Photo Credit: Wikipedia
For whatever reason, the phrase “friendly persuasion” popped into my head a couple of days ago. “Wasn’t that the title of an old movie?” I thought. Yep! 1956. Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, and Anthony Perkins starred in the “story of a Quaker family in southern Indiana during the American Civil War and the way the war tests their pacifist beliefs.” The struggle over whether to remain peaceful when confronted with wanton violence is neither new nor unusual in American history. Most people abhor violence, but when pushed too far by bullies, most will either flee or act to defend themselves ( usually framed as “fight or flight,” but self-defense can range from extreme violence to non-violent resistance).
The American Civil Rights Movement—embodied in the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.—taught many Americans the power of non-violent resistance. Could that be called friendly persuasion? Minnesotans today are angry, but they are not violent in their resistance to the brutality of ICE and Border Patrol thugs. Yet the American culture is fraught with implications favoring a presumed efficacy of violent action, all the way back to the earliest taking of land from the native inhabitants. Moreover, some argue that the nation was born in violence when the White Lion dropped anchor near Jamestown with the first cargo of enslaved persons in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims arrived in the so-called “new World” and well before the official founding of the nation in 1776. Enslavement was as integral to the founding of the nation as were expulsion and massacre of its original peoples.
Both slavery and the genocidal “winning of the West,” represented violent forms of ‘persuasion,’ the ‘settler mentality’ that still pervades Euro-American political-economic domination of much of the world—from Venezuela to Palestine and beyond. It is hard to deny that both genocidal violence and forced expulsion were essential dehumanizing components of the formation of the modern state, The United States of America, and are remain deeply embedded in the political culture. That is what the emerging “Donroe Doctrine” is all about—people are mere obstacles in the autocratic quest for power.
The entire configuration of the colonial era, of which the U.S. was a late entrant—having started as colonies itself—but powerful participant, was founded in the use of violence to persuade—that is, to force—others to give up their freedom, sovereignty, territory, and life, to satisfy the quest for wealth and power of the colonial nations. The players and stakes have changed, but the domination game remains the same.
Who’s Values, whose goals?
Today, things are different, or are they? Different technology, different more complex forms of organization. Different groups and ideologies. Yet, the predicament that results from an increasingly extreme hierarchy of dominance and dehumanization, played out in terms of financial and military power, is much the same. Whether expressed in the American “Donroe Doctrine” or the Zionist theory and practice in Palestine today, or in countless other examples from Rwanda to Russian denial of the Ukraine culture or polity, the elimination of the native peoples is integral to the settler mentality.
Can we organize a society based on peace and equality before the law in the U.S, today? Well, things are not looking so good at the moment. The demand for subservience to a gang of thugs never turns out well, as long as the thugs in suits or masked with body armor remain in power.
The American undertow of violent tendencies has been allowed, even encouraged, to be directly expressed in politics today. And, now, with calculated intent, it is captured by the regime in power, first in the January 6 insurrection and now in the formation gangs of technically ‘federal agents’ untrained, undisciplined, heavily armed and unidentified bullies. Selected for their violent tendencies, these marauders to run amok among the people of particular cities selected because the majority of their voters did not vote for the maximal leader of these thugs—persecution is the purpose of autocrats. As a number of analysts have pointed out, these are the classic tactics of a fascist takeover of democratic institutions.
Failures of Authority in Violence
In a democracy, authority arises from democratic legitimacy. Authority is legitimate power. Power is not legitimated through violence. It is legitimated through practices that embody basic societal values in the implementation of political policies and goals. Authority and autocracy are two incompatible conditions. Autocracy is power enforced without authority, but with violence, since it has no legitimacy. Legitimacy comes from the people as a whole and whatever actions and policies contribute to the wellbeing of the society.
If a duly elected regime goes autocratic and corrupts its mandate, it loses its legitimacy. Plundering the income tax system to reward wealthy donors inherently corrupts the regime that practices it. Applying force to suppress any resistance to tyranny secures corruption within the system. ‘Friendly persuasion’ loses out to forced compliance and retributive violence.
The people of Minneapolis MN, seem to implicitly know all this. They know that ICE has no real authority, since its deployment to indiscriminately arrest anyone—citizen, immigrant, documented or not, and anyone who annoys them—is obviously not only unjustified, but unconstitutional as well. Since the ascendency of the new regime, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the United States Border Patrol (USBP) intentionally violate their own formal mandate by ravaging the population indiscriminately and with impunity.
