BHP is stuck on the sidelines of copper M&A frenzy it started

Bloomberg News | January 12, 2026 | 

South Australia’s Olympic Dam copper, gold, uranium mine. (Image courtesy of BHP.)

BHP Group’s bold bid to buy rival Anglo American Plc in 2024 was supposed to set it up as the clear winner in a copper boom it had long predicted. Two years later, the copper market is indeed booming. And yet the world’s biggest miner is left sitting on the sidelines of an M&A frenzy it began.

People familiar with BHP’s thinking said the news that Rio Tinto Group and Glencore Plc are closer than ever to a deal that would leapfrog BHP to become the world’s most valuable mining company has caused consternation within the Australian mining giant. However, some of the people played down the likelihood that it would respond with a move for Glencore, and said it’s watching from the sidelines for now.

Instead of cementing its clear lead over Rio and others, the failed attempt to buy Anglo helped create the conditions for two big tie-ups among its major rivals. Anglo itself agreed last year to merge with Canada’s Teck Resources Ltd., and now Rio’s prospective deal for Glencore threatens to create an even more powerful competitor at a time when BHP is also contending with a mounting dispute over iron ore sales to its most important customer, China.

BHP surprised investors with a half-hearted last-minute bid to crash the Anglo-Teck deal late last year, fueling questions about its strategy after chief executive officer Mike Henry earlier said the company had moved on from Anglo.

And a response to the Rio-Glencore talks would be even more complicated: BHP and Glencore are two of the largest miners of metallurgical coal, meaning any merger would certainly run into antitrust issues — although BHP could theoretically make an offer for the whole of Glencore and then decide to sell or spin off the coal assets to get regulatory approval for a deal.

BHP’s CEO Mike Henry is also nearing the end of his tenure, potentially hindering the negotiation of a transformational deal.

The company is monitoring the Rio-Glencore talks and reviewing the situation and options with its advisers, the people said.

“If Rio combines with Glencore, and you’ve already got Anglo and Teck in play, BHP risks being left behind,” said Iain Pyle, senior investment director at Aberdeen Group Plc, which holds shares in Rio and BHP. “There aren’t many other ways to gain copper scale.”

BHP declined to comment.

Henry has long preached a mantra of M&A discipline, gradually warming investors back up to dealmaking after a series of disastrous deals at the top of the last cycle. He walked away from his bid for Anglo in 2024 after demanding that the smaller miner spin off its South African businesses as a condition of any deal.

Today, thanks to a restructuring along the lines that BHP had proposed, a copper boom much like the one it had been predicting, and the deal with Teck, Anglo is worth about $52 billion — more than the offer that BHP walked away from.

“I think they’ve got to look very closely and think about it,” George Cheveley, a portfolio manager at asset manager Ninety One and former analyst at BHP, said of the prospect of a BHP bid for Glencore. However, BHP “may find it difficult emotionally after their failure to close a deal with Anglo American,” he said.

The combination of Glencore and Rio would likely exceed BHP in copper mining scale and could surpass Chile’s Codelco to be the world’s largest copper miner. Anglo Teck would also become one of the world’s largest copper miners, though still somewhat smaller than BHP, according to the two companies’ presentation announcing the deal.

“There are many in the market who feel BHP cannot afford to sit and watch all the other consolidation that is going on,” Mark Kelly, who runs merger arbitrage specialist MKI Global Partners in London, said in a note to clients. “BHP has obviously said repeatedly it doesn’t need to acquire, but there was talk in mining circles all last year about Glencore beautifying itself to attract both BHP and Rio, thus hopefully extracting the best price in any sale.”

Glencore has a market capitalization of about $73 billion, compared with $158 billion for BHP, while Rio is valued at $138 billion.

A merger of Rio Tinto and Glencore would almost certainly put the combined company out of BHP’s reach for antitrust reasons. But Anglo-Teck could yet be an attractive target if and when the two companies’ merger is complete.

“It’s not obvious that this is the only thing they’ve got. There are other things that can happen,” said Cheveley. “To panic and pile in over the top of this one is not what you want to do.”

(By Thomas Biesheuvel, Dinesh Nair, Jack Farchy and Paul-Alain Hunt)

Dingbat Imperialism, the Lowest Stage of Capitalism

Reading Lenin Today

John Ganz
Jan 13, 2026

SUBSTACK

“Holy Shit, these guys are dumb.”

Many commentators have noted that Trump’s conduct in foreign affairs is as if you took the most simplistic and reductionist left-wing critiques of American foreign policy and decided what they described—a rapacious, oligarchical empire systematically stripping poorer and smaller nations of their resources—was what we should be doing. Matt Yglesias recently tweeted about a Trump post where he described a system of American companies dumping surplus goods into a pliant Venezuelan market: “This is like Lenin’s account of imperialism, but with ‘— and that’s good!’ added to the end.” The natural riposte to this line of thought is perhaps that the left-wing critiques of American imperialism weren’t so stupid after all, and Trump just has the bad manners to tell the truth. And you could just as easily imagine an impatient liberal response to some on the anti-alarmist left in reply: “Here is the guy who is actually what you said America was all along: a vulgar fascioid businessman who is using state power to enrich himself and his friends, but for some reason he offended and worried you less than the other guys.” But rather than attend to this squabble, I’m actually curious about how well Lenin’s account of imperialism fits what Trump is doing or trying to do.

Interestingly enough, “Lenin’s idea of Imperialism, but we should do it,” is pretty much how Vladimir Putin thinks, if you take the word of his former advisor Gleb Pavlosky:


It was a game and we lost, because we didn’t do several simple things: we didn’t create our own class of capitalists, we didn’t give the capitalist predators on our side a chance to develop and devour the capitalist predators on theirs…Putin’s idea is that we should be bigger and better capitalists than the capitalists, and be more consolidated as a state: there should be maximum oneness of state and business…

This makes sense, since Putin would’ve had Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy drilled into him in his training as a KGB officer. But what is the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy on imperialism exactly?

Vladimir Lenin’s pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was written during the First World War. Subtitled “a popular outline,” it was meant to explain to the working class the nature of the war taking place and to polemicize against the reformist, “opportunist” socialist and social democratic parties, that, in many cases, had gone along with it, and that Lenin believed were inextricably tied to the imperialist system. It’s not a fully developed theory nor is it entirely original: it’s largely based on the works of the Marxist Rudolf Hilferding and the liberal J.A. Hobson, and is directed against the earlier theories of Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. It was written in the heat of battle, as it were: Lenin is struggling to win over the European proletariat to his vision of world revolution. But it is a work of bold vision and compelling claims.

Lenin writes, “the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.” According to Lenin, capitalism has left behind its old liberal, laissez-faire competitive mode; the process of competition itself has given rise to monopoly as the winners devour the losers. Industry has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few great cartels, and these cartels, requiring vast supplies of credit for their operations, come under the control of banks. This combination of heavy industry and banking Lenin calls “finance capital.” In the pamphlet, he quotes Hilferding to describe the nature of this finance capital:


“A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry…ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’.” ….“Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.”

