Etc.

Pictures

Chujoe Wiki


Others

Inside Higher Ed

Killing the Buddha

Projo Subterranean News

Seed Magazine

Spike Magazine

Textplanet

Third Factory

Thoughtcast


Short List

Bemsha Swing

Body & Soul

Burningbird

The Loom

Luca Antara

Oblivio

Open Brackets

Robert Peake

Pharyngula

Real Live Preacher

Silliman's Blog

Slacktivist

The Valve

Vitro Nasu

Wood s Lot

Yule's Log



Support Bloggers' Rights!
Support Bloggers' Rights!

Blog Flux Directory

Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork · Nov 17, 12:26 PM

Note [11/23/06]: The most recent news on the incident from IHE here. It seems increasingly clear that, for all their bobbing & weaving, the police chief, the acting chancellor, & the cop himself are blowing smoke. I continue to be taken aback by some commenters on the earlier thread, who: 1) Are apparently willing to give up liberty for safety; 2) are ignorant of even the most basic facts of American history, to say nothing of the tradition of dissent & civil disobedience; 3) believed that the job of the police is to “maintain order”; 4) excused the cop’s over-reaction by saying, in one way or another, “the police have a tough job”; 5) by creating a fantasy of danger against which “we” must be protected; 6) a casual acceptance of violence as long as it is directed against some other while at the same time reacting hysterically to non-violent resistance to authority. Welcome to the compliance society.

Note [11/20/06]: See this post by Mark Kleiman, who teaches at UCLA.

Note [11/19/06]: here is a link to more information on the tasering incident. I cannot help but think that chancellor Abrams is going to have to get down off his high horse. It is certainly true that there are many Americans who hate disobedience & love compliance — who would kiss the end of the nightstick before the cop brings it down on their face — but in the end enough of us will be disgusted by this psychotic strain in the culture that the torturers & their assistants will not prevail. Maybe. I hope.

Last night, I posted a link to a video of the UCLA student being tasered in the library because he refused to show his ID when asked for it by a campus cop. I took the post down this morning, because it was just an expression of blind rage. I have posted some comments in a discussion thread at Inside Higher Ed following a news item on the incident. While most of the posts are pretty rational, two guys — I assume they’re both guys — BD & Craig C, are really astonishing. Craig C., in particular, seems to believe that UCLA regulations trump the US Constitution & that last week’s elections “showed disrespect for authority” (apparently) because Americans voted for Democrats. Furthermore, that vote, according to Craig C. will encourage students “push the envelope” & resist authority. Like many right-authoritarians, Craig C. has conjured a fantasy of “rapists,” “urine stained vagrants,” “drunks,” & “fifth-year undergraduate miscreants” who regularly threaten the patrons of Powell Library at UCLA. I wonder if Craig C. has ever been to Powell, or to UCLA, or to Los Angeles? My wife used to work in the other big library on the UCLA campus & though it was a few years ago, she hadn’t noticed hoards of street criminals moving into the library at night. BD, in the comment thread, simply writes so incoherently it is difficult to follow what he means. Like many on the right, fear drives such fantasies, but people do act on fantasies & these dark visions of an authoritarian America are warrants for right-wing terrorism & police terrorism under cover of law. What’s next, boys? Death squads sweeping through campus? That where the logic leads.

Later: It is also remarkable how illiterate the right-wing authority worshipers are in that thread & at IHE generally: funny how intellectual failures like to hang around educated folk & spray their spit around.

Still Later: Someone Named Russ Moore posted the following:

Just because you’re a minority doesn’t give you the right to resist the campus cops. Those guys are there to protect us, and EVERYONE ON CAMPUS should show their ID when asked — I do. Does being a minority mean that everytime you’re approached by a cop mean is unwarranted?? He was resisting the security guards and they had every right to taze him. I would hope he would learn something from this, but he won’t. So taze him again. And again. And again until he learns. Geeez, what a world.

