
White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says - vanusa
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report
======
kanox
The core problem seems to be that police abuses are not being properly
punished.

Whenever I tried to look into such incidence I see that prosecution gets
stopped (or didn't even start) at a local level and the whole process stinks
of conflict of interest. Asking local police and prosecutors to investigate
misconduct just seems like a bad idea.

My solution would be to automatically throw every violent police incident to a
special-purpose federal body which is not otherwise involved in enforcing
laws. This would be filled with prosecutors focused on civil rights and those
people would hopefully be highly motivated to prove their case in court.

The only problem I see is that this it ignores states rights but those are not
particularly popular anyway.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You don't get to ignore states rights just because they aren't particularly
popular.

Also, look into "regulatory capture". Independent bodies tend toward becoming
very cosy with those they're supposed to be monitoring.

~~~
cgrealy
Non American here. The only time I ever hear about "states rights" is in
relation to racism or misogyny.

Are there actually valid useful reasons for the concept or is it time to ask
what purpose they serve?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The last two times I heard about states rights were:

\- Trump wanted to run the Covid response. The states told him to get lost.
(Was that good or bad? True, the Covid response has been disjointed, even
incoherent. Would it have been _more_ coherent if Trump ran it? Or _less_?)

\- Trump wanted to send federal law enforcement into cities to control
rioting. The cities told him no. (There were some federal agents in Portland
against the will of the city; the legal scope of their activity was protecting
federal property.)

The deal is that we have a _limited_ federal government. They don't get all
the power. They get the power the constitution says they get. The states (or
the people) get the rest. And they're pretty touchy about protecting that
power.

Is it useful? It is if you want to keep having a limited federal government.
Arguably, we need (and needed) far more than we have had.

~~~
chillwaves
Can you give me a citation about the Trump Covid response? That does not match
the reality I experienced.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Not from the top of my head. But I seem to recall Trump saying that we're
going to require shutting down, or require masks (don't recall the details),
and various governors telling Trump that no, we're not going to, and you can't
make us.

~~~
paledot
A bit the opposite. Trump has consistently downplayed the threat, and the
(blue) states have taken it seriously and saved lives. Fortunately it's well
within their rights to be more restrictive than the federal government, just
like it's within California's rights to have more restrictive emissions laws
than the fed. But that's a different argument.

------
majormajor
"Infiltrated" is a strange word, here.

From the original report: > “white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement
. . . by organized groups and by self-initiated infiltration by law
enforcement personnel sympathetic to white supremacist causes.”

"self-initiated infiltration" sounds more like the racists were already there.
My understanding from other reporting is that there's a law
enforcement/military -> extremist militia pipeline as well, e.g. Oath Keepers
and such.

~~~
Ancapistani
One of the issues I see is that half of the country seems to see Oath Keepers
and Threepers as “extremist militias”, while the other half sees them as a
reasonable reaction to an increasingly powerful government.

I’m explicitly not taking a position on this topic -instead, I want to call
out the significant disparity in perspective. HN seems to nearly unanimously
accept the labels applied to these groups without question while other
communities of which I’m part reject them (also without question).

More worrying than the polarization to me is the fact that neither group seems
aware that other sees things so differently, and that the opposite opinion is
broadly held by the other side. The assumption seems to be that only
“extremists” would hold that view, when the reality is that 30%+ of the
population share it.

The “moderate” position is vanishingly small these days.

~~~
chillwaves
What does a "moderate" position look like when it comes to white supremacy?

~~~
Ancapistani
This is exactly what I mean. Which specific group are you referring to?

Using “extremist”, “anti-government”, “right-wing”, and “white supremacist”
almost interchangeably seems to be very common. Both this article and the
report its based on repeatedly refer to “white supremacist or far-right
militant groups”. Those are very different things.

------
alphabettsy
White supremacists exist in some quantity in all parts of American society.
This should not be a surprise.

That they would choose a career where you can directly affect the lives and
freedom of people you may hate without consequences would seem to make it more
appealing.

------
threatofrain
Link to the report:

[https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/hidd...](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law)

~~~
verylittlemeat
>Obviously, only a tiny percentage of law enforcement officials are likely to
be active members of white supremacist groups.

Quoted directly from the report itself. More fear, uncertainty and doubt to
stir the pot. The author also resigned from the FBI as a whistleblower
unrelated to this topic, so it seems he has a bit of an axe to grind.

