The Rise Of Fascism And The Need To Combat This Existential Crisis…

The wave of white Nationalism wash­ing over Western Europe and the United States requires seri­ous atten­tion from all non-white peo­ple. It may be sig­nif­i­cant exis­ten­tial­ly for peo­ple of col­or caught up in its wake unless those who are in the way wake up to its reality.

Many peo­ple thought Britain’s exit from the European Union was a joke which would nev­er hap­pen. Many peo­ple thought a Donald Trump pres­i­den­cy was as improb­a­ble as hit­ting the Powerball.

Despite Emanuel Macron’s sweep­ing elec­tion win over far-right can­di­date Marine Le Pen last year, the New York Times opined,[The issues that Ms. Le Pen raised are not going away. She gained twice the sup­port that her father did when he ran for pres­i­dent in 2002, cement­ing the far right’s hold on the French polit­i­cal landscape.]

Over the last two decades, the prac­tice of mass depor­ta­tion of peo­ple of col­or has become com­mon­place in the United States and in Britain for the small­est infrac­tions and in many cas­es in sit­u­a­tions, for offens­es they did not even commit.
This kind of enforce­ment has its root in racism and are pushed only by far-right white eth­nic groups in the United States and across Europe.

We must see these kinds of actions for what they are. The dem­a­gog­ic rhetoric is not root­ed in facts, nei­ther is it sup­port­ed by data. Study after study has shown that immi­grants com­mit far few­er crimes than native-born citizens.
Immigrants gen­er­al­ly migrate in search of bet­ter eco­nom­ic opportunities.
In more severe cas­es they do so because their very lives depend on it. For those rea­sons, immi­grants tend to be very good and respon­si­ble cit­i­zens who bring much dynamism and ener­gy to the workforce.

The prac­tice of remov­ing peo­ple who have lived for decades because of minor infrac­tions or because they thought they did not have to reg­u­lar­ize their sta­tus must be seen as the [eth­nic cleans­ing] it is.
This is evi­dent in the so-called (Windrush Generation) who are now liv­ing with the specter of depor­ta­tions in England even though they arrived in the United Kingdom as cit­i­zens of Britain, hav­ing arrived from the Caribbean before 1973.

In a recent­ly released book titled (Fascism a Warning) writ­ten by Madeline Albright, the US’s first female Secretary of State, Amazon’s review said the following.
[The momen­tum toward democ­ra­cy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, which his­tor­i­cal­ly cham­pi­oned the free world, is led by a pres­i­dent who exac­er­bates divi­sion and heaps scorn on demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. In many coun­tries, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and cul­tur­al fac­tors are weak­en­ing the polit­i­cal cen­ter and empow­er­ing the extremes of right and left].

The tone set by the far-white[sic] is hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences, not only for black and brown mem­bers of immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties in the United States and parts of Europe but are man­i­fest­ing itself in the way black cit­i­zens are treat­ed by law enforce­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the United States.
The unlaw­ful killing of Black peo­ple has exist­ed for as long as the United States existed.
Shockingly, how­ev­er, the police con­tin­ue to kill peo­ple of col­or with­out due jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, or expla­na­tion even in instances where they are unarmed and the sys­tems which ought to hold them account­able has twist­ed itself into pret­zels try­ing to give jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what every ratio­nal per­son know is murder.

In many cas­es, the sheer num­ber of bul­lets fired by police at indi­vid­u­als defies log­i­cal rea­son­ing and may only be con­strued or inter­pret­ed as total depraved indif­fer­ence to human life.
The cops who sav­age­ly slaugh­tered Amadou Diallo fired at the unarmed man a report­ed forty-one times. Some of those who fired their weapons could­n’t even claim they were scared, they coined a total­ly fraud­u­lent jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for dis­charg­ing their weapons.
“Contagious fir­ing” a new jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for [depraved indif­fer­ence] entered the lex­i­con and it was off to the races.
Abner Louima, Sean Bell, Akai Gurley, and count­less oth­er vic­tims were to fol­low, with each killing and depraved assaults in which police were not held account­able the attacks on black men inten­si­fied with no clear end in sight.

The idea that cops can sim­ply say they were in fear for their lives and are deemed jus­ti­fi­able in pump­ing dozens of bul­lets into an unarmed per­son is the high­est degree of men­tal and moral depravity.
Even in sit­u­a­tions in which a per­son may have a weapon it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy fir­ing bul­lets into an offend­er who has been neutralized.
Now imag­ine sit­u­a­tions in which the police don’t even see a gun yet over and over they use the very same tired excuse that they thought the per­son had a gun.