This financial oligarchy, seeking profitable investments in shrinking markets it already dominates, seeps into the nation-state itself and directs it to look abroad, grabbing colonies. The world becomes divided up by big monopolies with the help of their pliant government hosts. Lenin helpfully breaks this down into four points:


(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

I want to focus on these, particularly number 3, but first, we have to answer why Lenin calls imperialism “the highest stage of capitalism,” by which it often appears he means the last stage. For Lenin, monopoly capitalism is almost socialism; the concentration and socialization of production have happened, and it just remains in private ownership:


Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised….

Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation…

Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few.

The capitalists have done the socialists a great favor by organizing things like this: it makes the seizure of the means of production much easier! But as Lenin and Hilferding both thought, the jockeying for domination of the world by these combines would tend towards war between the imperialist powers. This created another opportunity for the militant working class. As Hilferding put it in his 1910 Finance Capital, "the policy of finance capital is bound to lead towards war, and hence to the unleashing of revolutionary storms.” As I’ve written about before, this is contra Kautsky, who imagined the possibility of intermonopolist cooperation and a peaceful transition to socialism.

In 1917, Lenin’s account of the world looked pretty plausible. There was, in fact, a war raging between the imperialist powers, and soon, revolution would break out, first in Russia, and then all over Europe. But how well does Lenin’s Imperialism explain today, in particular, Trump’s neo-imperialism in Venezuela?

The first thing to note is the anachronism of Lenin’s picture of monopoly capitalism. Yes, there is the word “finance” there, but finance capital is not identical with “financialization,” as we’ve come to know it. For all the rentier and “parasitic” behavior Lenin describes in the imperial core, he emphasizes the importance of capital exports, that is to say, of fixed capital, machinery, and plant. The world we are dealing with there is much more “steampunk,” if you’ll permit me. As I quoted above, “the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance.” This is because the capital’s rate of profit is sagging in the core. Trump’s vision of dumping commodities into Venezuela doesn’t fit that model. In this case, the big capitalist combines, the oil cartels, really don’t want to invest capital abroad. They are doing fine, thank you, and don’t really want to sink all this fixed capital into the mire of Venezuela. It’s not some easy colonial backwater ripe for the picking, but a very tumultuous and unstable environment, and they’ve been burned before. While other big oil company execs appeared ready to humor Trump, ExxonMobil’s CEO was frank: he called Venezuela “uninvestable” without major changes. As a result, Trump threatened to block them. But, of course, they don’t wanna go anyway! Even a close backer of Trump like oil tycoon Harold Hamm has “declined to make commitments,” while making some superficially enthusiastic noises. When the oil bosses asked for guarantees, Trump said he would guarantee their security. But he’s not gonna be around forever! We’re talking multiple-year investments. To make matters more difficult, the type of crude in Venezuela is tough and costly to refine.

So, Lenin’s vision of the financial oligarchy finagling the government to fund adventures abroad? Not quite the case here. Here we have the government trying to finagle the cartels. To be fair to the Leninists, Vladimir Ilyich makes clear that the foreign intrigues of the monopolists are often “secret” and “corrupt” manipulation of government, so we may not have the full picture. And perhaps there is a different dynamic in the case of raw materials and extraction. Lenin writes:


The principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of monopolist associations of big employers. These monopolies are most firmly established when all the sources of raw materials are captured by one group, and we have seen with what zeal the international capitalist associations exert every effort to deprive their rivals of all opportunity of competing, to buy up, for example, ironfields, oilfields, etc. Colonial possession alone gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle against competitors, including the case of the adversary wanting to be protected by a law establishing a state monopoly. The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies.

What the oil companies might like is a “complete guarantee” of a colonial situation, but they seem skeptical that Trump can really provide that. But is there a shortage in this case? On the contrary, there is a bit of a glut in oil at the moment, although the lack of investment might contribute to a future shortage. Analysts say that even a major crisis in Iran—imagine such a thing!—would not seriously affect global supply.

Now, a Leninist might object that I’m misreading the text in too conspiratorial a way and that I have to take into account a structural impulse built into financial capital to force investment. But if anything, we’ve seen financialized capital is very averse to risky fixed assets, preferring liquidity and easier profits.

I don’t want to suggest that capitalists are totally uninterested in Venezuela. Some are very enthusiastic, but they have a very different profile than the big oil majors that could actually redevelop Venezuela’s infrastructure. Politico reports:


“One of the things that has been incorrectly reported is that the oil companies are not interested in Venezuela,” Bessent told an audience at the Economic Club of Minnesota, according to a transcript supplied by the department. “The big oil companies who move slowly, who have corporate boards are not interested. I can tell you that independent oil companies and individuals, wildcatters, [our] phones are ringing off the hook. They want to get to Venezuela yesterday.”

As one industry insider noted, “The most enthusiastic are among the least prepared and least sophisticated.”

These types of firms are very well-connected to this administration. A Reuters report on the small and medium participants in the oil summit noted, “Several of the companies have connections to Denver, Colorado, the home turf of Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and a relatively small hub for oil and gas activity compared to other parts of the United States.”

Interestingly, the enthusiasm of small and medium capital vs. the big, publicly-traded corporate behemoths matches closely Melinda Cooper’s analysis of Trump’s business coalition, which is made up of “the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.” A 2025 analysis of the oil investment market reflected this as well: “Capital is shifting from traditional institutional investors to more flexible and opportunistic players, driven by attractive valuations, tax incentives, and infrastructure opportunities.”

This picture of a rag-tag private capital wanting to follow Trump’s filibuster into quick riches leads me to posit the very speculative theory of “dingbat imperialism,” where it’s not the big cartels, but their little cousins leading the charge down south. But in that case, it is not monopolization but a very competitive environment that is driving these risky moves. One might say this is capitalism not at its highest stage of development, but its lowest; indeed, it’s as if these firms want their chance at “primitive accumulation,” which is to say, robbery and plunder.

To add some meat to my theory of dingbat imperialism, consider the previous behavior of the majors. Rather than hawks for oil wars and free flowing crude, they’ve either wanted to lift sanctions to make their businesses easier (Chevron, Gulf refiners) or keep sanctions in place to get their legal claims from nationalization taken care of (ExxonMobil.) In this respect, they are much more like Kautsky’s “ultra-imperialists,” working within the normative structure of international agreements and treaties to cement the interests of their oligopoly, rather than pursuing destructive wars.

