Following on from Killer Cops And Gun Control:
This is a discussion paper written by a
member of the Twin Cities General Defense Committee, Local 14. It
therefore does not represent the official positions of the Twin Cities
GDC, the General Defense Committee in general, or the Industrial Workers
of the World.
By Erik D.
We can’t eliminate exceptional
violence without eliminating systemic violence. We must fight for
liberation, not smaller boxes guarded by white men with guns.
Introduction – We Must Connect The Struggles for Peace
On February 18th, 2018, A nineteen year old white man entered Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School with his rifle, and murdered 17 people. He
was later arrested peacefully by police. The shooter’s social media
profiles indicate a racist obsessed with white nationalism and a hatred
of women, and a promoter of fascist messages and imagery. He was
reportedly obsessed with guns, and his behavior had been reported to law
enforcement repeatedly. Law enforcement never took action, which has
itself been widely criticized. The reasons for this inaction are not
hard to pin down for those willing to look: Cruz, the shooter – was a
white man with a gun, and therefore not a threat. In the
aftermath, a Neo Nazi organization calling itself the Republic of
Florida claimed Cruz as a member. This was quickly refuted when it
became clear that their troll leader was merely seeking attention. Many
stopped paying attention to that aspect of Cruz’ history as a result. But a peek at Cruz’ social media history demonstrates his independent hatred of black people and women. Or the swastikas he etched into his firearm ammunition magazines.
In the aftermath, student survivors have successfully seized the
national spotlight for the moment, and are demanding steps that will end
the shootings that they have grown up with. This is a quest – to stop
the violence in our society – that must be supported, and accomplished.
But in order to accomplish it, we must be frank with ourselves about the
causes of these shootings. The causes are white supremacism, male
supremacism, and the history and present of firearms in the USA.
Compare the spotlight these high school students have successfully
seized with the response of mostly black women and men, including many
youth, after the murder of Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner,
Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Mike Brown, Jamar Clark, Sylville Smith, and so
many others. The “Ferguson moment,” started with the murder of Mike
Brown in Ferguson, transformed into a national movement against police
murder of black people in the US by law enforcement. In contrast to the
brave students of Stoneman Douglas High, the brave youth declaring that
Black Lives Matter were demonized, and the militarized weight of the
state was brought to bear against them repeatedly.
If our goal is to eliminate or at least massively reduce the epidemic
of violence in our country, we must connect these struggles. Without
connecting their gun control efforts to the concerns and needs of the
Movement for Black Lives, the Stoneman Douglas students will
substantially fail. Perhaps more ominous is the probability that they
win some of their their demands without connecting them to the systematic violence that underwrites our entire country’s history and culture.
The problem is not mental illness
A major concern in the post-massacre coverage has been the
near-universal discussion of the shooter’s mental state. Many assume
that merely because someone engages in an aberrant act, they are
mentally ill. This is very far from the case. Breivik, the Norwegian
neo-Nazi who in 2011 murdered 77 people – mostly leftist youths – was
clearly not mentally ill. Neither was Dylan Roof, when he sat through a
prayer meeting at the historic AME church founded by the great Denmark
Vesey, and then opened fire, murdered all present except one person,
whom he intentionally left alive as a witness. Neither were the
Columbine shooters – those who are often held up as the originators and
paradigm of modern school shootings in 1999.
What they all had in common was not mental illness, but a hatred of
non-white people and women. This is a through-line so consistent in mass
shooters that it is very difficult to find exceptions. Those few
apparent exceptions, such as Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista mass murderer
who targeted women, and whose mother is Asian, nevertheless adopt the
particular hatreds of the masculinist and white supremacist culture in
which they are raised. Rodgers frequently made racist and sexist
statements, including specifically against Asian people.
