So many of us felt speechless with disgust at this State of the Union speech … at a loss for words to answer: How can this upside down world even be real? Cruelty held up as duty. Suffering drowned by applause. The showmanship of blood lust. But there is a term for the horrors we’re watching … that brand of political power when atrocity becomes policy… when they decide who is protected and who is expendable. It’s called “necropolitics.”
In this short video, I explain what necropolitics means, what political theorist Achille Mbembe calls “death worlds,” and why this framework helps us make sense of what we are witnessing right now: entire spaces dedicated to death, built to strip away the meaning not just of democracy but of humanity. Reservations. Concentration camps. ICE detention camps. Gaza. Mocking us in a realtime unironic self-parody, there’s Trump inflicting his textbook Death World.
Please watch: In 7 minutes, learn what “necropolitics” means, what “death worlds” are, and how this framework helps explain the cruelty, erasure, and normalization of suffering we’re in right now.
Within the two-hours of gaslighting, Trump handed out medals… almost more than the Olympic Committee, he joked. Not one medal for a Black person. He gave his address during Black History Month, one week after hosting Black MAGA supporters at the White House, days after the passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who went unacknowledged. Not a word. His only reference to race was bragging about ending DEI. Meanwhile, Epstein survivors sat in the crowd, invited by Democrats, and he had not one emotion or word for them while his DOJ actively scrubs the files that could expose the powerful men who bought and sold those girls. The lying is unimaginable.
He claimed to have ended eight wars… perverting the very meaning of peace. He called Venezuela "our new partner and friend" after illegal missile attacks and effectively kidnapping their leader and boasting about the 80 million barrels of oil “we” have “received.” He took credit for low crime in DC, a city that polls 78% against him. He called this the "golden age of America" while gutting food stamps, defunding USAID, and now revenge cutting Medicaid in Minnesota … decisions that will kill many people. Not metaphorically. Actually kill people. Worldwide. This is the definition of Necropolitics made plain: the slow, bureaucratic withdrawal of life from those the state has deemed disposable.
And then there are the ICE death cards. Agents in Colorado have been leaving Ace of Spades cards ... custom-printed with "ICE/Denver Field Office" ... in the vehicles of people they have detained. The Ace of Spades. A death symbol. Left as a message. This is not ambiguous. This is the state announcing, openly, that not only do certain bodies not matter, but they are marked and we are coming for you. It is the same logic that has always governed what happens to Native people, to Black people, to immigrants, to the poor. The dehumanization comes first. Then the death becomes possible. Then it becomes normalized. Then atrocity becomes policy.
Watch the video. Share it. Name what we are seeing together.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your solidarity.
Tokata Iron Eyes
Spokesperson & Organizer
Lakota People’s Law Project
Sacred Defense Fund
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please: Share your reaction, your thoughts, and your opinions. Be passionate, be unapologetic. Offensive remarks will not be published. We are getting more and more spam. Comments will be monitored.
Use the comment form at the bottom of this website which is private and sent direct to Trace.