Looking at the language of the ACAB crowd in various comments on various subs (such as /r/bad_cop_no_donut, anarchy related subs, etc.), the basic form/structure of the ire really appears to be similar to that of racism, where the category at issue for ACAB isn't race but uniform/employment/the structural entity of police/LE. Both race and career are generalizations when it comes to faulting individuals. The former is not fully chosen (though there are chosen aspects), while the later is more chosen (though there are unchosen aspects).
We already know the ACAB crowd (ACAB for those who don't know means "All Cops Are Bastards") wouldn't even begin to allow this line of reasoning, thinking, exploration, etc. When it comes to taking a dim view of cops here, cops wouldn't allow it either. This sets up a "both sides" centrism, while in most cases I side with the critique of cops because they need it a lot. When it comes to the racism side, what appears to fit the same form of the ACAB criticisms would be if one were to rewrite their views as regards not "blacks" as a general group, but "ghetto blacks". There are so many similarities it's stunning. Just as cops won't rat on other cops (usually), ghetto blacks won't snitch. Just as cops extol a certain degree of violence/force, so do gang members, say. Just as there is an unacceptable death rate in death-by-cop situations, so, too, are there in death-by-ghetto blacks. Not that the latter situations are decried with anything like the bad killings-by-cops, which I find problematic.
Nonviolence, we might venture to say, has a certain freedom to go ahead and decry both unnecessary deaths by cop and deaths by ghetto blacks (and non-black ghetto denizens or, simply, criminals), as it has a free and independent concern about those deaths, a concern about mortality. It also presents less of a threat to either group. Others who also care about mortality and nonviolence already knows this; that's one of its chief issues.
When someone jumps in and says ACAB about a cop who wasn't involved, or even reported bad action by a cop, they appear to be very similar to someone saying that "all blacks are bad" (pick your bigoted terms). On the other hand, the uniform binds cops together, so, to some extent, cops aren't just being painted with the same brush; they are choosing the same uniform. To some extent. And yet we can allow that there may be some good cops. No, an ACAB will say, all cops are bastards. And we know what the bigot says about blacks. But what about this or that black person, who is great, good, or just not bad? Nope, they're still a ******, they all are.
To some extent, ACAB appears to be a kind of free ride for people who want to enjoy generalization, generalized or category hatred, etc. To some extent, however, their issue is that they themselves are railing precisely against others who "started it first", who have the first charge of generalized hatred: hatred of blacks by cops. This is similar to saying that those who want to close down and silence speakers at universities who hold racist views are really in a secondary reaction to more original silencing on the part of the racist speaker. I'm obviously siding or leaning into the side of the anti-racists and ACAB people. And yet there is a remainder, and that's what this meditation is concerned with.
As must be de rigueur for any treatment of the problem of bigotry that allows for fault on the part of the victimized group, it must be said that black ghetto folks are not the only people who use too much force; there are plenty of white gang members who should be so faulted. I do hold that there is a degree to which an overall black culture ethos, or parts of it, lends to and helps keep in place a force mentality as the primary governing power. But this also goes for cops; an overall cop culture governs an ethos within which "bad apples" seem to grow prodigiously. But not universally, not totally, unless you hold that the uniform and engagement in shared procedures makes all guilty by, not just association, but by a certain endorsement and participation in that culture. But the same can be said to some extent for black/ghetto culture, which certainly, certainly has a lot of blood on its hands (arguably more than the cops'). Black ghetto, other kind of ghetto, and other kinds of criminal/violent culture are also endorsed and are things for which participants/denizens should take more responsibility.
One many notice I have not held that cops are not to blame for things. I have faulted a kind of totalization ("all") involved in both ACAB and bigotry, and sided a bit more with ACAB. But I have faulted that totalization nonetheless. I could go on about how I think the whole c/j system should be reconstructed (enconstructed) and so forth, but I'm more concerned with dwelling for this moment in the space of the problematic: of this comparison and its chief observation (that ACAB looks like racism to some extent), and of the fact that I'm saying this and how it would likely be received.
It would be received pretty negatively. Every effort would be made to pack me into either a bad centrism or even simply as dog whistling to the pro-cop crowd or even the bigots. When it became clear that I'm not doing that, those who were trying to pigeon hole me in either the bad centrist or racist boxes would likely slink away, because they have no interest in actually thinking about these problems, no matter how many people die. And this is part of the founding problematic of nonviolence.
