By Dayvon Love
Liberals in America have mastered the ability to appear to be doing justice, while maintaining their allegiance to the status quo. Things like taking down confederate statues, wearing kente clothe in pictures, renaming buildings after Black historic figures have symbolic value– but none of these acts challenge the existing White power structure that benefits from the challenges that Black people face in this society.
The worst example of this tactic is when an effort that is being portrayed as an attempt to do justice is actually a cover for supporting the oppression of other people. HB1081/SB709 is an example of this. This bill would create criminal penalties for wearing masks while engaging in intimidation and harassment during protests. This bill is being characterized as an attempt to protect supporters of Israel from pro-Palestinian protesters.
I have written previously about the oppressive policies carried out by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people, which has been amplified by their response to the Oct. 7, 2023 attack committed by Hamas. Many people, including myself, have characterized the Israeli response as an act of genocide against the Palestinian people. American imperialism is an extension of the global system of White supremacy that concentrates wealth and military power in the hands of White people and relegates non-White people of the world disproportionately to poverty and subservience to dominant world powers. Palestinian liberation from U.S. sanctioned and funded Israeli governmental violence is a part of the fight against this global system of White supremacy and imperialism.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the White American mainstream have often characterized Palestinian resistance to their oppression as terrorism. Framing Israelis as perfect innocent victims and Palestinians as folks who are prone to violence. This is a similar narrative tactic that is used to characterize those of us committed to Black Liberation as endorsing violence against White people. This narrative tactic allows White folks to characterize themselves as champions for justice, while presiding over policies and a political system in this society that is oppressive to people all over the world.
HB 1081/ SB 709 is an attempt to characterize those who support the ongoing genocide against Palestinians as victims. The stories of intimidation by pro-Palestine protesters are overstated and pale in comparison to the political and economic violence that pro-Israeli supporters have carried out against those who support the human rights of Palestinians. The senate sponsor, Jeff Waldstreicher (D-MD-18), is quoted as saying that the bill “criminalizes utilizing masks to intimidate, menace or harass folks, and it’s the same laws we had in place in the post-KKK era,” according to the Jewish Insider. The implied equivalency of the KKK to pro-Palestine protesters is the same White supremacist tactic that I mentioned earlier…a tool of liberals to appear to do justice, while justifying White supremacist violence against others. This is the same kind of analogy that liberals and conservatives would use to characterize the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X and other advocates of Black Liberation as proponents of hate as a way to ignore their calls for justice for Black people. What is even worse is that Sen. Waldstreicher led the charge with other members of the Maryland General Assembly to threaten the funding of an immigrant rights organization, CASA, for their statement of solidarity with Palestinians.
Sen. Waldstreicher is the fox that Malcolm X once warned us about. He wants to appear to be a friend of our community, but ultimately is interested in policies that maintain the White supremacist status quo. HB 1081/SB 709 is a bill that would provide more weapons for law enforcement and the political status quo to levy political consequences against those standing up for oppressed people. Additionally, this bill would allow him to advance the narrative tactic that demonizes liberation movements as evil, concealing the evil that is committed by the existing White power structure against non-White people around the world.
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