Rising Waters ---- The present is unbearable. Genocidal violence
continues to be the language of daily life. Mass starvation in Gaza hasset in as Israel and its allies (most notably the United States) push
onwards towards their objective of the total annihilation of the
Palestinian people. Despite the marches and the banner drops and the
sabotage and the blockades, the bombs keep getting dropped and the
genocide continues. ---- Genocidal violence, no less devastating but
less easily digestible by a broadly anti-Black consumer and less neatly
mappable onto the preferred geopolitics of a certain brand of
state-worshipping "radical", continues to devastate a myriad of peoples
in Sudan. Starvation grows alongside the profits reaped by weapons
manufacturers in the U.S., China, the U.A.E., Iran, Ukraine, and Russia,
just to name a few happy to make a buck off of massacres.
In the U.S., xenophobic violence continues to erupt in every locale as
ICE attempts to will into existence the white supremacist wet-dream that
is an "America", built from the jump in the ideology of colonization and
chattel slavery, taken to its logical conclusion. Where there are police
(badged or otherwise) there continues to be the brutality of policing.
Where there are prisons there are daily nightmares of imprisonment.
The flood waters rise and those tethered to the ground gasp for air as
the mud rushes in.
Amidst the carnage that is the inherent logic of a world built on the
horror of racial capitalism, many seem to be opening their eyes for the
first time, struggling to make sense of the whirlwind of atrocities
enacted, daily, before the clock even strikes noon. In a desperate
flailing to grab onto any solid ground that may preserve the illusion of
an America sans this myriad of unfathomable violence, I have seen many
latch onto a series of discrete phenomena to explain where it all went
wrong. They focus on the masks worn by the modern day gestapo, on
decorum, on legal process, on "rights". The present violence of mass
deportations, of police brutality, of genocidal violence is stripped any
historical context, exceptionalized as some aberrant force spontaneously
erupting out of an otherwise "peaceful" status quo.
Self-described radicals even get in on the act, emphasizing these
violences as exceptional in an attempt to court a liberal audience
towards their moderately less liberal projects without risking too
antagonistic a critique of the weapons they wish to one-day wield. They
decry immigrant detention centers while ignoring the prisons in their
downtowns. They call for pushing ICE out of the courthouses but make way
for the judges and prosecutors sending their neighbors to fates equally
as grim.
Even at the genocidal scale, exceptionalization creeps in to defend the
nation state from the horrific demonstrations of its logical
conclusions. Israel must be unique lest we be forced to contend with the
violence inherent to every vestige of state power, lest we be forced to
acknowledge the enemy is everywhere and the solution to genocide is not
so simple as choosing a "righteous" state to align ourselves with.
I say this, not to take away from the necessity for resistance to ICE or
to Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, but to push them
further. I say this to demand the expansion of specific resistive
antagonisms against discrete iterations of state violence into
generalized antagonism against every death machine that is produced by,
and in turn reproduces, the horror that is a world of racial capitalism.
In order for that antagonism to generalize, we must be able to recognize
the ways in which this world has always been hell for so many. If you
hear distant waves crashing on the shore, someone has long been
drowning. If you smell smoke, someone has been burning alive. The hell
of this moment is a path of scorched earth that many (possibly you
included) have long been forced to endure, well before the flames
reached the horizon of the broader societal purview.
The present is unbearable, but so too was every present prior.
Exceptionalization of discrete manifestations of systemic violence
cannot bring about that violence's end, it can only serve to entrench
and normalize all violence deemed less exceptional. In order to make
this point clear, I want to focus on a few examples of present
exceptionalization and then end with a reutterance of my belief that it
either it all goes or it all stays the same. Either we recognize this
system of racial capitalism (and the states which serve/are served by
it) as a totality, or we will continue to live half-lives within a
leviathan that can only make death. I hope you find some use in the
words that follow.
The Exceptionalization of ICE and Ceding Ground to Policing
Ever since Trump began his second run for the presidency, he has riled
up his base with xenophobic and racist promises of mass deportations.
Since taking office, his administration has sought to make good on those
promises. Every day brings new footage of raids in parking lots of
hardware stores, courthouses, neighborhoods. The most spectacular of
these raids have been occurring in major cities with prominent Latinx
communities, most notably Los Angeles, but they are now endemic to any
locale with a population vulnerable in the context of "legally" being in
this country.
The raids are often horrific. Children are ripped from the arms of
screaming parents and care givers. Heavily armed men in masks kidnap
people just going about their day, throwing them into unmarked cars,
taking them to concentration camps, and seeking to deport them wherever
as fast as possible. This violence is horrific, but it is not
exceptional and it does not arise out of thin air. It is painfully banal
to the operation of this world. This is what policing the border has
always meant, at least for those being policed. Hell, this is what
policing, itself, has always been to those caught within its field of view.
