If the rich and powerful hadn’t wanted Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, then it wouldn’t have been there.
If the rich and powerful didn’t want extra-judicial killings by the police, then those killings would be rare or non-existent.
If the rich and powerful welcomed peaceful protests of police violence, then Colin Kaepernick would still be playing football.
American society, although dehumanizing, is in general well-organized, particularly when it comes to billionaires getting what they want. If the billionaires wanted police violence to stop, it would stop.
Their inaction in this matter is not due to indifference or petty racism; it’s an active policy. Billionaire Capitalism requires a certain social order, or it cannot survive. It must emphasize existing hierarchies everywhere, so that people come to accept a hierarchical society as normal. If egalitarianism makes a cultural comeback, the billionaires are in trouble.
There is no existing hierarchy in America more fraught with injustice than that of white and black. If the American people can be forced or deceived into accepting that hierarchy, then they will probably accept anything.
And of course the police have a symbolic role as protectors of property and the system. When the system slowly kills a man in broad daylight on the streets of Minneapolis, the message is clear: if we will do this for no reason to someone picked at random, imagine what we would do to a serious opponent?
In that sense Floyd’s death was an act of terrorism.
The Socialist Investor 