What’s worse, armed white sus­pects are talked down and tak­en into cus­tody with­out inci­dent, unarmed black peo­ple who aren’t even crim­i­nal sus­pects are drilled full of bul­lets imme­di­ate­ly the police arrive on the scene.
Blacks caught with a weapon is almost assured that his sen­tence will be the death penal­ty, decid­ed, and car­ried out on the spot.
White killers who mas­sacre large num­bers of inno­cents are almost always arrest­ed with­out a sin­gle round being fired at them and are treat­ed with the great­est degree of def­er­ence and care.

Over half a cen­tu­ry after Dr. Martin Luther King was assas­si­nat­ed the struc­tur­al edi­fices of white suprema­cy still exist in America as it did when he lived.
I strug­gle to see a sit­u­a­tion in which two white men of any age would have the police called on them because they sat in a Starbucks cof­fee shop and had not yet made a purchase.
Sitting in Starbucks and work­ing on one’s com­put­er, (free wi-fi), read­ing a book, or sim­ply chat­ting away is the Starbucks busi­ness model.
Yet two young black men sit­ting there like every­one else can find no sanc­tu­ary from racism, fas­cism, and police excess, even in these inner sanc­tums of pro­gres­sive coexistence.

In the ear­ly six­ties while Dr. King lived the sin­gle great­est issue fac­ing black peo­ple in America was police abuse, today well over half a cen­tu­ry lat­er police abuse is the largest issue affect­ing black peo­ple and oth­er peo­ple of col­or in America.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that police abuse has noth­ing to do with the qual­i­ty of police ser­vices over­all. Police ser­vice to oth­er peo­ple with much less melanin in their skins is exemplary.

In a riv­et­ing arti­cle writ­ten for the Root​.com, Dr. Jason Johnson, pro­fes­sor, polit­i­cal ana­lyst, and pub­lic speak­er. said the fol­low­ing in rela­tion to a loud argu­ment between a young white woman and her young African American boyfriend with whom she was feuding.
“I’m gonna call the cops! I’ll tell them you hit me!” the woman screamed, sit­ting on the grass and point­ing at her ex. “I’ll tell them you beat me up. They’ll get your ass.”

Johnson described what fol­lowed this way:
The man stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and gave her a look of shock, anger, and then unmit­i­gat­ed fear. He was black. She was white. He knew exact­ly what she was say­ing, and so did I, and most hor­ren­dous­ly, so did she.
Johnson summed up the event this way ”
“When white peo­ple threat­en to call the police on black peo­ple — out of anger, out of spite, out of pure vin­dic­tive­ness — they are effec­tive­ly say­ing, “I’ll kill you!” They’re just using a legal exten­sion of white suprema­cy to do it. It’s high time we start con­sid­er­ing these big­ots just as much a threat as the police that they sum­mon to do their bid­ding”.

White Americans have no prob­lem with police, when they call, ‑the police arrive in record time and their cares are attend­ed to with pre­ci­sion type dispatch.
When blacks injured by whites call the police,-the police arrive and go to the white offend­er to hear what occurred despite the white per­son being the offender.
Black motorists who have their vehi­cles destroyed on the streets by white dri­ves, par­tic­u­lar­ly white women, tell hor­rif­ic tales of how they are treat­ed by white cops who use intim­i­dat­ing tac­tics, despite the fact that they are the aggriev­ed party.
The nat­ur­al default pos­ture of police, there­fore, is that blacks are express­ly inca­pable of being right, inher­ent­ly inca­pable of being aggrieved.

This deep sense of implic­it bias weaponizes black skin ren­der­ing black men and boys and even women and chil­dren sus­pects, (see Tamir Rice), pure­ly on the basis of their skin color.
Police offi­cers turn up to answer calls, demon­stra­bly with no inten­tion of de-esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tions, for the most part, they show up aggres­sive­ly not car­ing how they act.
Why should they care, sel­dom are police offi­cers held account­able, regard­less of what they do to black peo­ple, even when they kill unarmed cit­i­zens who posed no threat to them­selves or any­one else?

In a tear-jerk­ing Article writ­ten for CNN African-American jour­nal­ist Nia-Malika Henderson in speak­ing about — The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum: wrote.
“The memo­r­i­al cap­tures the bru­tal­i­ty and the scale of lynch­ings through­out the South, where more than 4,000 black men, women, and chil­dren, died at the hands of white mobs between 1877 and 1950”. “Most were in response to per­ceived infrac­tions — walk­ing behind a white woman, attempt­ing to quit a job, report­ing a crime or orga­niz­ing share­crop­pers”.

The tragedy did not end in the 1950s as we are well aware untold num­bers of black peo­ple have dis­ap­peared and were nev­er heard from again, their only crime, dar­ing to be alive.
The killings con­tin­ued through­out the six­ties and sev­en­ties with the full weight of the states behind jim crow laws, which man­i­fest­ed them­selves in more lynch­ings, vot­er exclu­sion, vot­er sup­pres­sion, eugen­ics, chain gangs, lat­er trans­formed into the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, and oth­er meth­ods of racial suppression.

