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Speaker 1: They come for you in the night. One minute you're asleep,

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Speaker 1: warm and swaddled in your blankets, and the next you're

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Speaker 1: awoken by a loud, crashing sound, defended by the light

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Speaker 1: on the end of a police officer's a R fifteen.

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Speaker 1: You raise your hands up defensively, too shocked to think.

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Speaker 1: Hand grabs you by the wrist and yanks you hard

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Speaker 1: off the bed, nearly pulling your arm out of its socket.

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Speaker 1: Several men shout loudly, all at once. Their voices merge

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Speaker 1: together into one confusing, chaotic mess. But you know enough

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Speaker 1: not to resist as they jam your arms behind your

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Speaker 1: back and cut your wrists. As the fog of sleep

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Speaker 1: gives way to intelligent thought, your conscious mind finally understands

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Speaker 1: what this is arrayed. As they drag you out into

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Speaker 1: the hallway, you realize exactly what this must be about.

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Speaker 1: Two days ago, two police officers were shot dead just

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Speaker 1: outside your building. They weren't the heavily armed, militarized cops

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Speaker 1: you see at checkpoints near the Separates side of town.

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Speaker 1: These men were normal patrol officers walking a beat when

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Speaker 1: some partisan sniper gun them down. At a distance. You

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Speaker 1: walked past the spot where they died just a few

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Speaker 1: hours earlier, on your way home from work, someone had

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Speaker 1: spray painted all cops are bastards on the wall above

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Speaker 1: where both men had died. You remember staring at the

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Speaker 1: blood stains on the concrete, fighting down nausea and wondering

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Speaker 1: what was going to come next. Now you know. The

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Speaker 1: officers drop you one ceremoniously against the outside wall of

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Speaker 1: your apartment. Your next door neighbor sits opposite from you,

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Speaker 1: next to his front door. His nose is broken, blood

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Speaker 1: streams down his face. You lock eyes. Neither of you

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Speaker 1: says anything, but you share a look that says, so,

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Speaker 1: let's come to this, huh. Back behind you, armored cops

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Speaker 1: tear through your living room, in bedroom, emptying pillows of stuffing,

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Speaker 1: turning over your bed and couch, looking at every conceivable

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Speaker 1: nook and hidy hole, where a single delirious second, you

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Speaker 1: find yourself consumed with worry that they might steal some

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Speaker 1: of the bags of coffee you stockpiled. You can't afford

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Speaker 1: to buy more At the current prices ever since Mexico

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Speaker 1: closed their border, good beans cost more than your rent.

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Speaker 1: You know you should feel violated, You should be livid

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Speaker 1: right now, rather than just worried about your stash. A

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Speaker 1: distant part of you does feel that way, But after

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Speaker 1: the last few years of escalating police patrols, after all

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Speaker 1: the hours spent waiting at checkpoints in the constant vehicle searches,

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Speaker 1: this just sort of feels like the inevitable culmination of events.

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Speaker 1: Another group of cops rushes past you down the hallway

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Speaker 1: with a clattering of body armor and heavy metal deer.

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Speaker 1: All their faces are covered by goggles, helmets, and ski

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Speaker 1: masks with skulls printed on the face. The skulls are

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Speaker 1: black and white, just like the colorless American flags on

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Speaker 1: their shoulders. You realize with some surprise that none of

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Speaker 1: them have any visible rank or unit insignias on their armor.

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Speaker 1: You don't even really know if they're police or soldiers.

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Speaker 1: You guess at this point the difference is mainly academic.

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Speaker 1: One of them carries a battering ram, but your eyes

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Speaker 1: are drawn to a short man at the rear of

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Speaker 1: the group. On his hip is a sheathed tomahawk. Something

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Speaker 1: about that sets your skin on edge. An ax is

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Speaker 1: not the kind of tool you use to restore order

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Speaker 1: or to protect people. It has one purpose to cut

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Speaker 1: through flesh and bone. The cops or whatever they are,

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Speaker 1: batter open the next door and rush into the third

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Speaker 1: and final apartment on your floor. They're shouting the sound

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Speaker 1: of a struggle, and then a single gunshot shatters the night.

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Speaker 1: An eerie silence descends on the hallway. You and your

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Speaker 1: neighbors share another look. The dread on his face says

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Speaker 1: more than any words ever could. After a few seconds,

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Speaker 1: the short man with the tomahawks steps out of the room,

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Speaker 1: his hand on the shoulder of a tall officer. You

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Speaker 1: see a wisp of smoke curl up off the other

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Speaker 1: man's rifle. His front is splattered with blood, drops of

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Speaker 1: its stay in. The black and white flag on his

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Speaker 1: shoulder the only color on his dismal uniform, and once

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Speaker 1: again you find yourself wondering what comes next. In two

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Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, I visited Kiev, capital of Ukraine, about a

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Speaker 1: year after the successful My Dawn Revolution overthrew that country's

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Speaker 1: wanna be dictator Viktor Yanukovich. This was also about a

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Speaker 1: year into Ukraine's war with the Russian backed separatists. I

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Speaker 1: interviewed a bunch of veterans of the Maidan Revolution. Most

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Speaker 1: were young men and women. At one point I sat

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Speaker 1: down with a married couple, both in their mid twenties.