To a certain extent, imperialism may have always been dingbat imperialism. Historians have chipped away at Lenin’s empirical account of the origins of the colonial scramble in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Imperial Germany, for example, the government had difficulty getting the big German banks, although highly cartelized as Lenin demonstrated, to invest in developing its colonial ventures, mostly because they were not very profitable. German banks preferred to invest in relatively safe places, like the United States, Britain, or France. British banks, much more accustomed to imperialist ventures, were willing to chip in. The government had to practically force German finance capital into Southwest Africa to prevent its colony from being totally dominated by British banks.1 Sometimes the Kaiser himself provided financial support to the endeavors. The German companies that were enthusiastic about colonial expansion tended to be speculative, “get-rich-quick” schemes. The German colonial empire was driven more by a politics of prestige and a sense of being lesser than Britain and France than by the pressure of surplus capital looking for an outlet. In this sense, perhaps, we are behaving more like the imperial upstart Germany than the hegemon Britain. Why? Maybe because Trump is himself an upstart. Dingbats all the way down.

In any case, that’s all I have of this “theory” for the moment.
1


Feis, Herbert. Europe: The World’s Banker 1870-1914: An Account Of European Foreign Investment And The Connection Of World Finance With Diplomacy Before The War. With Internet Archive. Council On Foreign Relations, 1961. 181-182 http://archive.org/details/europeworldsbank0000unse.

EU countries must 'cut the cord now' with Trump's America over Greenland threat: analysis

Ewan Gleadow
January 14, 2026 

RAW STORY

European countries were urged by a political analyst to cut ties with Donald Trump's America as the threats to Greenland continue.

Trump has suggested his administration will take Greenland "the easy way or the hard way" and has refused to rule out boots on the ground action. The president should be taken at his word according to columnist Alexander Hurst, who urged EU countries to stand their ground and choose the rest of Europe over Trump.

Hurst, writing in The Guardian, suggested EU leaders must stand against the new image of the US as an "active and hostile" threat to friendly nations. He wrote, "Will its leaders have the courage to tell the full truth – that the US isn’t simply abandoning its allies and destroying the international order but is now in the position of active and hostile predation by force – and more importantly, to act on it?"

"Donald Trump has already set the tone by saying the US will seize Greenland 'one way or the other', and no part of the triumvirate around him is trying to hide their imperial intentions any more."

Trump's rhetoric has made it clear where he stands too, with the president suggesting it is just his own "morality" that will affect his decision making the world over. Hurst added, "When Trump says that the only constraint on his exercise of power is “my own morality”, that means there is no constraint."

"Like Vladimir Putin, he will keep grabbing until someone imposes a limit on him." Hurst has since urged European countries to "maintain a space of democracy and the rule of law in a world that is rapidly reverting to imperialism, oligarchy, and the rule of power".

He wrote, "By boldly detaching from the US now, visibly and decisively, Europe might even send a resuscitative shock through the US’s ailing democratic corpus."

"Only Americans can save their country from a descent into something even uglier and deadlier than what we are witnessing already. But for everyone’s sake, theirs included, Europe must cut the cord now, and not follow them into the storm."

Trump sends NATO an early morning warning

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a press conference, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio react to a Sky News reporter's question about NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calling President Trump 'daddy', at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Sarah K. Burris

January 14, 2026

ALTERMET

President Donald Trump issued a warning to NATO on Wednesday morning.

Taking to Truth Social, Trump wrote, "The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building. NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Militarily, without the vast power of the United States, much of which I built during my first term, and am now bringing to a new and even higher level, NATO would not be an effective force or deterrent - Not even close! They know that, and so do I. NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES.

Anything less than that is unacceptable. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT"

Russia and China are closer to the United States land through Alaska than they are to Greenland.

The U.S. also already has a Space Force base on Greenland. The Island is also part of NATO since it is part of Denmark. So, if Greenland is attacked by China and Russia NATO is attacked and all members will fight back.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long sought to eliminate NATO, Business Insider explained in a report after the invasion of Crimea.

"Trump declares war on Greenland, Denmark, and NATO. Will someone remove this man from office before he has the armed forces killing and dying all over the world. Well, we do now. This is much worse. Putin over Nato? I take NATO. National healthcare. But I was born into the big lie," commented a self-described intelligence worker named John Burden.

Denmark military told to shoot back if the US fires on Greenland as Sweden send troops

Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt at the Danish embassy for a meeting with US leaders January 14, 2026.

 Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via REUTERS

Sarah K. Burris

January 14, 2026

ALTERNET

A possible war with NATO is escalating after Denmark made it clear to military leaders that if the United States fires on its forces, Danish defenders must fight back.

The comments come after Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Donald Trump, told CNN that there were only 30,000 residents of Greenland, leading him to conclude that no one would fight back against the United States if it took over the Arctic island.

“Danish military units have a duty to defend Danish territory if it is subjected to an armed attack, including by taking immediate defensive action if required,” Danish Defense Command spokesperson Tobias Roed Jensen, said when speaking to The Intercept.

The 1952 royal decree applies to the Kingdom of Denmark, of which Greenland is still a part.

Such an order ensures that “Danish forces can act to defend the Danish kingdom in situations where Danish territory or Danish military units are attacked, even if circumstances make it impossible to await further political or military instruction,” Jensen added.


Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson confirmed the news on X, saying that Swedish Armed Forces officers were also joining the Danish military.

"Together, they will prepare for upcoming elements within the framework of the Danish exercise Operation Arctic Endurance. It is at Denmark's request that Sweden is sending personnel from the Armed Forces," he said, according to a translation on X.

Thus far, Denmark’s willingness to stand up to the U.S. has not deterred orders from the Trump administration.

“One way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland,” Trump announced on Sunday.

Trump has also claimed that Russian and Chinese “destroyers and submarines” are “all over the place” in Greenland. He has argued that if the U.S. does not take Greenland, they will. Trump maintains that owning the island is the only way to protect it, even though, as part of NATO, the United States is already obligated to defend it.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) backed him up on it by introducing legislation authorizing the use of force to annex Greenland, even if that meant leaving NATO and starting a war with Europe.

Trump’s critics responded with their own legislation, the No Funds for NATO Invasion Act, which would bar any federal dollars from being used to invade a NATO member state. Congress’s remaining leverage over Trump is its control of the budget.

Trump mocked, “Their defense is two dog sleds."

Though that isn't entirely accurate. Despite the small size of the Greenland military, Denmark and NATO could be sent to protect the island from the U.S.

Reporter Benjamin Alvarez, U.S. Correspondent for Deutsche Welle, confirmed that the soldiers were sent quickly.

Sweden's "Expressen" reported that the Swedish Armed Forces are arriving in Greenland on Wednesday, a Google translation of the article said.

Oddly, the State Department approved "a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Denmark of maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft worth an estimated $1.8 billion," said The Intercept.

The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland are meeting Wednesday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Read the full report here.

Retired 4-star general lays out how Trump could avoid war over Greenland

Retired 4-star general Wesley Clark on CNN on January 14, 2026

 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)

Sarah K. Burris

January 14, 2026

ALTERNET

Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, said that there is no reason for the United States to take over Greenland to accomplish national security goals.

Greenland, which already has a Space Force base on the island, has called in soldiers from Denmark and Sweden to support it in a possible military conflict with the U.S.