One gets the sense that the behavior of ICE agents is driven by the imposition of rabit fascist Steven Miller’s quotas, so that they feel compelled to detain anyone in order to drive the numbers up and meet their arbitrary quota. Their violence is clearly condoned and encouraged by their political masters, since they have no other clear mandate other than to arrest and detain enough people to meet the goal set for them. The tactics are the same as those of the erstwhile DOGE, when it ran roughshod over any and all government procedures, protocols, and protections from abuse and dared anyone to stop them. Dehumanization and degradation are the name of their game. The procedures of justice run much slower than the actions of a mob.
In a ‘good society,’ authority is respected because those who have it act in the interests of those who gave them the power to enact the rules and laws that enhance the public’s wellbeing. The fascist pretenders to authority think that their power comes from the violence they can inflict on the people whom they have dehumanized, which makes violence so much easier.
In a good society, however, violence is the last tool to be used in protecting people from danger, not a dangerous tool to gain compliance or merely to punish. Compliance with legitimate power—authority—is best gained by persuasion, not force. As every political scientist, military strategist, and effective police chief knows, violence should be the last tactic used, and is the most inefficient means to exert social control. It is applied mostly when legitimacy is lost or was never there.
The Delicate Matter of Social Control Without Violence
Clearly, ICE and Border Patrol gangs are focused on violent force in their attempts to capture anyone with darker skin than their view of the ‘white’ American norm. The people of Minnesota and the rest of the nation are objecting with increasing anger and commitment, to the blatant violence and mayhem. So far, they have behaved almost entirely non-violently. They have every right to ‘follow’ ICE operators and to warn neighbors that these threats to people are coming. They can express their outrage by exerting their right to free speech. But by law they are not allowed to ‘impede’ a federal officer, even, apparently, though the officers refuse to identify themselves and don’t bother to obtain warrants.
Now, I know it is difficult to consider these gangs of bullies as agents of the federal government, and this is part of the problem. They do not in any real way represent the ‘people of the United States,’ which is what any federal official is bound by oath to do. They certainly do not represent the Constitution, which they violate consistently. Did these guys actually take an oath to uphold the Constitution? If so, they are routinely violating that oath in the course of their violent lawless behavior.
In other words, it is all a bunch of lies. ICE and Border Patrol gangs deployed to ‘blue’ cities are not enforcing laws, they are terrorizing citizens and immigrants alike. As Timothy Snyder put it, the strategy of the purveyors of Tyranny redefine the boundaries of the law, conveniently calling themselves “law enforcement” when they are the exact opposite. Their policy is to tout aggressive action against the threat of “extremists” and “domestic terrorists,” when that is actually who they are. Their goal is chaos and their means are lies and abuse.
In a recent posting on his “Thinking about…,” Substack platform, Timothy Snyder affirmed that “The lies begin as clichés…One of these clichés is “law enforcement,” which is uttered over and over like a incantation. “Law enforcement” is not a noun. It is not a thing in the world. It is an action.”
The most effective way to object to the lawlessness of these “officers” is to do what most Minnesotan protestors are doing. Track and record, speak but don’t get in their way. Let the wonders of video technology be your weapon of defense of the people and the Constitution. The members of ICE and the Border Patrol are regularly observed using excessive violence ‘under the color of authority.’ Their behavior and their official mandate are blatantly at odds with one another. That is why it is dangerous to interact with them in any way. Alex Pretti was shot and killed, fore merely trying to help a woman the federal bullies had thrown to the ground.
The citizens of Minneapolis do not come under the jurisdiction of ICE or Border Control, undocumented immigrants not so much—if they actually have any legal jurisdiction at all, since they are unidentified persons who refuse to show badges or other identification. Unidentified masked men in combat uniforms, without badges, in unmarked SUVs, and armed with military weapons, make it very difficult to consider them “law enforcement” officers. They behave like an invading force. That, however, does not make them any less dangerous to the people, especially when their criminal behavior is backed by the U.S. Attorney General prior to any investigation of the criminal incidents of possible murder. The people of Minnesota are, by and large, respectful of the law. They want their communities to be safe. State and local law enforcement officials have worked hard since the murder of George Floyd to build good relationships with their constituents. State and federal institutions have separate sovereignties, which should not be in conflict if each recognizes that of the other. If these masked marauders were real officers of the law, they would be self-identified, respectful of human rights, and exhibit friendly persuasion in the conduct of their official duties, within the bounds of their jurisdictions instead of engaging in indiscriminate malicious aggression.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 