By Dayvon Love
The Trump administration has been clear that it is engaging in political warfare against those it views as its opponents. The aggressive deportation policies, attacks against Black history and culture and threatening the c3 status of non profit organizations has been central to the executive orders signed by the president. This has been accompanied by withholding federal funding from entities that Republicans view as their political adversaries. As a result,vital services and resources to our community have been interrupted in very brutal and detrimental ways.
Much of the political discourse regarding what Trump has done has been based on him being morally bankrupt and having a desire for authoritarian power. While these descriptions are true, this lends itself to omitting discussions about what has put us in this position to be so vulnerable to the brutal policies of the Trump administration.
So much of the discourse surrounding the last three presidential elections has been about saving democracy. The reality is that America is not a democracy, it is a settler colony that functions to maintain the 500 year project of European domination of the world. Making moral appeals to a society that have no meaningful commitment to protecting the humanity of Black people and other oppressed people is futile.
Too much time and energy has been spent on pointing out how terrible Trump is and pleading with people to vote for any Democrat, and not enough time spent talking about building the instruments of political warfare needed to go on the offensive against those who are attacking us. For instance, law enforcement has been a reliable network for right wing and largely Republican candidates for public office. The history of law enforcement shows they have been a vehicle for denigrating Black social movements through programs like cointelpro and local versions of the program designed to disrupt Black organizations and groups who are interested in social transformation.
The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and organizations in Maryland like the Maryland State’s Attorney’s Association (MSAA) continue to advocate for right wing policies on criminal justice that prop up mass incarceration (i.e. automatic charging of youth as adults, opposition to community control of law enforcement). What has happened in the past few years is increased funding for community based violence prevention, which largely involves funding Black led-grassroots organizations. Taking resources from law enforcement and putting it in the hands of community based organizations that are doing the work of building an infrastructure that makes the community safe, while seizing resources from conservative right wing forces is the kind of strategic political warfare that we need to be engaged in as Black people who are vulnerable to Trump’s policies.
Another example is Sinclair Broadcasting/Fox45 Baltimore and its clear right wing agenda. Too many Democrats are being friendly to them instead of challenging their legitimacy as a news media organization. I observe local Maryland elected officials engage them as a good faith media outlet, instead of calling them out for their racist political propaganda. Folks who understand that we need to be engaged in political warfare if we are serious about understanding the moment we are in, would be more aggressive in addressing the negative impact they have had in fueling mass incarceration and demonizing Black people and organizations that are in charge of distributing public resources.
The lesson that we continue to not learn is that we are not in a situation of trying to convince otherwise persuadable people to preserve American democracy, but that we need to have strategic conversations about how to successfully defeat our political enemies from causing our community collective harm.
The reality is that the hope and change that we were propagandized into during the Obama years made us ill prepared for this political moment.
Barack Obama symbolized the ultimate level of inclusion into the American democratic experiment. The reality is that the election of Barack Obama seduced our community into a fantasy of inclusion into what Martin Luther King Jr. said shortly before he was assassinated, a burning house. That burning house is America. Our only hope as a people is to build the power that we need to execute a strategy of political warfare against those who seek our collective subordination to the system of White supremacy.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
Read more from Dayvon Love here.