Friends,
Yes, we are faced with a fascist government not
unlike Pinochet's in Chile. Just watch the innumerable examples of
ultra-police violence against the protesters. In Portland, fascist
federal troops beat a Naval Academy graduate, and then peppered-spray
him. Martin Gugino is dealing with the effects of a fractured
skull. Yes, Joe Biden is a weak candidate, but he is not Trump. Kagiso,
Max
The Tactics of Terror in Portland
Posted
By Kenn Orphan On July 21, 2020
“There are decades
where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
– Vladimir Lenin
Between 1973 and
1990 scores of people were disappeared by the US supported fascist regime of
Augusto Pinochet in Chile. They were incarcerated, tortured and thousands were
murdered. In fact, the official total of those killed by the regime is just
over 40,000. But some critics suggest it was much higher. Pinochet was able to
do all of this with the blessing of the CIA who assisted him in the coup
against the elected President, Salvador Allende, and in his reign of terror
afterward in Chile. The painful lessons of the Pinochet years have often been obscured
under neoliberal historical revisionism, but with what is currently unfolding
in cities like Portland, Oregon, it is urgent to revisit them.
When Donald
Trump’s federal agents rolled into Portland last week, they began to employ
classic police state tactics of intimidation. Tear gas was employed,
“non-lethal” munitions, and the psychological terror of unmarked vans snatching
protesters, and even those simply standing by, off the streets without arrest
warrants and whisked off to undisclosed locations. The use of forced
disappearance should not be underestimated because it is, perhaps, the most
effective tactic at crushing dissent and eliminating political rivals.
Under the fist of
General Pinochet, the state became a ruthless force of terror. In September of
1973, at least 10,000 people, many of them students, activists and political
dissidents, were rounded up by the military shortly after he took the office of
the presidency by a US supported and orchestrated coup. They were taken to the
National Soccer Stadium in Santiago where they were subjected to torture or
were massacred outright. Thousands of bodies were buried in mass graves.
Thousands were never recovered as they were discarded in rivers and even in the
Pacific Ocean. Even today, families await justice and the chance to bury their
loved ones.
Forced
disappearances are a crime against humanity according to the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court. And there is no statute of limitations on
this crime. But, as we have seen over the past few decades, the US government
and military cares little for the international rule of law. Indeed, it has
enjoyed impunity for its atrocities while those who violate these statutes in
the Global South are often brought to trial and punished severely. The US
invasion of Iraq, along with the occupation and atrocities are clear examples
of this. And under Trump, the American Empire has divorced itself even more
from international bodies that seek at least some regulation of state excesses
or the management of crises. His withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate
change and his recent withdrawal from the World Health Organization during a
global pandemic point to a brazen disinterest in engaging with the
international community.
Pinochet’s Chile
was not alone in its use of forced disappearances. During the Dirty War in
Argentina at least 30,000 people were disappeared and murdered by the US
backed, rightwing military junta. In fact, under the US implemented and CIA
backed and assisted “Operation Condor,” which targeted leftist or socialist
political activists, student organizers, and academicians, the entire South
American continent became a killing field from the 1970s well into the 1980s.
Unsurprisingly, the genocidaire Henry Kissinger was deeply involved in these
atrocities in much the same way as he was in Southeast Asia and on the African
continent. And he assisted in marrying federal agencies, surveillance and state
police, and paramilitary mercenaries and death squads to one another in order
to carry out the crimes successfully.
It is not
hyperbolic for there to be great alarm over Trump’s use of forced
disappearances. Although there have been no deaths because of it, his flouting
of the rule of law and use of this tactic of terror is not an accident. And the
people under him have proven time and time again that they are ever willing to
carry out his orders. As the election looms in November, we should not
underestimate the timing of this either. Across the nation protests have arisen
to confront the long legacy and continuing ruthlessness of racist, police state
violence. The rage has been simmering for a long time, and the murder of George
Floyd ignited and galvanized millions to take a stand. To Trump, who is one of
the most overtly racist presidents to have taken office since Woodrow Wilson or
Teddy Roosevelt, this represents the greatest threat to his legitimacy.
The US is now
leading the world in cases of Covid-19 with over 140,000 deaths. Indeed, the
pandemic is currently wreaking havoc on an American healthcare system which was
already suffering from disorganization and beholden to the whims and will of
merciless capitalist predation. When Trump came in, he literally threw out the
handbook on how to deal with global pandemics, so the ongoing protests to
police brutality provide him a perfect distraction from his colossal blundering
and incompetence.
And, of course,
there are other ingredients to this recipe for disaster. Trump faces a weak
candidate in Joe Biden, who cannot seem to form a coherent opposition to his
blatant fascist impulses. If there is no meaningful alternative that represents
real change in ordinary people’s lives then, like it or not, the people will
not bother to vote. There is also the precarious economic situation, the
elephant in the room that few wish to acknowledge. With millions unemployed and
facing eviction or foreclosure, the elements of fascism may be coalesced even
further. God help us if a climate change fueled catastrophe comes this summer
or in the fall, because it will be the perfect storm for him to pull whatever
levels necessary for him to quell dissent and remain in power. He has such
mechanisms at his disposal thanks to the Patriot Act and the NDAA. He can
detain any US citizen indefinitely by merely labelling them a terrorist, thanks
to legislation designed and endorsed by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And he
has already begun branding anyone who opposes his tyranny, like Antifa and
Black Lives Matter, with that spurious charge.
The uprisings taking place across the US
are the stirrings of a global mass movement that shows great promise. That they
are taking place in the most wealthy and powerful empire on the planet is an
indication that this empire itself is beginning to unravel under the weight of
its hubris and a long legacy of cruelty, racism and brutality. But no one
should underestimate the tremendous pain a wounded giant can inflict as it
falls. Its violence is unoriginal, but it will use the only tactics it knows.
And we should remember that it is quite familiar with atrocities because it has
visited them frequently on the Global South for decades. Portland is a portent.
And, as Lenin inferred in the quote above, things can happen rapidly and in a
short span of time. We would be wise to heed these urgent lessons before it is
too late.
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