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Speaker 1: They were both fairly small people, of tiny build and stature.

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Speaker 1: I listened while they explained how they'd faced off against

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Speaker 1: the Barkut the Berkout. Where are Ukraine's elite riot police.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever seen an American cop at a civil

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Speaker 1: disturbance or riot wearing full body armor and wielding a

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Speaker 1: truncheon or a gas gridade launcher, or one of those

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Speaker 1: pepper ball guns that looks like a cross between a

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Speaker 1: paintball gun and an air fifteen, they looked sort of

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Speaker 1: like that. All riot cops look pretty much the same.

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Speaker 1: That is to say, they look like Darth Vader. You're

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Speaker 1: meant to be intimidated by them, awed by the sight

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Speaker 1: of dozens or hundreds of these tall armor plated badasses

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Speaker 1: slowly tromping towards you while a commanding voice bellows over

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Speaker 1: a painfully loud speaker on the back of a tank.

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Speaker 1: Disperse this is an unlawful gathering. Now. These two people

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Speaker 1: I was sitting with had gone face to face with

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Speaker 1: the Verkout as part of a shield wall of volunteers

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Speaker 1: who had for weeks successfully pushed back the assaults of

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Speaker 1: this army of darth vaders. I knew that intellectually, but

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Speaker 1: I could not square that fact with the unimposing reality

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Speaker 1: of these two spindly tech geeks who were sitting in

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Speaker 1: front of me. Eventually, I asked them, both of you

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Speaker 1: are tiny, and your software developers not m m A fighters.

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Speaker 1: How do you go face to face with armored cops

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Speaker 1: and win? The young woman smiled at me and sort

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Speaker 1: of raised out her arms to pantomime the shape of

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Speaker 1: a riot shield. It's similar to the kinds of shields

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Speaker 1: Roman legionnaires used to carry, but black, she explained, the

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Speaker 1: barcoot carried these big shields, and if you're small, you

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Speaker 1: can get in low and grab the shield by the

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Speaker 1: bottom and flip it up. With all that armor, they're

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Speaker 1: very top heavy. It's easy to get them off balance,

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Speaker 1: especially with all the ice on the ground. Then when

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Speaker 1: they fall on their backs, they are like a turtle,

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Speaker 1: so you stomp on them. In addition to being a

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Speaker 1: useful bit of practical advice, if you, dear listener, I

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Speaker 1: find yourself facing off against riot cops, I found her

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Speaker 1: advice to be powerfully symbolic of the nature of state power,

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Speaker 1: it always looks formidable. Perception of a monopoly on the

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Speaker 1: use of force is important for any government. If people

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Speaker 1: don't think a revolution is possible, they're less likely to revolt.

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Speaker 1: But once things get going, once push comes to literal shove,

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Speaker 1: the might of the police and even the military often

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Speaker 1: proves to be less imposing than it appears on paper.

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Speaker 1: In other words, the man has a glass jaw. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to episode three of It could happen here the Second

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Speaker 1: American Civil War. To recap our hypothetical timeline, a financial

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Speaker 1: crash has shattered the U S economy into pieces. Left

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Speaker 1: wing activists have occupied centers of several a major American cities,

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Speaker 1: including Wall Street in New York City. Several of these

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Speaker 1: occupations have surely been crushed that others have successfully held

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Speaker 1: off the police and created autonomous zones free of state control.

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Speaker 1: Terrorist attacks, mash shootings, and perhaps even bombings against demonstrators

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Speaker 1: from one side or the other have grown more common. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: out in the country, separatists resist the government calls to

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Speaker 1: disarm them. A potent insurgency has cut off the water

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Speaker 1: supply and the roads to some of America's most productive farmland.

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Speaker 1: The body count and the cost of food rises, the

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Speaker 1: stock market falls. Most people are probably still loath to

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Speaker 1: call this a civil war, but deep in Washington, that's

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Speaker 1: exactly how the guardians of the state have decided to

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Speaker 1: treat it. The government's first line of defense would be

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Speaker 1: the police and of course the power of law. So

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Speaker 1: if we're going to ponder over how the system might

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Speaker 1: strike back against this threat to its very existence, we'd

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Speaker 1: better start with Congress. Let's assume the government starts by

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Speaker 1: trying to placate the demonstrators without much success. To appease

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Speaker 1: the yellow vest protesters, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, repealed

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Speaker 1: the controversial gas tax on December fourth, two thousand eighteen.