And so when we fast for­ward to the men arrest­ed in a Philidelphia Starbucks cof­fee shop many peo­ple includ­ing African Americans fall vic­tim to blam­ing Starbucks.
Starbucks the com­pa­ny has a far bet­ter record as a cor­po­rate cit­i­zen than many oth­er com­pa­nies, and so it is incred­i­ble myopic for any­one, least of all African-Americans to sug­gest that Starbucks has a prob­lem, which is, in essence, deny­ing that American has a problem.

The white Starbucks man­ag­er who called the police on the two young African-American men absolute­ly would not even have noticed that two white men sit­ting in the same seats had not made a purchase.
The fact of the mat­ter is that the only rea­son that a time­line was cre­at­ed in her mind is the skin col­or of the two men. As soon as they stepped into that cof­fee shop a time clock trig­gered in her head, that time clock was trig­gered based on a con­cept too many whites have, that black peo­ple do not belong.

Nevertheless, the fight African-Americans are wag­ing is a fight that will land them in the very same predica­ment a hun­dred years from today. There is no pow­er with­out eco­nom­ic pow­er. People who use their ener­gies to fight with oth­ers to give them the free­dom to spend their mon­ey with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion are bound to end up being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.

What will it take for African-Americans to under­stand that the strat­e­gy of fight­ing to get peo­ple to accept them into their orga­ni­za­tions, busi­ness­es, insti­tu­tions, and fra­ter­ni­ties is a los­ing strategy?
There is more than enough evi­dence for us to con­clude that despite not hav­ing to sit and wait in vain to be served at lunch coun­ters, not a great deal has changed in the think­ing of far too many in the white community.
Surely the answer is in build­ing busi­ness­es of our own, estab­lish­ing coop­er­a­tives, small start-ups, com­mu­ni­ty banks, restau­rants, Real estate agen­cies, cof­fee shops, tech star­tups, dress shops, media house, etc, etc.

The only busi­ness black peo­ple seem to get excit­ed about are bar­ber­shops and hair salons. Which are two busi­ness­es ded­i­cat­ed to form, rather than sub­stance, what can be seen rather than what’s inside? So they priss and preen and dress up then go to white-owned restau­rants, white-owned hotels, and spend their monies pur­chas­ing goods and ser­vices in white-owned busi­ness­es, gets treat­ed bad­ly and the cycle con­tin­ues. That hamp­ster wheel has been a pre­scrip­tion for dis­as­ter and it will con­tin­ue to be so until we change it.

As long as blacks con­tin­ue to side­step the sem­i­nal issue of self-empow­er­ment through black finan­cial reten­tion, the dis­re­spect met­ed out to blacks in oth­er peo­ple’s busi­ness­es will remain on a continuüm.
There seems to be lit­tle desire among black peo­ple to pool their resources and become finan­cial con­trollers of their own lives.
Despite the con­tin­ued rep­re­hen­si­ble treat­ment met­ed out, black Americans con­tin­ue to bleed their resources each year, to the tune of well over one tril­lion dol­lars. (Black Buying Power To Reach $1.3 Trillion By 2017 )

In the mean­time blacks con­tin­ue to make the lame argu­ments that they can­not get loans to do star­tups, argu­ing incor­rect­ly that the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing loans avail­able to Latinos who are cre­at­ing star­tups at a record pace.
Black intel­lec­tu­als and jour­nal­ists argue that the implic­it bias­es we wit­ness in the end­less cycle of police killings and oth­er abus­es met­ed out to black peo­ple across America are fear-based.

I dis­agree, I heard in that record­ing, that cop telling Alton Sterling, over and over that he was going to blow out his fuck­ing brains, (then he did). Time after time police are caught on video and audio record­ings telling blacks, “I’m going to fuck­ing kill you” then they kill the person.
That is not fear it is hatred.
Not only is it hatred, but these encoun­ters are also unequiv­o­cal instances of mod­ern-day lynch­ings car­ried out by tax-pay­er fund­ed agents of the states. They are unmit­i­gat­ed instances of state mur­der in which the intent to kill is man­i­fest­ly expressed.

Police offi­cers are the first judge of facts when they are called to a sit­u­a­tion. Real offi­cers turn up with the inten­tion to resolve issues amicably.
The offi­cers who showed up at the Starbucks in Philadelphia had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve the com­mu­ni­ty, they end­ed up serv­ing their own racist agendas.

