The recent school shooting at Uvalde, Texas has brought gun violence to the forefront of political discourse again. The truth is that this violence is a pervasive part of the system that occurs every day, not just in episodes that receive news coverage. The shooting at Uvalde was terrible and the facts being revealed about the police response make it all the worse. Yet by focusing on single mass shooting events, the every day violence of the declining capitalist US empire is largely ignored.
According to reports, the police at Uvalde responded by attacking parents who were concerned about their children.
The police are a part of the problem, not part of the solution. Yet when a Neo-Nazi white supremacist killed ten black people in Buffalo, Biden responded by praising the police for their de-escalation tactics in taking him alive.
I want to thank your law enforcement officers for not just what they did in this crisis, but for accommodating us. - President Biden, Buffalo, May 17
At the same time that he was denouncing white supremacy, billions in weapons were being sent to Ukraine, where they likely will end up in the hands of white supremacists. The Buffalo shooter wore an emblem, the sonnenrad or Black Sun, which has featured prominently among Neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine.
In his manifesto, which also featured a sonnenrad, the Buffalo Nazi praised the actions of the Christchurch mosque shooter in New Zealand in 2019. A report by Time published in January 2021 describes the connection between the mosque shooter and the Ukrainian Azov Battalion:
After the worst such attack in recent years—the massacre of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019—an arm of the Azov movement helped distribute the terrorist’s raving manifesto, in print and online, seeking to glorify his crimes and inspire others to follow.
The Christchurch mosque attacker, who livestreamed the atrocity on Facebook, had been radicalized by far-right material largely on YouTube and Facebook, according to a New Zealand government report released in December 2020. He had spent time in Ukraine in 2015 and mentioned plans to move to the country permanently. “We know that when he was in that part of the world, he was making contact with far-right groups,” says Andrew Little, the Minister responsible for the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Little says he does not know if these groups included Azov. But during the attack, the shooter wore a flak jacket bearing a black sun, the symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion.
Biden might denounce white supremacy with his words, but his actions in sending weapons to Ukraine go against that denunciation. While much of the Azov Battalion have surrendered (or according to western press - evacuated) in Mariupol, their ideology is far reaching and incredibly dangerous. The western deification of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has done nothing to address the issue of white supremacy in Ukraine. Zelenskyy praised the Azov Battalion as heroes and awarded their leader with Ukraine’s highest honor.
White supremacy is a huge issue at home as well. In spite of record protests in support of Black Lives Matter in 2020, police have been killing blacks at a higher rate than before the protests. According to statistics compiled by Mapping Police Violence, black people were 28% of those killed by police in 2021 despite being only 13% of the population. So far in 2022, 445 people have been killed by police. Yet these killings seldom receive media coverage.
Even though the BLM movement called for the passage of the Breathe Act and defunding the police, Biden has largely supported funneling money and resources to the police. Just recently he proposed that cities and states spend their pandemic money on policing. According to the official White House statement:
As the cornerstone of the comprehensive gun crime reduction agenda he issued in June 2021, President Biden called on cities and states to dedicate American Recue Plan state and local funding to proven strategies that will make our communities safer – including by putting more police officers on the beat for accountable community policing, expanding evidence-based community violence intervention programs, and preventing crime by making our neighborhoods stronger with more educational and economic opportunities.
More police on the beat will not decrease police violence. But throwing money at the military, police, and Neo-Nazis in Ukraine seems to be the theme of the Biden regime.
Here is how Movement for Black Lives responded to this absurd Biden policy:
Karissa Lewis, National Field Director of Movement for Black Lives, issued the following statement:
“The root cause of crime is poverty, but instead of making investments in our communities, people in positions of power are pushing for more money for police. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s plan puts the lives of millions of Black and Brown people at risk by increasing the already looming and violent police presence in our communities.
Despite bloated police budgets across the country, crime continues to occur because the police do not keep us safe, and they do not prevent nor stop crime. Pouring more money into the system of policing only threatens the very lives they’re purported to protect.
What’s worse, using COVID-19 relief money to boost officer pay or fund oppressive police tactics when our communities are still struggling from the pandemic. It is immoral, but not unsurprising. It is also a slap in the face to the millions of Black, Brown, Asian, and LGBTQ+ people who voted this administration into office in a historic wave of support in hopes of shifting the material conditions of their families and communities.
We shouldn’t be surprised that our country is facing the same issues over and over again when what is put forward as solutions are the same racist, dysfunctional and violent solutions. When we say ‘defund and abolish the police,’ we mean exactly that; we need policies and solutions that center community and investments in housing, education, good jobs, and mental and physical health for all. This is how we stop crime and insure our people are able to live healthy thriving lives. So while those in power continue to create unsafe conditions for our people it is up to us to usher in a world that is free from harm. Join us.”
I couldn’t say it any better. Capitalism is the root cause of this epidemic of violence in our country. Transitioning away from private ownership and free market policies to a socialist system is the only solution. Giving more money to the police, military, and arms manufacturers is the opposite of what needs to be done. Capitalists have no answers to violence because capitalism is an inherently violent system.
I 100% agree with Birrion Sondahl that capitalism is the problem that creates violence, suffering, and death for so many people, all around the world. Humanity needs to evolve past capitalism, or they'll go to an early grave because of it.
Zel gets more extreme with every day. Maybe that Chenchen leader needs to finally get his way. Sigh. Just read some more Zel words about Kissinger that were totally repulsive historical revisionism. Kiss only has a few weeks or months of life left in him, yet he forced himself to speak to Davos. I had been praying for months they could roll him out in a wheelchair.