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Speaker 1: As of mid March when I'm writing this episode, the

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Speaker 1: protests are still ongoing. Placation does not always work, So

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Speaker 1: let's imagine Congress tries to wave a carrot reducing gas

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Speaker 1: taxes and promising investigation into the financial industry. May be

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Speaker 1: approving some federal funds to help struggling homeowners. Like most

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Speaker 1: things our Congress does, it's half hearted and heavily compromised

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Speaker 1: by partisan bickering. The protesters and separatists are not placated.

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Speaker 1: So what happens next when the government's first attempt to

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Speaker 1: restore order fails. We can find some clues to this

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Speaker 1: in the Standing Rock protests and the protests in d

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Speaker 1: C during present Trump's inauguration. In the immediate wake of

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Speaker 1: both of these unprecedented acts of resistance, the man did

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Speaker 1: what the man does, tried to stomp down on the

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Speaker 1: power to actively resist. In the wake of both protests,

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Speaker 1: more than twenty states proposed bills that restricted the rights

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Speaker 1: of protesters and also protected the rights of people who

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Speaker 1: did violence against those protesters. In response to protesters blocking

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Speaker 1: pipelines under construction on Native American territory, Oklahoma past h

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Speaker 1: B one one two three. This increased penalties for trespassing

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Speaker 1: on critical infrastructure. Protesters who simply showed up to protest at, say,

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Speaker 1: the side of a pipeline, could find themselves looking at

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Speaker 1: a year in prison. Damaging equipment increase the penalty to

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Speaker 1: ten years. In North Dakota, sight of the Standing Rock protest,

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Speaker 1: two bills were signed into law punishing people who wear

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Speaker 1: masks or cover their faces at protests and increasing the

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Speaker 1: potential prison term of participating in something deemed a riot.

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Speaker 1: To ten years. In Tennessee, a bill was proposed that

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Speaker 1: would give quote civil immunity for the driver of an

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Speaker 1: automobile who injures a protester who was blocking traffic in

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Speaker 1: a public right of way if the driver is exercising

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Speaker 1: do care. By the time Heather Higher was murdered by

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Speaker 1: an angry fascist demonstrator in a car, six states had

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Speaker 1: proposed measures similar to that Tennessee bill. In Texas, Representative

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Speaker 1: Pat Fallon attempted to straight up legalize ramming protesters with cars. Now,

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Speaker 1: I want to remind you of a few things. Number One,

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Speaker 1: state level congress people like Pat Fallon often wind up

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Speaker 1: running for and winning federal office. And number two, the

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Speaker 1: inciting incidents for most of these bills were peaceful protests.

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Speaker 1: So when I think of those facts and I imagine

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Speaker 1: the government's response to an activist movement that has literally

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Speaker 1: barricaded chunks of major American cities and said you can't

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Speaker 1: come in, well, I don't imagine the federal government's first

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Speaker 1: response would be violence, But I see them winding up

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Speaker 1: at violence rather quickly. I don't think we start off

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Speaker 1: with police snipers using live rounds on protesters as they

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Speaker 1: did in Ukraine, but I can see American police being

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Speaker 1: called in from other parts of the state and other states.

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Speaker 1: This would bring in huge numbers of officers more used

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Speaker 1: to handing up parking tickets than using tear gas. They'd

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Speaker 1: be suddenly thrown in to try and clear out an angry,

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Speaker 1: organized group of activists behind barricades, tossing jars of fecal

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Speaker 1: matter and urine firework, stink bombs, whatever they have. I

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Speaker 1: do not have any trouble imaging debts at several of

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Speaker 1: these clashes. There's been a lot of talk and a

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Speaker 1: lot of articles in the last few years about the

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Speaker 1: rise of the warrior cop. As left wing magazine Mother

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Speaker 1: Jones put it, militarized policing is a hot button issue.

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Speaker 1: At the tail end of his term, President Obama tried

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Speaker 1: to stem the flow of military grade weapons and vehicles

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Speaker 1: to law enforcement, but that executive order was reversed in

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Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. The thing is, police officers aren't soldiers.

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Speaker 1: Some of them are veterans, and a few are even

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Speaker 1: combat veterans, but most are just cops. Looking like a

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Speaker 1: soldier does not necessarily mean you can operate like one.

