., in a provoked proxy
war in Ukraine to knock out Russia’s economy. And we certainly
don’t need to pretend that we’re not gunning for another chance
at starting World War III by antagonizing China this week over a lost
weather balloon.
We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. History repeats itself.
Things don’t change for the better for the vast majority of human
beings.
I read a couple of articles this past week that opened my eyes and made me think of
how history and the present are intertwined. The first article ran in
the New Yorker online in July 2020. The Invention of
the Police tells the story of what we understand as “police”
from ancient times to the present day. We learn how the American
system of policing is based upon military practices. The article
is well worth the few minutes it takes to read (or listen to) to see how the
destructive, immoral patterns we witness in our world today have their roots in a
history not worth repeating.
My argument in Targets On Our Backs about how the police in
the US are based on the slave patrols is further buttressed with some
interesting facts:
In eighteenth-century New York, a person held as a slave could
not gather in a group of more than three; could not ride a horse;
could not hold a funeral at night; could not be out an hour after
sunset without a lantern; and could not sell “Indian corn, peaches,
or any other fruit” in any street or market in the city. Stop and
frisk, stop and whip, shoot to kill.
Then there were the slave patrols. Armed Spanish bands called
hermandades had hunted runaways in Cuba beginning in the
fifteen-thirties, a practice that was adopted by the English in
Barbados a century later. It had a lot in common with England’s
posse comitatus, a band of stout men that a county sheriff
could summon to chase down an escaped criminal. South Carolina,
founded by slave owners from Barbados, authorized its first slave
patrol in 1702; Virginia followed in 1726, North Carolina in 1753.
Slave patrols married the watch to the militia: serving on patrol was
required of all able-bodied men (often, the patrol was mustered from
the militia), and patrollers used the hue and cry to call for anyone
within hearing distance to join the chase. Neither the watch nor the
militia nor the patrols were “police,” who were French, and
considered despotic. In North America, the French city of New Orleans
was distinctive in having la police: armed City Guards, who wore
military-style uniforms and received wages, an urban slave patrol.
(…)
It is also often said that modern American urban policing began
in 1838, when the Massachusetts legislature authorized the hiring of
police officers in Boston. This, too, ignores the role of slavery in
the history of the police. In 1829, a Black abolitionist in Boston
named David Walker published “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of
the World,” calling for violent rebellion: “One good black man
can put to death six white men.” Walker was found dead within the
year, and Boston thereafter had a series of mob attacks against
abolitionists, including an attempt to lynch William Lloyd Garrison,
the publisher of The Liberator, in 1835. Walker’s words
terrified Southern slave owners. The governor of North Carolina wrote
to his state’s senators, “I beg you will lay this matter before
the police of your town and invite their prompt attention to the
necessity of arresting the circulation of the book.” By “police,”
he meant slave patrols: in response to Walker’s “Appeal,” North
Carolina formed a statewide “patrol committee.” —Jill Lepore,
The Invention of the Police
Eye-opening and thought provoking, isn’t it? What we’ve
tricked ourselves into believing—that all police officers are the handsome cops on Law and Order or diligent Detective Joe Friday in
the TV series Dragnet—is
completely false. We do have an excuse. We’ve been taught to
believe these lies all our lives through the clever use of novels
and television/movie dramas
which
paint the police in strictly heroic and positive terms. If there’s ever
a racist cop or a
crooked cop or
a super-violent cop portrayed in fiction,
they’re
almost always
seen as the exception, never
the rule.
Jill Lepore’s article
demonstrates how destructive
this “copaganda” (cop
propaganda) truly is. When an
organization is based upon protecting the property (that is, enslaved
persons) and tasked with maintaining the safety of the
ruling elites (that is, to prevent slave uprisings), it will always be a corrupt and violent organization.
Poor and powerless persons
will undoubtedly suffer and die from this organization’s practices.
It’s what our true
masters—the super-rich
oligarchs—demand of their policing agencies.
A
corrupt, violent organization must hire and train only
those who are willing to do
the job they’ve been tasked with, which is to keep us the poor
and struggling workers,
persons of color, and
unwanted immigrants in their
proper place, planted firmly beneath
the heels of the
ruling capitalist
elite.
Are you starting to see why
history should never be allowed to repeat itself in regards
to the police? The
time of rounding up “property” in order to keep the capitalist class safe and
wealthy is over. At least, it should be.
