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Detention of publisher Li Yanhe in China for endangering national security has sent chills through islands literary community

Fri 28 Apr 2023 22.00 EDT

In a bookstore near one of Taipeis leading universities, Zeng Da-fu and his wife work quietly into the evening. Zeng has run this store for decades, tucked in a laneway behind a wall of crumbling posters. They sell books on history and politics and Chinese translations of foreign texts, mainly to students but also once to Taiwans president, Tsai Ing-wen, Zeng notes proudly. His work is crucial to the defence of Taiwans democracy, he says. This week that battle came close to home.

Zeng, 75, is also a big investor in Gusa Publishing, a company whose editor-in-chief, Li Yanhe, was this week revealed to be detained in China on national security accusations.

Li, also known by his pen-name Fucha, disappeared shortly after arriving in Shanghai to visit family last month. His detention by authorities was only revealed this week when a Taiwan-based Chinese poet and editor, Bei Ling, posted the news on social media, sending shock waves through Taiwan.

For days, Taiwans government would say only that he was safe and that his family had asked for privacy. Then on Thursday, Beijing confirmed that Li was detained, under investigation for conducting activities endangering national security.

Zeng and his wife know Li well.

Fucha is good and kind and wants to publish good books, but its hard in China because of censorship, he says.

The case has sent chills through the islands community of booksellers and writers, echoing previous cases of Chinese authorities targeting writers and disseminators of critical or politically sensitive literature Li was not even the only case this week. It also comes at a time of deepening authoritarianism in China, and escalating hostilities between Beijing and Taiwan.

Often, there is little to no detail of what those accused of endangering national security are supposed to have done. For Li, many assumed it relates to Gusas publishing of titles critical of the Chinese Communist party or discussing topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and party corruption.

The Taiwan-based east Asia director for Reporters Without Borders, Cdric Alviani, joined global calls for his release, saying Li was one of the last Chinese publishers to still dare release investigative books critical to the regime.

Parallels have been drawn with the five Hong Kong booksellers who were disappeared from various global locations in 2015. One, Gui Minhai, remains in a Chinese jail serving a 10-year sentence on espionage charges. Another, Lam Wing-kee, reopened Causeway Bay Books in Taipei after he skipped bail and fled Hong Kong.

Lam told the Guardian Lis case served as a warning to the industry that publishing these books is a risk.

Li was born in China and worked for the Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House, but in 2009 he moved to Taiwan, where he married, started a family, and launched Gusa Publishing. He had applied for citizenship in the Republic of China (Taiwans formal name), a process that required the Chinese national to return home and cancel his household registration.

Taiwans national security bureau says every Taiwanese citizen has to carefully know this situation, says Bei Ling. Its more risky. But they dont say: dont go into China.

Bei says he learned of Lis arrest from contacts he still has in China. He posted the information on Facebook. While Lis family appear to have sought to keep the case quiet, perhaps in the hopes it would help secure his release, Bei felt it was urgent to get as much international attention as possible.

In 2000, Bei was arrested in China over his work publishing works by Chinese dissidents and exiles. He knew nothing of the campaign for his release during those 15 days, which included press articles in the New York Times and editorials by Susan Sontag.

His brother was arrested for trying to get him freed, a fact Bei learned when they were both released at the same time. Bei was allowed to leave China for the US, becoming a citizen and later moving to Taiwan.

Speaking from his home in the mountains outside Taipei, he wonders what can be done now for Li. He says times were different when he was detained, especially US-China relations under Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin. Now, an outcome like his feels impossible.

He laments that Li was in detention at the same time the former Taiwanese president, Ma Ying-jeou visited the city, and Chinas leaders welcomed the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and a large business delegation.

Ma and his party have much warmer ties with Beijing than the current Taiwan administration, and Macron was warmly received by Xi Jinping. Had they known of Lis detention, this could have been a unique opportunity to lobby behind the scenes for his release, Bei says.

Taiwans government has said they are treating Li as a full citizen, but this will have no impact on Chinese authorities, who do not recognise the ROC as a country.