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Speaker 1: More than two point two million Americans have served in

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Speaker 1: the War on Terror and been deployed to one of

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Speaker 1: its many hot spots. Most of those people are not

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Speaker 1: combat veterans either, but they all hold valuable skills, the

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Speaker 1: kind of skills that could help a group of protesters

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Speaker 1: occupy the center of a large American city, organized their

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Speaker 1: supplies and communications, and even physically resist the police. At

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Speaker 1: Standing Rock, I met veterans with information security backgrounds focused

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Speaker 1: on providing the protest camps with secure internet access, and

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Speaker 1: Kiev during the Might on protests, old Soviet veterans of

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Speaker 1: the fighting in Afghanistan helped stiffen the backs of scared,

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Speaker 1: young protesters facing off against lines of riot police. American

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Speaker 1: veterans are significantly more politically active than the average citizen,

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Speaker 1: six percent more likely to vote. Because of their experience

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Speaker 1: working as part of a large, organized whole, and because

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Speaker 1: of their specialized skills, veterans make fantastic activists. They also

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Speaker 1: make fantastic terrorists, insurgents, and freedom fighters. This is something

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Speaker 1: that came up during my talk with David Kilcolin back

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Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen. He told me about something called

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Speaker 1: Fuco's boomerang. This is an idea proposed initially by Michelle

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Speaker 1: Fucot to explain why military techniques originally developed by colonial

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Speaker 1: powers to put down insurrections and colonies eventually wound up

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Speaker 1: being used by those same nations on their own people.

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Speaker 1: One great example is the concentration camp. It was initially

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Speaker 1: deployed by the Spanish against their Cuban colony, and then

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Speaker 1: by the British against their South African colonies, until eventually,

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Speaker 1: during the World War the technique wound up in Europe

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Speaker 1: being used on Europeans. The science of finger printing and

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Speaker 1: the idea of panoptic prisons are two more examples of

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Speaker 1: techniques Europeans initially developed to maintain colonial order and then

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Speaker 1: brought back to their own countries. Fuco himself wrote quote,

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Speaker 1: it should never be forgotten that while colonization, with its

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Speaker 1: techniques and its political and judicial weapons, obviously transported European

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Speaker 1: models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang

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Speaker 1: effect on the mechanisms of power in the West and

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Speaker 1: on the apparatuses, institutions and techniques of power. A whole

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Speaker 1: series of colonial models was brought back to the West,

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Speaker 1: and the result was that the West could practice something

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Speaker 1: resembling colonization or an internal colonization on itself. In his

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Speaker 1: important book Cities under Siege the New Military Urbanism, Professor

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Speaker 1: Stephen Graham argues convincingly that the same thing is happening

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Speaker 1: now in the United States as a result of the

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Speaker 1: techniques are military developed initially to fight insurgents in Iraq

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Speaker 1: and Afghanistan. Quote. These operations act as testing grounds for

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Speaker 1: technology and techniques to be sold on through the world's

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Speaker 1: burgeoning homeland security markets. Through such processes of imitation, explicitly,

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Speaker 1: colonial models of pacification, militarization, and control honed on the

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Speaker 1: streets of the global South are spread to the cities

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Speaker 1: of the capitalist heartlands in the North. In other words,

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Speaker 1: if you want a picture of how our government and

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Speaker 1: our military will respond to a separatist movement in the

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Speaker 1: United States, just look at what they've done in other

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Speaker 1: countries when their cities defied us. This is why, as

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Speaker 1: this podcast goes on, I'll repeatedly refer to what the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Military did in Mosul and Rocah. But right now, for

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Speaker 1: this episode, what's important is that the boomerang effect cuts

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Speaker 1: both ways. The state right now is armed with a

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Speaker 1: whole host of weapons and tactics it perfected fighting insurgents

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Speaker 1: in Iraq in Afghanistan. But American cities and the American

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Speaker 1: countryside are also filled with men and women who spent

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Speaker 1: years of their lives fighting those wars and those insurgents.

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Speaker 1: They paid attention to what the enemy did, what worked,

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Speaker 1: and what didn't. Now, I want to make it clear

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Speaker 1: before we go on that I'm not saying veterans are

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Speaker 1: inherently violent people or anything like that. I don't think

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Speaker 1: they're more likely to become terrorists than anyone else. But

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Speaker 1: if they do make that choice, they have a much

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Speaker 1: wider range of capabilities than say, a radicalized former kindergarten teacher.

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Speaker 1: We already have a significant history in the very recent

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Speaker 1: past of U. S. Military veterans coming back from deployments

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Speaker 1: abroad and embarking on one man crusades to bring the

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Speaker 1: war home. We do. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber,

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Speaker 1: was a combat veteran. He killed people for his country

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Speaker 1: before he murdered the people of his country. Tim probably

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Speaker 1: never heard of Fucot's Boomerang, but without knowing it, his

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Speaker 1: life perfectly embodied the theory I'd like to quote from

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Speaker 1: the book American Terrorists, probably the best buy graphye of

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Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh quote. In reaching his decision to bomb a

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Speaker 1: federal building, McVeigh had been operating in a purely military

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Speaker 1: state of mind. The bombing, to him, was an act

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Speaker 1: of tactical aggression, nothing more, nothing less. The Army had

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Speaker 1: been his teacher in the horrors of war. He had

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Speaker 1: learned to cope with unthinkable cruelty, and now he would

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Speaker 1: put the lessons the army had taught him to practice

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Speaker 1: on native soil. You learn how to handle killing in

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Speaker 1: the military, he explained. I faced the consequences, but you

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Speaker 1: learn to accept it. This brings me to the story

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Speaker 1: of Christopher Dorner. Before he was a Los Angeles cop,

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Speaker 1: Chris Dorner was a Naval reserve officer who had been

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Speaker 1: deployed to Bahrain with the Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Unit

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Speaker 1: for two years. He was a well trained and experienced

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Speaker 1: soldier and a qualified marksman with both rifle and pistol.

