My piece on why progressives should be ready to defend our polling places, voters, and our candidates with force of arms if necessary, has met with understandably mixed reaction. A lot of people think I’m being paranoid. That’s fair.
However, maybe there needs to be a history lesson here. In nearly every incident of major racial violence, there’s been one common factor: The local cops were either participants or they looked the other way. Black Wall Street burned because the local cops handed weapons to the lynch mobs. Multiple Reconstruction governments were driven out of power because the police stood by and let it happen. Ruby Bridges had to be escorted to and from school because the local police fully intended to let her and her family die at the hands of the mob.
This bit of history can thus be illustrated as a few math problems:
Racists+Nothing=Stupid Armed Racists+Nothing=Dangerous but mostly to themselves Armed Racists+Tacit or Active Approval of Police= A major threat.
A lot of you are thinking that we haven’t approached problem three yet. This won’t happen again. I wouldn’t be so sure. A lot of people said that Nazis were “just history” and that the stuff we’re seeing from our government, and a lot of people now wouldn’t happen again.
Here we are.
Our current government knows that there has been a major infiltration of our police by white supremacist groups. In fact, it’s been documented to be one of the strategies of white supremacists. Yet, the government plans to do nothing. They don’t even want to discuss it. They’ve all but said that they plan to ignore right-wing militants in favor of chasing after Muslim boogeymen, as the RW extremists want. And it’s not as though we can expect Attorney General Jeff "the only rights that matter are States' Rights (to be assholes to minorities)" Sessions to make sure states are doing their jobs. After all, his own state is still butthurt that they can’ t put up “ whites only” signs. He’s not about to hurt their feelings.
The local cops in most cities have a vested interest in making sure that Democrats don’t win. Most police unions don't like Democratic constituencies (IE minorities). What with our "overwhelming" demands that they stop being allowed to investigate themselves and that they wear body cams so they can't write police reports where they're angels. If there's a situation where the local Nazis or RW militia fanatics are causing a problem in Dem precincts, I don't see the local police running out to stop it.
After all, we tend to want that pesky police accountability stuff while the Trumpists would gladly make it legal for police to shoot anyone who rubbed them the wrong way.
Hell, a good number of police unions have gone almost full KKK. They’ve spent the last few elections telling white people that if Dems win and start implementing things like civilian review boards and making it easier to fire bad cops, anarchy will reign. Sort of like what every group of white supremacists did during every advancement in civil rights.
And then there’s the final element: Being cornered.
Everyone outside the Trump cult basically doesn't like him. And he's their standard bearer. After Virginia and Alabama, the rightwingers know that they can’t depend on CrossCheck to deliver victory. Dems are challenging them in places they haven’t been challenged before. And sometimes winning. There’s something else brewing too. Florida, a reliably Republican state, has slowly been turning purple. Now there’s a major influx of people from Puerto Rico.
And by and large, they don’t have many positive things to say about Trump.
The RW knows this could get nasty. And cornered animals are dangerous. We should not assume they’ll stick to the letter of the law. Especially when law enforcement likes them better.
I hope I’m wrong about all of this. I hope the racists don’t act up. I hope if they do, law enforcement puts them down hard.
But history has shown that racists are most violent and dangerous when police abet them. And since the government has done nothing to stop white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement, and the political aims of police unions and individual officers are directly contrary to our own, we should assume we’re going it alone and plan to protect ourselves, voters, our precincts, and our candidates accordingly. Because the Feds are being controlled by white supremacists as well.
