Trump Green Lights Escalating Police Violence and Targets Protest Against Police Murder and Terror
May 21, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On May 15, Donald Trump spoke at the annual gathering of police to commemorate those killed in the line of duty (Annual National Peace Officers’ memorial service) in Washington, DC. Trump gave a chilling, fascist green light to an escalation of police terror and murder to a whole new level.
For decades, under both Republicans and Democrats, police have dogged, insulted, harassed, beaten, even tortured or murdered millions of people—mainly Black, Brown and Native people. This has been one of this system’s most outrageous crimes.
While Barack Obama overall and overwhelmingly supported America’s murdering pigs, he also sometimes talked of “mistakes” or “problems” with some police practices that needed attention and reform. Trump, however, made no mention of any wrongdoing—let alone the enormous crimes—by police. Instead, he portrayed these armed enforcers of an oppressive, enslaving system as “brave, but gentle souls.”
According to Trump, pigs who wantonly murdered Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Terence Crutcher, and hundreds more in 2016 alone are “heroes” who became cops “because they cared so deeply for the innocent and helpless and forgotten.” He condemned “attacks on our police” as “a stain on the very fabric of our society.”
Going further, Trump claimed that police were under increasing violent assault, which he blamed on the protests and denunciations of their wanton murders. “We are living through an era in which our police have been subject to unfair defamation and vilification ... and even worse, hostility and violence.... We must also end the reckless words of incitement that give rise to danger and give rise to violence.”
This is Trump’s “alternative fact” reality at its most racist and murderous. To begin with, it’s a lie that violence against police is escalating—the number of police killed in the line of duty in 2016 was lower than the average of the previous 10 years. The number of cops killed by gunfire—63—pales in comparison with the number of people killed by police the same year: 1,092.[*] Of those, 169 were unarmed, many others were non-threatening, and those killed were disproportionately Black, Brown, or Native American. So who’s waging war on whom?
Trump in effect threatened to criminalize those who condemn, or even criticize, the police or who refuse to collaborate with them. Later in the speech to the police gathering, he demanded: “The attacks on our police must end, and they must end right now”—implying he meant both direct physical attacks and any form of protest, resistance, or criticism.
Trump made clear he was determined to strengthen the police while attacking their opponents, promising he’d always stand with them, give them more “resources,” and enact new measures and laws to “prosecute violent crimes against law enforcement.” And he targeted Baltimore and Chicago in particular, in the name of stopping the killing among the oppressed, threatening, “My administration is determined—totally determined—to restore law and order and justice for all Americans, and we’re going to do it quickly.”
Such glorification of the police, and the demonization of any who oppose them, is a core ideological and political part of the Trump/Pence fascist program. It’s a part of radically reshaping laws and social norms to give even more free rein to the system’s armed enforcers while condemning, repressing, and even outlawing protest against them.
This is extremely dangerous, and the beginning steps in a much larger, potentially genocidal, fascist program. This must be stopped!
[*] According to “The Counted” feature at theguardian.com [back]Â
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