"Confederate Identity Extremists" and elastic definitions

On Dec. 16, 1773 a group boarded a ship and threw the cargo of tea into Boston Harbor.

Were they Colonial Identity Extremists?

Years ago, when I graduated and I was living in an urban old style apartment building, we saw a tall person drag a smaller person into a doorway in the alley way and started to beat the person severely. Back to the alley way were the kitchen windows to the apartments and we, me and my neighbors started calling out, "We are calling the police!" so to get the criminal to run and stop the beating. Imagine our surprise, when the tall person held up a police badge and was rather smug about it.

At the time there were no smart phone cameras or smart phones or digital cameras at all. There was nothing we could do to document it. No one called, because you didn't want thugs in blue calling on you. So it essentially never happened except in stories related by me and other residents.

Christopher Daniels who goes by the name Rakem Balogun in the heat of anger said some really bad things about the shootings of police officers in Dallas and Memphis. This article by the Dallas Morning News (DMN) which got published rather late sometime after Daniels was released from prison details his statements on Facebook.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/05/14/black-activist-celebrated-murders-police-social-media-says-feds-targeted-political-views

I raised the issue whether the DMN would cover this story at all which was getting global coverage. I discuss the rather delayed reporting in one of the numbered sections below.

This is The Guardian coverage of the story.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/11/rakem-balogun-interview-black-identity-extremists-fbi-surveillance

This is the Aljazeera coverage of the story.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/judge-orders-release-black-identity-extremist-180504115412408.html

I am quoted in another story where I create the term, "Confederate Identity Extremist."

There are multiple issues raised here.

One

First, the statements made by Daniels are not acceptable. Five officers didn't come home that night. They had people that loved them. They were just people trying to do their job.

These type of statements are the type of thing that results in mob violence and lynch law where rage sweeps respect for the law aside.

Of course appealing to the rule of law when videos keep surfacing of law enforcement officers not following the law and abusing their authority makes my position seem foolish to some. Where is the law it could be asked?

Further the courts seem to be unable to convict police officers when they murder someone and the evidence is obvious. Prosecutors seem to be all fumble fingers on these prosecutions, because I think they don't want to do what is necessary to successfully prosecute the case.

Again, with the videos and the failures of prosecutors to do their job, appealing to the rule of law makes my position seem detached from reality and self-serving.

However, situations come up where rage threatens us to be pulled into a vortex of violence. I think we must resist making statements like this. I had a real fear at the time of these shootings that there would be a chain reaction of violent actions and violent actions in response that could spiral out of control. Down in Baton Rouge there was another individual who went on a murderous rampage.

Recently in Balch Springs a teen was murdered by a police officer. There are indications that it was fairly clear this officer had menacing rage and should have been removed the police force some time ago. However, the problem officer was tolerated and it resulted in a young teen murdered. The trial is coming up this June 2018.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2017/12/20/murder-trial-cop-killed-jordan-edwards-pushed-back-june

I suspect that one way or another the police officer will either have a hung jury, get off, or have a ludicrously light sentence.  At that point the DMN will report the usual vetted "leaders" making pious statements. There will be discussions of how the trial went wrong or some proposed changes. It will be treated as some aberration in the law rather than the systematic problem it is. Lots of local ministers will ask for prayer, but it will be a substitute for engaging the question. I am not taking a position against prayer, I am just saying that a call for prayer can be an opportunistic move to avoid an issue.

I think that for some in Dallas all this will be "blah, blah, blah" and the belief in the rule of law will seem ridiculous.

The opinions in this blog posting will seem like babbling in the reality of a nation of murders by a society in which Black lives don't seem to matter very much.

What is worse is that though it might be a "few bad apples" who do these deeds, time and time again it is revealed that other officers gave the bad actor a free pass. And these officers murdering individuals act with the expectation that their behavior would be tolerated.

For people to believe in the rule of law we actually need to have the rule of law and not excuses or expressions of ain't it awful.

Regardless of the above, the officers killed were people going to their jobs, and there needs to be police for society to function, and they were killed by a delusional individual and that night there were people who loved these officers who realized they were never coming home.

The descent into savagery which we see nations and places descend into is because the humanity of individuals is forgotten. We must take action to avert going down a path which leads into this descent.

Since the above sounds like some treacly thing some local leader might say on TV so we all feel good about the situation so let me restate it.

The killing needs to stop, and it needs to stop soon, and those who kill need to be punished. While this problem exists we need to consider our actions.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans Commander-in-Chief has done writing in which never mentioning Black Lives Matter by name, has in his columns in the Confederate Veteran, had writing which I think is very clearly about the police shootings and Black Lives Matter and which attempts to represent the whole protest movement against the police shootings as wrong and the result of some nefarious movement.


Two

There are racist and reactionary political factions who like to portray calls for accountability in police behavior as somehow as an attack on the police. Everyone is accountable for their actions and this includes the police.

What is more disturbing is the assertion that lawless action by police is needed to preserve public order.

These racists are looking hard for any pretext to move the conversation or distract the conversation from the issue and to make it look like it is about attacking the police. In this environment Daniels's statements enable the opposition. Though I don't know how much a person is responsible for self-serving and dishonest actions of another.