While often coming from a place of genuine concern, the effort to evoke
a reaction by exceptionalizing present, spectacular, violence of ICE can
only serve to entrench the violence of borders and police more broadly.
By fixating on the masks worn by agents seeking to hide their
identities, one inherently cedes rhetorical (and ethical) ground towards
the agents who show their face. By fixating on "due process" one
inherently justifies the deportation of all those who have been granted
the great privilege of being dehumanized by the sociopaths wearing robes
and banging gavels.
The problem is not with the masks, it is not with a lack of "due
process", the problem is that people are being targeted as legitimate
prey by machines that want only their annihilation. If their kidnappers
showed their faces, if every deportee was paraded in front of a judge
before being shipped away, the violence they face would still be an
incomprehensible brutality that I cannot live with. This isn't even
hypothetical. The millions of people deported under the Obama
administration were subjected to this same system of violence, just in
less spectacular fashion. The present escalation of scale and spectacle
amounts to a gaining of ground for the machine of border policing. Even
if, at some point, the scale of this violence is rolled back slightly
(which will surely be touted as a victory for the activists and liberal
politicians), the ground gained in this moment will ensure that any
rolling back maintains the steady march forward for the death machine of
border enforcement. That is, if we remain unable to articulate a
position against the death machine in totality.
Similar to the fixation on discrete escalations, the hyper fixation on
the "good" immigrants being targeted, implicitly cedes that there are
people who are, in fact, legitimate prey for these machines. When you
speak only towards defending those without criminal records, who have
never been a part of a gang, who have never been "violent", you create a
categorization of people for whom an imposition of this suffering (that
of concentration camps, torture, humiliation, deportation) is justified.
This categorization can only every expand once it has been set, an
expansion aided by those who believe themselves to be "on the right side
of history".
Not only does the exceptionalization of present ICE violence reify the
violence of border policing writ large, it also deepens the entrenchment
of the violence of all policing and imprisonment. Every arrest is an
immediately violent act and a promise of violence in the future. There
is the obvious violence of police brutality that has become mundane in a
daily life of genocidal images on screens. Police crack necks with their
knees, fill bodies full of holes with their bullets, break limbs and
ribs and connective tissue as they pin and subdue their targets. People
are turned into meat beneath the weight of law enforcement. This is a
phenomenon that has existed as long as there have been police. None of
this is new, none of this is exceptional.
Even the arrests that occur "without incident" carry an inherent
violence that is difficult to explain to someone who has not experienced
it. There is an inherent humiliation, subjugation, to being bound,
thrown into the back of a car, brought against your will to a cage. You
become an object to be disposed of, you realize you may always have been.
Imprisonment has always been violent. You are kept from those you love,
from those who love you. You are tortured with inedible food, solitary
confinement, threats of beatings, actual beatings. Again, none of this
is new, none of this is a recent escalation (beyond the expansion of who
is considered legitimate prey for these systems). Prisons are, and
always have been, concentration camps. Understanding points of
escalation is necessary in order to find ways to undermine the death
machines of imprisonment. However, speaking towards the concentration
camps built to house undocumented migrants as though they are wholly
removed from the prisons built to house the non-migrant "criminal" can
only serve to simultaneously legitimize those non-migrant concentration
camps and hinder our ability to undermine the systems of imprisonment
writ large.
For those of us who desire an end to the world of police and prisons, it
is vital that we are able to analyze the alterations and escalations
within those systems without exceptionalizing discrete phenomena. All
exceptionalization can ever lead to is the normalization of all that is
deemed non-exceptional, a category that will grow to include ever more
incomprehensible brutality as those in power grow bolder in their desire
to punish and more desperate in their need to project control.
The Exceptionalization of Trump
I will attempt to keep this section as concise as possible, given any
discussion of Trump runs the risk of becoming a game of whack-a-mole in
trying to make sense of the hundred absurd statements made or actions
taken each day. My focus here will be on how the exceptionalization of
Trump as some unique phenomenon, rather than a single manifestation of a
myriad of decades long projects that span multiple continents, exposes
the vulnerability of a liberal populace who believe themselves to be
facing a localized aberration of their country's "true" nature.
Trump is not some fluke, some aberrant force that has wandered aimlessly
into power. Trump is simply the current, American, face of a collection
of movements (Christian nationalism, techno-feudalism, white
nationalism, etc.) that have been building in many countries for the
last fifty years. And while Trump has served those movements well (and
continues to serve them well) he is not the movement, and they will
continue without him. Italy has Giorgia Meloni, Germany has the AfD, the
UK has Nigel Farage, to name only a few faces of right-wing, white
nationalist movements perfectly capable of carrying the torch of
bringing racial capitalism to its logical conclusion of neo-fascism and
genocide.