The voice of the American police state spoken by one of its own browshirts. Russ More would have fit right in over at Abu Graib. Hell, maybe there’s a job for him down at Gitmo.

And this, from someone who signs himself “davidpaul” & who in an earlier comment says he is considering a career change to become a police officer:

You see, people in Washington D.C. who are elected to be there ESTABLISH laws. The same thing goes on in California, on a State level. Well guess what? President Bush, and Governor Shwartzenager (hope I got that spelling right) aren’t going to walk the beat at 11:00 pm to be sure everybody is obeying the law.

No, States sit down, and establish minimum requirements for people that they want out there walking the beats, to ENFORCE the laws that they have established.

When you see an MIB (as you lovingly call them), you are to treat them as if it was the President, or the Governor standing there, because in essence, they are.

If you show an attitude of overall disdain for the Police, you simply do not respect your elected leaders, and the laws they have established.

In American, this is government of the people, by the people, FOR THE PEOPLE. The laws that these police officers were enforcing at UCLA were for the protection of the people present.

Now that’s what I call a deep theoretical understanding of American democracy.

Anyway, this is what I wrote in my final comment at IHE:

Mike & Dave & Craig C. & now davidpaul all say the student got what was coming to him. I remember when, in 1970, a lot of the good citizens of Kent, Ohio, wrote letters to the editor of their local paper saying that the four students shot dead by guardsmen, also, “got what they deserved.” You can read the letters in the Library of America’s Reporting Vietnam (vol. 2). They’re chilling.

The only response to the people named above is ga-ga disbelief at their ignorance of the Constitution & American traditions of dissent. Freedom is inconvenient & troublesome. Because if you want freedom for yourself, you have to grant it to “fifth year undergraduate miscreants” & all the other unpleasant riffraff who who make the lives of real Americans so difficult.

My God, if Thomas Jefferson could hear these police state groupies drawling sanguinely about “disrespect” & being “uncooperative,” he would weep in despair. Yes sir, those American revolutionaries who rebelled (remember, “rebellion never pays”) against the British should have just gone along in order to get along. That Boston Tea Party thing? That was just so rude! Not to mention the destruction of property. Let’s just erase that history. Some Americans, by the evidence of this discussion thread, love authority more than freedom. A whole lot more. When that attitude dominates, we will no longer have anything that looks like any America I know. Maybe we’re already there.

* * *

  1. Thank you for writing intelligently about the fourth amendment and police state issues here.

    This case is plain and simple and obvious. First, the cops are brutes. I’ve dealt with LAPD and they are ignorant brutes who have no respect for the law.

    Second, the administration is run by tyrants. I’ve spoken with UCLA administration officials and they are power mad, deluded, and have no concern for the students, only for their own ‘legacy’ and wealth.

    Finally, the student had every right to be there in a PUBLIC LIBRARY at a state institution paid for by the taxpayers. Yes, paid for by taxpayers and not students. This is not a private school, it is funded by both the state and federally. Even a homeless vagrant has a right to be in the library during hours they are open as long as he is not creating a disturbance. A student quietly working on a paper is not creating a disturbance.

    What has happened to education in this country that the people commenting on this issue are so astoundingly ignorant of what the difference is between a free society and a police state? The people who are saying that a public library has the right to demand random ID checks of its patrons are mentally ill. I hope they will do us all a favor and move to North Korea where there is no 4th amendment. They’d like it there. People are very ‘safe’.