Beijing claims Taiwan as a Chinese province and is building its military capability to annex it if it wont surrender. Taiwan functions as an independent nation, with a democracy hard-won after decades of martial law that only ended in the 1980s. Zang says his and Lis work in bringing educational materials to young Taiwanese people is crucial to ensuring it continues.

Our generation can bear the risk to ensure the next generation is safe, he says. If I am afraid of the CCP I will live like the walking dead because I will lose the preciousness of life: having truth, justice and love.

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Publishing these books is a risk: Taiwans booksellers stand up for democracy - The Guardian

Lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems talk to reporters outside the Leonard Williams Justice Center following a settlement with Fox News in Delaware Superior Court on April 18, 2023 in Wilmington, Del.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That question, which has lurked behind the defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News, was answered today in an unsurprising fashion: no.

Fox and Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement just moments before opening arguments were set to begin in the Delaware trial. A jury had been selected, and everyone was preparing for what seemed likely to be a six-week trial that would scrutinize Foxs broadcasting of false conspiracy theories that Dominion machines stole votes from then-President Donald Trump in 2020. Dominion was seeking $1.6 billion in damages from Fox.

The settlement is not a total shocker. Just days ago, there was a flurry of speculation that Fox wanted to settle, with the goal of avoiding a courts verdict that it had lied with malice when it aired false accusations from its hosts and guests like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani that Dominion hadtried to rig the presidential election.

The settlement is unlikely to be welcomed by Fox critics who believed that a guilty verdict would serve a mortal blow to the networks reputation. The idea was that Fox, on the ropes, should not be allowed to slip away by writing a settlement check and mumbling an insincere apology. As a headline from The New Republic pleaded amid the settlement rumors a few days ago, Dont Settle, Dominion! Drag Fox News Across the Coals. It argued that with a guilty verdict, we will be able to say, with a certainty we cant quite claim now, that Fox News lies.

Dominion does not exist to serve the public interest. It is a for-profit company owned bya small private equity firm.

But Dominion does not exist to serve the public interest or liberal magazines. It is a for-profit company owned by Staple Street Capital, a small private equity firm. Staple Street has fewer than 50 employees and claims $900 million of assets under management (a modest amount in its industry). It was founded in 2009 by Hootan Yaghoobzadeh and Stephen D. Owens, who previously worked at Carlyle Group and Cerberus Capital Management, giants in private equity. Yaghoobzadeh and Owens graduated from Harvard Business School and have no records of political donations or political activity; they are business people, not pro-democracy agitators.

The size of the settlement represents a windfall on Staple Streets investment in Dominion: Its controlling stake cost just $38.3 million in 2018, according to a filing in the case. While Dominions lawsuit has attracted an enormous amount of attention, its actually not a large company, as the market for its vote-counting services is limited; its expected revenues in 2022 were just $98 million, according to the filing.

While Dominion and Staple Street have not explained why they agreed to the settlement, the rationale is pretty clear. Their case was strong, but it wasnt certain that a jury would deliver as much as they were seeking, and it also was not certain how quickly they might see any award, as Fox would likely appeal. The owners of Staple Street along with John Poulos, who is Dominions chief executive and has a 12 percent stake in the firm were unlikely tohave been strapped for cashbefore the settlement, but nowtheir companies will reap an immediate and significant bounty. In its discovery efforts, Fox unearthed a text message from a former Staple Street employee to a current executive that noted, Would be pretty unreal if you guys like 20xd your Dominion investment with these lawsuits.

Speaking to reporters after the settlement was announced, a lawyer for Dominion, Justin Nelson, said, The truth matters. Lies have consequences. A statement from Fox said, We acknowledge the courts rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.

Its not uncommon for a company to turn its back on the public good for the sake of enriching its owners (a transaction thats traditionally known as maximizing shareholder value). Thats essentially what happened, for instance, when Twitters board eagerly decided to sell the company to Elon Musk for the generous sum of $44 billion. The board lunged at the lucrative transaction even though it was widely predicted that Musk would diminish the usefulness of the social media site, which has indeed happened (Muskrecentlyadmitted the company is now worth half as much as he paid for it).

