Excerpt:
Political violence isn’t an aberration in U.S. history—it’s a through-line from the colonies to Reconstruction to January 6. A 2025 lecture by political scientist Desmond King argues that America’s constitutional order has long accommodated violence outside the state, exposing the limits of the classic “Weberian” monopoly on legitimate force. Meanwhile, on Europe’s edge, a new analysis names the mass deaths of migrants as the system’s preferred “solution” to the South’s agrarian crisis. Together, these arguments challenge our civic myths—and sharpen a Green, pro-peace framework rooted in Dearborn’s plural, global conscience.
“The partiality of the federal government’s authority to control the legitimate exercise of physical force…is a fundamental source enabling political violence to endure.” [1]
The sentence lands like a gavel. In his Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture (published 2025), Desmond King threads a bracing thesis: the United States has always made room for organized violence by actors beyond the state, before and after the Constitution of 1787–1789. The result isn’t random outbursts but a durable accommodation—from slave patrols and lynch mobs to paramilitaries and, most recently, January 6 defendants who could expect mercy from political patrons. That’s not a glitch; it’s a recurring feature of the American political order. [1]
To see why this matters now, pair King’s analysis with a 2025 essay in MR Online arguing that the mass death of migrants at Europe’s maritime borders isn’t a policy failure but a structural outcome of global capitalism: the “solution” to the South’s unresolved agrarian question is premature death—“systemic genocide”—and, most visibly, drowning at sea. [2] This is not rhetorical shock for its own sake. The data are intolerably specific: 10,457 people died or disappeared in 2024 trying to reach Spain via maritime routes, the deadliest year on record along the Atlantic passage to the Canary Islands. [3][4][5]
The threads—U.S. political violence and Europe’s border deaths—are woven by power, law, and the limits of what the state chooses to protect.
A republic that accommodates violence
Max Weber famously defined the state as the community that successfully claims the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a territory. [6] King’s point is that the United States often waives that claim—formally, informally, or selectively. This explains why political violence can be intrinsic and recurrent even as institutions appear stable.
- Reform through confrontation. From the 1960s onward, scholars like Frances Fox Piven have argued that disruption—sometimes spilling into force—has been a necessary catalyst when institutions are unresponsive. [7][8] Ted Lowi, writing during an earlier crisis of legitimacy, described a politics that “accepts disorder” as part of social change. [9][10] That may sound unsettling until you put names to the stakes: starvation wages in Lawrence (1912), racial terror in the Jim Crow South, police impunity in modern cities. The moral is not that violence is good; it’s that violence was already there, embedded in “routine” power relations, long before windows were broken.
- Self-defense and the civil rights movement. The record is clear: nonviolent organizers often survived because communities practiced armed self-defense at the edges of marches and mass meetings. Charles E. Cobb Jr. documents the local networks—Deacons for Defense in Jonesboro, Louisiana; unnamed defense groups in Alabama; veterans like Medgar Evers—who quietly deterred white supremacist violence. [11][12][13] Akinyele Omowale Umoja shows the same pattern in Mississippi: nonviolent direct action depended on armed neighbors to blunt terror. [14][15] Robert F. Williams, in Negroes with Guns, made the provocative claim that retaliation and self-defense were dictated by America’s racial order, not by choice. [16][17] Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton put it plainly: “Black people should and must fight back.” [18]
- Racial order, legalized. From the 1741 New York conspiracy panics (and the slave watches and gun bans they energized) to Dred Scott’s infamous declaration of Black non-citizenship, law and extra-legal terror worked in tandem. [19][20] The Draft Riots of 1863, the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, the routine use of lynching and chain gangs—none happened outside politics; they were politics by other means. [21][22][23]
- Impunity by policy. Andrew Johnson’s sweeping post-Civil War amnesties taught a lesson: rebel elites could expect restoration, not reckoning. [24][25][26] That logic echoes in the modern era. By late 2024, the Justice Department had charged more than 1,500 people in nearly all 50 states for January 6 crimes, including over 560 accused of assaulting or impeding police. [27][28][29] Yet on January 21, 2025, broad clemency orders freed high-profile leaders—Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers (18 years) and Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys (22 years), among others—alongside a large class of defendants. [30][31][32][33] The promise of pardons had been telegraphed for years—“full pardons with an apology to many” (2022)—and reiterated in a contentious July 31, 2024 interview: asked whether he’d pardon those who assaulted police, the answer was “Oh absolutely… if they’re innocent.” [34][35][36] The signal lands: political violence may be punished—but it may also be forgiven when it serves powerful patrons.
