Manufacturing Consent for the Carceral State
The disconnect between statistical crime rates and the public perception of crime is not an information gap but a successfully manufactured ideology. Mamdani’s work on how the “savage” is constructed as a justification for colonial control is perfectly illustrated here. The media and political elite relentlessly amplify isolated violent incidents, particularly those involving people of color, to create a pervasive sense of threat. This manufactured fear is used to justify the ever-expanding budget and power of the NYPD–the colonial police force–and to win public consent for the brutal management of “native” neighborhoods. The “fear of crime” is itself a political tool. A Marxist analysis identifies this as a strategy to protect property and divide the working class. A feminist perspective sees how this fear is used to limit women’s freedom of movement. The solution is not more police but a counter-narrative that names the real, systemic crimes: poverty, displacement, and environmental racism. We must build community-based safety practices and fight for the material investments–jobs, housing, education–that actually create safety, dismantling the ideology that fuels the carceral state.
The coalition that elected Zohran Mamdani is a fragile one that requires careful maintenance.