Lesson Six: Be Wary of Paramilitaries
Paramilitaries are armed forces that are unconstrained by the law. They have limited oversight or accountability and soldiers believe they have blanket immunity from prosecution. Paramilitaries are used to undermine democracy and to establish and maintain the dual state.
I worked on this piece on Martin Luther King Day while I read dozens of reflections of his work. I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail in full for the first time. For most of my life it seemed like a relic from a distant past. Not anymore.
I’ve been to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I’ve seen the history that some want hidden.
The United States, the American South in particular, perfected the dual state.
A dual state is when one group of people enjoys all the rights and privileges as defined by law (the normative state) while those outside that group do not (the prerogative state).
Those in the prerogative state are not protected by the Bill of Rights, so they never know from day to day, or encounter to encounter, what the rules are. The law is irrelevant. The rules change depending on the mood of the individual they meet.
The dual state does not exist accidentally. It is constructed through fear, codified, and protected by “tradition.”
The civil rights movement sought to dismantle the dual state.
Those who advocate for equality are often demonized as leftists, socialists or even communists. Demanding equal application of the law, of the Bill of Rights is none of these; it is the liberalism on which the United States was founded.
It is also the way of Jesus.
The entire Bible tells the story of a God who fights against the kind of tyranny that exists in the dual state, which is what gave Dr. King hope.
On the night before his assassination, Dr. King spoke of going to the mountaintop and seeing the promised land. He believed that the dual state was not destiny.
He knew that it would collapse because Americans were finally learning the truth. They had seen the devastation wrought by the dual state in Germany and their eyes were finally open to the dual state that existed in their own backyard.
He believed that the God of the universe was on the side of justice.
What we must understand today is that the dual state never completely went away, it just retreated to the shadows. There have always been people whose constitutional rights are violated and for which there was no redress.
More importantly, there have been those who have worked to restore the dual state. There are those who don’t believe in liberty and justice for all. For them, it’s not about racism, it’s about power and they exploit the racism of others to gain the power they desire.
Since at least the Civil War, the federal government has sought to force the states to abide by the Constitution by dismantling state laws that uphold dual state systems. This is why some groups have opposed federal interference in local affairs.
Now, the role of the federal government has changed. It seems to be no longer interested in protecting the liberty of individuals against the state.
Many see the issue of immigration as the catalyst for the federal government to reestablish and expand the dual state by normalizing routine violations of the fourth and fifth amendments and dehumanizing entire groups of people in order to justify the inequality.
If you read this far and you’re wondering why people are opposing I.C.E., it’s because they believe in the rights of the individual. They are not fighting to protect criminals; they are fighting to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution from a federal government they see as destroying it.
Snyder says in this chapter:
“When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.”
When the government sends in militarized forces, promises them immunity, and they repeatedly violate the rights of individuals, the dual state has come.
These are dark times, but it’s important that we not give into despair. We must keep vigilant. That was the message that Jesus told his followers and what I think Dr. King was saying.
The end is not the end. The end is the beginning. In Jewish tradition, the new day begins at sundown, in the dark. God comes like a thief in the night.
God will show up and move to free the oppressed and bring justice, and when God comes to bend the moral arc of history, we better be ready to move.
This is part 6 of a series inspired by my reading of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons Learned From the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder as part of my effort to offer Christian insight to those wondering what to do in this moment.