“A state…claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.” The word claims is doing a lot of work here. [6]
Key figures at a glance
- 10,457 deaths/disappearances on routes to Spain in 2024—the deadliest year on record. [3][4][5]
- 1,500+ people charged in federal court for the Jan. 6 attack as of early 2025. [28]
- 22 years (Tarrio) and 18 years (Rhodes): top Jan. 6 sentences before 2025 clemency. [31][32]
Europe’s edge: “migrant genocide” as structure, not scandal
The MR Online analysis takes a hard line: European states face a contradiction—they cannot absorb the labor reserves created by the South’s unresolved agrarian crisis. In this view, the system’s grim workaround is lethal bordering: drownings at sea, pushbacks, and attritional precarity that shortens lives. [2] You don’t have to endorse every theoretical leap to reckon with the numbers.
Caminando Fronteras, the NGO tracking the Atlantic and Western Mediterranean routes, reported 10,457 deaths or disappearances to Spain in 2024—about 30 per day, with staggering losses on the Atlantic passage from West Africa. [3][4][5] The UN’s IOM recorded 2,452 deaths on the broader Mediterranean in 2024 and nearly 9,000 globally, while warning that true counts are higher. [37][38][39] Reuters notes more than 63,000 deaths or disappearances worldwide since 2014, most in the Mediterranean. [40]
This isn’t a story of “no policy.” It’s a web of deterrence, outsourcing, and enforcement finance that channels flows into deadlier paths. If that sounds abstract, here’s the ground truth: a fibreglass boat loading in Mauritania; a child’s name never entered on a manifest; a satellite phone’s last ping in the Atlantic.
“Generalized premature death in the South and migrant slaughter at sea are two sides of the same phenomenon.” [2]
For Greens—and for Dearborn—the ethical test is simple: If the price of “order” is mass death, the order is illegitimate. The pro-peace platform demands safe pathways, rescue infrastructure, and an end to policies that turn the sea into a sorting machine.
How the two stories rhyme
Accommodation of violence in the U.S. and externalization of violence at Europe’s borders may look different, but they share a political logic:
- Selective protection. Who is protected by the state’s “monopoly” and who is left to “private” force? In the U.S., Black communities have lived the answer since Reconstruction; activists survived because neighbors stood guard. [11][14] At sea, migrants are left to physics and chance. [3][37]
- Impunity signals. Pardons for Confederates, indulgence for lynchers, “hostage” rhetoric for January 6 defendants—these all say: certain kinds of violence can be excused. [24][25][33] In Europe, serial pushbacks and the criminalization of rescue say: the deaths are tragic, yes, but priced in. [3][5][37]
- Narrative cover. U.S. public discourse often treats racialized violence as “outside politics,” a framing scholars like Megan Ming Francis have spent careers dismantling; when violence is system-embedded, treating it as exogenous guarantees we never fix it. [41] In Europe, the border death toll is filed under “crisis management,” not as the foreseeable result of policy choices documented year after year. [37][38]
There’s a fourth rhyme: resistance works when it’s rooted in community safety, broad coalitions, and clear non-negotiables about human dignity. That lesson travels—from SNCC mass meetings paired with night sentries to modern sanctuary networks and civil sea rescues.
