The ambush and cold-blooded murder of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black civilian and father, by five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, has sent the enemy state into a feverish, frenzied spiral. Our fascist tyrants are desperate to maintain the uneasy peace on which their rule rests, and their desperation is showing; it soaks like the blood of their millions of victims through every carefully choreographed television appearance and every focus-grouped official statement expressing their empty “condolences” to the family of yet another Black life taken by police terror.
In the year since Trump’s failed January 6th putsch, amid the ongoing COVID-19 plague, to which the U.S. Empire alone has lost more than a million people (and counting), and against the backdrop of an accelerating cost-of-living and housing crisis, the enemy state has just managed to restabilize — but only just. The Democratic Party, with its tenuous partial-majority in Congress, under the faltering leadership of the Biden administration, is doing everything in its power to hold on to this modicum of stability. Meanwhile, this “stabilizing” Democrat left-wing of American fascism contends with the rising extreme-right Trumpite faction of the Republicans. This “destabilizing” Republican faction is locked in a struggle for hegemony over the federal and state governments, and aims for the final conversion of the blood-drenched U.S. Empire into an arch-fascist settler reich.
It has been some two-and-a-half years since the murder of George Floyd, and his long shadow still looms, grim and unforgiving, from one coast to the other of this genocidal settler-colonial empire. Court proceedings are ongoing for three of Floyd’s murderers. The square where Floyd was murdered, renamed George Perry Floyd Jr. Square in his honor, is still occupied by local activists, whose demands for justice have still not been met by the local Minneapolis government.
It has been some two-and-a-half years since police departments across the U.S. Empire, those barracks of the shock-troops of white supremacist state terror, were set ablaze by millions of the oppressed masses, rioting in righteous fury, in what the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the language of the unheard.” In that time, the rate of murders-by-cop has only risen; indeed, 2022 was the deadliest year on record.
Now, in the aftermath of yet another brutal and gruesome murder-by-police, our fascist rulers are terrified that the oppressed masses will again rise up, and again threaten to burn down every last rotten institution of their white supremacist terror regime.
Now the enemy state is wavering.
Only two words are on the minds of the U.S. Empire’s capitalist despots, and “justice” isn’t one of them. “Damage control” — this is the order of the day; this is the sole focus and the sole crying demand of our monopolist tyrants.
And so, before the oppressed masses, on mainstream TV news, on Twitter, on podiums facing an aggrieved public, they trot out their loyal, stabilizing, left-wing-of-fascism politicians — from the local police chief to the President of the United States — with simple but absolutely vital marching orders:
Keep that righteous fury contained.
Keep the uprisings at bay.
Keep intact the unjust peace.
So enters Cerelyn J. Davis, the police chief of Memphis, Tennessee, whose rabid-dog officers mercilessly beat Tyre Nichols, unarmed and pleading for his life, into a coma during a routine traffic stop. In an exclusive interview with CNN the night before the body-cam footage of the murder was released, Chief Davis somberly warned, “You’re going to see acts that defy humanity. You’re going to see a disregard for life, duty of care, … and a level of physical interaction that is above what is required in law enforcement.” The police chief declares herself “outraged,” stating that the violence against Nichols “was incomprehensible.”
The police chief further acknowledged that the “extraordinary measures” taken against the killer cops — namely, that all five were quickly fired and charged with second-degree murder — “speaks to the fact that, over the last several years, we have all talked about police legitimacy and police reform. And I think it’s really important that in instances like this … when a person’s constitutional rights [and] their civil rights have been violated, that we act swiftly.” In other words, Chief Davis is admitting, although indirectly, with weasel-words, that the “extraordinary measures” taken against these killer cops are a preventative measure — that the goal is to “get ahead” of the inevitable public outrage, and to quell potential uprisings before they begin.
When we say that our rulers are trembling with fear of another Summer 2020, another wave of uprisings, this is what we mean. When in recent memory, or, indeed, in the U.S. Empire’s whole bloody history, has a killer cop been fired and arrested even before the news gets out, and even before the public demands it — let alone five killer cops, let alone on charges of second-degree murder, let alone in such a carefully coordinated and carefully televised manner?
Now the enemy state is wavering.