A mobile billboard deployed by Media Matters circles Fox News Corp. headquarters on April 17, 2023 in New York City.

Photo: Getty Images for Media Matters

The discovery process that preceded the trials opening was a nightmare for Fox, because it exposed in detail the levels of deceit practiced by hosts and executives as they pumped out the conspiracy theory that Trump actually won the 2020 election. But those disclosures appear to have had zero impact on the networks ratings, which remain strong. While Foxs reputation is at rock bottom with its critics, its viewers have remained loyal, and its not clear that a jurys verdict would have influenced them any more than the bounty of evidence that emerged in discovery. Its pretty certain, however, that a settlement will have even less sway.

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The high hopes that were riding on the trial reflected the exasperated state of the longtime and so far unsuccessful effort to counteract the deceptive and racist programming that has been Foxs hallmark since its founding in 1996 by Rupert Murdoch, who is now 92 years old and oversees the network with his eldest son, Lachlan (bothwere deposed and were expected to testify in the trial). Despite years of criticism from journalists and politicians Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., memorably described Fox as a hate-for-profit racket the network has prospered. While most advertisers have fled its airwaves, Fox remains profitable because the bulk of its income consists of exorbitant payments from cable and satellite providers (so-called carriage fees). Despite several years of attempts to pressure those companies, there has been little success, though a renewed push is underway.

Cable and satellite providers have to stop paying Fox News the carrying fees that are really Foxs bread and butter, far more than ad revenue, notedThe New Republic. If the jury finds against Fox, pressure must mount for that to end as well.

These hopes, while widely held among Foxs detractors, constitute the kind of magical thinking that circled around earlier efforts to undo the lies and violence of the Trump era. Just as the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller failed to deliver the knockout blow that was hoped for by its supporters, the now-settled lawsuit filed by Dominionis unlikely to alter the nature of Fox News, as the network has escaped the legal, moral, and financial punishment of a judicial verdict. We probably shouldnt be surprised by this outcome: One terrible limb of American capitalism was always unlikely to save us from another terrible limb.

Read the original here:
Dominion Was Never Going to Save Our Democracy From Fox News - The Intercept

Good Good Good is in Vancouver this week covering TED2023. This article is part of our ongoing, exclusive coverage of the conference, with more interviews and stories to come. Follow along here all week, or on social media with our hashtag #GGGatTED.

While it may initially come off as dramatic or despondent, theres a pretty strong likelihood that you or someone you know has assumed the worst about the United States in the last few years: That our democracy is on the brink of collapse.

While we likely wont be sucked into a big, fiery, fascist hole in the ground in the next few minutes, there is real credibility to those concerns.

Whether its mounting social injustices, inequities in voting rights, or the censorship of diverse media, many of us have felt the deep impact of political divides and fear what else they may lead to.

Barbara F. Walter, an expert on civil wars, and the author of the book How Civil Wars Start And How To Stop Them, took to the stage at TED2023 in Vancouver to affirm our worries, and hopefully, quell them a little, too.

Im going to talk about a threat that most people dont want to think about, she began her TED Talk. Its too frightening, and it doesnt seem real. That threat is civil war.

While it might seem like a scary way to start a lecture, Barbara is a lover of peace, and thats the hope that drives her work.

Since 1946, over 250 civil wars have broken out around the world and that number is increasing exponentially. In her talk, Walter provided additional context: There are now almost 50% more civil wars than there were in 2001, she said.

Walter knows what shes talking about; she has been studying civil wars and democracy for more than 30 years. Shes interviewed leaders at the top of these wars and has been interrogated by them.

She also served on a task force for the CIA called the Political Instability Task Force, whose goal was to develop a model to help the U.S. predict which countries were likely to experience ethnic conflict and civil war.

And the data is actually really good at predicting civil war. Walter and other experts on the task force came up with 38 factors that they predicted would be the best indicators if a country was headed for civil war.

