Let's assume a patrol officer becomes disillusioned with their public service and becomes a radical leftist overnight. How would they be able to most effectively use their position to subvert the existing power dynamic? Moreover, what are your opinions of infiltrating the police force as the KKK has been doing for decades?
Posted Mar 27, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC
Quit. Depriving them of 1 more willing little soldier is more valuable than trying some hero bullshit.
Why not try that Bullshit and expect to get fired?
I think a more moderate police officer would be most effective. Helping his fellow officers stay on the right path and keep corruption down, or to stop arresting people for marijuana possession and such laws. A law is truly dead when no one enforces it
ACAB's all good and well, but remember Sid Hatfield.
Here's the page for the battle:
I realize this is a bit reductive and perhaps far afield for the topic of OP's point, but this thread is on my mind so I'll post it.
Why is it that we as anarchists can easily say "all cops are bastards" (a slogan which specifically names individuals, rather than an ideology) but many anarchists will engage in apologism/defense of Islam which often refuses to acknowledge even the possibility of the roots of extremism being inherent in the religion's core ideology?
To be clear: I don't like cops any more than the next anarchist, and I believe that the vast majority of Muslims are good people. The question I'm asking isn't even really about content, it's about the default to rhetoric and posturing which precludes the possibility of having nuanced conversations because it limits the possibility of discourse to "all X are bad/bastards/etc."
Well if we (brutally) paraphrase Orwell the natural enemy of the worker is the police officer. That's partly why there's so much venom here. But let's not ignore one paradox. As it stands now, and this has been the case since at least the 60s, there are far more middle class leftists than there are middle class policemen. Just go take a look at your average student protest and listen to the voices of the people on either side.
Now I'm not saying middle or upper class people can't contribute to working class struggle. History's proved the contrary time and time again. But just think, of all those militant students fighting cops in the 60s across the Western world, how many of them dropped out of leftism when they graduated, cut their hair and got comfortable well paying jobs? Do you think their adversaries were nearly as rewarded by capitalism?
Policemen are for the most part working class people doing the state's dirty work. The culture in the force, and the role they play in society is bad, but they're not cartoonish villains like some in this scene try and paint them to be.
Once again. The worst enemies of the workers are in fact themselves.
Thanks for the reply. I see now that I missed the "all well and good" part of your post so actually I misinterpreted your point, though I did read the wiki article.
there are far more middle class leftists than there are middle class policemen.
That says more about the irrelevancy of the left than it does about any mythical revolutionary potential of the police.
I'd agree with you there.
Why is it that we as anarchists can easily say "all cops are bastards" (a slogan which specifically names individuals, rather than an ideology)
A cop is a specific relationship toward social/economic/political conditions, not an individual.
Cop loving is all well and good, but remember all the common criminals Sid Hatfield dehumanized during his tenure as police chief. A cop with some radical sympathies is a cop foremost.
I don't have any evidence that Sid Hatfield "dehumanised common criminals" or that he didn't.
What I do know is that describing him as having some "radical sympathies" is just inaccurate. Hatfield was an honest working class man who consistently sided with labour over capital, right up til the end, and ended up dying for it.
I remember reading about him before, but I'm not really sure if that sort of thing is possible these days.
Some folks could point to people like Ray Lewis, but my (albeit brief) interactions with him lead me to think that his analysis is along the lines of "the system is corrupted from its original, fair, and just arrangement and this police brutality thing is bad apples who need to be fired and replaced with honest cops" or something, though his politics may have changed in the past 4 years.
I could see it happening at a small town maybe? Seemed to me that a strong sense of community and justice seemed motivated Hatfield. Those values are still around in some places.
Though let's not forget Hatfield paid for his defiance. The Pinkertons gunned him down in broad daylight on the courthouse steps, just after a jury had acquitted him of all charges relating to Matewan. No one was ever charged and convicted for his murder.
That's enough to make any good person think twice.
I would say infiltrating the police is a bad idea for a couple different reasons, and that if someone who is already a cop becomes a radical leftist, the first thing they need to do is quit.
Keep in mind, Mussolini rose to power in similar fashion. He gained favor from the police and military, and the king stepped down.
Strategy over purity. A lesson that if anarchists don't learn, they'll be beaten by fascists again and again. We are poised for such a losing battle presently.
I bet if anarchists campaigned on lower taxes they could seize state power through the ballot box ! /s
I have heard tell of certain cops who are first on the scene of a non lethal accident where a car hits a tree letting teenagers who have perhaps had a beer or some pot run away into the night before other cops arrive.
Not ruining peoples lives over petty shit is probably the best you can hope for.
Christopher Dorner should have only had it so his manifesto would release if he died. He should have gone silent as soon as going rogue and ghosted the LAPD instead of talking a big game and thus losing his initiative advantage. He could have taken out all of their helicopters or something, wouldn't even have had to spill blood, it would have inflicted many millions of dollars of damage. He could have released public info on strategic infrastructural weakpoints too. So basically, leaking the key infrastructural vulnerabilities would be what a rogue officer could do. But none of these things will ever happen, and it would be silly to rely on it or attempt it as authoritarianism is toxic.
i have this movie script idea, where a bunch of anarchists rob a bank, and keep the pd's busy with bomb threats. and, of course, a dirty cop is required to plant a bomb in one of the evidence rooms.
probably never going to work. an actual cop would probably know how to help tho.
Quit and do something that truly helps the movement. Otherwise they'll probably just get fired.
Assuming the officer no longer cares about their career, possibly their life. What should they do?
In that case, maybe destroy evidence that could be used to convict someone of crimes like marijuana possession or protesting or Snowden's actions.
Ask yourself what the authoritarians would want that cop to do.
and then do the opposite.
Holy shit. As ridiculous as this may sound, there's some real discussion to be had here. Obviously this wont happen but imagine a popular conspiracy to get such a large number of radical leftists in the poloce forces such that they can begin to at least lessen enforcement of certain of the worst shit. Just fun to think about is all.
Edit: This isn't a good use of real ppls' energy because of the totalitarian and ideological nature of policing, plus the amount of oppressive shit u gotta do in order to keep your job makes this questionable, imo it's a much better idea to focus organizing/ activist energy elsewhere.
Oh lordy lord it would be awesome! We have a ex-cop here in Denmark who went "whistle-blowing" and told all the shit the cops did and made guides on how to protect yourself from cops legally etc. pretty cool except he turned fucking ancap
Once a reactionary, nearly always a reactionary.
There's a lot of people here to contest that, myself included