Do politicians really believe that violence has no place in America: A short history of violence in so-called America

After Saturday’s shooting during a Trump rally, numerous politicians responded by saying that violence was unacceptable. 

When President Biden heard about the shooting, he said, “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer responded to the news of the shooting by saying, “There is no place for political violence in this country, period.”

My initial reaction to these comments from Biden and Whitmer is simply that what they are saying is bullshit! I say this for two reasons. First, Biden and Whitmer, along with lots of white liberals were hoping that Trump would have been killed, they just don’t want to admit that they feel this way. Believe me, I understand that sentiment. I was thinking that before I even sat down to write this piece I was reflecting on the plot to assassinate German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, a plot that included the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I would encourage people to watch the Martin Doblmeier 2003 produced documentary, Bonhoeffer. 

Second, the notion that there is no place for violence in America is to ignore the very core of what this country was founded on and what it continues to practice……..violence. Now, it is not a question of whether or not Whitmer or Biden are unaware of the history of violence in the US, it is more about the fact that they can’t acknowledge this historical fact or even admit it. For most politicians it would be political suicide. However, imagine for a second if there were political leaders who would say things like, the US was founded on structural violence, both with the genocide of Native Nations and the enslavement of Africans. Of course that will not happen, since both Republicans and Democrats don’t want to admit that the US was founded on genocide, the theft of Indigenous land and the enslavement of people from Africa.

Genocide and slavery were the two foundational aspects of the founding of the US, but they are not the only forms of violence that are at the core of US history. What follows is an overview of the systemic or structural violence that is woven into the very fabric of this country, along with sources to support these claims.

• Genocide of Native Nations – see An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. 
• Chattel Slavery – see The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E Baptist. 
• Only white men who owned land could vote for nearly the first 75 years of this country – see Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions, by Jerry Fresia.
• The racist, xenophobic, white nationalist history of US immigration policy – see American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants, by Robert Bartholomew & Anja Reumschussel and The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin.
• The violent history of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their communities and placing them into so-called boarding schools – see Kill the Indian, Save the Man, by Ward Churchill.
• The history of US wars, whether they have been for the expansion of what is now the 50 states to the countless wars and other forms of imperialism around the globe – see Stephen Kinzer’s book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, William Blum’s book, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, and the excellent online source from Zoltan Grossman FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO YEMEN
• The violent history of US worker suppression by the Capitalist Class – one great example is found in David Correia’s book, Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police, plus the 10 volumes of the History of the Labor Movement in the United States, by Philip Foner.
• The violent history of patriarchy and misogyny in the US – see Phyllis Chesler’s book, Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness.
• The suppression of political dissent in the US – see Jules Boykoff’s book, Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States.
• See the three volume history of the US by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vittoria, Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny
• Mass Incarceration in the US – see Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and Naomi Murakawa’s book, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.
• The US Drug War – see Clarence Lusane’s book, Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs, plus the global side of the US drug war, which is documented well in Alfred McCoy’s book, The Politics of Heroin: CiA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
• Police murder of civilians in the US – see the online source https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ 
• The long history of violence against nature and eco-systems in the US, the climate crisis and environmental racism.
• We also need to add all of the systemic violence perpetrated against people with disabilities, queer & the LGBTQ community, all BIPOC people, class violence against working class people, immigrants and religious people who are not Christians.

This is just a short list of the violence that has been part of the US since it was founded and is woven into every aspect of society. To the degree that we have any civil liberties, civil rights or human rights, has been because regular, everyday people organized, fought, resisted and often died to win any sense of justice. The US political system never gave us anything, it was never a gift. So for President Biden to say there is no place for violence in America is to deny the very history of this country, especially the history of systems of political and economic power & oppression.