Necropolitics

When John Quincy Adams was secretary of state, he made a speech to Congress on the Fourth of July, 1821, in which he warned that if America ventured abroad “in search of monsters to destroy,” then “The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force” and America “would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”His point, rather poetically expressed, was that tyranny always comes home. A violent foreign policy begets a violent domestic culture. The irony is that Adams served in James Monroe’s cabinet, famous for the dreaded Monroe Doctrine that declared the US owned the Americas. A policy most clearly expressed by President William Taft at the dawn of the twentieth century: “The day is not far distant when ... the whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority as a race, it already is ours morally.” Following the Second World War, militarism became an evermore mainstream feature of US society. In his farewell address, when Eisenhower warned Americans about the Military-Industrial Complex—an unprecedented entity in peacetime—he said that the influence of a perpetually militarized society would be “economic, political, even spiritual.” When the imperial violence of the Cold War resulted in an epic case of “blowback,” to use the CIA’s term (happy 9/11, by the way, even to the haters and losers), the so- called War on Terror became a new frontier of limitless violence. These days, the bombing of some poor Middle Eastern country we’re not even at war with is routine. It’s done remotely via drone, no Congressional or UN approval is even sought, and no “war” is expected to follow (only if they were to bomb our cities would we consider it a casus belli). To quote Orwell’s famous phrase: “War is peace.” Criticism of the war is, to an extent, tolerated. But even the critics must sing the hosannas of the armed forces and “support the troops,” lest they be branded an apostate. The philosopher Achille Mbembe coined the term “necropolitics” in 2003 to describe the cultural-power states have to make some people more killable than others. And, more importantly, to make its enemies ungrievable—creating “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead.” “The most accomplished form of necropower,” wrote Mbembe, “is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine.” In the latest update from Gaza, 393 people are now confirmed to have been starved to death—140 of them children. As the Israelis have started razing buildings in Gaza, leveling 50 residential buildings in two days, Netanyahu said, “All of this is merely a prelude to the main, powerful operation.” Defense Minister Israel Katz promised “A mighty hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City ... and the roofs of the terror towers will shake.” Far from “terror towers,” Israel is destroying homes, cafés, restaurants, gyms, etc., in other words, the infrastructure for reproducing normal life. One fitness coach whose local gym was recently destroyed told Drop Site News that these buildings aren’t merely structures, they contain memories; “There are no friends left, no money left, and nothing to remember. Even the memories, they are taking them away from us.” A recent piece in The Intercept detailed how some Gazan teenagers were hoping for their applications to US universities to be accepted so they could be permitted to leave. That is, until the US blocked all Palestinian visas, trapping them in Gaza. No one leaves the camp alive. Doctor Mimi Syed, who worked twice in Gaza, shared a voice message from a young medical student she knows in Gaza City: “Hello, my dear Mimi. I’m not okay,” she says. “They already sent the evacuation order to us. I’m so scared and I don’t know what to do. I’m confused, I’m so sad. I don’t want leave. There’s no place for us, Mimi. My dad is going to the south, looking for a place for us, but there’s no place. They lied to us and said there’s a safe zone in the south, but the truth is [there’s] not. I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared.” She continued: “They start to bomb the towers in our place. And, you know, center of Gaza here have a lot of towers. I’m so tired, I couldn’t sleep all night. The sound of pumping very loud and so close to us. They use every method of killing and destroying. I don’t know what to do, Mimi. … We will not survive this time. This time is very bad. We’re going to [be] killed, Mimi. I’m so sorry. I’m so scared. Oh my God,” she said quietly while crying. “I’m sorry.” Meanwhile, Trump posted a video to social media of a US military strike targeting a civilian boat in the Caribbean. The boat was struck multiple times, killing 11 civilians. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the passengers, alleged by the US to be drug smugglers, could simply have been arrested but the president ordered them killed. “And it’ll happen again,” Rubio ominously added. These are the consequences of necropolitics. Suffice it to say, this creates a deeply unhealthy and rotten society. Adding the factor of capital exploitation—the fact that most Americans have had their standards of living decimated, and the possibilities for a descent life stripped away—resulting in income inequality worse than the Gilded Age, and you have an angry, desperate, and unhealthy society. This explains in part why Americans have so many mass shootings. It’s not just the guns, other countries where gun- ownership is legal don’t have the same disproportionate number of shootings. It’s the insane culture of bravado and necropower. Unfortunately, that is not likely to change soon. If the Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing