Mass Shootings (a symptom of white supremacy + capitalism)

White Supremacy Violence

While many of us woke up on February 14th, 2018 eager for the showering of Valentine’s Day gifts and kisses from our loved ones, one 19-year-old white man prepared his weapons and ammunition and stormed Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ruthlessly at the kids he’d spent years growing up with.

When the news first broke out on social media, a rumor started by the alt-right identified the “shooter” as a young white man wearing a Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and hammer and sickle shirt. Immediately conservatives began claiming this was a terrorist attack on behalf of “antifa” and leftists on various social media platforms were being harassed and threatened. Worst of all, the innocent man who they claimed to be the shooter was on the verge of suicide for a crime he didn’t commit.

And then Republic of Florida, a white nationalist terrorist group, had come out and claimed the shooting was on their behalf and suddenly the conversation of political terrorism dispelled, nobody spoke about the shooter, and all major discourse revolved around gun control.

The most threatening and fatal violence in the United States comes from first the white nationalist terrorists and is supported by the liberals and conservatives that enable them by being silent. When the shooter is not white, immediately reactionary politics jumps on talks increasing racially, ethnically, and religiously discriminatory policies. The conversation is never centered on the nature of violence these white supremacist groups perpetuate and in fact liberals protect their inherently violent speech for the sake of “free speech”. It is not that bourgeois and capitalist media afraid of calling out white supremacy, but that they rely on these white supremacists to uphold their own wealth. They would never call out their worker bees.

While the U.S. government regurgitates racist tropes against Muslim folks painting them as brutes and terrorists, it is actually three times more likely that one would be killed by a domestic white supremacist than an international terrorist. Americans who claim not to be racists are complicit in white supremacy when they refuse to talk about the origins of violence. Folks truly believe that we live in a post-racial and peaceful society despite the massive killing of innocent Black folk, especially Black trans women.

What is key to understanding about the white nationalist groups in America now is that they no longer operate like the Ku Klux Klan. They take on names like “Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy”, “Traditionalist Workers Party” or “Patriot Front”. They seek out vulnerable white folks in the working class and taint them with white supremacist values, they give them a false enemy and fill them with hatred. They take on racist, xenophobic, ableist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ+, and purely bigoted language. They are often extremely anti-semitic but support Israel, which can be interpreted in various ways considering Israel is a white ethnostate. In the past year, Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen has been responsible for the deaths of five people . Yet there is no legislation restricting neo-nazis from taking arms, the FBI spends more time investigating “Black Extremism”, i.e. Black Lives Matter for not wanting to be killed by the state, and supports white nationalist groups abroad. The state and media are enabling white supremacy to grow and those who don’t speak on it are complicit in its violence. I often ask folks, “what would you have done about the Nazi regime in Germany 1933-1945”? Well if you are silent about ICE, the CIA, the military, Trump, mass incarceration, and white nationalism, your answer is nothing. You would’ve done nothing.

Lets shift back to the conversation of gun control now and how it further enables the state and white supremacists and disenfranchises the oppressed communities. See the 2nd amendment was put in place solely for citizens to take arms and protect themselves against a tyrannical government, but it was never intended for anyone other than cishet white men. From the earliest colonial history dating back to 1751, legislation was put in place to shoot Black folks who had weapons as mild as a cane under the rule of the French. These laws became severely enforced in the north American colonies following the successful Haitian Revolution. Free Blacks were restricted from learning combat tactics and possessing firearms unless necessary by the state. Clayton E. Clamer writes in “The Racist Roots of Gun Control” that “It is not surprising that the first North American English colonies, then the states of the new republic, remained in dread fear of armed blacks, for slave revolts against slave owners often degenerated into less selective forms of racial warfare. The perception that free blacks were sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved brothers, and the dangerous example that ‘a Negro could be free’ also caused the slave states to pass laws designed to disarm all blacks, both slave and free. Unlike the gun control laws passed after the Civil War, these antebellum statutes were for blacks alone. In Maryland, these prohibitions went so far as to prohibit free blacks from owning dogs without a license, and authorizing any white to kill an unlicensed dog owned by a free black, for fear that blacks would use dogs as weapons. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any ownership of a dog by a black person.” The colonizers did all they could to contain the rebellion of enslaved folks to prevent Maroons, Nat Turner’s, and another successful Black revolution.

