Partners In Violence: American Law Enforcement Has A Long History of Working With Right Wing Provcateurs

On Monday, members of New Mexico’s white militia outfit the Civil Guard came to Albuquerque to police a protest surrounding a statue of a Spanish conquistador. The men wore military uniforms, behaved as if they were part of an official battalion, and intimidated people with their AR-15 rifles. Repeatedly, the Civil Guard clashed with protesters as they attempted to topple the statue. Eventually, and sadly predictably, a shot was fired and a protester was injured.

It’s yet another in a long line of repeated incidents involving militias and white supremacist terror groups. Already a member of the so-called Boogaloo Boys has murdered a police officer. Others have been arrested attempting to escalate tensions during the protests. Researchers like myself have observed multiple chats and communications by white terrorist cells plotting and planning how to use the moment to their advantage.

White terrorism is the most pressing security threat in America. It has been hidden and obscured by media, politicians, and individuals who are either using the movement for their own purposes or else in denial about the infection of white supremacy. Because Americans are in such denial about the problem it has allowed the infection to grow and spread and worsen, not unlike the current pandemic that is ravaging our country.

The problem, of course, is not new. Throughout American history we have seen multiple instances where law enforcement has behaved as if an occupying force and co-existed alongside extremist or right-wing groups in a struggle against protesters. This is the history of America which has been hidden because it is so disgusting and vile and disturbing that it paints moments like these in a new light for anyone willing to pay attention.

It begins before there was the United States of America, when the Revolution had been won but peace had not been realized. Following the war in 1776, Americans had still yet to see a benefit from their hard won independence. Taxes were still high, representation nonexistent, and it seemed as if power had simply slipped from a monarch to an oligarchy. With the rise of Shays’ Rebellion, a populist uprising, nascent governments found themselves incapable of putting down the rebellion. Eventually, merchants and business owners paid mercenaries to fight the protesters, and the wealthy and powerful decided to form a new government with the express purpose of fighting such rebellions.

Later, at the turn of the 20th century, obscenely wealthy robber barons regularly employed Pinkerton “detectives,” or well-paid private intelligence operatives, to either spy on labor unions or else join them and tear them apart from the inside. In instances of strikes or uprisings, these Pinkertons, as well as mercenary armies paid for by elites, would murder workers and their families. In 1914, such a force in Ludlow, Colorado mowed down a tent-village of strikers with their machine guns, killing 20, including 12 children.

There have been any number of these instances, including cooperation between law enforcement and mobs who have hung black men and women, shot them dead in a mockery of justice, or else raped and brutalized people of color. In 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an unknown amount of black people were massacred in race riots that destroyed the majority of the black community’s infrastructure and saw madmen bombing them with the use of aircraft.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Over the years such arrangements have continued, whether its Southern complicity with the Ku Klux Klan, or the police working with right wing criminals in 1919 who waged street war against Mayday protesters by beating them, stabbing them, kidnapping them, and destroying their homes and businesses. It continues in the Civil Rights Era, with police and white supremacist southerners beating protesters in the streets and bombing their homes and places of worship. In 1970, just days after the tragedy at Kent State University, supporters of Richard Nixon put on hard hats and beat protesters in New York City with clubs, crowbars, and their fists. It was yet another chapter in a long list of chapters of police and the FBI working alongside these criminals.

The truth is, we’ve seen this all happen before. It has been worse, but that only means it can get worse in this instance. As the Black Lives Matter movement gains steam and continues to win battles against white supremacy and brutal policing, we will see more and more instances of these groups coming into the public and engaging in violence. It’s what they do, and unfortunately it’s a behavior the police have long embraced as long as it coincides with their politics. We must be vigilant and be prepared, and mostly we must be ready.

This problem isn’t going away.

It’s always been here.

Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.