The Many Times US Police Forces Have Sided with White Nationalists
By now, it is old news that many off-duty police from all over the US participated in the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6. For many Americans, this news came as a shock. However, for those of us who have been paying attention to the relationship between white nationalism and policing, it felt like the culmination of a years-long process which has been unfolding in slow motion, that many have sounded the alarm about.
Last fall, I participated in a reading group that studied the far right. In this group, I casually mentioned the extent to which both Portland and Seattle police had been overtly coordinating with and assisting armed paramilitary groups during the Black Lives Matter protests throughout 2020. I was told by one of the people who attended the meeting that this “sounded like a leftist conspiracy theory.” While I was disappointed by this response, I was not particularly surprised by it. Liberal Americans, especially liberal white Americans, love to comfort themselves with the the idea that the police who commit racist violence are “bad apples.” But I wanted everyone in the group to be on the same page regarding this topic, so I asked Twitter to help me compile a list of resources documenting the phenomenon I was talking about. The picture that emerged from these resources suggests that the issue is…
