‘Good Guy’ versus Renee Good: Where Guns Have Got Us
Trump’s, Noem’s, and Vance’s “self-defense” narrative takes the “stand your ground” logic of America gun culture and applies it to the culture wars in America. Any vehicle is the same as a loaded gun.
The killing of Renee Good is striking in the polarization of interpretations it has produced. People on the left claim murder, and those on the right call “self-defense.” I propose the stark difference is due to a right-wing predetermined narrative that has its roots in white nationalism gone mainstream in the throes of gun culture. Viewing the incident through apocalyptic logic brings into focus the right’s insistence they are living in an embattled, violent world—and explains why so many will not entertain the possibility that Renee Good’s shooting was plainly murder.
The “self-defense” story uses the same logic as “stand-your-ground” gun laws. But increasingly, the mainstreaming of stand-your-ground gun logic takes an imagined individual conflict between intruder and home-owner and extrapolates to the national level with white supremacists in ICE acting as defenders of the American “castle”—with anyone supportive of immigrants deemed hostile enemies.
George Floyd was murdered less than a mile from where Renee Good was murdered in Minneapolis. And indeed, the context that is most critical for understanding this shooting is the American white supremacist one—where certain bodies are deemed a threat and are thus expunged. Black bodies are much more likely to be targeted, but white women are disposable too if they support the rights of non-white people. Whatever else guns may be for people using them on hunting grounds or in target competitions, on America’s streets guns are a means of asserting white supremacy and state power. They are a key component of the story of white nationalist “self-defense” against the apocalyptic horses of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Trump’s take on Good’s murder directly echoes the self-defense narrative. Renee Good is called a “professional agitator” with ill intent. Trump says she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who then “shot her in self-defense.”
J.D. Vance similarly says the ICE officer was targeted by a “deranged leftist” who used her car as a weapon:
Vance is digging in his heels on this interpretation even after additional videos call it into serious question.
And Kristi Noem, in her flamboyant cowboy hat flanked by officers in manspreading pose, calls the event “an act of domestic terrorism,” saying Renee Good “attacked them …and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him and my understanding is that she was hit and is deceased…This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and our law enforcement are under every single day.” Noem’s narrative is the same as the white nationalist narrative: white men are unjustly being attacked and must constantly defend themselves.
Walz calls Noem out for inflammatory anticipatory storytelling saying: "It's beyond me that apparently from the federal government, the Homeland Security director herself, ha[d] already determined who this person was, what their motive was, and they hadn't even been taken out of the vehicle," Walz said. "We're not living in a normal world." Indeed, we are living in a world of predetermined narratives intended to reshape the world itself. Demands for reasonable investigation will fail where a quasi-religious narrative of persecution is already firmly in place.
Trump’s, Noem’s, and Vance’s “self-defense” narrative takes the “stand your ground” logic of America gun culture and applies it to the culture wars in America. Any vehicle is the same as a loaded gun. Anyone driving a vehicle is then a de facto threat. ICE officers are predetermined “good guys” assaulted by “bad guys.” The desire to push one’s ideological opponents into the position of violent attackers is logic familiar to white nationalists, who are prone to seeing the world as filled with agitators persecuting them.
I suspect the shooter was already primed to view ordinary citizens as enemies, particularly if they exhibited progressive political leanings. I think, given the look of shock and surprise on the ICE officer’s face when Good turned the wheels of her vehicle, that he already felt under threat. He already suspected protestors would use cars as weapons against him. He already had an us-versus-them “stand your ground” narrative unfolding. He presumed Good was going to ram him with her car. He then reacted as if he had been attacked when he had not. Like Kristi Noem, he was already primed to see the world as an apocalyptic battlefield and himself as a warrior. According to this presumptive narrative, Renee Good could have had no other motive than to mow him down. The tragedy is that Good almost certainly had no intention of harming anybody, as detailed analysis of the video evidence shows. But white nationalists already committed to an apocalyptic narrative will refuse to see the evidence before their own eyes.
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