On Thin ICE

 

"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes."

— Ernest Hemingway

The news coming out of the United States for the past few weeks has been deeply troubling for a number of reasons. I'm speaking of course about the proliferation of ICE agents and the violence and harm they instigate in urban communities. These agents have been deployed throughout the nation, but their presence in Democratic cities like Minneapolis has received outsized media attention. And with good reason. Over the last nineteen days two very public executions have taken place in Minneapolis. First, on January 7th (almost on the anniversary of the January 6th riot at the capitol) 37-year-old Renée Nicole Good was murdered by ICE agent Johnathon Ross as he—in violation of clear federal protocols—fired his gun three times at point blank range as Good tried to leave in her car, tragically killing her. Then, on Saturday, during a protest Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse was thrown to the ground and beaten by a gang of ICE agents who then proceeded to murder him by firing squad, unloading a hail of ten bullets into his body. In response, another ICE agent clapped. 

Pretti, intervening to protect a woman who had been knocked down by ICE agents, was recording the officers with his phone and coming to the woman's aid when he was intercepted by ICE. Much like in the killing of Renée Good, the needless and disproportionate escalation from the ICE agents had been filmed from multiple different angles, making it clear that the use of force was unwarranted and excessive, and in violation of federal law. And as in the case of Renée Good, the Trump administration not only justified the murder, but painted Pretti as a liberal extremist and domestic terrorist. 

This narrative is currently being propagated through Trump-friendly media outlets all across the United States. It's important to take a second to survey the lay of the land in terms of media bias. Trump's connection to media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Fox News is well known and needn't be rehashed. But recently, social media platforms—the de facto place where many people get their news—are now either owned by massive Trump donor and billionaire accomplice Elon Musk in the case of X (formerly Twitter), longtime friend and billionaire ally Larry Ellison in the case of TikTok (Ellison's son in August took control of Paramount and CBS), billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has newly warmed to the Trump administration and this month announced former Trump official Dina Powell has been hired as Meta's president—signaling even closer alignment with the GOP. Jeff Bezos, billionaire CEO of Amazon and news publication The Washington Post, has also recently cozied up to Trump and his allies. So for all intents and purposes, the narrative frame has been seized by the Trump regime and a handful of the richest men on earth. It cannot be understated the impact this has in terms of control. Trump, effectively, has setup a sort of private state-run media not just to centralize messaging and stifle dissent, but to establish a comprehensive and far-reaching propaganda apparatus. 

To see the immediate impact one only needs to look at the discourse on conservative news stations, or sink into the churlish comments section of any social media post about the latest ICE killings and contrast those talking points with the traditional rhetoric of the right when it comes to second amendment rights, for example. In the case of Alex Pretti, he was legally carrying a concealed pistol—a right he is afforded by the Constitution. Strangely, right-wing influencers and commentators used this fact as evidence of foul play, appealing instead to a sort of "if you decide to fuck around, then you'll find out" response. An oddly paradoxical position considering when Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with an automatic weapon large enough to make Black Panthers blush, marched into a BLM protest a few years ago and murdered protestors Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, Rittenhouse was lauded as a hero championing his second amendment right. It would seem that for the most part, the "don't tread on me" crowd has become decidedly compliant with being tread on. Not a single one of them have risen up to resist state-sponsored tyranny despite masked federal agents (acting without a warrant) kicking in the doors of law-abiding citizens, demanding to see their papers, detaining them no matter their age, situation or status—sometimes indefinitely or without access to a lawyer—potentially deporting them to foreign prisons, all while explaining that if you are to interfere with any of this, whether you are a suspected immigrant or not, we will publicly execute you. All while filming you and adding you to a database they're collecting on dissidents.

As far as I can tell from the avalanche of video content circulating through the media-sphere, ICE agents are doing all of these things, and worse. If wearing masks emboldens them to abuse women, children and the elderly on public streets where their crimes are filmed by bystanders in broad daylight, I shudder to think of what happens behind closed doors. It's easy to abstract this ghastly barbarism away to some faceless organization, or a large and shapeless administration, or even a corrupt and criminal despotic leader, but it's important to remember that this isn't just bureaucracy, or a power-hungry administration—it's real human beings perpetrating harm on other real human beings. 

People are doing this to people. 

We see it in the genocidal history of the founding of this nation, later in the bloated bellies of plantation owners and the malice of their whips, in the lynch mobs, we see it in the fat coffers of the wealthy who leech their riches from the exploited poor. Somehow, people all across the world are willing to submit to these structures and dehumanize others in service of power. It's crucial to ask: why? Of all of the possible jobs a person could have, why choose to work for an organization which, to me, seems scarcely different from the gestapo of early 1930's Germany?

