Fucking Power

Yesterday ICE executed a woman in Minneapolis. The entire event was witnessed by dozens of people, many of whom recorded and disseminated the video. Renee Good, a legal observer, a mother, a wife, a friend, a poet, was executed in cold blood in front of her wife and neighbors. 

I watched the video more than once and no matter how it is described as showing “nuance” (CNN) there is no justification for her murder.

Her vehicle was perpendicular in the road, the officers were shouting, they approached her vehicle and tried to open the door and the officer shot through the front of the vehicle and then through the window. Afterward they kept someone who identified himself as a doctor away and allowed her to bleed out in the vehicle for almost 15 minutes while they waited for EMS to arrive. Because the street was blocked off EMS had to carry their equipment from their vehicle to her body and, when ready to transport her body, they did not have a stretcher and carried her by her arms and legs.  

I also watched a video of ICE officers, including the one who tried door handles and the shooter, clasp hands in a show of solidarity. Men bonding over violence against women, seeing themselves as agents of power and order with no responsibility to the people. A band of brothers unites having vanquished their enemy in spectacular violence.

I am in the midst of reading Alberto Toscano’s “Mapping Microfascism” exploring the theorization of a “new fascism” by Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari (among others) that exists in everyday practices rather than being an imposition from above. Foucault, in particular, is interested in the libidinal investment in power, the eroticization of power, that is emblematic in the eroticization of Nazism in pornography and popular culture where the symbology is used as a sign of eroticized transgression. Guattari describes this as a mass phenomenon, a “fantastic collective death instinct” while Foucault notes that the libidinal drive is within a specific segment of the population. I was struck by Foucault’s argument that access to this power under Nazism allows the most mundane and pathetic (like Himmler) to access power through identification with the Nazis–joining the party, being in the SS–and indulging in violence. Foucault argued:

This, I believe, is a crucial characteristic of Nazism; that is, its deep penetration inside the masses and the fact that a part of the power was actually delegated to a specific fringe of the masses. This is where the word “dictatorship” becomes true in general, and relatively false. When you think of the power an individual could possess under a Nazi regime as soon as he was simply S.S. or signed up in the Party! You could actually kill your neighbor, steal his wife, his house! (333)

The delegation of power through society generates a segment of the population who must commit fully to retain their own power, perhaps with some awareness that it is only in and through allegiance with Nazism they have this power. I am reminded of arguments that Trumpian loyalty is often based on the fact that he elevates mediocrities (including himself) and failsons who would otherwise just be mediocrities. Pete Hegseth, the drunkard adulterer and weekend talk show host who could not keep a small non-profit afloat, commands the military and lectures them on the warrior mindset. Kash Patel, an embarrassing low level lawyer takes his personal humiliation (his radicalization story is a dressing down from a judge when he failed to wear a tie to court through no fault of his own). I could go on all day about how the little Himmlers around Trump represent this specific fringe elevated because of their pathetic accomplishments and find the frisson of power irresistible. 

The weekend attack on Venezuela, including the prominent role of Lil Marco, is a perfect example. Rubio and Vance are emblematic of this specific fringe, lacking any actual convictions or real talents, but clearly animated by the thrill of power for power’s sake. 

The gendered nature of this violence crackles on the surface here. Klaus Thieleweit’s Male Fantasies outlined a psychoanalytic case for the gendered and erotic nature of fascism, noting in particular the elevation of the “Red Woman” as the enemy a “reproduction of male power with and against women.” (334) On Fox, Jesse Waters described Renee Goode as having “pronouns in bio” and as a lesbian with a child from a failed marriage. She is the Dangerous Woman, sexually and politically impure and was, even before she put her car in drive, asking for it in their minds. 

Foucault argued that Nazism offered no real material advantage; it did not solve the “affordability” hoax. Instead it makes petty sovereigns, little Hitlers, of some. Let them eat power. I have been writing around this idea for awhile. Certainly the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has offered a form of material inequality that is unparalleled but the devotion of the followers who are experiencing material hardship cries out for an explanation. Our models of politics–behaviorist, interest groups, etc.–do not account for the appeal of the erotic thrill of getting to fuck one’s enemies. And in a world where lol nothing matters because the masses are not whipped into a frenzy but are in a dissociative haze, maybe that delegation of violence to the loyal brotherhood is enough for fascism to triumph.