Jared Yates Sexton Profile picture
Hoosier, Political Analyst, Muckrake Podcast, Author THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS @duttonbooks available now

Apr 27, 2021, 14 tweets

As it's becoming increasingly clear the FBI and police have partnered with the Proud Boys, we need to talk about the long and ugly history of the alliance between law enforcement and fascist groups in protecting white supremacy and the wealthy.

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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-natural-al…

It was shocking to a lot of people to see police and paramilitary groups buddy up to each other during the BLM protests, but history shows these groups have the same interests and goals.

They work together for a common goal: protecting white supremacy and the economic system

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Revelations have shown that the Proud Boys and their leaders have been partnering with law enforcement, federal and local, in targeting "Antifa."

This is how it happens. The Right and law enforcement partner to take down possible reformers.

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To start, we have to go back to the 1790's, where the French Revolution inspired the start of British policing to stave off revolution.

The same people who led the police found paramilitary street gangs to intimidate, attack, and sabotage the Left.

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The purpose, of both the police and the street gangs, was to protect established power and wealth.

What's more, their members were often members of both the police force AND the paramilitary group. A trend that continues to this very day.

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The reason our law enforcement and military are full of white supremacists is because they are engaged in common cause.

The enforcement of law and order, as they are currently defined, is about suppressing reform and "protecting" society from people of color.

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There's a reason law enforcement fashions itself as a crusade for good against evil, a "Thin Blue Line" between society and criminal evil.

It's based in the history of white supremacy and the idea that Anglo Saxon culture is wholly and good.

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In America, we've seen this play out in extralegal ways, as law enforcement has helped paramilitary, fascist mobs lynch people of color, burn down their neighborhoods and businesses, and murder them in cold blood in the street.

It is a long, long partnership.

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The conspiracy theories we're dealing with now are also at the heart of the relationship as law enforcement and white supremacists believe they are "protecting" America from a major conspiracy and legitimize violence on the idea that foreign influences are destroying us.

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With Civil Rights, violent whites and law enforcement believed African Americans were unwitting agents of Communist plots.

They believed they were defending America from a terrorist conspiracy determined to destroy them.

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This paranoid mindset is why the FBI and law enforcement prosecuted Civil Rights figures like MLK.

They worked to undermine and destroy them, believing they were fighting a foreign plot. They used incredibly insidious means, including partnering with violent extremists.

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We continue to see the same paranoia and partnership between law enforcement and the fascistic Right play out to this very day.

The idea that BLM was a "Marxist" conspiracy is just an echo of past racist paranoia and saw them coming together to crush reformers.

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This is how an event like January 6th can take place even as law enforcement knows it's coming, how they were also involved in it.

Because the white supremacist paranoia pairs them with extremists in defending white supremacy and economic power.

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The problem isn't just that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement, both local and federal, it's that the two are inherently linked by ideology.

They have the same goals, same purpose, which is to destroy any and all challenges to the white supremacist system

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