As it turns out, just two of the factors were highly predictive of a civil war and they might sound a bit too familiar for those of us in the United States.

Some of the task forces potential predictive factors for civil war might seem obvious, like higher levels of poverty and income inequality, or extreme discrimination against a particular group of people. Those factors, though, werent actually the best predictors of conflict, Walter shared on the TED2023 stage.

To the experts surprise, it came down to two main factors. First, whether or not a country was an anocracy.

Anocracy is just a fancy term for partial democracy, Walter explained. Its a government thats neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic its something in between.

Hungary is a good example of an anocracy; it holds democratic elections, but whoever is elected can then basically do whatever they want, Walter said.

The second factor of predicting civil wars: Whether citizens in an anocracy form political parties around identity rather than ideology.

So rather than joining a party because you were liberal or conservative, capitalist or communist, you joined a party because you were Black or white, Christian or Muslim, Serb or Croat, Walter said.

If a country displayed both of these factors, the task force put it on a watch list for being at a high risk of political violence and the list was shared with the White House.

The task force discussed countries around the world, but the U.S. never made it onto this watch list. Why? Because the CIA is not legally allowed to monitor the U.S. or its citizens, and in Walters words thats exactly the way it should be.

Walter, though, as a private citizen, saw both of these factors emerging rapidly in the U.S. She also knew that since 2016, the U.S.s democracy had been downgraded three times, the most recent of which came after former President Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and actively attempted to overturn them.

Between December of 2020 and early 2021, the United States was officially classified as an anocracy, Walter said. If the task force had been allowed to monitor and study the United States, it likely would have considered it at high risk of political instability and political violence.

In other words: the task force would have predicted the political violence that ensued on January 6th.

You may also be surprised to learn who are the folks that declare or start a civil war. Well give you a hint: its not the poorest or the most oppressed.

The people who tend to start civil wars, especially ethnically-based civil wars, are the groups that had once been politically dominant but are in decline, Walter said.

In the U.S., for example, Walter explains how the rise of militias has been driven primarily by white men who see America changing in ways that directly threatens their status.

These militias were the ones who led the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

Although Walter points to clearly unsettling and, sadly, unsurprising facts about the current status of democracy in the United States, she also explained that we already have the blueprint to strengthening and maintaining democracy and preventing a civil war.

The U.S. is in the midst of a transition from a country with a majority-white population to one that will soon be majority non-white. And the stakes are high: other countries will follow our lead.

These countries are going to be looking to the United States to see how we manage this demographic shift, Walter said. Americans can allow this transition to tear us apart, or we could use it to come together to show the world how to manage this change, and in the process, create a truly multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy.

The second option would be preferable, please and thank you.

And the good news is: its entirely achievable. Walter laid out two ways we can do it.

When it comes to addressing anocracy, we have to improve the rule of law, Walter explained. This means ensuring equal access for every citizen to vote, reducing corruption, and improving the quality of services provided by the government.

But doing all of that is challenging, and takes time. Acknowledging this, Walter explained how businesses can step in to fill the gap and help speed things along. She posited: Corporations have the opportunity to lead the way by putting pressure on governments to make changes that align with the will of the people.

While that might raise a red flag to some folks who are concerned about corporate lobbying, Walter used South Africa as a case study to show how businesses can push politics forward at the agenda of democracy, albeit also at the agenda of profit.

The business community stepped in and demanded real democracy. They did this because they had been suffering under years of crushing economic sanctions, and eventually they had to choose between apartheid and profits, and they chose profits, Walter explained. When they went to the government and said we will no longer support you, the apartheid regime knew it could no longer survive, and reform happened quickly.

To help address the other factor identity politics businesses have the opportunity to invest in better health care, higher minimum wages, and more, so that they create a group of people that are hopeful about the future, and less vulnerable to the calls by extremists to burn the system down.

Currently, social media algorithms are designed to elevate the most incendiary and divisive content, as the most extreme ideas are given preferred status in algorithms, pushing them to peoples feeds who may not otherwise see them.