Steve Mulroy, the district attorney of Shelby County, openly and explicitly admits that containment was the local government’s goal. In an interview with CBS, when asked “what led you to the charges, and why you all [i.e., local government officials] feel the need to prepare the public the way you’re preparing them to see this video” Mulroy replied,
In any case like this, where you have an officer involved fatality, there’s going to be a certain amount of public agitation. [Note the district attorney’s turn of phrase! Even when charging the killer cops with murder, Mulroy cannot bring himself to call the “officer involved fatality” what it really was — a cold-blooded, ruthless murder.] But when people actually see with their own eyes the kinds of things that occurred in this incident, there’s an even greater potential for a very serious public reaction. And I think that’s why it was important for the charges to be announced prior to the release of the video, and for expectations to be set, and for people in the community with credibility to call for calm… If people feel the need to protest, we’re confident that protests will be peaceful.
The two sides of this last sentence, its cravenness — if people feel the need to protest? — and its calculating, abject honesty — we’re confident that protests will be peaceful — together encapsulate the enemy state’s self-contradictory maneuvering. On the one hand, our rulers are attempting to whitewash the social character of the Tyre Nichols murder, namely the fact that it was an act of state terror against the oppressed Black people within the U.S. Empire; and by this method, the puppet politicians of the monopolist tyrants are attempting not only to “get out ahead” of and quell potential uprisings, but to call into question, in the public’s mind, the very act of protesting state terror. On the other hand, the agents of the enemy state, the politicians, officials, and spokespersons, are openly admitting their fear of the oppressed masses, of our rage, of our capacity to burn this wretched, fascist empire to the ground — a fear well-deserved, and a capacity realized only in half-measure during the Summer 2020 Uprisings.
The ruling capitalist class and its representatives in government will never abolish the police, for the police stand dutifully between the expanse of private property of the capitalists — their incredible hordes of wealth — and the overwhelming majority of the U.S. Empire’s population, the mass of the working classes, the poor and dispossessed, the colonized and the nationally oppressed. The ruling class cannot afford to put an end to police terror. Thus, instead, the enemy state must desperately seek out new stratagems, new maneuvers and ploys by which they might deceive, distract, and assuage the righteous fury of the oppressed masses.
Now the enemy state is wavering.
Chief Davis also claimed in her interview, “I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything of that nature in my entire career. Really.”
But the police chief is, in fact, lying. In truth, the officers who ambushed and murdered Tyre Nichols were members of a police unit called the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, or SCORPION — a unit established by Chief Davis; the blue-uniformed murderers were trained in “violent crime reduction” — SCORPION’s stated purpose, code for the violent, terroristic suppression of poor and oppressed communities — under Chief Davis’ tenure. In only the past two months, during December 2022 and January 2023, under Chief Davis’ command, Memphis police have murdered four people, the latest of whom is Tyre Nichols.
Amber Sherman, local Black Lives Matter organizer, described the murder of Tyre Nichols as “extremely disgusting, but also not a surprise, considering the way police here treat people in Memphis.” In an interview with Democracy Now!, Sherman said,
We’re extremely overpoliced. Every experience that my friends have had, and of folks that I know, has been violent. [The police] immediately approach situations with violence. They don’t give us the respect that they want us to give them. It’s always, “You’re a criminal!” and “How can we put you down?” or “How can we put you in your place?”
When asked whether the violence Tyre Nichols suffered at the hands of police was “consistent” with the community’s experience of interactions with the Memphis police, Sherman replied,
Yes. This experience, among Black people, isn’t abnormal. It’s literally just been caught on camera. We have experienced this same kind of violence over and over and over again in our communities. And their cute little statements [i.e., those of the police chief and other local government officials] don’t mean anything to me, because the SCORPION movement still exists… Honestly, [Chief Davis] can keep the cute statements; it does nothing for us.
According to Sherman, the goal of the Memphis PD’s SCORPION program “was [to] flood ‘high crime areas’ with officers. And that’s supposed to deter the crime. But that definitely isn’t what’s happening… They’re scaring citizens; they’re assaulting people, and they’re murdering them.”
Meanwhile, the Democrat mayor of Memphis, Jim Strickland, says in a regular “weekly update” that “no one, including law enforcement, is above the law. I assure you we will do everything we can to keep this type of heinous act from happening again.” To this end, the mayor states that “We are initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies, and operations of our specialized units. Since this event happened, the SCORPION Unit has been and remains inactive.”
