Copaganda at the Federal Level

So far, I've only mentioned Alec Karakatsanis on here within my Twitter or BlueSky round-ups. He's a civil rights lawyer and founder of an organization called Civil Rights Corps. He's written two books, Usual Cruelty (2019) and very recently, Copaganda. 

Not surprisingly, copaganda is one of the things I associate him with. As you can infer from the portmanteau, it's defined as "propaganda efforts to shape public opinion about police or counter criticism of police and anti-police sentiment." Think: every fiction T.V. show you've ever seen, and most T.V. news about crime, where the police version of events is repeated without checking it for factualness.

Karakatsanis had a thread on BlueSky a few days ago about the Republicans' recently passed House reconciliation bill. To see all the responses, screen snapshots from the bill that illustrate his points, and links to other things he mentions, check out the thread, but I know he won't mind if I do a little bit of amplification by reposting most of it here:

A lot of attention is rightly going to Medicaid cuts and other very bad things in Trump's bill passed by the House, but there's something else that isn't getting enough attention, that is very difficult to find in any news coverage, but that will fundamentally alter life for all of us.

The bill provides for $160 billion in border and immigration funding in the next 4.5 years. It's difficult to describe the unprecedented scope of this, but I'll try: tens of thousands of armed agents in every corner of society are going to be virtually immune from state prosecution or civil suits.

I want to focus on a few things. First, when you build infrastructure like this and create new jobs/pensions for right-wing unions, it's hard to ever remove them. This new gestapo could become a permanent feature of our lives.

Second, the bill sets the stage for massive privatized, for-profit concentration camps. It will quadruple the capacity of ICE to detain people—giving it capacity to detain, in for-profit arrangements where corporations make money per person per day, at least 100,000 more people.

Third, the United States will be flooded with new armed agents that are virtually unaccountable. The legal and institutional mechanisms by which any of them could be held accountable are almost non-existent, either in criminal or civil court.

You must understand this point in combination with the government's assertions that it can sell anyone it wants to indefinite life-long torture camps in other countries, and that courts are powerless to bring them home—even if it is a total error or the person is U.S. citizen.

It's astonishing to me that there is almost no mainstream coverage of these aspects of the bill.

Fourth, we have arrived at this point not just through far-right fear-mongering and bold fascist planning. The Democratic Party, mainstream news, and even many self-serving liberal professors/nonprofits are responsible, and it's vital to see that point if we are going to change course.

This is the result of Dems/liberals not only building much of the infrastructure for decades, but engaging in flat-earth fear-mongering about immigration and crime that bears no relation to fact. But it's deeper, it's about deeply immoral, unserious, and incoherent elite liberal framing/positions.

It is vital that the anti-fascist coalition not adopt the lies, mythologies, assumptions, and policies of the fascists. Most of what you're told about crime, immigration, policing, etc. is copaganda that must be rejected by people who care about a better, more just, less violent world.

The core lies shared by Democrats, Republicans, and the New York Times are: (1) that the greatest threats we face come from poor people (especially people of color), immigrants, and strangers; (2) that violence is always increasing; (3) that state violence/repression/punishment are the solution to make us safe.

Each of these is false. Most interpersonal violence is perpetrated by people who know each other, and the scope of death/property crime caused by people with money/power dwarfs all other harm. Interpersonal violence is at historic lows, and all evidence shows more state repression doesn't make us safe.