“Beneath the surface of nonviolent rhetoric and strategy, armed self-defense was necessarily at work to protect nonviolent civil rights activists.” [11][12][14]
A Green, pro-Palestine lens—without blinders
To be pro-Palestine is to insist that state violence be governed by international law, not impunity; that sieges and collective punishment end; and that U.S. complicity stop—now. The Green Party has called for immediate ceasefire, an arms embargo, and a return to the 1967 borders framework as a starting point for political resolution—positions rooted in nonviolence and universal rights. [42][43][44] These commitments don’t compete with support for Ukrainian civilians or Sudanese refugees; they complete each other. The thread is non-negotiable human dignity and equal standards—the opposite of the discretionary monopolies that breed cynicism and violence.
And if anyone tells you that solidarity is zero-sum, remember: Detroit-River conscience doesn’t run out when it crosses the Atlantic.
What Dearborn can do
Dearborn is a majority-MENA city with deep Black, Arab, and immigrant histories. [45][46] We know, intimately, how policy and narrative shape whose safety counts. So let’s act with the clarity of lived memory:
- Make facts public goods. Partner libraries, mosques, churches, and schools to host teach-ins on American political violence (King’s thesis), civil rights self-defense histories (Cobb, Umoja, Carter Jackson), and border deaths (IOM, Caminando Fronteras). Put data in people’s hands. [1][11][14][3][37]
- Demand consistent law. Locally, push for police accountability and due-process protections that actually reduce community harm. Nationally, insist that clemency not become a reward for political violence while nonviolent protestors face harsh penalties. [28][30][31]
- Humanity at the border. As a city of migrants, we can amplify rescue, legal aid, and sponsorship networks—and pressure representatives to fund safe pathways and end lethal deterrence. [37][38]
- Say the quiet parts out loud. The U.S. accommodated “private” violence to police its racial order; Europe is outsourcing lethal bordering to manage a global labor contradiction. Naming things accurately is the prerequisite for changing them.
At Dearborn Blog, our voice is consistent: We are pro-peace, pro-truth, pro-community safety, pro-Palestine, and pro-humanity. We’re skeptical when power sanctifies force, and we’re allergic to fatalism. The United States can choose a fuller, fairer monopoly on protection. Europe can choose rescue and regularization over drift and drown. None of this is automatic. It’s politics, the kind you practice every time you widen your circle and tighten your standards.
If someone calls that disorder, we’ll take the kind that saves lives.
“Immigration is the way imperialism’s contradictions return to the core… the migrant genocide is the system’s structural ‘solution’ to the South’s agrarian question.” [2]
Sources
[1] King, Desmond. “American Political Violence (The Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2023).” Government and Opposition 60, no. 2 (2025): 289–312. DOI: 10.1017/gov.2024.33. Cambridge University Press page; Oxford/Nuffield release. Cambridge University Press & Assessment+1
[2] Suárez, Iker. “The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle.” MR Online, June 18, 2025. MR Online
[3] Caminando Fronteras. Monitoring the Right to Life—2024: 10,457 deaths/disappearances on routes to Spain. Caminando Fronteras
[4] ECRE (European Council on Refugees and Exiles) brief on 2024 Atlantic route deaths and Canary Islands arrivals. European Council on Refugees and Exiles
[5] Al Jazeera / RFI coverage of 2024 Spain-bound deaths. Al Jazeera+1
[6] Weber, Max. Politics as a Vocation (1919). Oxford/Balliol extract. Balliol College, University of Oxford
[7] Piven, Frances Fox. Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006). Excerpts. University of Minnesota Duluth+1
[8] Piven interview on disruptive power and protest. Jacobin
