The Battle for Los Angeles

It is important to figure out what matters.

Does it matter, for instance, that a federal judge this week concluded that US President Donald Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard to the city of Los Angeles was illegal? There are certainly those who would like to think so – people who have long invested their hopes in such an outcome, and whose increasingly beleaguered conception of how the world is supposed to work hinges on the ragged certainly that the courts, the constitution, the system itself will eventually halt the mounting iniquities of the Trump regime’s whimsical authoritarianism. To them, it should matter.

Put aside the fact that, within mere hours of Judge Charles Breyer’s order for Trump to return control of the National Guard to California governor Gavin Newsom, an appeals court blocked the order; illegal or not, Trump did order a total of 4,000 National Guard troops, later joined by 700 United States Marines, ostensibly to restore order following protests against raids conducted by the orcish goons US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So, practically speaking, it doesn’t seem to matter very much.

Does it matter whether or not this is, as some contend, a fiendish plot to distract attention from Trump’s falling out with Elon Musk? That depends on whether or not you consider the deployment of several thousand heavily armed jarheads against a civilian population more immediately concerning than a social media spat between the worst combination of drugs and fascism since the Nazis discovered methamphetamine and his erstwhile benefactor in the White House.

Does it matter that this is not the first time troops have been put on the streets of an American city, and likely won’t be the last? Those who have observed Governor Newsom’s posturing over the past week might recall the roughly 8,000 members of the National Guard he deployed to quell Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, resulting in over 3,000 arrests. Some conservative commentators have highlighted this, as if to suggest those perturbed by the deployment of military forces in their neighbourhood are simply being precious. Amazingly enough, living through a tradition that stretches back to Kent State may not be the greatest of comforts.

Finally, does it matter how the protests which spurred all this look? There are some who believe it matters a great deal – that when defending those who only seek to live their lives in America, even as its society keeps them poor and marginalised and its state is turned against them, one should also keep something called ‘optics’ in mind. Believe it or not, people actually get paid for this kind of insight.

When the tactics of protest elicit criticism, a common rejoinder from the Left is that conservatives, centrists and liberals rarely articulate what manner of protest they would consider acceptable. Thankfully, to field that question, we have Tom Nichols of the Atlantic magazine, America’s house journal of patrician mediocrity, and the answer turns out to be ‘doing precisely fuck all’.

“The president and his coterie want people walking around taking selfies in gas clouds, waving Mexican flags, holding up traffic, and burning cars,” writes Nichols. “Be warned: Trump is expecting resistance. You will not be heroes. You will be the pretext.”

The revelation that there is an equivalency between waving a Mexican flag and setting cars on fire will certainly make the next Cinco de Mayo interesting, but the larger point Nichols is trying to make is that the protests will ultimately be counter-productive. Instead of participating in activism that involves actually doing anything, Nichols sagely advises that “the most dramatic public action the residents of Southern California could take right now would be to ensure that Trump’s forces arrive on calm streets.”

In other words, do not give voice to your anger. Do not show them your numbers. Do not wave a flag that might offend the kind of people who believe the Stars and Bars is a part of their cultural heritage. Do not, under any circumstances, be the utterly badass skater kid who strolled through a hail of exploding ICE munitions like it was their own personal WWE entrance before turning around and casually giving the finger to fascism.

If we are on the subject of things that are ineffectual in combating Trumpism, protests – violent or otherwise – are far from the only example that comes to mind. To that list, we might put at the top ‘everything the Democratic Party is doing or has done since Joe Biden started to have trouble speaking in full sentences’, especially in light of how many of those now advising Los Angelenos to stay home emerged from that comfortably centrist ideological current.

As risible as this kind of finger-wagging is, we may comfort ourselves that such punditry is another thing that does not matter, and I suspect its purveyors know it. One of the reasons the protests in LA bother them so – as much, if not more than the authoritarian response it has provoked – is that it embodies a breed of activism not inclined to take instruction from those who sit far from the tear gas and rubber bullets and berate those in the midst of it from behind their keyboards.

By all credible accounts, the protestors have shown astonishing discipline, particularly given the extraordinary circumstances they now find themselves in. When there are troops on the streets – your streets – the rules of engagement are different; every populace ever placed under occupation in history has understood this. The fact that, thus far, no member of ICE, the National Guard or the United States Marines is heading home in a box speaks to the superhuman restraint of the people of Los Angeles.

I cannot and would not presume to lecture those in LA who are, at the time of writing, putting their bodies in harm’s way in defiance to Trump, ICE and the vast, terrifying and ludicrously beweaponed apparatus of the state they have at their disposal. I am no expert in what makes an effective protest movement. I can however recognise unimaginable courage when I see it, even from half a world away. Unlike some, I can at least be honest enough to identify it as such.

Troops out of LA.