"It would certainly seem to be the case that you could set up an arrangement and put the bases in that you want. You could do the patrols. You can bring the Danes in with you in a joint headquarters. You could call it national security control of Denmark, [but it] doesn't have to necessarily mean ownership. Just have the control. You could also set up the same arrangement with, let's say, economic exploration of minerals in Greenland. So there are different ways to go at this other than simply saying you've got to own the territory," Clark explained.

CNN host Boris Sanchez was curious about why Trump would pursue a kind of hostile takeover of a NATO ally.

Clark noted that Trump has indicated it makes him more comfortable to own Greenland because he thinks that Russia and China will take the Arctic island. Doing so would trigger a war with NATO, which includes the United States.

"But, you know, he's the president. That's what he wants to do. There are alternatives to this that would be more palatable. I think it has put a lot of stress on NATO," he added.

Clark explained that he's not aware of the specific details about Trump's plans to understand why simply "putting assets in Greenland would be less effective than, let's say, legal ownership of the territory. the territory."

"I do feel that these relationships in the Arctic are changing," he continued. "Russia is up there, and they're challenging us. China wants the Northwest Passage over the top of Siberia to get to Europe on a shorter route. There's a lot of challenges in the Arctic coming. And the United States really hasn't prepared for it very well."

He noted that the U.S. doesn't have icebreakers like Russia does.

"We need to work in the Arctic, but we can have all the access we need under the existing arrangements in Greenland, it seems to me," Clark said. "So, maybe there's something here that we don't see."

He added that he hopes the meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio "turns out the right way and gives us whatever shred of additional control that we need."

NATO could set up an Arctic command, he said, as an option.

"But again, this proliferates commands, and the Pentagon has been trying to reduce the number of commands. But there are many ways to go after this," he closed.

Watch the segment below:

Spectral Threats: China, Russia and Trump’s Greenland Rationale

by Binoy Kampmark / January 14th, 2026

The concerns about China and Russia seizing Greenland retells the same nonsense President Donald Trump promoted in kidnapping the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Looking past the spurious narcoterrorism claims against the former leader, it fell to the issue of who would control the natural resources of the country. If we don’t get Venezuelan oil now and secure it for American companies, the Chinese or the Russians will. The gangster’s rationale is crudely reductionist, seeing all in a similar vein.

The obsession with Beijing and Moscow runs like a forced thread through a dotty, insular rationale that repels evidence and cavorts with myth: “We need that [territory],” reasons the President, “because if you take a look outside Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We are not gonna have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t.” On Denmark’s military capabilities in holding the island against any potential aggressor, Trump could only snort with macho dismissiveness. “You know what their defence is? Two dog sleds.”

This scratchy logic is unsustainable for one obvious point. Were Russia or China to attempt an occupation of Greenland through military means, Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty would come into play, obliging NATO member states, including the United States, to collectively repel the effort. With delicious perversity, any US effort to forcibly acquire the territory through use of force would be an attack on its own security, given its obligations under the Treaty. In such cases, it becomes sound to assume, as the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen does, that the alliance would cease to exist.

Such matters are utterly missed by the rabidly hawkish Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who declared that, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” It was up to the US “to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests” in incorporating Greenland. To take territory from a NATO ally was essentially doing it good.

Given that the United States already has a military presence on the island at the Pituffik Space Base, and rights under the 1951 agreement that would permit an increase in the number of bases should circumstances require it, along with the Defence Cooperation Agreement finalised with Copenhagen in June 2025, much of Miller’s airings are not merely farcical but redundant. Yet, Trump has made it clear that signatures and understandings reflected in documents are no substitute for physically taking something, the thrill of possession that, by its act, deprives someone else of it. “I think ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty,” he told the New York Times. “Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”

What, then, of these phantom forces from Moscow and Beijing, supposedly lying in wait to seize the frozen prize? “There are no Russian and Chinese ships all over the place around Greenland,” states the very convinced research director of the Oslo-based Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Andreas Østhagen. “Russia and/or China has no capacity to occupy Greenland or to take control over Greenland.”

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen is similarly inclined. “The image that’s being painted of Russian and Chinese ships right inside the Nuuk fjord and massive Chinese investments being made is not correct.” Senior “Nordic diplomats” quoted in the Financial Times add to that version, even if the paper is not decent enough to mention which Nordic country they come from. “It is simply not true that the Chinese and Russians are there,” said one. “I have seen the intelligence. There are no ships, no submarines.” Vessel tracking data from Marine Traffic and LSEG have so far failed to disclose the presence of Chinese and Russian ships near the island.

Heating engineer Lars Vintner, based in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, wondered where these swarming, spectral Chinese were based. “The only Chinese I see,” he told Associated Press, “is when I go to the fast food market.” This sparse presence extends to the broader security footprint of China in the Arctic, which remains modest despite a growing collaboration with Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. These have included Arctic and coast guard operations, while the Chinese military uses satellites and icebreakers equipped with deep-sea mini submarines, potentially for mapping the seabed.

However negligible and piffling the imaginary threat, analysts, ever ready with a larding quote or a research brief, are always on hand to show concern with such projects as Beijing’s Polar Silk Road, announced in 2018, which is intended as the Arctic extension of its transnational Belt and Road initiative. The subtext: Trump should not seize Greenland, but he might have a point. “China has clear ambitions to expand its footprint and influence in the region, which it considers… an emerging arena for geopolitical competition.” Or so says Helena Legarda of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.

The ludicrous nature of Trump’s claims and acquisitive urges supply fertile material for sarcasm. A prominent political figure from one of the alleged conquerors-to-be made an effort almost verging on satire. “Trump needs to hurry up,” mocked the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and former President Dmitry Medvedev. “According to unverified information, within a few days, there could be a sudden referendum where all 55,000 residents of Greenland might vote to join Russia. And that’s it!” With Trump, “that’s it” never quite covers it.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

'What gives him the right?': Trump voters grill president on his threat to major ally

Ewan Gleadow
January 14, 2026

RAW STORY

President Donald Trump speaks as he meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (not pictured) during the 80th United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, New York on Sept. 23, 2025. REUTERS/Al Drago


Donald Trump's voter base is starting to turn on him as his biggest supporters question his reasoning for a potential invasion of a foreign ally.

The president made it clear that he wanted to take the Kingdom of Denmark's territory of Greenland in a move that would allegedly bolster national security. Natural mineral deposits have also been cited as a reason for the Trump administration's interest by some political commentators.

Those who voted for Trump in the 2024 election believe the president has no right to threaten military action against the country, and that the administration should not interfere in Greenland. A collection of Trump voters, speaking to the New York Times, voiced their opposition to the administration's continued push for territory.

Heather, a 55-year-old Republican, said that the administration's actions in Venezuela are understandable but there is no need for Greenland to be in the conversation. She said, "In Venezuela, we need to go in and not just take him [President Nicolás Maduro] out. We need to get rid of his entire cabinet, everybody that was underneath him that is following in his footsteps and start afresh."

