Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

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 21st 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.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

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

More Stories


  • Biden's War Propaganda
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Biden's War Propaganda
    22 Jul 2022
    Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley discuss Biden administration antagonism of Russia and China and the war propaganda apparatus.
  •  BAR Book Forum: Crystal Eddins’ Book, “Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Crystal Eddins’ Book, “Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution”
    20 Jul 2022
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Crystal Eddins. Eddins is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at UNC Charlotte.…
  •  Celebrating Revolution in Nicaragua
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Celebrating Revolution in Nicaragua
    20 Jul 2022
    Genuine peoples holidays are hard to come by in the U.S. But in Nicaragua the ongoing revolutionary process is widely celebrated.
  • ESSAY: Negro Revolutionary Hero: Toussaint L'Ouverture, Cyril Briggs, 1929
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Negro Revolutionary Hero: Toussaint L'Ouverture, Cyril Briggs, 1929
    20 Jul 2022
    In 1929, Black radical Cyril Briggs penned an essay on Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution. For Briggs, both provided inspiration for the fight against the U.S. occupation of Haiti. We…
  •  BAR Book Forum: Steven W. Thrasher’s Book, “The Viral Underclass”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Steven W. Thrasher’s Book, “The Viral Underclass”
    20 Jul 2022
    This week’s featured author is Steven W. Thrasher. Thrasher holds the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg chair at Northwestern University’s Medill School, the first journalism professorship in the world…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us