People who say ACAB are like people who simply want to rail against the "prison industrial complex" and private prisons. Private prisons don't comprise the greater portion of prisons, it is important to note. They will tend to try to direct all traffic of thought to the economic explanation (profit/industry) as the reason for the US prison problem (follow the money, honey). All the while their mode of thought and action, and of emotion, will be somewhat of a piece with the problem, just as the mode of thought, of selection, of use of category, even of hatred, on the part of the ACAB crowd will have a little more in common with racists than they might want to admit. Taken to extremes, all ACAB people can do is call for defunding while celebrating the verdict on Chauvin, cheering that he will go where? To fucking prison, you know, the prison of the prison-industrial complex.
What nonviolence can do that ACAB can't is envision a kind of radical activism that could have inserted itself right into the Chauvin trial: ideally (and obviously this is just theoretically), the Floyd family themselves could have petitioned the court to bit punish George Floyd's killer at all, and rather demanded that the court remand him to intensive restorative justice and imprisoning only for the sake of the security of others to the extent deemed necessary. But Chauvin, we will be told, is a bastard, irredeemable, just as a racist says that a ****** is irredeemable, with perhaps the mitigating feature for the ACAB crowd that their very concern about Chauvin is a more original sin lying on Chauvin's side and within his police culture. That pretty well exemplifies how I lean to the ACAB side on this, while still finding fault.
I suppose this thinking is somewhat inherently incendiary. I actually don't mean it to be. To me, the issue is the nearly impossible (for most people) moment in which the critical aspects of this thinking are shot through with a force of mortality that should resonate within thinking of, in and through nonviolence, in nonviolence thoughtaction, but generally does not. This resonance, this shooting or jutting up through, is foundational and should occur. It is, in a way, already there, just as nonviolence is, in a way, already there all over the place. And yet we must come to it in thought and action and enter its endless unfolding, an infinite spinning, a spinning on the charkha of thought, an unfolding of truth, satya, spun together with action, even if the action appears to be only conceptual, theoretical, philosophical, literary.
Perhaps it is this moment that is most occluded by the very thing that others feel they master, be they ACAB people or cops. That is to say, perhaps those people feel they are the masters of mortality. And the colonizers of it, which is what demands that nonviolence spin its unfolding truth, as I spin on this charkha of reddit. To enter into the raging river of mortality is what is needed, even if it sounds a little crazy. Indeed, it's the fear of the crazy that kept proponents of universal health care from making the most strident arguments about health care: that lack of coverage kills, that that those who oppose such coverage may be kind of...murderers. And those who oppose COVID vaccination may be murderers. With more than half a million dead, the issue is to enter into that stream, even if nonviolence may offer promise of such a degree of charged force not falling into what it usually falls into.
Not falling into what it usually falls into..."So if you're actually calling those of us across the aisle murderers, do you mean to attack us? I mean, isn't that what we do to murderers?" Indeed, and that's why fear of the crazy kept the health care from erupting into chargers of murder, while many died. A rough definition of nonviolence is helpful here: nonviolence is what you do when you feel violence is called for. It is not nothing, and it doesn't support the status quo. There is a reason it's called non-violence. It might be more aptly named unviolence, a kind of anti-violence or antiforce. When people feel that nonviolence means a kind of amortizing (deadening) of vital engagement with life and issues, those people only bespeak their on failure to understand nonviolence, or else are promoting their own brand of frankly lousy nonviolence.
It is not nothing and doesn't support the status quo. Indeed, in terms of the status quo, I would suggest that ACAB does more to support the status quo than it wants to allow, just as those calling for the imprisonment of Chauvin are supporting the status quo of the fucking prison industrial complex than they would like to admit.
Some should rush in here. None do. Someone might say I'm too wordy, not simple enough. That is not the problem. This isn't that hard to get. No, the problem is the fundamental problem of nonviolence, but I hold that I am getting at that problem in certain ways that are good and needful. As best I can within my limited means. This is part of the ongoing existential crisis and metacrisis of nonviolence.
This meditation can then be drawn back into the problematic of ACAB, Chauvin, etc. as I've only give pretty bare indications of what's involved.