~~~
notacoward
Quoted _out of context_ from the report. The point was that they're not likely
to be out in the open about their affiliation with white supremacists, which
is not the same as there being no affiliation at all. Of course infiltrators
don't announce that they're infiltrators. Blending in is part of the game.
Supremacists even have a name for this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_skin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_skin)

Note the particular reference to law enforcement. That plus the ad hominem at
the end of your comment adds up to a whole lot of Not Convincing. BTW here's
another report on the same topic, from 2006. Can't wait to see what reason you
come up with for dismissing it as well.

[http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26-white-
su...](http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26-white-supremacist-
infiltration.pdf)

~~~
verylittlemeat
Most of that document is redacted. The first key judgment even seems to be in
the spirit of my quote, contradicting that there's any real infiltration.
Aside from a reference to one specific person and the KKK it's just full of
hypotheticals: "they could", "which can", "they can benefit."

The fact that "ghost skins" exist does not suggest that they're any more
numerous but it sure makes an attractive runaway conspiracy that of course
can't be disproved.

My quote is completely in context, he mentions nothing about openness of
affiliation in the paragraph before or after. In fact he weakens his own
argument by jumping from pointing out a handful of alleged white supremacist
connections since 2000 to "hundreds of federal, state, and local law
enforcement officials participating in racist, nativist, and sexist social
media activity" \- posting memes seems like a bit of a step down from being a
member of a white supremacist militia.

And my ad hominem is completely relevant considering that he has burned
professional bridges and has no incentive to be subtle or nuanced about a
politically charged topic.

As I said, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Glad to come back to this thread and
see that it was flagged.

------
BurningFrog
Some of those that work forces...

~~~
alexilliamson
Citation
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ)

------
jadell
We stop former felons from taking certain government jobs. There's no reason
we can't do the same for current or former members of white supremacist
organizations. You don't get to be in law enforcement while also being part of
a white nationalist terrorist group, this shouldn't be controversial.

------
DlSGUSTING
I'm not saying this isn't true (there's a lot of evidence to support this
claim), however, if you read the actual report the Guardian is reporting on,
all but one of their sources are Vox, NYT, WaPo. It wouldn't be controversial
to say that these outlets lean left, and therefore would draw conclusions
along those lines. Why didn't the Brennan Center report look at the studies
directly? I think that taints the sources a bit.

------
mschuster91
Meanwhile in Germany: the Interior Minister blocks a study on racism in
politics because it is "not needed" and "racial profiling is no problem
because it is forbidden" ([https://www.dw.com/en/germany-study-halted-into-
racial-profi...](https://www.dw.com/en/germany-study-halted-into-racial-
profiling-by-police/a-54059367)).

At a time when literally every other week alt-right networks, weapons caches,
abuses of police IT systems to snoop on women, antifascists and VIPs in the
police and military crop up...

------
nailer
As other have noted, this article omits a number of relevant facts to spark a
narrative:

> Wisconsin, faced intense scrutiny over their response to armed white men and
> militia groups gathered in the city amid demonstrations by Black Lives
> Matter activists and others over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black
> father of three who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back.

Video confirms Jacob Blake was ignoring the instructions of the police and
moved to his vehicle (keep in mind that in the US firearm ownership is
common).

> On Wednesday, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who appeared to consider
> himself a militia member and had posted “blue lives matter” content, was
> arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal shooting of two protesters.

Video and eyewitness testimony confirm this man was being chased by a group of
people.

dang: a better link would be to the actual report:

[https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/hidd...](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law)

~~~
chillwaves
It's not self defense when you initiate conflict.

We have people traveling form out of state to start fights, then killing other
people in 'self defense'. Do you see a problem here?

~~~
nailer
If someone pulls a gun on you and you're kneeling [1], or someone chases you
[2], they are the aggressor. As this witness confirms [3]

He travelled 20 miles from his home, a very short drive. It's possible the men
who attacked him travelled from further away.

You stating that this short journey 'crosses state lines' is a tactic similar
to the article: omitting relevant facts to push a narrative.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1299119894169092098?s...](https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1299119894169092098?s=20)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdMTghlrFiw&bpctr=1598560684](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdMTghlrFiw&bpctr=1598560684)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=0zSECoazDSE&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=0zSECoazDSE&feature=emb_title)

------
cgrealy
Disturbing, but hardly surprising.

------
craftinator
And here's a link to a video of David Beth, the Kenosha sheriff mentioned in
the article, saying some things that you'd expect to hear from an anti-Semitic
speech from 1930s Germany:

[https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/1299006089317347330...](https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/1299006089317347330?s=20)

It's quite relevant to the infiltration of white supremacists into the police
force that the article points out.