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Speaker 1: Up until two thousand thirteen, Officer Dorner seemed like a

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Speaker 1: model human being. In two thousand two, while training Advanced

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Speaker 1: Air Force Base, he and a comrade found a bag

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Speaker 1: with a thousand dollars of cash inside it, property of

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Speaker 1: the Enid Korean Church of Grace. They turned in. They

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Speaker 1: turned the money into the police. At the time. When interviewed,

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Speaker 1: Dorner stated, quote, there was a couple of thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: and if people are willing to give that to a church,

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Speaker 1: it must be pretty important to them. He emphasized that

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Speaker 1: his mother and the military had both taught him to

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Speaker 1: be an honorable man. And two thousand thirteen, Christopher Dorner

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Speaker 1: was fired by the l a p D. He claimed

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Speaker 1: that this was because he reported on the use of

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Speaker 1: excessive force within the department, beatings of suspects and homeless

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Speaker 1: people for no reason. He tried to report these things

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Speaker 1: and was shut down. Rather than next going to a

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Speaker 1: journalist or the a c l U, or generally taking

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Speaker 1: any of what we consider to be the acceptable roads

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Speaker 1: our society provides people to attempt to redress these grievances,

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Speaker 1: Chris Dorner decided that none of that was likely to work.

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Speaker 1: He chose a redder path. On February one, two thousand thirteen,

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Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper's office received a package from Dorner. It in

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Speaker 1: included a DVD laying out his case against the department

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Speaker 1: and a challenge coin issued by l a p D

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Speaker 1: Chief William Bratton. Challenge coins are basically POGs for soldiers

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Speaker 1: in law enforcement, metal coins and blazoned with the logo

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Speaker 1: of this department, that office, through this general, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: Chris Dorner had shot this coin and attached to it

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Speaker 1: a note that said one m o A. An m

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Speaker 1: o A is a minute of angle. By writing this,

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Speaker 1: he was essentially saying that he had shot the coin

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Speaker 1: from a hundred yards away with a grouping of one inch.

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Speaker 1: In other words, Chris Dorner was saying, I am a

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Speaker 1: very very good shot. Be afraid. On February third, two

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Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, Chris Dorner shot and killed Monica Quan, the

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Speaker 1: daughter of a former l a p D captain and

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Speaker 1: Keith Lawrence, her fiancee, and a campus police officer. This

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Speaker 1: kicked off a rampage that would last until February the twelfth.

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Speaker 1: It was a chaotic, terrifying time for the l a

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Speaker 1: p D. Many officers went to work feeling like, in essence,

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Speaker 1: the predator was after them. It was also a terrifying

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Speaker 1: time for black men who looked vaguely like Chris. There

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Speaker 1: are pictures of one guy wearing a white T shirt

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Speaker 1: with the words not Chris Dorner written on his chest

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Speaker 1: and sharpie. Over the course of his rampage, Chris killed

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Speaker 1: two additional police officers and wounded three others. The l

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Speaker 1: a p D took all patrol officers off their motorcycles

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Speaker 1: for the duration of his spree. Protection details were set

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Speaker 1: up for the forty police officials named in his manifesto,

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Speaker 1: and thousands of officers were redeployed to watch the highways

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Speaker 1: of southern California. I went to read you some exerpts

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Speaker 1: from the manifesto Chris sent out on February fourth, in

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Speaker 1: the middle of his one man war against the l

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Speaker 1: a p D. Citizens slash non combatants. Do not render

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Speaker 1: medical aid to downed officers slash enemy combatants. They would

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Speaker 1: not do the same for you. They will let you

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Speaker 1: bleed out just so they can brag to other officers

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Speaker 1: that they had a one eight seven caper the other

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Speaker 1: day and can't wait to accrue the overtime in future

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Speaker 1: court subpoenas. As they always say, that's the paramedics job,

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Speaker 1: not mine. Let the balance of loss of life take place.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes a reset needs to occur. This will be a

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Speaker 1: war of attrition and a pyrac and Camdean victory for myself.