While Walter emphasized that she doesnt believe in censorship, or limiting free speech, she said that algorithms must be regulated so that they dont give preference to these extreme ideas.

Let people put whatever they want on social media, but do not allow the algorithms to amplify the messages by bullies, hate-mongers, conspiracy theorists, and enemies of democracy, Walter said. If we take away their bullhorn, their influence will decline.

In other words, we must give the best ideas the ones that naturally resonate with users the space to succeed on social media, rather than pushing them aside with an algorithm that favors extreme ideas.

In her years of work in this area, Walter has interviewed people who have lived through a civil war, and they all say the same thing: I didnt see it coming.

We have the benefit of foresight here: We have the data to back up these predictive factors for civil war and political violence (and, arguably, proof and hindsight from what happened on January 6th).

Theres no reason why we, the democracy-loving people of this world, cant create our own playbook to prevent civil war, Walter said. To do that, we have to be brave enough to fight for real democracy, strong democracy. Because only by fighting for democracy can we ensure we will truly get peace.

And there are some signs of hope in the fighting-for-democracy arena: specifically, Walter looks at the November midterm elections.

She called it a really, really good sign in that one, all of the folks who denied the results of the 2020 election (a.k.a. are anti-democracy) lost their elections.

And second, the group of voters that traditionally vote the least, turned out for the midterms in huge, historic numbers: Young people between the ages of 18 and 25. That good news multiplies, too once you get a young person engaged in voting early, they tend to continue voting in future elections.

That means turnout is going to improve, the type of person who votes is going to be more representative of the population, Walter said. That is a healthier and better democracy.

Follow along with Good Good Goods coverage of all of the best positive news, hopeful progress, and ways to make a difference all from TED all week long: Instagram | Newsletter | Website

Header image courtesy of Gilberto Tadday / TED (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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Civil War Expert: How To Save & Strengthen U.S. Democracy - Good Good Good

An upcoming public discussion will explore the conditions and practices that define a democracy and strategies for building its resilience at a time when many democracies worldwide are at risk.

This years Lund Critical Debate, Democracy and Its Opposites: Challenges in a Global World, will address the increasing global influence of rising autocracies and the backsliding of democratic norms in many long-stable democracies.

Expert panelists Thomas Garrett and Damon Wilson will examine the threats democracies around the world are confronting, and what governments and citizens can do to fight back, on April 24, 5-7:30 p.m. in the Alice Statler Auditorium. Registration is required.

The annual debate is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Garrett serves as the secretary general of the Community of Democracies and formerly lived abroad for over a decade observing election processes and advocating for political participation. Wilson, president and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy, is an expert in international security and strengthening democracies. He is a former civil servant and was former special assistant to U.S. President George W. Bush from 2007-09.

The debate and the conversations it sparks give the campus community an annual opportunity to explore high-profile global issues from diverse perspectives, said Rachel Beatty Riedl, the Einaudi Centers director and John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

Democracies around the world are experiencing ongoing attacks on democratic practices and institutions from electoral management systems to judicial independence, said Riedl, who will moderate the debate. I hope students will bring questions and ideas to this conversation with policy leaders as we think through ways to safeguard voters voices around the world.

The Lund Critical Debate gathers noted experts in international affairs to deliberate on pressing issues in world news and public policy. This years dialogue highlights Einaudis work on democratic threats and resilience. The series is made possible through the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs 57.

Jessica Ames is a communications assistant for Global Cornell.

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Lund Debate to bring democracy experts into conversation | Cornell ... - Cornell Chronicle

From left, then-expelled Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, and then-expelled Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, raise their fists as they walk across Fisk University's campus after hearing Vice President Kamala Harris speak on Friday, April 7, in Nashville, Tenn. Johnson was saved from expulsion by one vote. Pearson and Jones have each been returned to their seats. George Walker IV/AP hide caption

From left, then-expelled Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, and then-expelled Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, raise their fists as they walk across Fisk University's campus after hearing Vice President Kamala Harris speak on Friday, April 7, in Nashville, Tenn. Johnson was saved from expulsion by one vote. Pearson and Jones have each been returned to their seats.

