Thread by @doctorow

I remember when we stopped calling police weapons "nonlethal" and switched to "less lethal" - I thought it was a victory for anti-authoritarian realism, ditching a polite euphemism for a more accurate phrase that reminded us that the cops kill and mail people with these arms.

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But after reading what @drfigtree says about the history of these weapons, I'm coming to think that "less lethal" is, itself, a euphemism. Feigenbaum is the author of 2017's "Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today."

versobooks.com/books/2109-tea…

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Feigenbaum's comments appear in @scarschwartz's piece in The @Guardian chronicling the sickening injuries experienced by #BLM and #Pipeline protesters who were targeted by police wielding these weapons.

theguardian.com/world/2020/aug…

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Schwartz reminds us that the origin of "less-lethals" is in colonial policing: occupying British troops used "baton rounds" (sections of broomstick fired from guns) to terrorize pro-independence protesters in Singapore and Hong Kong.

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Cops transitioned to rubber bullets in Northern Ireland in the Troubles, insisting that these were humane even as they slaughtered and maimed protesters, including young children. Gas and baton rounds were the weapons of choice against anti-Vietnam War protests in the US.

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There's a straight line from then to now and the gas cannisters, rubber bullets, beanbags, flashbangs and pepper balls we've seen fired into protesters' lines by masked and armored cops LARPing remorseless Judge Dredds.

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Feigenbaum: "These weapons were invented as a way to not have to engage with people’s claims to human rights. And they are still deployed to both physically and psychologically destroy people engaging in resistance."

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These weapons are big business, and the industry has a slick patter: "a narrative that emphasizes police vulnerability and underplays how dangerous the weapons really are...Officers feel it is reasonable and relatively safe for them to deploy any amount of force on people."

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Inevitably, this leads to maimings and deaths, which begets a standard response: PD's say the problem is individual officers who fail to follow rules of deployment. Arms dealers insist that "if their products were used as instructed, serious injury would be avoided."

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Schwartz's profiles of protesters who've been permanently injured by these weapons are harrowing, personal stories of PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and permanent disability, but as he points out, the effects are community wide.

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He cites this study of survivors of the Hong Kong uprisings who experienced a 500% increase in PTSD symptoms after witnessing brutal police violence abetted by police weaponry.

thelancet.com/journals/lance…

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In the US, everyone from Congress to the American Academy of Ophthalmology are begging cops to stop shooting and gassing protesters. But this isn't just authoritarianism: it's authoritarianism with a business model.

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I think we've got a lot of bad times ahead of us before we achieve the structural reforms that drive the profiteers out of business, and in the meantime, they'll be deploying their excess rents - the wages of terror - to fight us.

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Image:
Pasu Au Yeung
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tear…

CC BY
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.…

eof/