Let’s fast forward to the 1967 with the Mulford Act. In 1966, the Black Panthers, formed by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, advocated for racial justice and advised Black folk to exercise the 2nd amendment and its purpose to stand up against the oppressive and racist government. At that time, California’s gun laws allowed open carry. The Black Panthers are known for their fearlessness, they stood against cops, gun-in-hand, and intimidated the white supremacist power structure. On May 2nd, 1967, the Black Panthers entered California’s legislative Capitol armed with their guns pointed to the ceiling. Legislators feared for their life, despite the Black Panthers urging they were merely carrying guns as they are legally allowed to do, however they were eventually arrested on felony charges for attempting to disrupt a legislative session. After this incident, Don Mulford, with full support of the NRA , passed the Mulford Act often coined the “Panther Bill” which banned open carry in the state of California.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the battles of power have been restless in the Eastern European region. The imperialist powers of the world have seen vulnerability of people’s movements, allowing them to give substantial aid and support to fascist and Western puppet groups as they rise to power. In 2014, a group called Euromaidan had a coup to oust the liberal President Viktor Yanukovych. Euromaidan is a fascist group composed of Ukrainian Nationalists, neo-nazis, and oligarchs who propose the ethnic cleansing of non-whites and especially ethnically Russian and Russian speakers, and to eradicate any sort of people’s movement. They seized Kiev and massacred 48 anti-fascists at the House of Trades. Since 2014, the western Ukraine Maidan-controlled region has been at civil war with the eastern Ukraine Donbass region that is staunchly anti-fascist. They are predominately working class folks, they also mostly speak Russian. The United States and the European Union have funded this fascist leadership so viciously for the fact of Ukraine’s resources and its strong connections with Russia. The United States has given multimillion dollar funds to the fascist regime and sent US paid “NGOs” to these regions to spread western Pro-capitalist ideals. Svoboda is another Neo-nazi party, self-proclaimed Ukrainian Nationalists, group that has official seats in the Ukrainian parliament, that was also backed by Washington.

We’ve learned from Hungary, Romania, Germany, and now the Ukraine how detrimental it is to be tolerant of white nationalism. Often liberal media will criticize anti-fascist groups for violence against Nazis. Does anyone reflect on how absurd it is to be tolerant of a group that advocates for ethnic cleansing? Does anyone reflect upon history of what happens when white nationalists aren’t confronted? This leads to genocide, this leads to war. Liberals who criminalize anti-fascists for doing the work liberals are too spineless to do are complicit and enablers of white supremacy violence.

Now the #NeverAgain movement is a noble cause started by the survivors of the Parkland shooting. But along with the liberal narrative, it fails to address the causes of gun violence. Guns are merely a tool for a larger problem that had existed before guns and will exist if you take them all away. The #NeverAgain movement for this reason that it doesn’t address the uncomfortable cause of violence has been widely adopted by liberals. However taking a look at Black Lives Matter that is considered controversial though it is advocating against gun violence as well, just at the hands of police, shows there is a stark difference in what Liberals are comfortable adopting.   Black Lives Matter youth organizers are being targeted, harrassed, and have been killed in Ferguson, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Charleston, and so many more. Inner city kids in Baltimore and Chicago have also been advocating against gun violence, yet their voices are never heard. There is something to be said about the position of Black youth in a broader activist space than white youth.

The situation of mass shootings in the United States has long been argued in bourgeois media but it lacks any nuance altogether. I understand the desire to take a way the tool that can kill the most at once, but the problem is still there, still dormant, and waiting for its own 1933.