On College Campuses, Empire Comes Home

Fascism is imperialism turned inward.

“We must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam, in France they accept the fact; each time a little girl is raped, in France they accept the fact; each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact; civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.” — ‘Discourse on Colonialism’ by Aimé Césaire

The above quote from anti-imperialist thinker Aimé Césaire describes how the brutalities of colonization desensitized the French public, leading them to accept the horrors of Nazism. Though nearly seventy years old, Aimé’s warning perfectly explains why the police have savagely assaulted peaceful, pro-Palestine campus protests across the United States. Though the scenes from the University of Texas at Austin and Emory College may seem unrelated to American foreign policy, the two could not be more closely linked.

After two decades of imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and God-knows-where else, Americans have become accustomed to state violence. The sight of armed men pointing guns at civilians no longer fills us with horror. Our nation has watched, without objection, as Israeli tanks, paid for by our tax dollars, crush Palestinian homes. When blue-eyed American boys seized innocent Iraqis for “questioning” at an undisclosed CIA black site, we shrugged. “He probably knows something about the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or whichever insurgency we’re supposed to be fighting.” When we learned the CIA had repurposed Saddam Hussein’s Abu Ghraib torture site for its own use, we were aghast! For a while, at least. Then, we saw a movie that explained torture was Very Necessary. Our national guilt absolved, we gave the film an Oscar. 

Zero Dark Thirty was acclaimed for romanticizing CIA torture programs (right).

Across the world, the American Empire ventured. From Pakistan to Palestine, we dropped bombs and orphaned children in the name of “freedom,” “national security,” or whichever buzzword polled highest at the time. At every endeavor the media followed, laundering America’s war crimes into war stories that manufactured the public consent necessary to support these crusades. At home, we boasted about being “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” even as our soldiers and spies trampled the humanity of those unfortunate enough to be born outside our hallowed borders. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled Constitutional protections don’t apply to foreigners, only “us.” 

But this ideology of Lady Liberty’s grace for Americans and the Marine Core boot for foreigners was always contradictory. Unlike a doctrine of human rights for all, it doesn’t draw from a universal, concrete belief, but a vague, transient idea of who is “American” and who is not. Throughout our short history, as the western border expanded and Uncle Sam snatched more territories, we tried and failed to reconcile this incoherence. Each attempt only brought more persecution. Should Latinos use the Black or White segregated bathrooms? Hmmm, it depends on how dark they are. Our colony of Puerto Rico was hit by a hurricane. Should we send relief aid? No, better to save it for “real Americans.” 

The shifting line between who is/is not “American,” coupled with a desire to oppress the latter, guaranteed the state violence we’re currently witnessing. It was always inevitable that the Empire’s inhumanity would come home. And, it’s not the military conducting inward imperialism, but the police, who have been purposefully equipped, trained, and indoctrinated to view themselves as the home-facing battalion of the American Empire.

For over twenty-five years, the Pentagon has given police departments “excess” rifles, tear gas canisters, and tanks through the Defense Logistics Agency’s LESO 1033 Program. Most major city police departments have traveled to Israel to study the Israeli Defense Force’s brutal repression tactics, with all expenses paid for by the Anti-Defamation League and the very American taxpayers they learned to suppress. When the Justice Department investigated Baltimore PD in 2016, they found the agency to have engaged in “widespread constitutional violations, discriminatory enforcement, and culture of retaliation,” an identical finding to what Amnesty International identified in the IDF. Armed with the same weapons and mindset as an imperialist military, it’s no wonder American police across the country are brutalizing peaceful protests. At UT Austin, the very cops who sat idle while 17 children were murdered at Uvalde charged students without warning. At Emory College, they assaulted a professor whose only offense was urging them not to hurt her students (top video). Such scenes are nearly identical to what the Palestinian people have endured from Israeli soldiers (below video), the very cause that drew the students into the encampments. 

Unsurprisingly, fascist politicians and media figures have aided the cops by imagining a link between foreign militant groups and American peaceful protestors. ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt went on television to call anti-genocide protestors “Iranian proxies,” a not-so-subtle message to his Israeli-trained cops they are now soldiers in Israel’s conquest of Palestine: The Gazan battlefield has been extended to the Columbia campus, and the enemy must be crushed by any means necessary. Don’t worry about distinguishing between soldiers and civilians — there are none.

This very sentiment was admitted to me by The Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan, who proudly proclaimed that when it came to these encampments, “all bets were off.” Flanagan has made a career advocating for brutish imperialism. Now that she sees “the enemy” at home, the inevitable outcome of her politics is for American students to be treated with the same violence as enemy combatants.

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Over the past week, America has witnessed unabashed police violence, state repression of speech, and unlawful detentions of protestors, all gleefully encouraged by the very fascist politicians and media elites who have built careers cheerleading such practices abroad. This is neither the result of “a few bad apples in American police departments” nor is it the fault of Donald Trump. This is American fascism — the impending product of our imperialist adventures, which was always destined to return home. We will not be able to demilitarize the police and end their systemic brutality without first ceasing our government’s desire to control the world. Even if substantial police reform was implemented overnight, allowing these tactics to continue outside our borders would — without question — see them eventually return.

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