Protecting the in-group from you, the out-group
Jonathan Last on Friday made sure readers saw clearly that for Republicans “law and order” has a very, very narrow meaning. Last was commenting on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry, convicted and sentenced to 25 years for the vigilante murder of Garrett Foster during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.
Last recounts the details that put Perry, a racist murderer, behind bars, but the key detail is Abbott’s pardon:
There is no legal or moral justification for pardoning Perry. His trial was fair. The jury acted reasonably. The laws he broke were well-defined and serious. He is not a good guy who had one bad moment. There is no indication that he has repented and become a different man than the one who fantasized about murder and then carried it out.
The only reason to pardon Perry is political. Pardoning Perry creates political gain for Gov. Abbott because his constituents like Perry. And these voters like Perry precisely because of who he murdered.
Texas last year passed a law allowing the removal of “rogue” elected district attorneys like the one who brought charges against Perry, and like the ones removed in Florida by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Pay attention to the message Abbott’s sending:
The public justification for the law was that some DA’s were too lenient on crime. Today the state is looking into removing José Garza, the DA who prosecuted Perry.
While pardoning Perry, Gov. Abbott claimed that Garza had “demonstrated unethical and biased misuse of his office in prosecuting Daniel Scott Perry.”
Texas Republicans are not content to allow Perry’s murder of Garrett Foster. They also want to send a message that even using the law to bring charges against members of the ingroup who kill members of the outgroup is verboten.
That is what “law and order” means to Republicans. And it is all perfectly legal.
Echoes of Frank Wilhoit.
Will Bunch tells Philadelphia Inquirer readers that the Perry pardon “was a gross injustice in a former Confederate state that reeked of the bad old days of Southern jury nullification, a modern update on the impunity with which white men lynched Emmett Till and then laughed at justice.” This was not simply another warning light on the dashboard of democracy, a “Check Engine” light we’ve learned to ignore:
In this sprawling state of just over 30 million people, supposedly First Amendment-protected protests for causes like Black civil rights or against the slaughter of civilians in Gaza can, and probably will, expose you to arrest or state violence, risk your schooling or your job, or — when all else fails — leave you in danger of deadly vigilante justice. Abbott’s pardon was the last bootheel on Texans’ right to dissent.
Administrators at the public University of Texas-San Antonio were caught on video by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) telling students that they’d be turned over to police if they merely chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It hardly seemed an idle threat after Abbott had sent state troopers clad in riot gear to UT’s main campus in Austin to forcefully shut down a large pro-Palestinian protest as soon as it began.
Texas’ overly harsh, militarized approach to protests is an inevitable outgrowth of the Lone Star State’s hyper-aggressive response to migrants at its southern border. The Abbott administration has spent an astronomical $11 billion, and counting, on maintaining a massive Texas army of soldiers who’ve threatened the federal government’s supposed hegemony over border issues.
The governor’s tin soldiers have — unlawfully, federal courts have found — strung razor wire and other barriers on the Rio Grande to deter asylum seekers. The wires have slashed desperate kids and pregnant moms, and efforts to evade them have been blamed for several migrant drownings — joining the Air Force veteran Foster in the rising body count of a U.S. state in thrall to violent authoritarianism.
Coming soon to state near you, Bunch warns, “Texas is merely the leading edge of the storm.”
Republicans are signaling daily that the law only applies to out-groups as they define them, driven by their “instinctive revulsion against the leveling of hierarchies and social change.” Those of a certain age recall religious and political conservatives railing against the supposed moral relativism of the 1960s left. Nowadays, they view the application of law as relative to one’s place on the social ladder, determined at its coarsest grit by the color of one’s skin, and more subtly by the color of someone’s politics.
“Nowadays” is generous. Jim Crow enforced that legal regime for 100 years. It just went underground for fifty or so years since the Civil Rights movement.
Everything that’s happening in Abbott’s Texas — the relentless war against liberalism and education itself, the influence of a corporate oligarchy, the surge of Christian nationalism, the war on feminism that features its strict abortion ban, and its own state military and militarized cops now deployed against its own people — is textbook fascism. The crackdown on dissent is the flame that keeps this downward spiral going. Knowing that attending a protest can expose you to legalized vigilante murder is just pouring more Texas crude on the fire.
It’s important to remember that — whether or not you agree with the cause — state violence currently directed at pro-Palestinian protests from Brooklyn to Austin is merely a trial run for what could come if Trump is sworn in for a second presidency in January. He has already pledged to send out troops to crush any Inauguration Day protests. But the best way to stop full-blown autocracy in 2025 is to speak out against the police-state authoritarianism we have now.
Speaking out is not enough. Get active. Donate to local campaigns. Knock doors. Turn out voters. That is, if you expect to get another chance.
Update: Removed a line about Foster’s race. Misremembered that and did not check. Thx: AR.
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