Donald Trump, ICE,  and the globalisation of violence

A young mother carries her baby past a group of federal agents. (Pic courtesy: Ted Weiss/www.motherjones.com )

By threatening to use military force against people defending immigrants from horrific ICE  kidnappings, Trump has globalised this nasty feature because the rest of the world will follow the American example

As I grew up in semi-rural towns before my parents finally settled down in Colombo in the 1970s, I acquired a lot of Americana – pop music, Westerns, and literature. This was on my own. 

There was something magnetic about American rock bands, movies with actors such as Burt Lancaster, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Dirty Harry, and the books of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.

I wasn’t alone. In Piliyandala, there was a friend called Paani who was a rock music fan. Listening to 78rpm Santana and Grand Funk Railroad LPs on a Kenwood stereo in his living room was a revelation. Back in 1975, when Sri Lanka didn’t even have a TV station and I had never heard of globalisation, this was a way of connecting with a larger world. 

I must admit that I was politically immature. The dark side of American foreign policy – the napalm bombing of North Vietnam, coups in Latin America, backing dictators like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines – was overshadowed by the gloss of Americana and its seemingly inexhaustible supply of idols and superstars – from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, from Marlon Brando to Richard Gere, an unending line of artistic heights. In my mind, there was a firm line drawn between American politics and American culture, but culture superseded politics.

I suppose the line is still there. But Donald Trump has turned that into a fault line with shifting tectonic plates. By unleashing ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement against immigrants), he has shattered my old benign vision,  and deeply divided America. Till now, the violence was mainly unleashed outside of the US, by direct or proxy wars. Now, it’s internal as well. Squashing of internal dissent with brute force – long seen as a developing world characteristic – is now justified and directed from the White House. By threatening to use military force against people defending immigrants from horrific ICE  kidnappings, Trump has globalised this nasty feature because the rest of the world will follow the American example. 

‘The Ugly American,’ the title of a 1958 novel by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick critical of American foreign policy in Southeast Asia, became an euphemism for American arrogance and insensitivity to the cultures of Southeast Asia. It became almost a term of reference during the Vietnam war.

Even though the ‘The Ugly American’ re-surfaced again and again – especially during the George W. Bush era – the old beliefs that the US was a haven for immigrants persisted. Several of my friends too, have migrated and all are doing well. But, talking to them, I have always been puzzled by one thing. Most of them are anti-immigrant. They hate Barack Obama for being ‘soft’ to immigrants (despite the fact that three million immigrants were deported during Obama’s time), and praise President Donald Trump now for getting rid of them. 

America, white or black, is now deeply divided on this issue. It isn’t that all American liberals are pro-immigrant. But even those who want the flood of immigrants stopped are aghast at the way Trump and his hard liners are going about it. With Trump’s full approval, ICE gents have been terrorising American cities, kidnapping people from homes, workplaces and their vehicles in broad daylight, and in full public view.

In Sri Lanka, the word ‘ice’ puts fear into parents and  spouses because it denotes a commonly used narcotic. In America, ICE means the Federal Government. Its ICE agents in full battle gear wearing combat jackets saying ‘Federal Police’  descend in their hundreds, even thousands, into cities, terrorising communities. Minneapolis has been one of the worst hit, with a woman activist shot and killed by an ICE agent.

It looks like a civil war, with the Governor of Minneapolis vowing to use the National Guard against ICE agents. There is a level of brutality about ICE operations that stretches our credulity – people abducted in the streets, from their vehicles, and dragged away. These videos always show a crowd gathered around, trying to save the victim. But ICE agents carry pepper spray. They will use ‘non’ lethal bullets and even fire live rounds as they see fit.

In California, a 21-year-old was badly injured by  an ICE agent when he fired a ‘non-lethal’ round at the protesting youth. They were protesting verbally, not pelting stones. The round was fired at close range to the face, and the victim was dragged away, bleeding. He needed six hours of surgery to remove plastic and glass fragments from his eye and skull, and doctors said he was lucky to be alive.

America is on fire over the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and a prize-winning poet from Minneapolis. She was a volunteer tracking ICE activities in the cities (it’s not cities). ICE agents stopped her car but she tried to drive away, saying “I’m not mad at you.” 

As she turns her car to drive past a vehicle obstructing her path, an ICE agent shoots her three times in the face. A doctor rushes to the scene, saying “I am a doctor.” But agents block him, saying “We have our own medics.” By the time they arrive, she’s dead.

This shooting has divided America. But it’s not the only scene of graphic violence. In another video, a 79-year-old businessman is knocked down and manhandled very roughly (agents had come in looking for one of his employees) causing broken ribs. He’s now suing the Government.

Most people who are roughed up or abducted don’t have that ability. One video shows a young Latin American woman abducted at a traffic light. There are twelve ICE agents surrounding her car. One cuts the seat belt, and they pull her out as she screams “I’m autistic, I‘m going to the doctor” and drag her to an unmarked van.

It is inhuman, a far cry from my somewhat naive, childhood image of an America with resplendent stars. Or it may be that I was blind to the other America, with right-wing fanaticism and hatred of coloured immigrants.

This is finally a race issue. The US, already deeply divided as black and white, is now further fragmented by other colours. The hate is now directed mainly towards South Americans and Indians. Vice President JD Vance’s wife is Indian, and a practicing Hindu. Despite that contradiction, he’s firmly behind the anti-immigrant wave. White America has veered  towards Indian immigrants in looking for friendship, partnership and personal relationships while seeing China as the enemy. But Trump’s voter base thinks that Indians are ‘unclean’ and want to drive them out.

Can American society survive with all these contradictions? Fascism doesn’t officially exist in the US. But very clearly, a fascist psyche is at work. This is not an exact parallel to the rise of fascism In Europe in the 1930s, a result of the socio-economic chaos which followed World War I. The US is in some economic trouble, but this isn’t Weimar Germany of the 1920s. That’s why the rise of Donald Trump is more disturbing than the rise of fascist dictators in Europe. It’s not a problem that money can solve. Unless Trump’s supremacist voter base learns to respect minorities, the US will fall apart one day. This problem won’t end when Trump leaves the White House. As we saw with the Roman empire in decline, the emperors only kept getting worse and worse.

At the same time, there is a  disturbing question about the way women are treated in the US. Under Trump, kidnapping seems to have become an unofficial but approved instrument of state policy. While immigrants are kidnapped in American streets, Cilia Flores, wife of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the country’s First Lady, suffered injuries when she was abducted. A courtroom picture shows her with injuries to her face, and she is said to have a fractured rib. It isn’t known if she resisted her abductors, but it’s quite possible.

That’s within her rights, because this is no ordinary police arrest. Both she and her husband were abducted. The way she was treated during arrest is no different from how thousands of third world immigrants are treated by ICE agents in US. It puts the lie to any American claim to be a champion of human rights.