Both Justins' Jones and Pearson have returned to the Tennessee statehouse. They once again represent the people in Memphis and Nashville who elected them.

However temporary, the expulsion of two Black state legislators was both unprecedented and history repeating itself.

For some, it conjured Julian Bond, the civil rights leader elected to the Georgia house of Representatives in 1965, initially denied his seat by white legislators because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. For others it echoed an earlier moment in Georgia, when in 1868 white legislators expelled all 33 Black lawmakers from the governing body.

Three legislators in Tennessee were on the chopping block. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, was spared expulsion by just one vote. Same behavior. Two different outcomes.

It was a stark example of how threats to democracy are, and have always been, rooted and wrapped up in race and racism, says Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of race, history, and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School.

"This should be yet another wake-up call to Americans who believe in justice, who believe in fairness, who believe in democracy," says Muhammad. "To recognize that our system is fundamentally failing and broken at this moment, and race and racism are the key wedges and levers to pull it apart."

The racist optics of expelling two young Black men and saving the white woman was not lost on Republican legislators, as captured in audio of a private conversation that was leaked to and released by the digital news outlet Tennessee Holler.

In the audio, Republican Rep. Jason Zachary accused fellow Republican Jody Barrett, whose lone vote saved Johnson, of throwing the others under the bus.

"I've listened for the last three days to Democrats trash us as racists," Zachary says in the recording, specifically listing off the names of three Black Democratic legislators. "All I have heard from them is how this is the most racist place, one of them used white supremacy. Good lord, we have to realize they are not our friends," he says.

The idea that being called a racist is the worst thing you can be called especially if you are white is itself a long standing tactic of deflection, says Carol Anderson, chair of African American studies at Emory College.

"Part of what the Civil Rights Movement did was to make 'racism' bad," she says at least the appearance of racism. She says now you get this protest whenever racism is called out, "oh no, you called me a racist." Anderson says this makes it seem as if the real harm is in being called racist, rather than in actual racism.

Take the words of another Republican representative caught on the tape, Scott Cepicky. "I've been called a racist, a misogynist, a white supremacist more in the last two months in my life, than I have in my entire life," he says.

"By golly, I'm biting my tongue," he went on. Referring to the reappointment of Rep. Jones to the legislature, "I'm going to have to swallow this to see Mr. Jones back up here, walking these hallowed halls that the greats of Tennessee stood in, and watch them disrespect this state."

He did not say what words he had to bite his tongue to stifle. He did not mention what phrases or thoughts he was swallowing or what specifically it is about the young Black legislator that disrespects the history of the statehouse.

Only expelling the two Black legislators may have surfaced the racism at work in the Tennessee statehouse, but racism and discrimination were also lurking just beneath, according to political scientists, historians and activists on the ground.

"We've been screaming at the top of our lungs for twenty years that there is deep-seated racism for Black and brown communities here," says Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

There was something powerful, she says, about seeing it so blatantly and clearly laid out, for so many to witness.

Put aside which two legislators were temporarily expelled, says Carol Anderson. Instead look at what voters were represented by the three targeted representatives. "Those three legislators represent 'the other,'" she says.

Rep. Justin Pearson's district in Memphis is 61.1 % Black. Rep. Justin Jones' district in Nashville is 30.9 % Black and 24 % Hispanic. Rep. Gloria Johnson's district is 58.2 % Black.

Targeting the three for an apparently minor, at least by comparison, rules violation "is a way of calling them and by extension the votes of the people they represent illegitimate," Anderson says.

This is all part of a larger pattern, says Luna. "We often say we're not a red state, we're a gerrymandered state."

Gerrymandering by Republicans in power has significantly watered down the votes of Black people and other people of color, through redrawn maps that help secure a Republican supermajority, even as the state demographics and politics shift.

"A country that is growing in its majority population of non-whites," Khalil Gibran Muhammad says, "has compelled the Republican Party to engage in unconstitutional practices of one kind or another in an effort to retain and or grab as much power as they can."