it’s opposing the Left at all costs. In New York City, for example, Zohran Mamdani is the most popular Democratic candidate perhaps in over a decade. Yet Democratic lawmakers have smeared him as an anti-Semite, a jihadist, and his campaign platform as “Socialism”—in scare quotes—and doomed to fail. Without a robust Left to organize against the ravages of capitalism, the people stewed in their misery, their poverty, and their noxious culture. The result was generalized rage, people who are angry about everything; a fertile ground for hate. It coalesced into a destructive force that was molded into a neo-fascist movement. One man, among others, who is at once a product of this unhealthy society and an ideologue for this neo-fascist movement, is Charlie Kirk. He took up the job of far-right propagandizing with zeal. His rhetoric was at times indistinguishable from that of the German fascists in the 1930s. For example, take Kirk’s discussion of citizenship: Americanism is more than paperwork. Right now, all “American” has been reduced to is just paperwork. If you have your documents, you’re an American. I’m sorry, that makes no sense whatsoever. Kirk then proceeds to show a rally for Omar Fateh, a Democrat in the Minnesota Senate currently running for Mayor of Minneapolis. At the rally, a Muslim woman spoke. “I want you to tell me whether or not Taageerada Musharaxa Duqa—that’s literally the speaker’s name—is this person American?” Kirk asked. He then showed them dancing to Middle Eastern music. “Are these people Americans? Have they assimilated—have they dedicated their soul, their spirit, their fullmost [sic] to the United States?” He continued: Most people look at me and they say, ‘Well, an American is just someone who has a US passport.’ Zohran Mamdani has a US passport, Omar Fateh has a US passport, Ilhan Omar is a member of Congress, do you consider that to be a fellow American? If America is just a passport, then America is dead … then we are just a colony for Earth—a pile of wealth to loot. And that’s how Somalis treat it. In the era of mass- transportation and mass airfare, this was inevitable; that mass-migration would become the story of the 21st century. …If you’re not American, that’s fine! Go back to your place of origin … Just go back, hasta la vista! But we have a culture to protect, we have a country to love. ‘No man can serve two masters,’ Christ our lord said that. It will likely not have escaped you that all of the people supposedly not American are Muslims. Indeed, Kirk has tweeted, “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” To anyone familiar with Adolf Hitler’s published work, this will all sound extremely familiar. In Mein Kampf, Hitler complains that, Today the right of citizenship is acquired primarily through birth inside the borders of the state. Race or membership in the Volk play no role whatsoever. A Negro who previously lived in the German protectorates and now resides in Germany can thus beget a ‘German citizen.’ By the same token any Jewish child, or Polish child, or African child, or Asian child can become a German citizen without further ado. Apart from naturalization through birth there is also the possibility of subsequent naturalization. … Racial considerations play no role in this whatsoever. The entire process of the acquisition of citizenship is hardly different from joining an automobile club. Another, slightly more amorphous, right-wing characteristic Kirk also possesses is the willingness to accept collateral damage. Kirk has frequently argued that gun- deaths are a necessary price to pay for keeping the Second Amendment, in the same way that car accidents are a necessary price to pay for the right to drive a car. (Of course, cars are not designed to kill; fatalities are by definition accidents.) He was also unbothered at the gruesome murder of George Floyd, instead calling him a “scumbag.” And when a would-be assassin broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home, accidentally encountered her husband, and cracked his skull with a hammer, Charlie Kirk was amused, and smiled while telling his audience: “Why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? … If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out.” His solution for mass-shootings is, like everything else he does, a method of attacking the Other. While at Utah Valley University, Kirk argued that keeping guns away from transgender people would go a long way in preventing mass-shootings. A student pointed out, correctly, that trans people are actually less likely to commit violence and more likely to be victims of violence (see chapter 2 of my article “Sexy Science”). As Kirk responded, he was fatally shot in the neck by a sniper. This happened yesterday. I wonder if he’d still say it was a price worth paying for the sacred Second Amendment. Now they expect us to mourn him, to express our shock and outrage, and to send our “thoughts and prayers” to his family. Congress held a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk. He is not the Other, the “living dead,” he is grievable and we must do so. Those are the rules of our necropolitics. I will not mourn a man that would not have mourned for me, nor for us. Let us not participate in this shallow performance. Save your moment of silence, your “thoughts and prayers” and solemnities. My thoughts today are with Palestine, as they are every day during this genocide. Charlie Kirk is not worthy of my kindness. Don’t worry, though, it wouldn’t bother him. He once said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up New Age term, and it does a lot of damage.”