White guilt for racism as the debut of urban revolt against capitalism

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Now in the United States, exactly the same thing is happening, only TNCs act as medieval cities. But the essence of the process remains unchanged. New, perhaps to a large extent network-centric thanks to the successful offshoring, the "cities" of transnational corporations are fighting for the right to officially be considered equal in public rights and territorial status with the state as an institution.

The blessed western world is practically bombing. Civil unrest, which began just over a week ago with a single incident, with excessive police brutality in Minneapolis, has set fire not only to the United States, it has spread to Europe.

Disorder

Quote from the movie "Joker". Dir. Todd Phillips. 2019. USA

Some police officers in Sweden have knelt down in agreement with the protest "Black lives matter too". Although the local prosecutor's office has opened an investigation, the very fact of the massive demonstrations by the Swedes is remarkable.

Especially in light of the events in Britain, where local rioters stormed the residence of the country's prime minister. This despite his public statement that "Floyd's death was horrific and unforgivable."

In the United States itself, riots have already engulfed 140 out of 273 cities with a population of more than 100 thousand people. Including all cities with a population of over one million, state capitals and Washington itself. On June 1, there was even Donald Trump hiding in a bunker under a real threat of protesters invading the White House, and 60 police officers and Secret Service agents were injured in the defense of the country's main federal building.

The owner of the Oval Office threatened to "bring in troops," but after the Pentagon refused to support his idea, he backed down a little. Demanding from the governors more decisive use of the National Guard. True, in some places, including the capital, separate army units are already being used to ensure the safety of firefighters. As for the National Guard, they, together with the police, begin to massively bow their knees in front of the rioters in agreement with their position.

Although it would seem, why? The authorities recognized the inadmissibility of the incident. Police officer Derek Chauvin is taken into custody and charged with the murder of African American George Floyd. Three more cops are accomplices in the case. All of them will face trial. The unacceptable level of police violence is about a dozen such incidents for about 70 million arrests throughout the country a year.

And most importantly, not only blacks are massively involved in riots, fights, robberies and mass acts of vandalism. Everyone, including whites, is just as much protesting. And this is where the fun begins. What is happening today in the United States, as well as starting in Europe, is never a single outburst of popular anger over an unresolved racial problem. And no revolution against the capitalist system, which has fallen into a deep crisis. Everything is much simpler and more interesting.

The vast majority of current US citizens have nothing to do with racism. According to the results of the 2010 census, out of 300 million inhabitants of the country, 1% is the "indigenous population" (Aleuts, Indians and Eskimos), 4, 8% - immigrants from Asia, 12, 6% - black, 72, 4% - white, 2, 9% are mestizo.

Slavery in the United States was abolished on February 1, 1865 legally and in the second half of the 70s of the twentieth century in fact. Although Mississippi only ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on February 19, 2013, in reality, the real problem has not existed for more than half a century.

Of the 223.5 million of the white population of America, almost 120 million were either born many decades later, or even emigrated from other countries that had nothing to do with the American history of slavery. The same applies to 80% of the 38.9 million blacks in the United States.

Judging by the current mass scale of the presence of non-whites in the police, army, special services, in senior positions in politics and business, there is no real reason to consider the problem of racism in the United States as existing. Who cares, inquire about the race of former President Barack Obama and people like Michael Jordan (personal fortune 1.31 billion), Will Smith (2.5 billion), Oprah Winfrey (3 billion), Mike Adenuga (6.1 billion) or Robert Johnson, founder of the cable television channel Black Entertainment Television (BET).

Oprah Winfrey

Greg Hernandez

Then why is everyone? Because during the decades that have passed since the 70s, the trump card of the racial problem has been a convenient tool for personal and political struggle. A tradition has developed, through the efforts of some cunning guys, now taken as a convenient banner of protest to achieve a simple and understandable goal - the destruction of the institutional framework of the state system. All over the Western world, but above all in the USA.

The fuel for the protests has been accumulating for a long time and not at all on the racial plane. The problem arose from the progressive devastation of the core of the American democratic system - the middle class. In the mid-90s, 74% of the American population was confident about him. From 2000 to 2014, it decreased from 60 to 41%. Today in many cities of the country it has dropped to 37%, and in some cases to 6%.

Just as in England "the sheep ate people" at one time, so in the modern Western economy, large corporations are gradually winning the competition from small businesses. Only a small, about 2%, share of people from the middle class managed to grow to the top league and gain a foothold there. Another 44% have become impoverished relatively tolerably. The rest, almost 60%, have become impoverished, sliding into ordinary hired workers completely. Including up to 20% - to the level of poverty. Over the past 30 years, the poverty rate in the United States has risen from 11% to 41%.

These are not just boring numbers. During the period of domination of the middle class, he formed and retained the lion's share of the total profit of the aggregate economic system, which he spent in it. Thereby creating jobs and funding a forward-looking rolling process that proved the advantage of the American Dream. According to which any person could, with his work, education and talents, rise from nothing to a very prosperous life.

Each percentage of the growth in the share of corporations actually turned into the withdrawal of profits from circulation and its storage "somewhere out there." Most often - in offshores, in which only the first hundred of America's leading corporations hold an amount comparable to half of the US GDP in 2019.

Since 2014, the process of socio-economic degradation has intensified significantly. This is facilitated by the final exhaustion of free markets available for continued expansion and the loss of America's dominance in industrial production. Including defeat in trade competition with China, whose share in world industrial production is already 3 times higher than the American one in terms of total sales.

