White Chechens Open New Vistas of Repression in America | Black Agenda Report

White Chechens Open New Vistas of Repression in America

24 Apr 2013

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

The Chechens are coming – and they're white! Like other pale-skinned immigrant groups, they appear to be flourishing. Only in America could lightly armed youngsters “represent a threat so awesomely dreadful as to spread fear up and down the great megalopolis stretching from Boston to Washington.”

White Chechens Open New Vistas of Repression in America

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“The whole nation has been set up for a new round of domestic repression.”

The United States of America has collapsed into a phantasmagoria – an inverted world conjured up by imperial minds to fool the home population of the planet’s only superpower into believing they are under siege by virtually everyone else on Earth. The formula has worked too well, rendering the society so brittle, so anxious and afraid, it resembles a madhouse in a fortress that is trying to turn itself into a prison.

Once again, white America (and lots of assimilated non-whites) shows it has absolutely no capacity for introspection – only for projecting its own insanities on others. The New York Times for Sunday, April 21st, speculated that the suspects in the Boston bombing were motivated by “echoes” of “plots from the past” in their ancestral Chechnya, in the Caucasus region of Russia – but, in reality, the scenario was purely 21^st century Americana. Where else could two young men with small arms and improvised explosives – if the charges are true – represent a threat so awesomely dreadful as to spread fear up and down the great megalopolis stretching from Boston to Washington?

If the two young Chechens were set up by the U.S. government, as their mother says, they are not the only ones. The whole nation has been set up for a new round of domestic repression. It has already begun, with the stripping down of Miranda warnings for persons arrested by police and the lockdown of whole sections of greater Boston, where the authorities treated white neighborhoods as if…well, as if they were Black.

In our post-911 world, we might expect that the events in Boston would lead to drone strikes or invasions of other countries to avenge American “honor.” But Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation, which retains its nuclear arsenal, so that won’t do. Besides, it turns out the FBI was in much closer touch with the older brother than any Russian officials – so, maybe the Russians ought to be the ones asking the questions. These were, after all, American citizens.

“Some have blonde or red hair.”

We hear a lot of talk about naming the surviving brother as an “enemy combatant,” but – a combatant for whom? For Allah? You can’t launch airstrikes against God. The Americans have to be careful about trying to tie their prisoner to the Chechen Islamist fighters who have made such a name for themselves around the world, since many of them are allied with the same gunmen the U.S. has financed and armed in Libya and Syria. In the end, there seems to be no enemy for Washington to punish – except American society, itself.

In this regard, the Chechen brothers’ ethnicity opens new vistas of domestic repression. Many Chechens are white – I mean, really white. Wikipedia describes them as “exhibiting traits typical of European and Caucasian peoples.” Some have “blonde or red hair,” with blue eyes and “typically pale skin.”

Does this mean that white people will lose their immunity from being arbitrarily accosted by Homeland Security? That would certainly be a sea change in American life. But, in the enemy-filled phantasmagoria that the United States has become, anything is possible.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20130424_gf_BostonBombing.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio December 19, 2025
19 Dec 2025
In this week’s segment, we present a conversation about birthright citizenship, its benefits to Black people, and why it is under attack. But first, we hear from a U.S. activist who recently traveled…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
John Parker on Solidarity with Venezuela
19 Dec 2025
John Parker is the coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice In Los Angeles and a leading member of the Struggle for Socialism Party. He is joining us from Los Angeles to discuss…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley , Renee Johnston , Jared Ball
Birthright Citizenship and the African World
19 Dec 2025
Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on the Black Liberation Media program, Saturdays with Renee, with Renee Johnston and Jared Ball. They discussed the issue of birthright citizenship in light of…
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Ahmed Kaballo
Struggling for Sovereignty: Sudan After Two Years of Civil War
17 Dec 2025
After two years of civil war, Sudan is now the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. However, as in most conflicts in the Global South, colonial and neocolonial history are a large part…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Turtle Island Liberation Front Warning for Activists
17 Dec 2025
Arrests of members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front are the latest in a decades-long effort to criminalize the left and to make examples of anyone who might fit the profile of being a "…