solarpunkwobbly:

What They Can’t Do With Badges, They Do With Torches

Fascists are not the opposite of police. They are not lawless; on the contrary, the hope to intensify the violence with which laws are enforced. They count on police to protect them from the wrath of the public as they recruit new members and encourage them to carry out attacks. They hope that these attacks will give the police the excuse to  clamp down further on the general population. Their aim is to normalize bigotry and violence, so there will be less outcry when the police intensify the discriminatory and violent ways that they enforce the laws.

Police are not the opposite of fascists. They harass, kidnap, incarcerate, deport, and murder more people of color, women, and queer people every year than any fascist group; they do more to advance the white supremacist agenda than any independent far-right organization. It was police who enforced the segregation laws of the Jim Crow era, police who cracked down on civil rights demonstrations, police who killed Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. Throughout history, longstanding informal relationships have frequently existed between police and white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan in many parts of the United States and other parts of the world. But these relationships are not essential for the police as an institution to continuing playing a structural role maintaining the fundamental disparities of our society.