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Category: Editor's blog

Last Updated: Wednesday, 03 June 2026 17:45

Published: Thursday, 07 January 2021 12:40

Written by Colin Sumner

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Criminology teaching cannot remain the same after watching CNN's excellent coverage of the extraordinary demonstration of power incited by the President of the United States, against the formal workings of US democracy. Claiming to have won an election that he actually lost by a landlside, his supporters could not let the ritual confirmation of election results pass without letting rip their anger at his defeat. Over 70 million Americans voted for Trump and the fascist end of that large wedge gave full warning they wanted to protest against "their" election being "stolen".

Storming the Capitol

The 'law' knew it was coming but were woefully underprepared and understaffed. This was obviously deliberate and under somebody's orders; ultimately Trump's, one can only surmise. Certainly, when policing BLM demonstrations, the white people who clearly dominate and control US law enforcement deploy guns, brutal force, knees on necks, and huge swathes of armed police, National Guard etc; and, when policing black people generally, suspected of lighter crimes than seditious insurrection, the US police killed 999 people in 2020 (Statista weblink below), and they were disproportionately black. 

Maga v BLM: how police handled the Capitol mob and George Floyd activists - in pictures

But weren't we taught that the state defines crime? We were certainly not told, in our criminal law or sociology classes, that the state not only commits crimes and protects huge corporations acting unlawfully, nor that the head of state sometimes foments seditious insurrection against his own state. Why weren't we taught about article 25 and 'mad kings'? Why did the Left criticize the rule of law? What does the rule of law mean when the law permits sedition by whites yet shoots blacks under mere suspicion? Wouldn't that be the very definition of a white supremacist state? How is the USA different from Apartheid South Africa before Mandela came to power? Doesn't this mean we have to define terrorist to include self-defined patriots who use terror to prevent proper legal procedure? And so doesn't 'domestic terrorism', a popular new term, include people who peddle fake news and tell lies to create a terror that leads to the manipulation of legal procedures for their own ends?  If so, don't social censures govern legal censure? And if that is true, don't falsehoods play a huge role when weaponized in contemporary society and politics? Why does the Speaker in the UK House of Commons not permit the open censure of lies in Parliament? Is our hypocrisy in cherishing the state so raw that we allow liars to rule, or the mentally delusional?

CNN mentioned the 'mad king' problem today and criminology students may not know that the king at the time of the US revolution in 1776 was 'Mad' King George III [because rootless British students sadly tend not to want to know their own history any more, perhaps because it has been turned into a commodity for tourists who need a history to love whereas students in other countries cling on to history as a bearer of identity]. Well, after his final relapse in 1810, King George was provided with a regency for the rest of his life (to 1820) and maybe the US state needs a 13-day regent, such as Pence, if it cannot bring Trump to justice. Otherwise, we could consider what happened to the autocratic monarch Charles I in 1649, who claimed the Divine Right of Kings to rule, but beheading a dictatorial but church-going head of state to stop all tales of monarchy is probably far too traumatic for an America wedded to its President as the key symbol of American unity. Perhaps best of all modern and progressive criminological solutions would be a period of community service to bring Trump's ego down to size, such as breaking rocks in a chain gang - so often applied to black prisoners in the South.

People shot by US police every year

The police shooting of black Americans is significantly higher than with any other ethnic grouping. This supports the view of many, based on the facts of its history, that the USA is a fundamentally racist state, from its foundation onwards. But let's be clear: most states would unleash powerful force against protesters proclaiming a revolution and assaulting the capital building of governance. The USA amazingly didn't, although one female was shot dead and 3 other people died 'of medical causes', according to the limited information released so far. Amerika, as we used to call the military-industrial complex over the pond, allowed its far-right insurrectionists, openly committed to overturning democratic and lawful procedures, to stroll into the heart of US democracy, the Capitol building, some with arms, to steal iconic stuff, terrorize the working politicians, threaten the correct working of democracy and generally disrespect the iconography of US governance.

Critical criminologists like myself have been saying for decades now that the capitalist state tends not to police corporate, environmental or state crime. That has been established as true in many jurisdictions - except perhaps within US criminology which remains predominantly statist and in denial of the obvious. However even social scientists like ourselves did not expect the state to shoot itself in the foot quite so blatantly. Why was Trump not reined in during the last 3 years? Or was he, but quietly? Why was he allowed to build up this assault on democracy? In whose interests exactly did the insurrection serve? Is the job of the state mainly to protect its citizens or to sustain extremist minority cliques, or is it to reflect the views and interests of its billionaires?  Why has it been so pathetic this last four years?  Is it true, as some have suggested, that modern liberalism cannot deal with hostility to its existence?

Trump's Maga insurrectionists were perverse US civil war re-enactors 

Whatever your answer to this very contemporary essay question for criminology students, I am not as sure of the answer as I once was. If my answer once was to protect capital in all its aspects and needs, and all compliant parties thereto, or stake-building, then I obviously never anticipated capital tolerating the rule of a childish mental patient, a much bankrupted paper billionaire and a narcissistic moron. After all, today some billionaires give away billions to charity and call for themselves to be taxed more heavily.  Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are the best known. If the answer is to protect the national interest, how can a single Federal state govern such diametrically opposed populations in the USA? Is there a single national interest outside of foreign invasion? Black people have little in the US state that they can identify with politically or culturally. One day, Hispanics will feel the same way and over-shadow those far-right Cuban exiles in Florida. I would venture that this is a turning point in The American Dilemma (Myrdal 1944) and that the US now must either disintegrate as an entity or become an openly multi-racial state with multi-racial leaders in charge.

Of course, we in the UK are well aware that the general population here have already been quietly subjected to a far-right anti-democratic coup, based on lies and cons, that will grossly weaken our economy, minimize the rule of law and destroy our antique parliamentary democracy once-and-for-all. Our mini-Trump, Johnson, his would-be assassin, Gove, and the incompetent and corrupt yes-men they appoint, work tirelessly and daily together to destroy the UK and its citizens. The country that acclaims how low its 'excess death' rate is, whilst ignoring its monstrous Covid death rate per capita, cannot be shocked by Trump's antics; we just see them clearly for what they are. Insane self-interest. An expression of sociopathy, as defined in the DSM (see Demonising others and the sociopathic government here). The UK too is now massively divided; politically, economically, culturally, generationally and regionally.

White privilege on display

Instead, in America yesterday, we saw a white middle-class female crying because she was affected by the pepper spray and probably got escorted from Capitol Hill after she declared she sought a revolution that day. Her sense of entitlement was huge - she showed no sense of feeling lucky that she was not shot, as she would have been if she was black, and no sense that any state can be expected to repel violent revolutionary groups. Protected by hard men and police racial prejudice, she gave a look that many Americans are embarassed by. The woman who was shot dead was, I should note now it has been revealed, was a veteran, a Trump obsessive and a right 'libertarian', i.e.a fascist unconcerned with democracy, intending to carry out a revolt.