As a police offi­cer, you enter the cof­fee shop and engage the per­son who called the police. Clearly, after hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the man­ag­er (who was the com­plainant in this instance), real offi­cers would inti­mate to the com­plainant that unless the per­sons were being dis­rup­tive there was no offense.
As the own­er of two pri­vate busi­ness­es, I do have the right to ask some­one to leave if the per­son is being dis­rup­tive, or if the per­son is trespassing.
However, the tres­pass can­not be con­fined to only peo­ple of a cer­tain pigmentation.

Real police offi­cers would have approached the two young men and spo­ken to them respect­ful­ly, upon which they would have been told that they were await­ing a friend. [which is what peo­ple do at cof­fee shops, includ­ing Starbucks].
Real police offi­cers would have walked away when the friend of the two men arrived. They did not walk away because they saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be tough guys, lots of them, two unarmed men.

Instead of defus­ing the non-sit­u­a­tion, they took up aggres­sive posi­tions around the two men in a semi-cir­cle. That aggres­sion includ­ing mov­ing chairs and tables with the full inten­tion of show­ing who was boss.
None of which was nec­es­sary if they believed they had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be def­er­en­tial and respect­ful to the two men.
The sole defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic which pre­de­ter­mined the cop’s response was the col­or of the men’s skin.

In England, Spain, France, Russia, Denmark. Norway, The Netherlands, and all across Europe and the United States we are wit­ness­ing a rise in what can only be acknowl­edged as Fascist attacks on peo­ple of color.
During the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama (America’s first black pres­i­dent), there was a pro­lif­er­a­tion of hate groups unseen in the United States prior.
President Obama as the first African-American to hold the office of pres­i­dent received more death threats than any oth­er President in history.
Those threats and the rise of the white hate groups had noth­ing to do with fear and every­thing to do with hatred.
These groups are heav­i­ly armed, hate-filled, they train as armies do and they are not afraid to chal­lenge the Government under the force of arms as they did in the Bundy standoff.
Despite this clear and present dan­ger, the Federal Beaurea of Investigations (FBI) spent its time and resources inves­ti­gat­ing and prepar­ing warn­ings on the so-called “Black Identity Extremists.”

According to (thing​progress​.com) The trou­bling report cit­ed numer­ous instances of vio­lent extrem­ism, pin­ning them on the cur­rent wave of Black Lives Matter demon­stra­tions and allow­ing law enforce­ment to pur­sue aggres­sive sur­veil­lance and inves­ti­ga­tions into indi­vid­u­als they believe may one day pose a threat.
Instead of deal­ing with the threats posed by the heav­i­ly armed, well-trained Militias with vio­lent intent, the FBI is more con­cerned about unarmed peo­ple demon­strat­ing to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect. https://​thinkprogress​.org/​f​b​i​-​u​s​i​n​g​-​i​t​s​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​i​d​e​n​t​i​t​y​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​t​s​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​-​c​6​4​7​0​9​1​1​3​5​ab/

Politico mag­a­zine report­ed that vio­lent hate groups are now act­ing as a “third force” — as a buffer, in the­o­ry, between far-right agi­ta­tors and their opponents.
Indeed, dur­ing these first months of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, these loose-knit orga­ni­za­tions mak­ing up America’s mili­tia move­ment are los­ing their anti-gov­ern­ment ide­o­log­i­cal puri­ty as they grow increas­ing­ly close with a seg­ment of the right-wing from which many in the recent past had gen­er­al­ly kept their dis­tance. Their pres­ence as a pri­vate secu­ri­ty force for an increas­ing­ly pub­lic coali­tion of white nation­al­ist fac­tions — Ku Klux Klan fol­low­ers, neo-Nazis, and “alt-right” sup­port­ers — has trans­formed a move­ment that has already demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to threat­en vio­lence. www.politi​co​.com/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​2​0​1​7​/​0​8​/​1​7​/​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​s​-​m​i​l​i​t​i​a​s​-​p​r​i​v​a​t​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​2​1​5​498

All in all, this fright­en­ing sys­tem of aggres­sion we are wit­ness­ing can be turned back but it requires vig­i­lance, mil­i­tan­cy, and a sense of awokeness[sic] from those who are threat­ened by aggres­sion, their only crime being their skin color.
These are not prob­lems that crop up like some non-man made dis­ease, they are arti­fi­cial prob­lems cre­at­ed by peo­ple who make con­scious deci­sions to adopt a pos­ture that they some­how have more right to this plan­et than oth­ers do.

This aggres­sion must be coun­tered using edu­ca­tion, self-aware­ness, social inter­ac­tion, finan­cial empow­er­ment, vot­ing, and a raft of oth­er tools.
Those who would con­tin­ue to take advan­tage of the igno­rance and docil­i­ty of oth­ers will not cease to push the enve­lope until the igno­rant and docile say no more.
This is an exis­ten­tial cri­sis that requires all hands on deck.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.