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Speaker 1: You may have the resources in manpower, but you are

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Speaker 1: reactive and predictable in your apt plans. I have the

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Speaker 1: strength and benefits of being unpredictable, unconventional, and unforgiving. Do

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Speaker 1: not waste your time with briefs and table tops. Chris

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Speaker 1: was finally cornered in a cabin on a mountaineer big

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Speaker 1: Bear Lake, California. It's presumed he shot himself after the

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Speaker 1: police fired in munitions that lit the cabin on fire

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Speaker 1: around him. Three years later, in two thousand sixteen, Micah

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Speaker 1: Xavier Johnson followed in Chris's footsteps when he opened fire

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Speaker 1: on and killed five Dallas police officers during a protest.

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Speaker 1: Johnson was an Army reserve officer and veteran of the

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Speaker 1: Afghan War. Later that same year, Gavin Eugene Long ambushed

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Speaker 1: and shot six Louisiana police officers in Baton Rouge. Three

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Speaker 1: of his victims died. Gavin Long had spent five years

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Speaker 1: in the United States Marine Corps. He'd served one tour

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Speaker 1: in Iraq. Now Long was not a combat soldier, but

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Speaker 1: every Marine is a trained rifleman, and every Marine receives

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Speaker 1: training on basic combat tactics, including how to set up

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Speaker 1: the sort of ambush he carried out expertly against those

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Speaker 1: baton rouge cops. The United States military has gotten extraordinarily

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Speaker 1: good at training young men for battle. Even the soldiers

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Speaker 1: who don't see combat can wind up quite proficient. These

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Speaker 1: three cases are ample evidence of how much damage a competent,

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Speaker 1: trained person can inflict on American police officers. But Chris

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Speaker 1: Dorner is the case that's most interesting to me and

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Speaker 1: I think most relevant to our discussion here. He was

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Speaker 1: clearly a man of passionate beliefs, a man who felt

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Speaker 1: that something terribly wrong had been done by the police.

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Speaker 1: His actions effectively tied up the l a p D,

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Speaker 1: one of the largest armed forces on this planet for

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Speaker 1: more than a week. Imagine if he'd been out there

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Speaker 1: hunting cops in the middle of a major protest campaign.

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Speaker 1: This is part of why I can pretty easily imagine

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Speaker 1: some sort of more badass occupy style movement managing to

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Speaker 1: hang on and control territory in several American cities despite

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Speaker 1: the best efforts of law enforcement. One angry, radicalized vet,

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Speaker 1: armed with the kind of weapons you can buy just

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Speaker 1: about everywhere in America could pretty easily lock down an

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Speaker 1: entire cities law enforcement during a time when they would

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Speaker 1: not have many officers to spare. And remember the boomerang effect,

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Speaker 1: Police departments already react, shall we say, forcefully whenever an

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Speaker 1: officer dies. Because Black Lives Matter was in the news

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Speaker 1: when Mica Johnson and Gavin Long carried out their attacks,

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Speaker 1: and because they were both black men, there were calls

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Speaker 1: around the country to declare BLM a violent extremist group,

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Speaker 1: despite a general lack of connections between either shooter and

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Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter as an organization. If an angry veteran

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Speaker 1: with a bolt action sniper rifle started shooting NYPD cops

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Speaker 1: while a huge chunk of Manhattan was locked down by protesters,

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Speaker 1: well it doesn't exactly take a big logical leap to

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Speaker 1: imagine the cops might blame those deaths on the protest movement,

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Speaker 1: so their violence against the protesters would escalate, and more

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Speaker 1: activists would be killed and injured. More videos of police

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Speaker 1: violence would go viral. This would inspire more anti police

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Speaker 1: vigilantes to start hunting cops on the streets, and the

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Speaker 1: cycle would continue, driving everyone to more extreme acts of

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Speaker 1: violence and gradually ratcheting up the body count. And this

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Speaker 1: is where the other side of the boomerang effect would

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Speaker 1: come into it, because an awful lot of police officers

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Speaker 1: or veterans too, And when these guys start facing the

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Speaker 1: same kinds of attacks they faced when they were deployed

430
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:43,760
Speaker 1: to Baghdad or wherever, they would respond using the same

431
00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 1: sorts of repressive measures. And as Cuko predicted, American citizens

432
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: would soon find themselves and during something millions of Iraqi

433
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: and Afghan people already know quite well the midnight raid.

434
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,360
Speaker 1: Talk to any Iraqis Edison who grew up in Kirkuk

435
00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: or Fellujjah in the early aughts, and they will tell

436
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:07,400
Speaker 1: you stories of American soldiers suited up like something from

437
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: a science fiction movie, with giant guns and body armor

438
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: and wild and sectoid looking optic equipment, breaking down doors

439
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:17,360
Speaker 1: in the dead of night and dragging people off into custody.

