Thread by @RoseCityAntifa

A TIL thread about one niche example of historical connection between white supremacist movements and police violence:
One common firearm technique taught to police (and in most firearms classes) is called the "Failure to Stop" Drill, or "Mozambique Drill."

Supposedly for use in defense against an "attacker," it involves first shooting twice into someones chest, and then into their head if the first two shots have failed to "stop" them (from...shooting? Moving? Living?). It is, in basically every sense, a drill for efficient murder.

The drill was first named the "Mozambique Drill," because of the technique's origins: It was supposedly first used by--wait for it--a white Rhodesian mercenary (jacobinmag.com/2018/06/americ…), paid to kill guerrilla independence fighters in today's Mozambique in the 1970s.

This mercenary shared his stories of the technique's success with his friend, a famous(ly white supremacist) American firearms instructor named Jeff Cooper, who incorporated it into his Arizona-based training center classes in the late 1970s.

In 1980, two LAPD cops traveled to Cooper's training site in Arizona to take classes from him. They were so enamored with his technique, and the Mozambique drill specifically, that they asked for permission to train other LAPD officers in the technique themselves.

(They also decided to start calling it the "Failure to Stop" drill, since they were concerned that calling it the Mozambique drill could be construed as explicitly racist. Which is wild, considering all parties in this history so far were white supremacists killing black people.)

The drill has now been taught as part of basic firearms training to cops all over the country for decades. Use of the drill's shooting pattern, and the justifications it's taught with, are both common features of police murders (like that of 17-year-old Quanice Hayes).

When reporters ask us about police collaboration with fascists, we of course go over the many instances where direct cooperation has been documented. But we also emphasize that, even when they don't work directly with fash, police share a similar far-right worldview.

And at the core of that shared white supremacist worldview is a deep-seated, violent dehumanization of black people in particular (and other groups they view as "subhuman" or "degenerate," in general). Below is a quote from a 1996 newsletter by Jeff Cooper:
[CW: anti-blackness]

It's not surprising that cops sympathize with white supremacists who point/fire guns at protesters. The disgusting justifications those people have for their violence are the same things that cops say/believe about their own right to execute black people (or anyone) at will.

And often times, police with overt white supremacist and even fascist beliefs would have little reason to feel like they have to join an underground fascist organization in order to violently "cleanse the streets" of people they hate. They're cops. They already get to do that.

There's so much more that can be said on this topic, on this history and story, but that's all for this thread. Shoutout to the Wikipedia pages on the "Mozambique Drill" and on the individuals involved, which cite/contain most of the documentation referenced for this thread.