Texas Governor Pardons and Frees Far-Right Gunman Who Killed Black Lives Matter Protester

On May 16th, the Trump aligned governor of Texas, Greg Abbot, pardoned and freed from prison Daniel Perry, an Uber driver and active-duty soldier at Fort Hood who shot and killed Garret Foster, himself an Air Force veteran, in 2020 in Austin, Texas, during a Black Lives Matter demonstration following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Foster, who at the time of his death was open carrying an AK-47, legal under Texas law, was taking part in a Black Lives Matter march alongside his fiance, who he was pushing in a wheelchair. Perry who was also armed, drove his vehicle through a red light and into a group of protesters, before shooting his revolver through his car window, killing Foster. Perry was later found guilty for the murder of Foster by a jury, but had yet to be sentenced at the time of his pardoning.

According to the Texas Tribune:

Perry’s attorneys said at trial Foster raised his rifle, prompting Perry to shoot Foster five times through his car window with his handgun. Witnesses said Foster did not raise his rifle.” According to the Daily Dot, “Several witnesses told police that Foster, who was pushing his disabled girlfriend’s wheelchair in the march, did not aim the AK-47 he was legally carrying at Perry’s car.”

As the libertarian leaning Reason pointed out:

Perry himself…told law enforcement that he was not [acting in self-defense]. “I believe he was going to aim at me,” he said. “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” But that is not a self-defense justification…

A look into Perry’s online footprint reveals him to be a far-Right Trump supporter who for years made racist comments, pushed conspiracy theories, and also routinely talked to friends about wanting to shoot and murder protesters. As the Daily Dot reported:

…tweets blame China for the coronavirus pandemic. “[L]et’s just call it the Chinese bat soup virus,” says one…Numerous…tweets…are replies to President Donald Trump, conservative commentator Michael Savage, and Breaking 911, a right-wing site that has been described as “bogus” and untrustworthy.

According to the Austin-American Statesman:

The posts unsealed…included messages such as “Black Lives Matter is racist to white people…It is official I am racist because I do not agree with people acting like monkeys,” Perry wrote.

Perry shared countless memes on Facebook, including one that said, “If this symbol represents racism in America … (shows Confederate flag) SO DO THESE (shows NAACP logo, Hispanic scholarship fund, American Association for Affirmative Action, BET, UNCP, the democratic party logo, etc.)”

The Boston Globe reported:

Several items [Perry posted to social media] include racist or discriminatory content, such as a 2019 message in which Perry suggested he would like to “get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.” Memes that he shared joked about racially profiling neighbors and scolding a theoretical daughter for having a crush on a person of color.

The Houston Chronicle also noted:

Other items…found on Perry’s phone include a undated meme that uses the n-word and complains about Black people being racist; a meme that advises people “pick up your brass” if they encounter rioters; and a May 29 text to another person that shows a photo of a building with a sign on it that says “WHITE POWER, White county power & light co.”

Text messages also show that Perry had communicated to friends multiple times his desire to “shoot looters” and wanting to “shoot the ones in the front” of a demonstration, while complaining about “the blacks” organizing protests following the police murder of George Floyd.

Governor Abbot first made public his push to pardon Perry a day after then Fox News power-house Tucker Carlson defended Perry on his hit TV show. Like far-Right killer Kyle Rittenhouse, who in 2020 shot and killed two people while seriously injuring a third during a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Perry became a right-wing cause célèbre and symbol of vigilante violence that both the far-Right and the Republican party embraced in the wake of the George Floyd uprising.

As This Week in Fascism wrote:

This celebration of fascist murder has even become state official policy. In the wake of Rittenhouse’s multiple killings, the Department of Homeland Secruity (DHS) under Trump directed officials to support the violence. As VICE reported, “Department of Homeland Security officials were given a list of sympathetic talking points to use when answering questions about the teenager who allegedly killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to an internal memo obtained by NBC News.”

This took place against a backdrop of extreme politicization within the DHS under Chad Wolf, according to whistleblowers, who instructed those working at the agency to downplay threats from the far-Right and play up the threat of anarchists and antifascists.

Settler-colonial states have always relied upon and benefited from extra-judicial murder and state-sanctioned violence against the broader population. From Trump calling on the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by,” to slave patrols and state sponsored genocide of Native peoples, far-Right violence often helps to strengthen the structural violence of the State itself, not destabilize it.

As political repression and inequality explode, the State is also signaling to all its priorities: ramping up repression in the face of possible resistance from below, attempting to entrench divisions within the broader population, and readying those who they can call on to enforce the brutality of the status-quo.

For all the talk of “gun rights” and “standing your ground,” the instruction manual for this society is quite clear: it is only for those who tow the ruling class line and who aren’t pushing to attack this shit-show we call capitalism and white supremacy. The pardoning of Daniel Perry is a warning: that the State is willing to sanction and support extreme violence and outright murder against those it deems as political enemies.