Racism was also coursing through the words spoken and the tone taken towards the two young Black legislators, says Carol Anderson. She says the formal rules of the expulsion hearings barely concealed a simmering rage on the part of white legislators.

"White rage is all about putting you back in your place," Anderson says.

"White rage demands that people of color, and women, stay in their place in the racial structure and the patriarchal structure," she says.

Take the way Rep. Andrew Farmer addressed Justin Pearson, his hands shaking with emotion. "Just because you don't get your way, you can't come to the well, bring your friends, and throw a temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn," he told Pearson. "It doesn't give you the right to enrage folks that are here."

"That's why you are standing there, because of that temper tantrum that day, that yearning to have attention, well you're getting it now," he said to the young Black man.

What Pearson wanted, he told Farmer in response, was to be able to speak for his constituents, many of them young people who had descended onto the state capitol after yet another mass shooting, to demand that politicians do something about gun violence.

"He called a peaceful protest a temper tantrum," Pearson said. "Is elevating our voices for justice or change a temper tantrum?"

The real offense, Pearson said, was not in breaking the rules of decorum. The real offense was that "we asserted our dignity as equal members of this body who you would rather have silenced, who you would rather not hear, who you would rather have back somewhere else, instead of up here as your equal."

Their real offense, according to Pearson, was they refused to assimilate.

The unwritten rules of assimilation to a space that had been run by, and for, mostly white men, was not just raised in the conversations between the young Black activists and white Republicans. It also came up in an exchange between Rep. Justin Jones and an Indian American Republican, Rep. Sabi Kumar.

"You look at everything through the lens of race," Kumar said to Jones. "Those are your experiences, and that's perfectly understandable. But sincerely, after becoming elected, you should be celebrating. You really should be. You should join the House, become one of us."

"That's what this is really about," Jones said in response, that he should "just assimilate."

"This is a very old and effective strategy of evoking a model minority myth where people should be grateful for access" to power, says Harvard's Muhammad.

The suggestion is that proximity to power is enough, that "people of color should come in and follow the rules, but the truth is, the rules were stacked against them from the beginning."

Both Pearson and Jones, alongside other Black legislators have spoken up about being systemically silenced on the statehouse floor. They have said it was either break the rules, or never be allowed to speak at all.

Rather than forcefully filtering everything through the lens of race, Muhammad says, "race always matters," even when people who are Black and brown deny its pervasive power.

Kumar also accused Jones of calling him a "brown face." He said that it was the first time he had ever encountered a racial slur in his 53 years in America.

"I told you what you just exhibited as the only member of their caucus who is not of the Caucasian persuasion," Jones clarified in response. "I said that you put a brown face on white supremacy."

As for never hearing a racial slur, Jones pointed out that just a few weeks prior, another Republican representative "recommended that we should bring back lynching." Jones was referring to Rep. Paul Sherell's comments that the death penalty should include "hanging by tree."

Lynching was a form of racial terror that was used extensively throughout the South to kill and control Black people.

For Lisa Sherman Luna, whose organization, TIRRC, worked to register and turn out voters of color in Tennessee, what is happening in the state shows the great extremes Republicans are willing to go to establish what she calls "white minority rule."

"The rest of the country should be very deeply alarmed, because this is 100% the blueprint for tackling the vision that we have of our multiracial pluralistic democracy," she says.

It may be a blueprint for an anti-democratic push to maintain power, especially white power, but what is happened in Tennessee is also a blueprint for something else. That is, if you believe the words of Justin Pearson, spoken in his defense on the floor of the Tennessee legislature.

"The news for you and for every member in this legislative body is that this country is changing in magnificent ways," he told the body. "That the diversity of the state of Tennessee is changing in magnificent ways, that the voices and the people who are protesting aren't just Black folk, it ain't just white folk, ain't just rich folk or poor folk," Pearson said.

"It is a multiracial coalition built on a solidarity dividend that can break any institution that refuses to change."

More here:
Power, race, and fragile democracy in Tennessee - NPR