440
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:21,719
Speaker 1: Sometimes these people were insurgents, sometimes there were innocent civilians

441
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 1: victims of mistaken identity. In every instance, the raids were

442
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:29,359
Speaker 1: terrifying for everyone involved. And when you've got a bunch

443
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: of jumpy, armed young men breaking down doors and the

444
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:35,120
Speaker 1: dead of night looking for terrorists. Well, there's a lot

445
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: of room for error, the fatal kind of error, since

446
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:40,959
Speaker 1: most of you aren't familiar with what happens in one

447
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 1: of these raids. I'd like to quote from several of

448
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:45,439
Speaker 1: the fifty or so veterans who were interviewed by the

449
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:48,439
Speaker 1: Nation in two thousand seven about their activities in Iraq.

450
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: Sergeant John Brune served in Baghdad and Abu Grab. He

451
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:57,600
Speaker 1: carried out numerous night raids on the local people. He said, quote,

452
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 1: you want to catch them off guard. You want to

453
00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: catch them in their sleep. You run in and if

454
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: there's lights, you turn them on. If the lights are working,

455
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: If not, you've got flash lights. You leave one rifle

456
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: team outside while one rifle team goes inside. Each rifle

457
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 1: team leader has a head set on with an earpiece

458
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:16,920
Speaker 1: and a microphone where he can communicate with the other

459
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: rifle team leader that's outside. You go up the stairs,

460
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 1: You grab the man of the house. You rip him

461
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: out of bed in front of his wife. You put

462
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: him up against the wall. You have junior level troops.

463
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: P f c's specialists will run into the other rooms

464
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: and grab the family and you'll group them all together.

465
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 1: Then you go into a room and you tear the

466
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 1: room to shreds, and you make sure there's no weapons

467
00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:40,439
Speaker 1: or anything they can use to attack us. These police

468
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 1: raids would surely lead to bloody accidents, as even routine

469
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:47,439
Speaker 1: traffic stops due to day. Marine Reserve Lieutenant Jonathan Morgenstein

470
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,199
Speaker 1: served in Ramadi from August of two thousand four to

471
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 1: March of two thousand five. He noted, quote, I mean

472
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: you physically could not do an investigation every time a

473
00:25:56,760 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: civilian was wounded or killed, because it just happens a lot,

474
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 1: and you'd spend all your time doing that. I want

475
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: to remind you that these soldiers carrying out these raids,

476
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: which often ended in death, have vastly more training than

477
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: any police officers conducting the same raid in the United

478
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:15,880
Speaker 1: States would be likely to have. A seconds googling found

479
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: me the two thousand and nine New York Times article

480
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 1: soldiers kill Iraqi couple during raid at home is an

481
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 1: example of the kind of headlines you might expect to

482
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:26,360
Speaker 1: see if this were to happen in the United States.

483
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 1: So imagine being the protesters in a camp in a

484
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 1: major American city and waking up to see a headline

485
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: like that about one of your neighbors. Imagine how the

486
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: other protesters in that camp will react. Imagine this being

487
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: someone's last straw, the final thing that makes him decide

488
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: to pick up a gun and try to ambush a cop.

489
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: You see how this all works, right, Each little step

490
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 1: forward makes everything worse and exacerbates all these tensions that

491
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: in calmer times would fade back down. None of the

492
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: individual pieces are unprecedented, but if they all happened close

493
00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: enough to each other, it creates this accelerating psyche of violence.

494
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: So imagine a bunch of cops facing off against screaming

495
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: protesters every night, knowing they could get shot from behind

496
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 1: at any moment. Imagine them doing that for days on end,

497
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,120
Speaker 1: working double shifts like the police in Paris did during

498
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: the height of the Yellow vest protests, and every few

499
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: days or weeks some new nuts starts hunting cops. Some

500
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:23,200
Speaker 1: of these vigilantes will be stopped right away, others might

501
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: continue to kill for weeks. To the police, everyone would

502
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: start to look like an enemy. That kind of stress

503
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:32,159
Speaker 1: does not make any group of human beings better or

504
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:35,119
Speaker 1: more compassionate. I'd like to quote from one more veteran

505
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 1: staff sergeant named Camillo maya quote the frustration that resulted

506
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: from our inability to get back at those who were

507
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,719
Speaker 1: attacking us lead to tactics that seemed designed to simply

508
00:27:44,800 --> 00:28:00,440
Speaker 1: punish the local population that was supporting we don't now.

509
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: I know police violence in the United States is one

510
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: of the most controversial topics in the country right now.

511
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be as even handed as possible in

512
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:13,160
Speaker 1: my presentation of things, So I want any police officers

513
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: or back the blue folks listening right now to know

514
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to inherently write law enforcement off as

515
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 1: the bad guys here. This would be a terrifying and

516
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:26,680
Speaker 1: demoralizing situation for the vast majority of American law enforcement.