"But also, Venezuela is hopefully more for the people’s sake, to end the suffering for them. Greenland just seems more of a – why are we there? What do we need from Greenland? I mean, there’s no conflict there. Can we just bring the focus back to somewhere else in America?"

Fellow Republican voter Bill, 62, suggested there was an argument to be made for the natural resources on Greenland but that a want for those did not give Trump a right to use the military against the country. He said, "Greenland has resources that Trump wants to be able to take advantage of. But what gives him the right to go in militarily and take it?"

Daniel,. 54, says there is an obvious comparison between Trump's threats to Greenland and what Putin is "doing to Ukraine." He added, "What gives him the right to do that as well? So it just doesn't feel right. It's a negative impact, I believe, on the United States."

Bill added, "And if he does go into Greenland with force, if you read today’s news, they talk about how all of the NATO countries over there are not happy with that. That could spell the end of NATO."

Trump, in a recent post to Truth Social, reiterated the US needs Greenland "for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building."

Trump may fall for 'repackage' of Greenland deal if EU 'put a big bow on top': analysis

Ewan Gleadow
January 14, 2026 
RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 10, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Donald Trump may be convinced to leave Greenland alone should Europe "repackage" security measures and "put a big bow on top" of a potential deal.

The president made it clear he wanted the Kingdom of Denmark's territory for security reasons but has faced resistance from NATO nations. A European Union diplomat familiar with the details of one proposed plan has suggested it could be enough to convince Trump to leave Greenland alone if other nations can make security assurances.

Speaking to Politico, the unnamed insider said, "If you can smartly repackage Arctic security, blend in critical minerals, put a big bow on top, there’s a chance." They added that "this is always how things have gone" when negotiating on defense.

But another diplomat says Trump will not be as easily swayed as some are hoping. The insider suggested the Make America Great Again slogan had become "a geographical concept; he wants to go down in history as the man who has made America ‘greater’ — in geographical terms".

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has since warned that, should Trump approve military action in Greenland, it would be unlike anything the organization had dealt with since its founding in 1947.

Minister Pistorius said, "It would be an unprecedented situation in the history of NATO and any defense alliance. EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius and Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen have both said NATO "would stop" should Trump breach its rules.

A third unnamed diplomat added, "This is serious - and Europe is scared." EU countries have already been urged to "cut the cord" with Trump's administration should he pursue an invasion of Greenland.

Alexander Hurst, writing in The Guardian, suggested EU leaders must stand against the new image of the US as an "active and hostile" threat to friendly nations.

He wrote, "Will its leaders have the courage to tell the full truth – that the US isn’t simply abandoning its allies and destroying the international order but is now in the position of active and hostile predation by force – and more importantly, to act on it?"

"Donald Trump has already set the tone by saying the US will seize Greenland 'one way or the other', and no part of the triumvirate around him is trying to hide their imperial intentions any more."

‘That’s their problem’: Trump threatens Greenland's leader after vow to stay with Denmark

Robert Davis
January 13, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters, on his return from Detroit, Michigan, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump threatened yet another foreign leader on Tuesday during a press gaggle at Joint Base Andrews after returning to Washington, D.C. from a brief trip to Detroit.

Earlier in the day, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said his country would rather stay as part of Denmark than become part of the U.S. Nielsen's comments come at a time when Trump has upped the ante against Greenland, saying the U.S. needs to control the island nation for its own national security.

Nielsen's comments apparently didn't sit well with Trump, who was asked to respond to them during the press gaggle.

"That's their problem," Trump said. "I disagree with them. I don't know who he is, don't know anything about him, but that's going to be a big problem."

Nielsen is just the latest foreign leader that Trump has threatened in recent weeks. He has also threatened the Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum over their country's drug policies. The threats followed Trump's middle-of-the-night operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and bring him to the U.S. to stand trial for narco-terrorism charges.

The Trump administration's moves against foreign officials also come at a time when the administration has faced accusations its seeking to distract from the ongoing release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Recently released files painted Trump's relationship with the disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal in an unsavory light.

The Glee You See From Fascists About State Violence is a Sexual Fetish

Kenn Orphan

January 14, 2026

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

There is a psychology at the root of what we are seeing behind the behavior MAGA fascists and far-right media these past few weeks that isn’t being addressed. One which is behind how they so openly defend the murder of an unarmed woman. Or how they cheer on the Trump regime’s imperialistic fever dreams. And all of this, while none of it improves their own life circumstances in the least.

If these people were to be transported back in time to when slavery was the law of the land, they would have adored the overseers and the bounty hunters and applauded any violence against runaway enslaved people or abolitionists. If they were transported back to 1930’s Germany, they would have cheered the Geheime Staatspolizei as they beat and rounded up communists, Roma, queer people and Jews in the streets. It isn’t a new script. It is the same story of grievance played out in a new setting.

The people who are most susceptible to this are notorious for suppressing sexual desires. And thus, there is an enormous amount of repressed fetishism happening within the celebration of ICE violence. They find unchecked, unaccountable power enticing. Its sadism is intoxicating because it allows them to disassociate from the crushing weight of their own inner turmoil. And because virtually none of them have ever taken the time to examine their own shadows, they project them onto everyone and everything.

This psychology of sadomasochism is not the kind one finds in consensual BDSM relationships or communities. Quite the opposite. The people who participate in consensual BDSM do it because it is cathartic. Because it is fun. Because they trust their partner.

But the kind we see among far-right and fascist groups is solely about demeaning those who have not submitted to the state or to a mob. This is a dynamic that extols an arrangement of power based solely upon punishment and cruelty against a dehumanized other. In this way, the supporters of ICE violence or the Trump regime’s cruelty are positioned as the voyeur, and thus derive pleasure from observing the pain meted out on a scapegoated and dehumanized other, on those who dissent, or anyone who gets in the way of power.

This plays out most especially in misogynistic terms. Patriarchal authoritarianism serves as the foundation for fascist psychopathology. Conservative patriarchal religion provides a framework for both the repression of sexual desire and human sexuality in general, and the oppression of women. And violence, from the burning or witches to the denial of reproductive rights, has often been the result. Fascism merely draws on this dark history of misogyny.

We see this clearly in the murder of Renee Nicole Good. A woman stood in the way of a man’s power. Her wife mocked him. Although they presented no danger to his life, they signified that they did not recognize his dominance. Thus, Good had to be punished. Shot in the face, which is the most intimate form of murder. That Good was later revealed to be in a lesbian relationship provided more ammunition for MAGA fascists. She was swiftly painted by far-right media as a traitor to her gender.

Wilhelm Reich wrote more about this in his book The Psychology of Fascism:

“More than economic dependency of the wife and children on the husband and father is needed to preserve the institution of the authoritarian family [and its support of the authoritarian state]. For the suppressed classes, this dependency is endurable only on condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is suspended as completely as possible in women and in children. The wife must not figure as a sexual being, but solely as a child-bearer. Essentially, the idealization and deification of motherhood, which are so flagrantly at variance with the brutality with which the mothers of the toiling masses are actually treated, serve as means of preventing women from gaining a sexual consciousness, of preventing the imposed sexual repression from breaking through and of preventing sexual anxiety and sexual guilt-feelings from losing their hold. Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology.”

― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

White supremacist, Nick Fuentes, said: “You should not seek sex because if you seek sex you will become gay because sex is a gay act.” He elaborated on this thought with: “the straightest thing you could do is to never have sex.” The homophobia and sheer absurdity of these statements aside, it underscores the sexual repression at the heart of fascist thinking. It is a belief that sexual pleasure itself is to be rejected. It may appear contradictory, but it goes hand in hand with the notion that the only role women play in society is to bear and raise children. It is also why transgender people are so often a target of far-right malice. Their very existence is a challenge to an order that they see as essential and God-ordained.

The contradictory nature of fascist thinking is a primary feature. It is how many of them could express anger about the Epstein Files, while ignoring that their leader, Donald Trump, figures large in their pages. It is how they can express devotion to religious institutions which have covered up child abuse for decades, while condemning drag queens. In sum, fascism is more about optics, than facts. It is about upholding traditional mores and myths, and strict gender roles, than human equality. It is about charismatic heterosexual male strongmen rather than things that are considered feminine, like empathy and kindness.

The seduction of state violence is nothing new. And it will always attract a segment of the population, mostly disaffected men. But the American project, with its characteristic predatory capitalism and Calvinist Christian patriarchal roots, has allowed it to grow and become emboldened. Racialized, Indigenous and queer women have known this violence since the first European set foot in North America, often meted out to them by white women who enjoyed a certain measure of privilege in a racist society. This is not to say white women were not also brutalized or treated as property, they were. But racialized and queer women have never enjoyed the same privilege.

As we see more and more incidents of ICE violence and the subsequent praise it receives from fascists, primarily fascist men, we should take time to understand the corrosive pathology at the root of it all. Fascism channels its sexual repression into aggression and absolute submission to charismatic male leaders and grand narratives about nationalistic glory. It thrives on the denigration, humiliation, torture and murder of dehumanized others. And it targets young men.

Understanding this may help us realize where it is coming from, how to oppose it effectively, and how to help a new generation of boys escape a similar fate.

Kenn Orphan is an artist, sociologist, radical nature lover and weary, but committed activist. He can be reached at kennorphan.com.

Archive.orgia801703.us.archive.org/29/items/WilhelmReichTheMassPsychologyOfFascism_20170308/Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism.pdf

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY. OF FASCISM. By. WILHELM REICH. 

Reich shows how every form of organized mysticism, including fascism, relies on the unsatisfied orgastic longing of the masses. The importance of this work ...

The Pathology of Power: How America Learned to Love State Violence

The comments celebrating Renee Good's death reveal a pattern familiar to anyone who has studied authoritarian movements. It's the same impulse that filled Roman coliseums & medieval execution squares.

By Tim Hjersed

January 13, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Screenshot from Jay Town’s tweet on X

There’s a scene playing out across American social media that should disturb anyone with a functioning conscience.

A woman lies dead, killed by federal agents while serving as a legal observer. The video evidence is clear: she was waving ICE vehicles forward, her SUV was moving with its wheels turned away from officers, and the fatal shots came from an agent standing to the side with ample space to disengage. Yet in comment sections across the internet, thousands celebrate her death with gleeful acronyms like “FAFO” – Fuck Around and Find Out.

This isn’t an isolated pathology. It’s the same reflex that defended George Floyd’s nine-minute murder under a cop’s knee. The same impulse that mocked Eric Garner’s final words – “I can’t breathe” – as he was choked to death for selling loose cigarettes. The same sickness that turns every police killing into a referendum on the victim’s character, clothing, compliance, or decisions made in fear of state violence.

What we are watching is a culture that has learned to reflexively sanctify the trigger pull, to treat human life as disposable when it inconveniences power, and to experience vicarious pleasure in watching the state kill people who step out of line.

This is what moral rot looks like when it reaches the core.

The Psychology of Victim-Blaming

The comments celebrating and defending Renee Good’s death reveal a psychological pattern familiar to anyone who has studied authoritarian movements: the sadistic pleasure derived from watching power crush the powerless. It’s the same impulse that filled Roman coliseums and medieval execution squares. What should disturb us most is not that such impulses exist – they are part of our evolutionary inheritance – but that contemporary American culture actively cultivates and normalizes them.

When someone types “Yep, still a good shoot” with a meme of Tom Cruise grinning that says “Deal with it” in response to footage of a woman being killed, they are engaging in a form of participatory violence. They are experiencing the pleasure of dominance without the moral burden of pulling the trigger themselves. The state becomes their instrument, and every killing becomes a validation of their worldview: that those who do not perfectly comply with authority deserve to be killed.

This is victim-blaming in its most lethal form. Just as rape culture asks “But what was she wearing?” police violence culture asks “Why didn’t she just comply?”

Both deflect accountability from the person wielding power to the person experiencing violence.

Both manufacture justifications by scrutinizing the victim’s behavior rather than the perpetrator’s choice to commit violence.

Both require us to accept a sick logic: that somehow, the victim brought this on herself.

Rape culture follows a familiar script:

• “She was drinking”
• She shouldn’t have been at that party”
• “She went to his room”
• “She was flirting with him”
• “She didn’t fight back hard enough”
• “She didn’t say no clearly enough”
• “Why did she wait so long to report it?”
• “She has a history of…”

But let’s be absolutely clear. As the late Dick Gregory put it: “If I’m a woman and I’m walking down the street naked, you STILL don’t have a right to rape me.”

You see, the clothing was never the issue—the rapist’s choice to commit violence was. Police violence culture operates identically: absolutely nothing Renee Good did warranted lethal force. She could have been blocking traffic, she could have been scared by the assaulting officer trying to suddenly force her door open, she could have tried to drive away—none of it justifies lethal force.

Both systems train us to ask the wrong questions.

Not “Why did he choose to rape?” but “What was she wearing?”

Not “Why did the officer shoot someone driving away?” but “Why didn’t she comply?”

The interrogation always flows toward the victim, excavating any detail that might transform violence into something the victim brought upon themselves.

And just as crucially, both systems ignore the role of the aggressor in creating the crisis they claim justified their violence. Seconds before Renee Good was killed, the situation was calm. Her final words to one officer were “It’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Then another agent dramatically escalated—yelling “get out of the car” while forcefully trying to open her door, creating the very fear and panic that preceded her attempt to leave. No one asks why he chose that escalation. No one questions why he transformed a de-escalated moment into a chaotic confrontation. The focus remains laser-fixed on her response to the panic he created, never on his choice to create it.

This is the pattern: agents of power escalate, then claim the victim’s reaction to that escalation justified further violence. She panicked because he made her panic. She tried to leave because staying felt dangerous. Then they killed her for the fear they manufactured and called it self-defense.

