Patriot front arrested. they have a uhaul filled with shields and idk what else https://t.co/c8pCyd0xGW pic.twitter.com/omQuLyPpoe— alissa azar (@AlissaAzar) June 11, 2022
To all the people confused as to why the cops actually busted them: they are discipling them. Letting these fascists do what they wanted would run counter to the goal of maintaining white supremacy and capitalism in general. It would lead to bad pr and likely make the left more powerful.
It would serve as powerful motivation for the LGBT community to arm themselves and form their own security groups, undermining the authority of the state. The state is way more effective at maintaining these rotten structures than even the best organized fascists in America could.
And attacking the LGBT community doesn't actually help preserve the system very much because being gay no longer threatens the ruling class or the structures that keep them ruling. The only reason it ever did was because the discrimination LGBT people faced was so extreme it gave the community great revolutionary potential. Giving LGBT people the protection of the state defangs them.
I think you're getting too big picture here. At some point, you have to recognize that the White Supremacists in Idaho, specifically, are a chronic thorn in the side of a state government that's a few miles to the right of Wyoming's Cheney aristocracy.
They aren't even "a threat to capital" so much as a threat to one another.
This really is just a feud between rival gangs of goons. Pure Sopranos shit. It's a struggle within the state for control between fascist factions.
On another day, with a different group of people in office, their roles could easily be reversed.
Discipline in this context means to assert control over, in the sense of keeping the group cooperative. The group that would make the decision to stop the attack is the group that is most often going to be more powerful within the police force because the dynamics I described.
And how does attempting to pull off an attack on a pride event serve to gain the group doing the attack any power in comparison to the local police? I don't think it does. Fascist power struggles don't really look like this.
I think you are taking the idea of cops being fascists too literally. It's almost literally true, but this situation is a good demonstration of how it's not entirely true.
Fascists communicate most clearly with violence. They don't call the cops for permission, they go and do it and decide what the cops are saying based on how they use their violence. And adjust future actions based on what they heard the cops "say".
The cops did not mess with the people walking around passively intimidating people and not technically breaking any laws. But they arrested the people who came being too obvious about it. I expect the organized fascists to have heard the message: be like Rittenhouse, not like the Proud Boys. You can have"fun", but don't start "trouble".
Regardless of the intent of the individuals arrested, the way this will be treated by the fascist groups as a whole is as a probing attack. A scouting mission.
And how does attempting to pull off an attack on a pride event serve to gain the group doing the attack any power in comparison to the local police?
Assuming the Pride event is attended or endorsed by state officials? Coeur d'Alene is spitting distance from Spokane, and a chronic battlefield for nativist Idahoians who think Washington is encroaching on their turf.
Making a border town hostile to West coast transplants serves to both rally regional bigots to a unifying cause and intimidate border locals with an interest in encouraging coastal development and migration.
The cops did not mess with the people walking around passively intimidating people and not technically breaking any laws. But they arrested the people who came being too obvious about it.
I don't know what the cops were up to outside of what was reported. That said, I suspect these guys see the local city leadership as their team and the Idaho nativists as "foreign" in the same way the nativists think Coeur d'Alene's government is a puppet of Spokane's.
Likely true, but consider this: during the George Floyd protests cops in most cities did not see fascists from our of town as being non-native, and collaborated with them. If these fascists had been attacking something that did threaten capital, I think the cops would have temporarily forgotten about that dynamic and let them proceed. Or at least wouldn't have arrested them.
That's the whole deal with thinking about politics in primarily material terms. These group dynamic things matter a lot, but when material things are on the line suddenly they don't.
during the George Floyd protests cops in most cities did not see fascists from our of town as being non-native, and collaborated with them.
In Ferguson, the cops were - themselves - non native. The St. Louis PD has jurisdiction over the county, but the residents have no electoral impact on St. Louis offices.
It's a fundamentally different relationship here. Coeur d'Alene isn't a country captured by a larger right-wing municipal government. It's a liberal enclave running counter to the prevailing culture of the state.
To all the people confused as to why the cops actually busted them: they are discipling them. Letting these fascists do what they wanted would run counter to the goal of maintaining white supremacy and capitalism in general. It would lead to bad pr and likely make the left more powerful.
It would serve as powerful motivation for the LGBT community to arm themselves and form their own security groups, undermining the authority of the state. The state is way more effective at maintaining these rotten structures than even the best organized fascists in America could.
And attacking the LGBT community doesn't actually help preserve the system very much because being gay no longer threatens the ruling class or the structures that keep them ruling. The only reason it ever did was because the discrimination LGBT people faced was so extreme it gave the community great revolutionary potential. Giving LGBT people the protection of the state defangs them.
I think you're getting too big picture here. At some point, you have to recognize that the White Supremacists in Idaho, specifically, are a chronic thorn in the side of a state government that's a few miles to the right of Wyoming's Cheney aristocracy.
They aren't even "a threat to capital" so much as a threat to one another.
This really is just a feud between rival gangs of goons. Pure Sopranos shit. It's a struggle within the state for control between fascist factions.
On another day, with a different group of people in office, their roles could easily be reversed.
Discipline in this context means to assert control over, in the sense of keeping the group cooperative. The group that would make the decision to stop the attack is the group that is most often going to be more powerful within the police force because the dynamics I described.
And how does attempting to pull off an attack on a pride event serve to gain the group doing the attack any power in comparison to the local police? I don't think it does. Fascist power struggles don't really look like this.
I think you are taking the idea of cops being fascists too literally. It's almost literally true, but this situation is a good demonstration of how it's not entirely true.
Fascists communicate most clearly with violence. They don't call the cops for permission, they go and do it and decide what the cops are saying based on how they use their violence. And adjust future actions based on what they heard the cops "say".
The cops did not mess with the people walking around passively intimidating people and not technically breaking any laws. But they arrested the people who came being too obvious about it. I expect the organized fascists to have heard the message: be like Rittenhouse, not like the Proud Boys. You can have"fun", but don't start "trouble".
Regardless of the intent of the individuals arrested, the way this will be treated by the fascist groups as a whole is as a probing attack. A scouting mission.
Assuming the Pride event is attended or endorsed by state officials? Coeur d'Alene is spitting distance from Spokane, and a chronic battlefield for nativist Idahoians who think Washington is encroaching on their turf.
Making a border town hostile to West coast transplants serves to both rally regional bigots to a unifying cause and intimidate border locals with an interest in encouraging coastal development and migration.
I don't know what the cops were up to outside of what was reported. That said, I suspect these guys see the local city leadership as their team and the Idaho nativists as "foreign" in the same way the nativists think Coeur d'Alene's government is a puppet of Spokane's.
Likely true, but consider this: during the George Floyd protests cops in most cities did not see fascists from our of town as being non-native, and collaborated with them. If these fascists had been attacking something that did threaten capital, I think the cops would have temporarily forgotten about that dynamic and let them proceed. Or at least wouldn't have arrested them.
That's the whole deal with thinking about politics in primarily material terms. These group dynamic things matter a lot, but when material things are on the line suddenly they don't.
In Ferguson, the cops were - themselves - non native. The St. Louis PD has jurisdiction over the county, but the residents have no electoral impact on St. Louis offices.
It's a fundamentally different relationship here. Coeur d'Alene isn't a country captured by a larger right-wing municipal government. It's a liberal enclave running counter to the prevailing culture of the state.