Between Clinton’s address and worldwide security alerts of anticipated retaliation by Al-Qaeda, the discourse has been less about celebrating the end of an era, and more about fortifying the War on Terror, expanding its scope and reach, increasing and exacerbating racialized securitization.
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The victory, we are told, is in delivering justice. But what measure of justice, and for whom? The governments of this world – a global war-profiteering military-industrial complex spoken for by corporate media – have pulled the trigger on Osama Bin Laden in time to save Obama’s re-election campaign, and to mute the significance of May Day in a climate of increased precarity and dispossession. By funnelling the opium of patriotism (America’s exception to nationalism), Obama might well be preparing the American people for another decade of war, and is undoubtedly shooting the already paralyzed working and tax-paying American in the foot.
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In effect, this theatrical display does not pay tribute to the victims of 9/11 (may they rest in peace), nor does it give more meaning to the lives of dead soldiers or the victims of the American-led missions in the region. It is an ecstatic tribute to a death-machine in which the only winners have been a global capitalist elite: arms companies, security apparati, criminal (and in many cases, outgoing) authoritarian regimes, and the many corporations that thrive on disaster. Even more offensive in the Ground Zero party is the continued racialization of what constitutes a grievable human life, such that similar celebrations (by minorities) following 9/11 were seen as evidence of an innately violent culture of death, but popular celebrations of an empty assassination valorize a fictional “justice”.
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If these dancing Americans, however, were to transform their fear and fascination with violence into rage and courage to occupy the same streets in protest, against the ruling elite that has profited from the loss and grief of 9/11 and the wars that followed, and the undemocratic corporate interests running their lives, they might find the arms of other ordinary working people from around the world extended in solidarity. More here.