Even
very recent
history should never be repeated. This
is noted well in Caitlin
Johnstone’s article US
Surrounds China With War Machinery While Freaking Out About Balloons:
So everyone's losing
their minds over a balloon that in all probability would be mostly
worthless for spying, even while everyone knows the US spies on China
at every possible opportunity. US officials have
complained to the press that American spies are having a much
harder time conducting operations and recruiting assets in China than
they used to because of measures the Chinese government has taken to
thwart them, and in 2001 a US spy plane caused
a major international incident when it collided with a Chinese
military jet on China's coastline, killing the pilot.
The US considers it its sovereign
right to spy on any nation it chooses, and the average American tends
more or less to see it the same way. This is highlighted in
controversies around domestic versus foreign surveillance, for
example; Americans were outraged over the Edward Snowden revelations
not because spy agencies were conducting surveillance, but because
they were conducting surveillance on American citizens. It's just
taken as a given that spying on foreigners is fine, so it's a bit
silly to react melodramatically when foreigners return the favor.
But,
of course, the US is acting melodramatically over
a lost weather balloon. They are attempting
to provoke the Chinese into
a “shoot first” situation, such as they did to Russia in February 2022 when,
under the auspices of the NATO, they completely forgot about the Minsk Agreements and armed
Ukraine to fight a proxy war. Yet
again we are all living under
the imminent threat of nuclear war.
We’ve been here before. Déjà
vu. History repeats itself.
Things don’t change for the better for anybody.
Why are we repeating history like
this on a yearly basis? Isn’t the military-industrial complex
making enough money from
armaments sales? Arms manufacturers' stock prices have
skyrocketed
on Wall Street. The idea that the US/NATO bloc can take on two
nuclear powers at the same time is utterly insane. But here we
are again, repeating history, attempting
to provoke another super-power, while simultaneously riling up the American
public’s emotions
with over-the-top propaganda about a lost weather balloon.
For example, my husband turned on
ABC News Friday night.
We rarely, if ever, watch mainstream media outlets, and he’d
turned off the sound, but I noticed the first story was about
the lost weather balloon. I
went into the kitchen and a few minutes later I
came back and noticed
that the same video clip of the weather
balloon was still plastered on the screen. I
turned on
the sound and heard nothing
but hysterical
“The Chinese are invading!”
commentary. I promptly hit the mute button. Five minutes later, the
weather balloon was still on the screen and “experts” were all
screaming about how this lost
weather balloon means war.
ABC spent the entirety of its half
hour newscast spewing inflammatory nonsense, probably at the behest of the Biden Administration. War
propaganda bears repeating,
apparently.
All
Americans can learn something from celebrating Black History Month. That
feeling of “We’ve been
here before. Déjà vu.
History repeats itself.
Things don’t change for the better for the vast majority of human
beings,” is real. It proves
that our gut feeling is correct. The ruling elite will
do whatever it takes
to get the results they want.
If the
elite want to
keep their enslaved workers
from running away,
they’ll equip
and arm a slave patrol. If they
want to corner the LNG
market in Europe, make
huge profits from selling arms,
and destroy Russia’s and possibly China’s economies,
they’ll rev
up the propaganda machine of the mainstream media (90% of which are owned by just six corporations) to create the
necessity for a war
in order to do so.
The
US is still the only
industrialized country on Earth without a single-payer
(Medicare For All) health
care system, free education pre-K
through college, and a
Universal Basic Income because these programs have been deemed unnecessary by our masters. We breath polluted air, drink water full of plastic particles, and eat cheap processed food infused with high fructose corn syrup because its all we can afford. If we should ever act out because of these injustices and protest, the elite's "slave patrols" stand ready to put us back into our place, swiftly and violently, if they deem necessary.
Whatever the ruling capitalist elite want
they will have it. They will
have their way, and they won’t
lose any sleep over how many are starved, killed, or maimed in the process. You can be sure about that, as history repeats itself.
Happy Black History Month,
America. Our sordid history doesn't need to keep repeating itself. Abolitionist David
Walker had the right idea for
a rebellion, don’t
you think? Watch out for those slave patrols.
Related Links:
Teach Black History--Don't Ban It https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/04/teach-black-history-dont-ban-it/
New Advanced Placement African American Studies Course is Watered Down Version of Itself https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/03/new-advanced-placement-african-american-studies-course-is-watered-down-version-of-itself/
The Invention of the Police https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police
US Surrounds China with War Machinery While Freaking Out About Balloons https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/03/caitlin-johnstone-us-surrounds-china-with-war-machinery-while-freaking-out-about-balloons/
The Pentagon's Balloon Floats On https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/05/patrick-lawrence-the-pentagons-balloon-floats-on/
More Evidence That The West Sabotaged Peace In Ukraine
Quote of the week:
Ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing against the
US and they'll start babbling about TikTok and balloons. --Caitlin Johnstone
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