Thread by @spacetwinks

thinking about how a lot of people's trouble with wrapping their heads around nazis as an actual threat is the thought that "if there was really a problem, the cops would take care of it", followed by the inability/unwillingness to believe that cops would actually support them

cops have massive latitude to beat the shit out of most anybody with little to no consequences and that this is almost never used against various flavors of white supremacists would say something obvious, but so many people just can't/won't grip around "the cops like the nazis"

thoughts of how the ACLU couldn't seem to understand how the cops wouldn't do their job at the Charlottesville hate rally - they seemed utterly baffled that police might favor a white supremacist organization over those protesting them

widespread total disbelief of reality

and always the roadblock with talking to free speech absolutist types, who can't/won't understand that forces of authority - cops, judges, etc - would defend nazis and not offer the same defenses to those said nazis would oppress

this bizarre idea that because something is the law/the rules, those in charge of enforcing those laws, those rules, would somehow just universally do so fairly, like a magic spell compelling them to be unbiased

total unwillingness to grasp material reality

it's one of the biggest arrows through the whole "oh it's just a few bad apples" thing - beyond just "cops not doing anything about bad cops is bad to begin with" and into getting to watch, in action, cops defend white supremacists above all else

it's too much for 'em to process

wondering how bad it has to get to pop people's bubbles of the belief of "cops are good, they just are"

i don't even remember what undid that for me, so who knows

i think adrian schoolcraft was probably a fundamental piece for myself

that cops would act, en masse, to silence and abuse one of their own blowing the whistle on abuse in the department, really shook a lotta walls down in my head

it's quite the demonstrative thing that really tears down the idea of 'good cops' is how cops as a force treat individual cops that actually do the right thing and report abuse