A Culture of Normalized Violence

This pathology didn’t emerge spontaneously. It was carefully constructed through decades of policy choices, media narratives, and cultural conditioning.

Start with the militarization of American policing. When we equip local police departments with armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and training that emphasizes “warrior mentality” over community service, we shouldn’t be surprised when they treat citizens as enemy combatants. The weapons don’t just kill—they shape psychology. Officers trained to see lethal threats everywhere will escalate situations until their fears materialize, then cite the crisis they created as proof they were right all along.

Add qualified immunity, which shields officers from accountability for all but the most egregious violations. When cops know they can kill with minimal consequences – perhaps a paid administrative leave, perhaps a transfer to another department – the incentive structure actively encourages lethal force. Why take the time to de-escalate when you can shoot and face no meaningful punishment?

Layer on media narratives that frame every police encounter as life-or-death drama, every person killed as a “dangerous criminal,” every protest as a riot. Decades of “copaganda” shows like Law & Order have trained Americans to identify with the badge, to experience every limit on police power as a personal threat, to see civil liberties as obstacles to justice rather than its foundation.

The result is a culture of learned helplessness and moral resignation. We accept as inevitable what other democracies consider intolerable.

In Sweden, police are trained to treat lethal force as a genuine last resort. De-escalation is mandatory. Firing at vehicles is extraordinarily rare. Officers face real investigation and prosecution when force is unjustified. The result? Dramatically fewer police killings – not chaos, not crime spikes, but a society that manages to maintain order without treating human life as disposable.

American culture shrugs at deaths that would spark national crises elsewhere. We’ve been conditioned to accept lower standards through a systematic propaganda campaign that conflates criticism of police with opposition to public safety, that treats accountability as anti-cop bias, that frames every demand for restraint as weakness in the face of threats.

The Legal Theater of Justification

The excuses marshaled to defend Renee Good’s killing follow a familiar script, designed to create the appearance of legal justification where none exists.

“The car is a deadly weapon.”
Only if it’s being used as one. A vehicle moving away at low speed from an agent with space to step aside does not present an imminent threat. DOJ policy is explicit: firearms may not be discharged at moving vehicles unless the vehicle threatens death or serious injury and no other reasonable means of defense exist, including moving out of the path. The agent walked in front of the vehicle, then stepped aside while firing. He created the “danger,” had space to disengage, and shot anyway. Self-defense does not apply.

“Split-second decisions.”
Use-of-force policy exists precisely for fast moments. Training instructs officers to create space, move laterally, use cover, and avoid shooting at moving vehicles except to stop an immediate threat. If the officer had time to stand, aim, and fire from the flank, he had time to step back and disengage. Speed is not a license for killing – it’s a reason for restraint. Professionals in genuinely dangerous occupations make split-second decisions without killing people all the time.

“Failure to comply.”
Even conceding non-compliance, lethal force requires an imminent threat under Graham v. Connor and DHS policy. The video shows her SUV moving away from the officer, who simply steps aside. Mere resistance, obstruction, or failure to follow orders never justifies killing someone. If it did, every traffic stop could end in execution.

“Officer safety comes first.”
This slogan has become a blank check for violence. Officer safety is protected by tactics, not bullets. Do not walk in front of a running vehicle. Do not escalate a calm situation just because you are being heckled. Use calm language to reduce panic. Once the vehicle was in motion, the officer could step aside (he did) and reassess. Every option short of gunfire was available to an officer not pinned, not dragged, and not struck.

“He feared for his life.”
Fear is a terribly pathetic excuse for officers supposedly trained to behave professionally under stressful situations. I saw an apt comment from a woman who remarked, “If I shot a man in the head every time I’ve felt afraid, the streets would be lined with bodies.”

“We have to back our agents.”
Accountability is how you back them. Lowering the bar for deadly force endangers officers by teaching bad tactics and eroding public trust. The standard must be higher for the person with state power and a gun, not lower. Every unjustified killing makes the next officer’s job more dangerous by deepening the divide between law enforcement and the communities they’re supposed to serve.

None of these excuses are legal arguments – they’re narrative tricks designed to move the goalposts after someone is dead.

Bottom line: there was no imminent threat, no pinned officer, a vehicle moving away, and ample alternatives.

The justification for lethal force fails necessity, proportionality, and last-resort tests.

What We’re Really Defending

When someone rushes to justify clearly excessive force, they’re not really defending that specific officer’s split-second decision. They’re defending an entire worldview – one where authority is sacred, where questioning power is the real crime, where the “wrong kind of people” stepping out of line deserve whatever they get.

This worldview is not compatible with democracy. Democracy requires the capacity to challenge power, to resist unjust policies, to document and expose misconduct. When people are conditioned to reflexively side with the badge, to treat every limit on state violence as dangerous, to experience pleasure when protesters, legal observers, or anyone who “doesn’t comply” gets hurt or killed, they’re being trained to act like obedient subjects, not citizens.

The sickest element is the glee. Not grudging acceptance or tragic necessity, but celebration. The comments sections I’ve witnessed these past 48 hours reveal people who aren’t reluctantly accepting “a tough but necessary call” – they’re enjoying it. They experience the killing as entertainment, as righteous retribution, as satisfying proof that “our side” has the power and will to dominate “theirs.”

This is the psychology of fascism, and it doesn’t require jackboots or swastikas. It just requires enough people who have learned to derive pleasure from watching the state hurt the right people.

The Question That Matters

When someone tries to deflect criticism of a clearly unjustified killing by searching for hypocrisy – “But did you condemn mockery on the other side?” – they’re engaging in a familiar evasion. Whether any individual critic is perfectly consistent has nothing to do with whether this specific killing was excessive, criminal, and should never have happened.

But let’s be clear: as a student of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on compassion and nonviolence, I opposed Luigi’s assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I condemned his killing without qualification, grounded in a philosophy that refuses to dehumanize our political opponents.

Yes, revelry and jokes about Charlie Kirk’s death disturbed me too—they reflect the same slide toward conditional empathy that corrodes a society’s moral foundation. But for every finger pointed at isolated reactions on the left, three point back at the systematic celebration of violence on the right: from the gleeful reactions to George Floyd’s murder to the countless MAGA supporters cheering the killing of 80+ victims at sea by Pete Hegseth, which legal experts called war crimes, murder or both. Even White House, DHS, and other official social media accounts now openly post memes mocking their enemies.

But consistency is beside the point. The real issue is what kind of society we’re building.

What kind of culture reflexively excuses excessive lethal force by police or our government at every turn?

Those in the comments hunting for hypocrisy would do well to turn their questions inward: what am I doing to make this world a more compassionate and humane place for our children to inherit?

What am I doing?

What’s my role?

Am I living in service to life and human dignity for all? Am I challenging illegitimate abuses of power, or serving it?