[9] Lowi, Theodore J. The Politics of Disorder (1971). Abstract/Internet Archive. Office of Justice Programs+1
[10] DOJ OIG context on January 6 failures (background on security environment). DOJ Inspector General
[11] Cobb Jr., Charles E. This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed (Duke UP page). Duke University Press
[12] Basic Books page for Cobb (overview). Hachette Book Group
[13] National Archives: Deacons for Defense and Justice (founding in Jonesboro, LA). National Archives
[14] Umoja, Akinyele Omowale. We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (NYU Press/JSTOR). NYU Press+1
[15] Rep Club listing/overview of Umoja’s work. Reparations Club
[16] Williams, Robert F. Negroes with Guns (book pages). Amazon
[17] Background on Negroes with Guns. Wikipedia
[18] Carmichael, Stokely & Hamilton, Charles V. Black Power—excerpted PDF with “Black people should and must fight back.” cdnsm5-ss1.sharpschool.com
[19] New York Conspiracy of 1741: primary resources and overviews (Gilder Lehrman; UMKC Law). Gilder Lehrman Institute+1
[20] Dred Scott v. Sandford summary (Oyez). Oyez
[21] New York Draft Riots (Britannica). Encyclopedia Britannica
[22] Wounded Knee (NPS background). National Park Service
[23] 2025 Wounded Knee medals coverage (AP/WaPo/The Guardian updates). AP News+2The Washington Post+2
[24] Andrew Johnson’s amnesty proclamations—texts and archives. Miller Center+2The American Presidency Project+2
[25] Educational/archival summaries of Johnson’s sweeping pardons. NCPedia+1
[26] Historical context of rapid restoration to former Confederates. Lowcountry Digital History Initiative
[27] DOJ press updates on total Jan. 6 charges mid-2024. Department of Justice
[28] DOJ updates Sep–Oct 2024 (1,504+ charged; 560+ assault/impeding LE). Department of Justice+1
[29] Fourth-anniversary DOJ summary (Jan. 6, 2025). Department of Justice
[30] PBS NewsHour: Jan. 21, 2025 clemency releases for Tarrio/Rhodes. PBS
[31] AP: Tarrio’s 22-year sentence (pre-clemency). AP News
[32] NBC/LA Times: Rhodes’s 18-year sentence and release after clemency. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth+1
[33] Al Jazeera roundup on mass Jan. 6 pardons. Al Jazeera
[34] Washington Post (2022): “full pardons with an apology to many.” The Washington Post
[35] ABC7 / ABC News coverage of NABJ interview (July 31, 2024). ABC7 Los Angeles+1
[36] Fact-checks and reporting on NABJ exchange. PolitiFact
[37] IOM: 2024 was among the deadliest years; Mediterranean deaths 2,452. International Organization for Migration
[38] AP: nearly 9,000 migrant deaths worldwide in 2024. AP News
[39] Migration Data Portal / ECRE Mediterranean updates (2024–2025). Migration Data Portal+1
[40] Reuters: 63,000+ deaths or disappearances since 2014. Reuters
[41] Francis, Megan Ming—on embedding racial violence within political analysis. (Representative scholarship; see 2019 article on movement capture and public policy.) JSTOR
[42] Green Party U.S.: ceasefire statements and policy positions on Gaza (2023–2025). www.gp.org+2www.gp.org+2
[43] GPUS explainer on Right of Return and anti-imperialism. Green Party of the United States
[44] PA Greens statement anchoring nonviolence and self-defense. www.gp.org
[45] Detroit Free Press: Arab Americans now a majority in Dearborn (2023). Detroit Free Press
[46] ClickOnDetroit local coverage of MENA-majority milestone (2023). WDIV
Disclaimer: Dearborn Blog provides news analysis and commentary for educational purposes. We rely on reputable primary documents and journalism, but facts and legal interpretations can evolve. Nothing here constitutes legal advice. Views expressed reflect a commitment to human rights, nonviolence, and international law consistent with Green values. Readers should consult the original sources above and multiple perspectives before acting on this information. Dearborn Blog assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions or for outcomes arising from reliance on this content.
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