I don’t know who needs to hear this, but people in power don’t need excuses to target the Left. They do it all the time without the specter of rightwing violence. We have to struggle over *what* the consequences for the far Right should be, not whether there should be any.

***Of course*** Biden and centrist Dems initial response is bad and about counterterrorism. Their worldview is bad! That’s why we have challenged them from the Left. One insurrection, even against them, isn’t going to change their long held beliefs. https://twitter.com/dnbrgr/status/1299727428743434241

But the concern trolling that suggests any official response is going to be used against the Left or against poor and BIPOC people misses that such repression against those constituencies is in full effect already—precisely because the Right rarely faces consequence.

That’s what mass incarceration is: not simply a lot of people being repressed, but a sorting mechanism for deciding who gets to riot or protest or play in the park or sleep safely at night—and who doesn’t.

So yes, counterterrorism responses are going to build upon an already racist & repressive carceral state that is overwhelmingly focused on leftists & BIPOC people. But that doesn’t mean nothing can or should happen to the revanchist insurrectionists, which included many police!

TL; DR abolition and antifascism are mutually constitutive, equally necessary lodestars for this moment.