Three

Looking at the pictures of Rakem Balogun and associates, I see khaki outfits and guns. What it reminds me most is This is Texas Freedom Force. I did look up the word Balogun and I think it means "war lord" in Nigerian. I have been to Scottish Highland festivals also. It all reminds me of Cosplay.

As a cultural geographer you realize that people in the late 20th century and in the 21st century consume identity. If you want to sell someone something sell an identity with it.

Nationalism is also a component of this movement which has names derived from Africa.

Nationalism is a European ideology with which the Western European nations created themselves as very powerful nations, and which many ethnic groups in Eastern Europe saw the means to wrest power from the Russian, German, Austrian, and Ottoman Empires in the late 19th and early 20th century.

It was seen as a means to achieve independence from European empires across the globe in the 20th. The idea of nations is the globally triumphant ideology such that we have trouble recognizing that it is an ideology and thinking outside of its concepts.

I think its ideological success comes from the fact that it has allowed dispossessed groups to achieve power.

Nationalism is what led to violent war in the 20th century. With World War I and II the 20th century is the century of violence. There were calls to have a conflict with Russia, there could have been a World War III, but it was realized that it would be a war of total destruction of of the Western world if not the radioactive poisoning of the Northern hemisphere. Nagasaki and Hiroshima with the small 20 and 40 kiloton bombs gave insight as to what 10 and 20 megaton bombs might do. Nationalism and violence seem follow each other in history.

Nationalism is a time worn strategy to create a state or to coalesce an identity to fight for rights, particularly when the dominating society is demeaning your identity. That is why there are parades or festivals in the United States for so many groups. We have Christopher Columbus day for Italian Americans, St. Patrick's Day for the Irish Americans, other groups have parades and days also. Solidarity in politics works.

Though now that persons with Irish ancestry are part of the dominate group and most white Americans and maybe most African Americans have some Irish ancestry, St. Patrick's day means green beer. Which is another thing about identities, they are put on like clothes when needed.

So these Black nationalist groups are latching on to a strategy which works for other groups.

Of course sense nationalism is imagined, a nationality can exist if you convince people of its existence. This creates an inherent instability. Is it Great Britain or Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and what about Cornwall, and then you can pull maps of the distant past and image further more nations. What about the Heptarchy? The success of a nationalist project depends also by suppressing other possible nationalisms.

Nationalistic difference within a state is separatism and thus threatens social unity. That is why the national American metaphor is the "melting pot" and there historically have been speeches against "hyphenated Americans."  However, the quickest way to get rid of "hyphenated Americans" is to truly eliminate prejudice against a group which is being hyphenated. Black nationalism exists since there really isn't a post-racial society in America and the "melting pot" is seen as a deceptive fiction.

You won't be very credible saying were are all in this together, when there is an ongoing pattern abuse by the police and others which make it very clear that we aren't.

I can see nationalism being used to keep from being co-opted by the system by being separatist, but I also see it as leading to carving out worlds of nationalist fantasy in which you can live inside.

In 2018 I see that with the Baloguns that African nationalism is still seen as a strategy.

All of the above is to explain that I find nationalism dubious, but I also find that these nationalists are the least accommodating of racism. So I think that they will continue to find follows.


Four

The Aljazeera article was on May 5th, the Guardian article was on the 11th, and the DMN didn't report it until the 14th after it was becoming an issue locally on Facebook. The DMN is still the Dallas Managed News. This is an important national story with a local connection. The DMN has a past history of doing things like this hence their nickname.

People in Dallas are somewhat annoyed, including myself, that the DMN does stuff like and I posted links here and there so that the story would be known and I was testing to see how the DMN would respond.

They just did a court report type article. No insight at all.

But never fear there is this article form the DMN.
https://www.guidelive.com/bars-and-cocktails/2018/05/15/waste-away-margarita-mile-app-dallas-new-cocktail-crawl#_ga=2.112256132.1647958528.1526036106-1544550825.1491865227

Four

The most serious thing about this whole "Black Extremist Identity" is that it seems elastic. In this article below I point out that you could create a classification "Confederate Identity Extremist."

http://atlantablackstar.com/2018/05/15/federal-judge-finally-releases-man-fbi-targeted-black-identity-extremist-now-hes-job-home/

Also, there seems to be selective enforcement involved.

It seems that the FBI combed through Daniels' past to find something on which to prosecute his ownership of a gun, though it is fairly apparent to anyone that this detailed going through Daniels' past was based on what Daniels' statements in the present.

Though one neo-Confederate group has said some quite threatening things online I haven't seen the FBI acting on them.

I pointed out the comments of Miss. State Rep. Karl Oliver who called for the lynching of opponents of Confederate monuments. Did the FBI visit him?

As frequently is the case, the government overreaches and threatens constitutional liberties with a case where the defendant is unpopular with the public, has done something where sympathy is little, and has limited support.

The Aesop fable of the small tree being surrendered to the woodsman resulting in the destruction of the great trees of the forest applies here.

I think that the FBI acted out of anger and once this BIE thing got started no one was willing to critically examine it, maybe because it was not politically tenable to ask questions. Maybe the FBI wanted to prosecute an African American so they could look "fair" when they went after white supremacists. Regardless, they have made themselves look less credible and look like they were influenced by Info Wars, a really ridiculous conspiracy website.