When you see footage of someone being killed by agents of the state, and your first impulse is to search for reasons why they deserved it, you need to examine what has happened to your moral compass. When you type “FAFO” and get a little dopamine hit, you have crossed a line that separates civilization from barbarism.

The Alternative We Refuse to Imagine

The most pernicious lie embedded in these defenses is that this is simply how things must be. That police work is so dangerous, we can’t expect better outcomes. That questioning lethal force endangers officers and invites chaos, or is “anti-American.”

This is learned helplessness and nationalist ideology disguised as realism. Other democracies prove it’s a lie.

Police in England, Germany, Japan, and Scandinavia face dangerous situations without killing people at anywhere near American rates. They manage this not because their citizens are more compliant or their criminals less dangerous, but because their training, policies, and culture prioritize de-escalation over dominance, view lethal force as a genuine last resort rather than a routine tool, and hold officers accountable when they exceed those boundaries.

The argument that “American gun culture makes this impossible” ignores that the most egregious police killings occur in situations that don’t involve suspects with guns. George Floyd wasn’t armed. Eric Garner wasn’t armed. Tamir Rice had a toy gun and was killed within two seconds. Renee Good was in a slowly moving vehicle. The vast majority of these killings are tactical failures, not unavoidable shootouts.

The argument that “police need better training” also miss the point entirely. Reports indicate Renee Good’s killer had extensive training. The problem isn’t a skills deficit—it’s a culture of violence. It’s fascism wearing a badge.

This becomes undeniable when you watch the video where you can hear an ICE officer calling Good a “fucking bitch” after she was shot, lying bleeding in her vehicle. When they refused to let her get medical help as she died, an officer replied, “I don’t care.” That’s not an undertrained officer making a tragic mistake. That’s an officer who wanted her dead, and who felt entitled to kill her because his feelings were hurt moments before.

Any honest police officer will tell you they have the capacity to engage, contain, and disengage without killing people. Other democracies prove this every day. American cops choose not to because they operate within a culture that treats such deaths not as failures but as features—acceptable, even desirable demonstrations of power. This isn’t about maintaining public safety. It’s about maintaining a specific kind of order: one where any challenge to authority, no matter how minor, no matter how lawful, is met with overwhelming force. Where the state’s monopoly on violence must be demonstrated repeatedly, viscerally, lethally, to remind everyone who holds power and what happens when you forget your place.

Resisting the Sickness

Part of staying human in a sick culture is resisting “the way it is” and demanding better. It means refusing to let your moral intuitions be overridden by narratives designed to justify the unjustifiable. It means recognizing that the reflex to defend state violence isn’t driven by law or evidence – it’s cultural conditioning.

When you see footage that disturbs you, that conflicts with official narratives claiming “imminent threat,” “domestic terrorist,” or “officer safety,” trust your eyes. Trust your moral sense that something is deeply wrong when the state kills someone who could have been easily addressed without lethal force.

When you encounter people celebrating that death, understand what you’re witnessing: not legitimate debate about a difficult judgment call, but the pathological pleasure of watching power crush someone who stepped out of line. These people are not guardians of public safety. They are apologists for bloodletting.

To anyone who truly believes what you saw warrants execution: you have absolutely zero respect for the sacredness of life and you should be considered a danger to the people around you.

That’s not hyperbole. A person who cheers the state’s right to kill someone for imperfect compliance has revealed something profound about their character. They have demonstrated that they value obedience to authority above human life. But that absence of empathy doesn’t confine itself to strangers on screens—it shapes how they treat everyone around them.

This mindset, if it’s not obvious, is not a foundation for a free society. It’s the psychology that enables atrocity – not just through deliberate malice, but through learned indifference to suffering when it happens to people we’ve been conditioned to see as “other.”

What Actually Needs to Change

The solutions aren’t complicated. Other democracies have already implemented them. The question is whether we have the political will to dismantle systems that serve power at the expense of human life.

Enforce the policies we already have. ICE’s own guidelines discourage shooting at moving vehicles. The officer who killed Renee Good violated them. But policies mean nothing without enforcement, investigation, and prosecution. Officers who violate use-of-force standards must face criminal charges, not paid leave and internal whitewashing.

End qualified immunity. When cops can kill with minimal consequences—perhaps paid leave, perhaps a transfer—the incentive structure actively encourages lethal force. Officers must face real civil liability for rights violations. If doctors can be sued for malpractice, cops should be sued for killing people who posed no threat.

Root out the infiltration. The FBI has warned for decades about white supremacists and far-right extremists infiltrating law enforcement. Any officer with ties to extremist groups must be immediately terminated and barred from law enforcement. Any agency that refuses to purge these elements should lose federal funding.

Abolish ICE. An agency whose founding purpose was mass deportation, whose culture celebrates cruelty, whose agents operate with near-total impunity, cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled. Immigration enforcement existed before ICE and can exist after—but not through an organization that has become a magnet for extremists and an incubator for violence.

Spiritual self-defense. We must retain our humanity in the face of relentless propaganda training us to deaden our hearts and minds. The machinery of justification isn’t just institutional—it’s psychological. Every “FAFO” comment, every reflexive defense of obvious brutality, every search for some detail that makes a killing seem reasonable represents a small victory for forces that want us compliant, obedient, and numb to state violence.

They need us desensitized. They need us asking the wrong questions. They need us identifying with the badge instead of recognizing ourselves in the person being killed. Resisting this requires conscious effort: trusting your moral intuitions when they conflict with official narratives, recognizing that the reflex to defend state violence is cultural conditioning, not evidence-based reasoning. Your capacity for moral horror at unnecessary death is not naivete—it’s the last line of defense against normalized barbarism. Protect it fiercely.

Choose Humanity

Choose to retain your capacity for moral horror. Choose to trust your eyes when they show you something wrong, even when authority insists you’re seeing it incorrectly. Choose to ask why the officer escalated rather than why she didn’t comply. Choose to recognize that her life had inherent worth regardless of her choices in those final seconds.

Choose to build a society where we hold power accountable rather than rush to excuse its failures. Where we demand de-escalation and restraint from those we grant badges and guns. Where we respond to unnecessary death with outrage and action rather than manufactured justifications and victim-blaming.

That choice—renewed daily in how we respond to each new killing, each new justification, each new celebration of cruelty—is what determines whether we’re building a democracy or a death cult.

There is no middle ground. Either human life is sacred, or it’s conditionally valuable based on compliance with authority. Either we hold power to the highest standards, or we grant it permission to kill anyone who inconveniences it.

Renee Good’s last words before the escalation were “It’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” She was calm. She was kind. And then an agent created panic, and another agent killed her for the fear they manufactured.

If that doesn’t fill you with rage and determination to demand better, check your pulse. Reach out to friends and family. You might have already deadened something essential to being human.

The machinery of propaganda wants you numb, compliant, and willing to accept that “this is just how things are.” Resist that. Fiercely. Your humanity depends on it. So does any possibility of building a society worthy of our children to inherit.