Thus, over the past decade, an increasing number of people have seen a downtrend and felt a lack of prospects for themselves. Especially the younger generation, even having paid dearly for education, all the same in the end does not find a place except at the McDonalds checkout or a cheap warehouse worker at Amazon.

The problem was aggravated by two points. An increasingly clear confirmation that the state does not protect the entire society, but exclusively large corporations, and the total expansion of attempts by the budget to pay off through social programs, money for which was taken out of nowhere.

Dollar

Daria Antonova © IA REGNUM

Theoretically - from taxes. But as scandals increased, such as Amazon's failure to pay a dime to the treasury of its billions in profits, it seemed as though the printing press was covering everything. Not unfounded, because from 2008 to the present, the Fed has printed about $ 8 trillion, and by the end of this year will add at least $ 5 trillion to them.

For reference, the US GDP for 2006 was 13.8 trillion. After that, should we be surprised at the rapid growth in popularity overseas of socialist radical ideas, most vividly embodied in the "Green New Deal" of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Only a little bit was left before the launch of a synergistic effect in the form of launching a mass protest of a significant part of society against the state, already as an institution that has finally broken down.

The first missing step was taken by the neocons, who began to actively destroy the foundations of social (conceptual, moral, ethical, systemic, legal, all sorts of) foundations in an attempt to first prevent Trump from entering the White House, and then somehow wrestle him out of there. Not disdaining forgeries, betrayal, high treason and outright slander, densely mixed with hysteria.

They also prepared the second, which finally led the American society to a rebellious impasse. Having frankly failed three strategic offensives to seize control over key points of the federal state system (CIA, other law enforcement agencies, Fed, Treasury, FBI, Army, Senate), these guys shifted the focus of efforts to maximize the emphasis on the independence of the territories from the center. By intensifying blatant sabotage of the decisions of the Donald Trump administration at the level of individual state governments.

As a result, suitable conditions have developed for the deep state to attempt to collapse the very institution of the state as a conceptual system in general. The deep state is the owners of big money, including those very transnational corporations.

The current situation is very much reminiscent of the revolt of cities against the system of feudal relations, which began around the 10th-11th centuries AD. When some cities (and there were quite a few of them) grew to a significant level of concentration of human and, most importantly, industrial resources, which made it possible to carry out their own trade, the profits from which they no longer wanted to share with the feudal lords. And they were already in a position, if necessary, to put an army “in the field”, in terms of number and combat capability, surpassing not only the squads of local feudal lords, but also the king.

All that remained was to achieve public recognition of the official status of extraterritoriality. To legally exist in addition to (!) Feudal political and economic relations. Including with the right to mint your own coin and independently establish the rules of the game. And they did it. As an example of success, you can read the history of the emergence of the Hanseatic League, the Lansk Commune or the Venetian Republic.

Now in the United States, exactly the same thing is happening, only TNCs act as medieval cities. But the essence of the process remains unchanged. New, perhaps to a large extent network-centric thanks to the successful offshoring, the "cities" of transnational corporations are fighting for the right to officially be considered equal in public rights and territorial status with the state as an institution. At least in the political and economic space of the Western world.

To win, it is critical for them to destroy the state's monopoly on the supremacy of power in the mass public perception. For this, the state must publicly acknowledge its systemic and organizational powerlessness in resolving national and general social issues. First of all, in providing conditions for a normal, safe and secure life.

The incident in Minneapolis just happened to be handy, as they say, in the right place at the right time. White barbarously killed a defenseless black man who systematically used drugs, and before that he was convicted five times, including for robbery - he put a gun to the belly of a pregnant white woman. That in reality the situation is very different there, for example, that George Floyd died much later, already in the hospital, and not from the consequences of strangulation, but from an officially proven heart attack, now no one cares.

For the crowd that stormed the residence of Boris Johnson, he generally remained just a recognizable brand, legitimizing the protest itself, as such. The revolt has long turned into a protest of "indignant honest citizens" against the inhuman and rotten state system as such. A system to be completely destroyed.

Moreover, they are practically not at all interested in the answer to the question - what should replace it. So far and difficult, the crowd is not able to think organically. To vandalize, to rob, to assert oneself on anyone who turns up at hand, to destroy everything that cannot be taken away - is much easier, more convenient and easier to understand.

Whether the state institution will be able to resist or the descendants in history textbooks will read about the 20s of the 21st century as a period of corporate revolution (by analogy with the feudal, bourgeois or socialist) now depends on Trump and the abilities of the grouping of the American ruling elite, which he represents and personifies yourself.

While the position is balancing at a point of unstable equilibrium. Moreover, Trump is gradually losing control over him. All states are riot. Half of them refuse to involve the National Guard. The army refused to help the president restore order. At least at the Pentagon level.

Although two days ago, the President of the United States weighty referred to the right, according to the "Law of Rebellion" of 1807, to use infantry, tanks and paratroopers against the rioters. However, today he explains why he changed his mind to send troops.

Although he began to withdraw army units from adjacent territories. In particular, by September of this year, 9.5 thousand of the 34.5 thousand American military contingent deployed there should return home from Germany. Probably with the aim of accumulating forces for decisive actions to stabilize power before the elections.

But this does not mean a confident victory for corporations yet. They have significant resources and significant influence. However, at the same time, they are forced to act covertly. In addition, they also do not have any single general staff of the commander and clearly managing the protest. That leaves the official authorities with a fairly serious chance of success.

Another question is that this is all a huge and difficult game, where the sides make both strong moves and make mistakes. Now we are observing only her opening, the limit of moves for which has not yet been chosen. So we will have to wait a bit with long-term assessments. But that this is a new reincarnation of the conflict between cities and the system of feudalism - we can already say absolutely precisely.