Thread by @JYSexton

The problem isn't a few "bad cops."

The problem isn't a lack of training.

The problem is that our law enforcement is founded specifically on the principles of white supremacy and carrying out a war of suppression.

The problem is the Blue Line.

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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-domestic-m…

This idea that police are a "thin blue line" between freedom and violent anarchy is a crusader ideology.

It is a belief that law enforcement exists as a military unit dedicated to protecting the country from dangerous elements.

This is a mythology with terrible roots.

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The ancestors of our police forces were knights in the employ of lords and monarchs, warriors who could be dispatched to war, invasions of other countries, but also to police peasants and serfs, ensuring they would never rise up and trouble their economic superiors.

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In these roles, knights would regularly shakedown subjects for owed taxes, regulate their movements and actions, all of it in an effort to keep the power structure of feudalism continuing.

They were a force that could be rolled out domestically or for foreign pursuits.

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Before the advent of modern policing, the wealthy and powerful paid for exclusive protection of their own property and saw little need to pay for public policing.

That changed in the Age of Revolutions, when they saw that public unrest could lead to major upheavals.

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With the French Revolution, the wealthy were terrified that grassroots organizations or movements could turn into larger political changes, including possible loss of wealth and property.

This is how they came to decide that funding police was a huge priority.

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Police were given a charge to disrupt any group that might threaten political power or the property of the wealthy.

To do this, they worked with Right Wing paramilitary groups to disrupt organizations, intimidate citizens, and bust the skulls of reformers.

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This tradition continues to this day, which is why you see police coordinating with groups like the Proud Boys, why we see the FBI helping them, why they work together to hurt Leftists and reformers.

They're on the same team. Always have been, from the very start.

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In America, there's another insidious element. Law enforcement has been, from the beginning, a force meant to maintain slavery and then, post-slavery, control the African American population, who were seen as dangerous and constant sources of potential violence.

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Post-slavery, law enforcement has considered itself a domestic protection agency that, knowingly or unconsciously, has regarded African Americans as a threat to national security, including the belief that they are unwitting agents of anti-American foreign forces.

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Like the BLM Protests, law enforcement considered the Civil Rights Movement an operation by communists looking to hurt America.

The violence was seen as a legitimate use of force in protecting the country from revolution seeded by outside influences.

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The problem is that law enforcement views itself as a domestic military force, a belief that has been spurred as it has been increasingly militarized and funded in order to wage a war on America's streets.

The idea that it is a counter-revolutionary force survives.

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Because of this, our law enforcement is perpetually poisoned with a belief that it is the last line of defense in a war against fellow citizens.

This white supremacist belief has rotted our law enforcement to the core, and is the reason why we're here now.

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The problem is the very mythology of the Thin Blue Line.

It is a worldview that seeks to protect white, patriarchal, wealthy power, and in doing so it makes law enforcement a domestic military force at war with its fellow citizens

This is the issue.

This is the problem.

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