you guys, you can't talk about confronting white supremacy without talking about power. there's a difference between being a hateful jerk and being a hateful jerk with power.

i could stand on the street and scream 'i hate white honkeys!!!' right now today. i will be understood as crazy, not somebody to follow into an insurrection against the US.

think about all the sites of power that trump exists in. it's not just that he has the nuclear codes. he had 80 million followers on twitter. he had daily access to cable and broadcast news. he has protection of white supremacy, whereby 'white person' is NEVER criminalized.

white supremacy gives him the 'benefit of the doubt.' you see this in liberals going on about 'we shouldn't be mad at the working class workers that attacked the capitol.' giving those white people the 'benefit of the doubt,' is *power*.

if you think rich white men don't know about and manipulate that 'benefit of the doubt'--look at that wide eyed worried eager to make you understand it was all just an innocent mistake look you see from so many white men.

white people read that look and see their brothers and uncles and fathers assume goodness. *that is power*.

tucker carlson saying repeatedly that 'they don't LOOK radical,' about white people attacking the capitol--he is not just being hateful, he's using the legitimacy of his platform specifically say 'criminal' is carried on one's body, even IS one's body (pasty entitled nihilists).

that continues the conditioning we've all had from the time we were born that we look for criminality on people's bodies, not through the actions they take. that is power.

but what IS the power? that is--ok, donald trump declares 'mexicans are rapists' so we all assume that anybody who is mexican is a rapist. that is power, but why? where does the power play out?

first--of course, it means that ALL mexicans are ALWAYS rapists, we are ALWAYS under suspicion, we are ALWAYS understood as 'criminals.' but again, i can call all white people honkeys, and that doesn't mean much of anything, so why does it matter?

it matters bcz, for example, when a black person calls out that he has a gun and concealed carry permit in a pull over, he gets shot and killed by police--and the police become heroes for doing so.

institutional power to decide how to criminalize (looks).
institutional power to decide who will be criminalized (mexicans).
institutional power to decide how criminalization will be punished (deportation).

they all work together recreate a constant system of institutional power that means both my father AND i face constant calls of 'go back to where you came from' even as he faced a different type of criminalization (deportation) than I do (eg control of my reproductive choices).

or: generational systemic white supremacy. it may change and shift and play out in different ways from father to kid to grandkid--but that is a function of it's power and how power protects itself.

so. if you recognize that power exists in multiple sites and has the ability to transform itself through generations-that 'hate' is not primary motivator of white supremacy, *power* is--how does that change the current discussion about attack on capitol?

how does that change what actions we want to take? how does that change what we want to do? do we want to give white supremacists the benefit of the doubt? do we want to 'educate' all the republicans that were at the attack?

is that what the moral majority did? is that what the civil rights movement (who the moral majority modeled their organizing on)?

the hardest thing for me during this time: i want every single one of those fuckers to suffer. to be punished, the way all the innocent people were punished post 911. i want that with all my heart. but.

as things are starting to click in, i'm also having ptsd hits here and there. bcz holy fuck. they FBI found somebody based on a patch they had on their jacket. i'm fucking terrified about how this tech will be used against my children.