    — Dan Biston    11/20/2006 04:43 AM    #

  2. Dan, let me play Devil’s advocate: 1) Not all cops are brutes & that is the kind of rhetoric that makes them feel embattled & thus more brutish. But most cops don’t know squat about American traditions of dissent & free speech. 2) I think the UCLA administration has not exactly covered itself in glory with its response to this incident, but see Professor Mark Keliman’s summary linked in an updated note at the beginning of my post. 3) I don’t know enough about the law to say exactly how “public” Powell Library is, but you are right that it is taxpayer supported. I teach at a private university & we have much more latitude, under the law, regarding who is allowed in our facilities. But in any case, random ID checks strike me as un-American & probably unconstitutional. But pretty clearly, there is a strain in the American personality that loves authority more than it loves freedom & those people really came out of the woodwork over at IHE. 4) I am very uncomfortable suggesting that any American “love it or leave it.” That argument was made during the Vietnam War & has been trotted out again by right-wing extremists during the Second Iraq War. In fact, one of the comments at IHE suggested that people like me would benefit from a season in North Korea. One of the weirdly wonderful things about American democracy when it’s working is that even ignorant boobs have the right to express their opinions.


    — jd    11/20/2006 08:08 PM    #

  3. I appreciate your response. To clarify, by ‘the cops’, I meant the cops in the video. But I also meant the LAPD in general, and I’ll throw SDPD in there as well as I have observed both departments. What I have personally seen on many occasions, and also heard from first person accounts from reliable persons has never, never been good. So. Cal. police departments for whatever reason attract bullies. Good cops are driven out of the force by the bullies, or worse, sometimes killed in ‘accidents’. It is foolish to trust or rely on these people, they operate outside of the rule of law.

    There is no law that requires americans to carry ID, or even to have ID at all. This is one critical thing that distinguishes us from a police state.

    My comments about North Korea are not ‘love it or leave it’. It is that for the huge numbers of ‘stalinists’ as you appropriately called them who love police states and yearn to live in them, that many are available for moving to. I recommend to these people that they move their to find the pretense of security and safety that they yearn for.

    It has been said many times that the 911 attackers all had valid and legitimate identification. Checking for id randomly or even methodically accomplishes nothing except to prepare the good little cows for their life in the veal pens.

    Finally, reports are that Mr. Tabatabainejad and his parents are Baha’i. To this I can only say OMFG. They are the only religion more pacifistic than the Quakers.


    — Dan Biston    11/20/2006 09:11 PM    #

  4. Dan, I don’t find much to disagree with in your response & thanks for explaining your earlier remarks more fully. The cops in the video were UCLA campus cops, though, not LAPD. Of course, some campus cops simpy don’t have what it takes to make the grade on the city force. The fact that the student is Baha’i actually explains a lot: he is what one might call a trained pacifist: his going limp (if that’s what he did) was likely a moral statement against violence. What is absolutely not in dispute is that tasering a person who is handcuffed & on the ground & threatening to taser people asking for the identification of the cops is a form of torture & is a violation of federal civil rights law. Both the cops & the university need to be held accountable.

    You make an excellent point about the supposed safety of living in a police state. One has to ask: How much freedom are you willing to give up in order to be “safe”?


    — jd    11/20/2006 10:22 PM    #

  5. Yes, I’ve not covered the issues of whether the tasering was appropriate or justified since it’s completely self-evident that it was neither, and that inflicting severe pain to force compliance, by long held and accepted definitions of the word, is indeed torture, and has no place in any society purporting to claim to be civilized. A soldier doing this to an enemy soldier would be in clear and unmistakable violation of the Geneva Convention, and could appropriately be brought up on war crimes charges. It is a tragedy that the Geneva Convention does not apply to civilian agencies, especially now that they have taken on military-like powers and tend towards the lack of accountability found in a dictatorship.

    What you say about trained pacifism is such a good point. This is what Rosa Parks did, and it is what Ghandi did, and it is what Thoreau did, and it is what Martin Luther King Jr. did.

    Whether anyone recognizes it or not, I know that Mr. Tabatabainejad is far far more of a true American Patriot than any of the thugs who brutalized him will ever be able to comprehend. Through his actions, and his willingness to pacifistically stand up to the egregious abuse of authority, he is a true Hero. We must never forget the sacrifices that were and are being made by the rare heros such as him who have the courage and the guts and the strength to stand up and defend Jeffersonian ideals of freedom and democracy.


    — Dan Biston    11/21/2006 03:32 PM    #