I see many, from liberals to radicals, seeming to hold their breath and
wait for the Trump administration to pass. Leaving aside the possibility
(likelihood?) of this administration refusing to even allow another
election, the movements who have given rise to Trump will not cease even
if his administration exits the executive branch of governmental power.
These movements have already gained far too much ground culturally,
socially, politically. Any time these movements find themselves without
explicit governmental control, they will continue to build social
control. They will pour billions of dollars into further entrenching the
ideologies of anti-Blackness, xenophobia, cisheterosexism, colonization,
etc. into every cultural space they can while they wait for a new figure
head to lead them back to governmental power.
Not only will the movements Trump represents continue well beyond his
exit as their figure head, the window of mainstream politics has lurched
so far rightward that even the politicians of the so-called "resistance"
mostly range from collaborators to outright participants in these
movements. For fuck's sake, the Biden administration are explicit
collaborators in one of the most visible genocides in recent history.
The democrats shift ever rightward in an effort to court some
non-existent "moderate" voter, furthering the expansion of legitimate
prey to the death machines they yearn to regain control of. As I write
this, Gavin Newsome continues to build his own cult of personality much
to the delight of liberals desperate for a more agreeable boot to lick.
Pay no mind towards his policy of brutality against California's
homeless and incarcerated. Surely his possible ascendancy to the
presidency wouldn't be another example of the steady rightward march of
American governmental politic.
There also exists this bizarre lost-cause rhetoric around a republican
party that was once noble but has now "lost its way" that I've seen make
its way into much of the mainstream liberal discourse as though Reagan
and Bush were not part of the very movements those same liberals now
decry. This rewriting of history can only serve to entrench the actual
politics of those individuals as acceptable and even desirable to the
liberals espousing such rhetoric. If anyone in this moment mentions
Reagan with any hint of fondness, please remind them of his genocidal
position towards the faggots and junkies by introducing a used needle to
their eye socket. If anyone mentions Bush in a similar light, consider
beating them to death with a shoe.
Exceptionalizing Trump as some aberrant force, rather than the logical
conclusion of a colonial state flailing to maintain power in the slow
death march of racial capitalism can only blind us to the mechanisms
that actually produce and reproduce the hell world around us. Everything
Trump represents has always been present in some form and will not end
with his administration. There is no "normalcy" worth returning to,
unless by "normalcy" you mean your willingness to ignore the
incomprehensible suffering of those around you when it didn't affect you
personally.
If we really wish to live differently, if we wish to combat the broader
movements Trump represents, we must be able to understand their inherent
relationship with racial capitalism writ large and work to undermine
that system entire. Exceptionalization can only ever obfuscate, hide the
totality behind a discrete manifestation.
The Exceptionalization of Israel
For the last two years I have spent every introduction of any essay I
work on highlighting the brutality of Israel's genocide (both it's
current and historical manifestations) against the Palestinian people. I
have urged myself and all those around me to continue to fight against
the systems and individuals that allow such violence to exist with an
immediacy that can only be held within the context of building
resistance as daily life. I say this explicitly to make it abundantly
clear that this section is not meant to undermine the fight against this
specific genocide, but rather push for the analysis necessary to combat
the violence of genocide writ large.
Over the last two years, I have seen a number of radicals speak to the
violence of Israel's genocide as though it is some unique phenomenon
without any historical (let alone concurrent) comparison. Israel is
positioned as some unique evil, as some illegitimate state standing in
contrast to all the supposed legitimate states. I understand the urge to
reach for this language. The incomprehensible images we have all had
seared into our brains of people burning alive, of bomb after bomb being
dropped on schools and hospitals and markets demand some way of making
sense of how such violence could be enacted so wantonly. An Exceptional
Evil becomes the most easily digestible explanation for this
unfathomable violence. Unfortunately, this is a woefully inadequate
explanation for how genocide (both this particular manifestation and the
phenomenon broadly) comes about.
Genocide is not an aberrant force of a world otherwise bending towards
metaphysical justice. Genocide is the language of a world built on
racial capitalism. Genocide is the banal necessity of state-craft.
While we could point to the historical record for literal pages of
examples of states committing acts of genocide no less brutal than what
Israel is currently committing against Palestinians (the Armenian
genocide, the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide,
the hundreds of genocides of indigenous people colonized by European
powers to name a miniscule fraction to capture the scale of this
violence) we don't even need to look to the past. There are multiple,
existent, present genocides of the same scale and horror as what is
being waged against the Palestinians. If Israel's genocidal violence
were truly evidence of some uniquely evil character of that specific
state, how then do you explain the genocidal violence actively being
waged in Sudan, in Tigray? I could sit here and list numbers of the
murdered, missing, injured, traumatized to demonstrate the comparability
of scales, but honestly, numbers of this magnitude are so large they
become meaningless.
