Domestic disaster response has adopted tactics of overseas militarization

Evidence

In the name of securing the city, New Orleans was quickly turned into an armed military camp. Combat-ready forces went door-to-door urban warfare style, kicking down locked entrances searching for survivors to evacuate at the end of often fully loaded AK47s. While critics were rightly bemoaning the dehumanizing conduct of war abroad, few seemed to notice that for domestic purposes America was mimicking tactics of militarization honed in the desert war. America, in short, has taken to turning itself into armed and gated camps at home. Its regime of social truth today is shaped principally by a military mind-set circulated and recirculated by all those retired generals appearing on the nightly news programs advising the public on how to read the day’s events. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 434

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Goldberg’s broader argument about racial neoliberalism and the militarization of social control under ‘homeland security’ — echoes his earlier framing of the securitized state.