I don't claim to have any answers. It follows logically that there isn't a single answer. The reason is different for different people, I suppose. Yesterday I wrote that there must be something sinister inside the hearts of middle-aged white men that makes them so predisposed to inflicting this brand of cruelty on those around them. But after sleeping on it, I would amend that statement a bit. It's not just middle-aged white men. ICE employs black and brown and Asian bodies as well. So the core of the issue then cannot be white people, it's whiteness. Whiteness as a construct—as an energetic force that moves through human bodies, regardless of race. Whiteness can inhabit black bodies. This is not an easy thing to grasp at first, but one need only look out at the world and try to explain the idea of "race-traitors." Race is at once a made-up construct and a real physiological process affecting bodies on a cellular level. Just look to our earth ecologies for proof. Trees in a given ecosystem will have unique adaptations to place. This is true everywhere. These adaptations affect their physical attributes, the style of their leaves and root structures, the sizes and shapes and colors of their bodies which coevolve through relationship with all other facets and forces and organisms in that location. When we categorize a tree as a specific genus or species or family, it simultaneously speaks to some innate quality of that tree, and that word is just a category which itself is not real. The same is true for race. The modern mind loves to see things in binaries and dualisms, rushing to put a stake in the ground and make a claim on this or that, white or black, right or wrong, but as in the case of most things, the answer is usually a bit of both. Race is something that lives in human bodies, built through millions of years of evolution with our natural surroundings, and is also a construct. The race that exists in our bodies and presents as the unique adaptions that historically served the peoples native to those regions. The race we construct has deep and profound implications for those with membership to that race. And constructed race has no physiological affiliations. Whiteness, then, can colonize black bodies. 

So I think what we're seeing in the United States right now is a forfeiture of whiteness on behalf of those white bodies who challenge white supremacy, and a bestowing of whiteness upon those bodies willing to enact violence on those bodies deemed threats to whiteness. In this political climate, race is no longer tethered to the color of one's skin. And for some, notably these ICE agents, that might be reassuring. It provides safety and protection and other benefits. But I wonder. Is there some historical referent we have that could help shed light on what happens if that political moment cools and whiteness restores itself to a position of control and domination? I'm not a scholar, but I think we could look back to the Civil War in America and see how black folk who willingly aided the confederacy were treated after the war in 1865. Of course the confederacy didn't allow black men to enlist, but there are stories of black men supporting the cause. Were these chosen few rewarded with statues erected to their valor and heroism? Did the Ku Klux Klan (also formed in 1865, coincidentally) honor the service of those men? No. These men then (and I'd suspect now) were perceived as disposable fodder. 

There must be a fear and a desperation in the heart of whiteness so great that it makes one willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto control and power. For whiteness, the ends always justify the means. Warped and twisted from all the horrors it has unleashed on white and non-white bodies alike, whiteness is haunted by ghosts that are legion. It has accumulated a deep fear of retaliation, reprisal, demotion and subservience, because it fears that what it has done may one day be done to it. To illustrate this point, one could easily imagine the fear a criminal kingpin might have of being captured by a rival gang. Except increase the sphere of influence of said kingpin to the entire globe, and extend the list of those wronged to an incalculable swarm of souls that spans centuries. Therein lies the horror. Having to one day foot the bill for the harm that's been rendered. To atone and make amends for past wrongs.

And I don't say this to excuse whiteness—because it is inexcusable—but to offer a different story. Whiteness is the schoolyard bully that has been terrorizing the playground for as long as anyone can remember. The bully, if he were to sincerely express remorse and regret—if he were to reform—could in theory become a useful member of the community. When I look back on encounters with bullies of course I dreamed of beating the ever-loving shit out of the motherfucker, clobbering him to a bloody pulp, spitting on his prone body, dropping my pants and taking a steaming shit right on his face. But also, if the bully were to have come to me and said, I realize the way I treated you was wrong and I'm sorry and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to earn your trust and forgiveness, I also would have been open to that option. I might decide I'm not ready or willing to forgive him, but I wouldn't lynch him. This is peacemaking. Pulverizing the bully only re-engages the cycle of violence and makes me the bully. When battling monsters one must be careful not to become one. 

What I mean to say is that redemption is possible. But it requires this cycle of violence and oppression to halt. Whiteness needs to put down its arms. It needs to be ready to be assaulted and maybe destroyed. If that is what absolution looks like—if absolution is even possible—then it must be willing to accept the consequences for its actions. Whiteness isn't ready for this. It may never be.

What to do then? What does the average person do as whiteness enlists other bodies in a war against immigrants, minorities, women, children and the vulnerable? What do we do as the United States invades Venezuela, threatens Greenland, and supplies an arsenal of bombs to countries like Israel, which, by the way is engaged in the same high-level conflict with brown-bodied Palestinians. 

I don't know. This isn't a legal problem or a social problem, it's a spiritual one. There's a spiritual bankruptcy and corresponding moral decrepitude in the root-structure of our relational fabric. Not just in how we relate to each other, but how we relate to all of nature around us. We've fallen prey to thinking we are separate, and we focus our attention on our own personal advancement, satisfaction, comfort and pleasure instead of the needs of the greater community we exist inside and because of. The world we've created is but one possible world. We could organize ourselves in any number of configurations, and it needn't be warring nation states searching for scarce resources. We could organize ourselves into a cooperative civilization that nurtures nature, respects and honors life, and chooses peace, collaboration, and creativity as its core values. Ursula K. Le Guin famously said, 

"We have that power. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

But if a had to float out a vague idea to form the chrysalis we need to wrap ourselves in to precipitate this transformation, I'd say we have to start living the better story we know in our hearts is possible. Not with our minds, not intellectually or philosophically, but practically, with our bodies, in our everyday actions and how we treat the human and non-human persons around us. If we do that, there's a chance. How that looks, and how long it takes, and what that journey will look like, I cannot tell you. 

But if we don't do that, I can guarantee we'll keep playing the same colonialist game of conquest, domination, control and oppression that we've been playing for the last long period of human history. The good news is, that game cannot sustain itself any longer, so even if people are unwilling to correct course, the planet around us will correct it when the resources needed to sustain human life falter, or we blow ourselves up with nuclear or biological weapons.

The choice is ours. We're on thin ice.