When we exceptionalize Israel as uniquely positioned to commit acts of
genocide through some argument about the legitimacy of one state over
another, we inherently obfuscate the violence inherent to all state
craft. We obfuscate (and in many ways offer apologia for) the genocidal
violence waged historically and concurrently by all those wielding state
power who aren't caught in the net of that exceptionalization.
Simultaneously, we obfuscate the action necessary to meaningfully fight
back against a world of genocide in its entirety.
We sell a myth that if only we align ourselves with the righteous
wielders of state power (or become such wielders ourselves) then the
genocides will end. We distance ourselves from our participation in the
production and reproduction of genocidal violence, making room for the
cognitive dissonance necessary to believe the daily lives we lead are
somehow unrelated to exploitation and murder of all those targeted under
racial capitalism the world over.
Genocide has always been about power and who holds it. In modern
history, it has been part and parcel with state power. Fundamentally,
there is no meaningful way to end this world of genocide that does not
completely dismantle the death machines that make such violence
possible. There is no way to end a world of genocide that does not
attack the very concept of the state. The exceptionalization of Israel
obfuscates this fact.
While I genuinely believe that most people who exceptionalize Israel's
violence do so from a place of good faith, being truly shocked and
horrified by the actions beamed into their social media feeds every
morning and scrambling for answers, I hold a particular disgust for
those who knowingly, and cynically, exceptionalize the violence of
Israel while aligning themselves with states actively participating in
genocides elsewhere. For example, I ask those who proclaim the state of
Iran to be a bastion of resistance and liberation what liberatory aims
Iran sought when selling arms to the genocidaires in Sudan? Or does
their nominal objection to the genocide of Palestinians mean that they
get a pass for participating in the genocide of peoples with whom you
feel less affinity? Do you actually desire an end to the machines that
make genocide inevitable, or do you hope to one day wield such machines?
The exceptionalization of present genocidal state violence, the
separation of legitimate states from illegitimate ones can only ever
serve to obfuscate genocidal violence writ large to the point of
bordering on apologia. It sells the lie that if we were only to end
particular states in particular moments that "justice" may reign. It
obfuscates what we must undermine, what we must destroy if we really
wish to live in a world beyond this one of death and only death. It
ensures that genocide remains a permanent fixture, ever present, and
ever on this horizon.
It All Goes, or it All Stays the Same
In the end, exceptionalization takes all of the horror that is daily
life under racial capitalism and forces it into the mold of a singular
boogeyman. While you assure yourself that you stand against this
singular boogeyman, just outside your purview incredibly normal people,
wielding the power of incredibly unexceptional states, commit
incomprehensibly horrific and banal violence against people inexplicably
similar to you. This boogeyman may help you sleep at night, make the
task at hand seem more manageable (or at least more comprehensible) but
it is and always has been a myth.
The violence of ICE is the violence that has always been inherent to
policing and prison. The neo-fascist thrust of Trump's administration
has been decades in the making, and isn't going anywhere any time soon
(even after the current figurehead bites the dust). The genocidal
violence of the Isareli state is horrifyingly banal in the project of
state craft. These are horrifying times, filled with horrifying
violence, but it is not exceptional and exceptionalization will not help
us fight back if we really mean to end the horror.
I recognize I've become a cliché at this point, but I will repeat anyway
that either it all goes or it all stays the same. Either we recognize
the death machines we live within as a totality to act against or we
will forever be doomed to mistake discrete manifestations of their
violence as unique enemies. If we cannot understand the totality as our
enemy we will inevitably and continuously participate in the
reproduction of violences we claim to want to end.
We must push ourselves to name, explicitly, the machines we are fighting
and why we are fighting them. You must learn to speak for yourself,
speak towards what you actually want of this world and help others to do
the same. I refuse to accept anything less than the end of this world
entire. I refuse to accept that some manifestations of genocidal
violence are exceptional against a pastoral backdrop of equally horrific
brutality. I refuse police, and prisons, and borders, and politicians,
and every vestige of the death machines that have already taken so much
more from me than I ever had to give.
Exceptionalization cedes normalization. Normalization cedes reification.
Reification cedes the assumed permanence of this world of death and only
death.
I refuse this world entire. What is it you want?
EXCEPTIONALIZTION CEDES NORMALIZATION
NORMALIZATION CEDES REIFICATION
REIFICATION CEDES THE ASSUMED PERMANENCE OF THIS WORLD OF DEATH AND ONLY
DEATH
I REFUSE THIS WORLD ENTIRE
WHAT IS IT YOU WANT?
Long Leaf Distro - August 2025
https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2025/08/29/you-have-always-been-in-someones-hell-theory-analysis/
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