“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Trigger warning: For those who think it’s facile and overwrought to make comparisons between 2020s America and 1930s Germany, you may want to skip this essay. Also, I urge you to read William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Maybe it will become clearer to you.
For the second time in five years, Minneapolis – and America – is in crisis. For the second time, an unarmed civilian was murdered in broad daylight by uniformed officers of the state, an act that was captured on video and circulated around the world. For the second time, the people of the city are responding to state-sanctioned violence with resistance, with vigilance, and with mutual aid. But this time, the response of so-called leaders could not be more different.
In 2020, just a few days after George Floyd was choked to death by a Minneapolis police officer, the CEOs of nearly every major company in the state issued a statement condemning his killing and the systemic racism it so vividly demonstrated. They also committed to taking actions to address racial inequities and social justice. Now, I know from my own experience then that within the companies we led, and the communities we served, there were widely divergent opinions about Mr. Floyd’s killing, policing, and the issues of equity and inclusion. So this wasn’t necessarily an easy step for these CEOs to take in that moment. It was an act of courage, an expression of principle over expedience.
Contrast that to now. There has been near silence from business leaders about the murder of Renee Good by an ICE agent, and about the mass deployment of para-military forces engaged in widespread acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence in Minneapolis and many other communities in our state. And let’s be clear: this has little to do with immigration. It is about intimidation. Citizens and non-citizens alike are being indiscriminately kidnapped and assaulted. For goodness sake, four of those detained are members of the Oglala Sioux Nation! (Oh, and despite the rhetoric about going after criminals, DHS’ own data shows that fewer than half of those captured have any criminal record at all, and only about 5% for violent crimes. Less than at a reunion of January 6th rioters.)
Where are our leaders, as our community is under assault? As our nation is engaging in neo-colonial undertakings around the world and alienating our friends and allies? As the rule of law is being dismantled in front of our eyes? Where the hell are our leaders?
Many would argue that the main responsibility of a CEO is to maintain the value of their company, to act in the best interests of its owners, the shareholders. Others would expand that to include other stakeholders such as customers and workforce. But the leader’s duty is to their company, first and foremost.
Even taking that view of a business leader’s obligations, it’s hard to argue that the ICE surges, and more broadly the Trump Administrations upending of legal processes, is good for business. It can’t be good for business if employees and customers alike are afraid to leave their homes. It can’t be good for business if trust in institutions is further undermined. It can’t be good for business if contracts can be arbitrarily canceled, if economic policy is conducted by the whim of a president who is at least narcissistic and at worst unstable, if society is becoming further and further fragmented.
My first thought was that the silence is due to fear. This would be understandable, given the demonstrated tendency of Trump to use the full force of the federal government to punish anyone who disagrees with him. Indeed, unlike the business community, elected officials in Minnesota have been strong in their condemnations of the administration’s actions and they are paying for their courage. (Well, at least some of them, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Gov. Tim Walz. Not sure what’s happening on the other side of the aisle.)
Then, I discovered the writings of Ernst Fraenkel, a Jewish lawyer who fled Nazi Germany in 1938 for the US. In his book The Dual State, he noted that the fascist regime built its totalitarian power gradually. Prof. Aziz Huq writes in The Atlantic, “As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system – which he called the “normative state” – remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which ‘unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees’ reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply.” Like the proverbial frog in the pot of heating water, we don’t recognize when we have slipped over completely to rule by executive prerogative until it is too late. This is especially likely when the loss of legal guarantees applies only to marginalized groups: Jews and Communists in 1930s Germany, people of color in 2020s America. It is easy for those in positions of privilege and power to be in denial.
We do still have much of our normative state. Large companies are allowed to engage in mega-mergers, individuals are still allowed to challenge government actions in court, people file their taxes and get passports and vote. But make no mistake: what we are seeing in Minneapolis today is an example of the prerogative state. When George Floyd was killed, the legal system followed normal procedure and justice was done. When Renee Good was killed, the Department of Justice simply decided it was justified, they would not investigate, and they would not help the state of Minnesota do so either. Our companies may be able to conduct business more or less normally for now. But for how long?
I’m not suggesting we are on the verge of a full-fledged fascist dictatorship (though it is a possibility that is distressingly more realistic than I would have ever imagined). I am suggesting that unless something is done, further erosion of the rule of law is almost certain. And as we have seen throughout history, that can be successfully resisted.
Whether out of fear or denial, our business leaders have been silent. We need them to speak up. We need them to resist. Perhaps it is starting. Last week the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, not exactly a hotbed of radicalism, released a statement that, while measured, was clear in calling out the current harassment being conducted by ICE and the need for redress when government acts unconstitutionally. There’s still a lot of crickets, but I hope more voices will follow. Because as Dr. King also said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Starting With Curious 