Local community members active in the Movement for Black Lives have rejected the empty promises, two-faced expressions of “outrage” and “condolences,” and crocodile tears of the chief of police and the mayor, and have condemned both, along with the whole rotten “local officialdom” of Memphis, for their political cowardice and their dutiful role in upholding white supremacy.
At first glance, one might be fooled into believing that Mayor Strickland is taking action, just as an elected official should. In fact, however, the mayor fails to mention that this is far from the first time he has received complaints about the Memphis PD in general and the SCORPION program in particular. Memphis activists have confronted Mayor Strickland about the SCORPION Unit’s rampant abuse and called for its disbandment, among broader calls to defund and scale back the department. But only now has the unit been deactivated — only after the unit’s officers have been caught in the act of one of multiple “heinous” murders, and only as mass rage builds in Memphis and across the country. Mayor Strickland could have prevented Tyre Nichols’ murder, and could have prevented all the murders-by-police that preceded Nichols’ murder — but only now does the mayor proclaim that “no one, including law enforcement, is above the law.”
Disbanding the SCORPION Unit is nothing more than a desperate “public relations” stunt — yet another tactic aimed at mitigating protest activities.
Now the enemy state is wavering.
Leading maneuver of containment, this discordant symphony of canned outrage and condolences from the representatives of the left-wing of American fascism, is our decrepit President Joe Biden. His statement, published yesterday, just after the release of the video of the Tyre Nichols’ murder, is instructive.
In the first paragraph, Biden refers to the murder as a “beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols’ death” — the president, just like the Shelby County district attorney, cannot depart from the police-union “public relations” style guidelines for referring to murders-by-cop as “officer involved incidents” that “result in deaths.”
In the second paragraph, the president says his “heart goes out” to the family and “all Americans” grieving for Nichols. He then says, “The footage that was released this evening will leave people justifiably outraged” — but, wait! — “Those who seek justice should not to [sic.!] resort to violence or destruction. Violence is never acceptable; it is illegal and destructive.”
How sympathetic! “Our” president takes care to warn us that, aggrieved as Black people and other oppressed people in this country may be, fighting back against our oppressors is not the answer; it’s “illegal and destructive.” Yes, riots and uprisings are destructive — that’s the point. The alternative is passively awaiting our benevolent rulers to hand down kind words, alms, and stepwise reprieves from the daily terror we suffer.
Or, as Biden puts it, toward the end of his statement, “Real and lasting change will only come if we take action to prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again.” But again, only if said action remains nonthreatening, timid, servile, contained.
What “real and lasting change” does Biden have in mind? An executive order and a failed police reform bill, the so-called George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would have done less than nothing to scale back the presence of police in and the terror they inflict against oppressed communities.
The president’s words are not only empty, but shamelessly deceptive. In the president’s so-called Safer America Plan, announced in July 2022, the Biden administration’s “fiscal year 2023 budget requests a fully paid-for new investment of approximately $35 billion to support law enforcement and crime prevention — in addition to the President’s $2 billion discretionary request for these same programs.” Biden has a decades-long track record, first as a senator, and now as president, of supporting police militarization and police terror, of promoting racist policies, including Jim Crow laws, and of dutifully working to maintain the centuries-old regime of white supremacist state terror upon which the U.S. Empire was built and expanded. Despite his relatively new, “progressive” veneer, Biden remains the same militarist and the same white supremacist he always was — and requests nearly $40 billion in yearly police militarization funding to prove it.
At every level, from the federal to local governments, the enemy state takes the same approach to police terror and the waves of mass uprising that inevitably spring up against it: Police militarization and police terror continue, unabated and without reprieve, public outcry and mass discontent notwithstanding. But from time to time, mass discontent boils over into mass rage, and mass rage fuels the mobilization of mass uprisings — yes, sporadic, disorganized, and without a clear political direction, but nevertheless powerful enough to shake the very foundations of the U.S. Empire.
Now the enemy state is wavering.
Only in the coming days will we learn whether this wavering has spared our rulers a refrain of the Summer 2020 rebellion — whether it has spared the white-terror institutions of their fascist empire the righteous, self-emancipating flames of the people. In the meantime, our proclamation can only be:
Down with the enemy state!
Death to the fascist U.S. Empire!
All support and all glory to the Black liberation struggle!