517
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 1: The people they'd be fighting wouldn't all look like Christopher Dorner,

518
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: a dude with a squeaky clean record of service and

519
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 1: a clear articulated reason for his rampage. Some of them

520
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: would be long standing members of violent criminal groups like

521
00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: m S thirteen, the Eighteenth Street Gang, or Barrio s Teca.

522
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 1: While I was researching that two thousand sixteen Cracked article,

523
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: several of the experts I interviewed independently brought up the

524
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: same thing. They expected that organized criminal groups would absolutely

525
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: get involved in any kind of serious fighting that broke

526
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: out in a city where they had a strong presence.

527
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: Is actually a pretty common occurrence in civil wars. David Kilcolin,

528
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 1: the former State Department strategist, told me this. There's often

529
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:10,560
Speaker 1: a criminal element in early stages of insurgencies which often

530
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: gets purged later. Street criminals in particular, are much more

531
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 1: likely to use violence. You see this with gangs and

532
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: early insurgent movements brought in a lot of street thugs

533
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: early to just sort of raise the temperature and get

534
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 1: everybody used to it. Raising the temperature is critical because

535
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 1: it's how we go from mass unrest to outright revolution.

536
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: Lone wolf nuts, small violent cells of people willing to

537
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: use deadly force, don't inspire the masses as much as

538
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: they get them increasingly used to violence, and that is

539
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 1: a critical step on the road to turning a series

540
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: of protests into a civil war. On October twenty two,

541
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, Business Insider ran an article with this

542
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: super fun headline quote. The FBI announces gangs have infiltrated

543
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:59,240
Speaker 1: every branch of the military. It's one of those increasingly

544
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: rare tidal that really accurately describes what's going on. Here's

545
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: a quote from the FBI's report. Quote. Through transfers and deployments,

546
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: military affiliated gang members expand their culture and operations to

547
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: new regions nationwide and worldwide, undermining security and law enforcement

548
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: efforts to combat crime. Gang members with military training pose

549
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 1: a unique threat to law enforcement personnel because of their

550
00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: distinctive weapons and combat training skills, and their ability to

551
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:30,000
Speaker 1: transfer these skills to fellow gang members. Right now, there

552
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: is no evidence that any American street gangs support any

553
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: kind of organized activity against the U. S. Government other

554
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: than you know, selling drugs and stuff. They're primarily money

555
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:43,240
Speaker 1: making organizations. But criminals have a long history of making

556
00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: fantastic revolutionaries. Abu Musab al Zarkawi, the George Washington of Isis,

557
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: was a drug dealer and gangster back in Jordan before

558
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: he found Allah. Joseph Stalin robbed Banks before the Bolshevik Revolution.

559
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: It is not so great a jump from gang leader

560
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: to revolutionary. American society is seated with people who have

561
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 1: the know how and the tools necessary to raise the

562
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,920
Speaker 1: temperature in our society to uncomfortable levels, and within the

563
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: affected cities themselves, the places dealing with large protest camps,

564
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 1: police checkpoints, nighttime raids, and escalating violence, well, I think

565
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: things could get hot fast. I remember one moment vividly

566
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: from my second trip in the Mosle. We were embedded

567
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: with a unit of the Iraqi Federal Police. Don't let

568
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 1: the name fool you. These guys had tanks and artillery

569
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: and mortars and rocket launchers and machine guns, and we

570
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: watched them use all of it. The Federal police were

571
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: infamous among the civilians of Mosle for using heavy weaponry

572
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 1: with reckless abandon and crowded neighborhoods filled with sheltering families.

573
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: They were nice guys outside of that, but I would

574
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: not have wanted to wind up on the other side

575
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 1: of their ire or their fire. After we spent a

576
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: little time embedded with them and we're leaving, I tried

577
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: to convey my gratitude to their colonel for hosting us.

578
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: I think I came across more as saying thank you

579
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 1: for what you're doing against isis than thanking him for

580
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: his hospitality. And I'll always remember his response don't worry

581
00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 1: your police would do the same thing if this happened

582
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: in your country. That sentence has haunted me ever since,

583
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 1: because once the cycle of violence gets well under way,

584
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: once the dead on both sides number into dozens and

585
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: start edging up to the hundreds, a chain of events

586
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 1: will have been set into motion that will lead inexorably

587
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 1: to the direct involvement of the military and a literal

588
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:31,440
Speaker 1: war between the American government and many of its people.

589
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: This is the point at which many of you might

590
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:37,959
Speaker 1: suspect the violence would rather quickly come to a close.

591
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: After all, protesters with molotov cocktails and insurgents with air

592
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: fifteens could not possibly last long against the unleashed might

593
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: of the American military. In our next episode, I'll tell

594
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:58,479
Speaker 1: you why you shouldn't be so sure about that. People

595
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: cross want to tell him mom guns you should see

596
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: how the jaw dropping to tell him. Why ain't talking

597
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: to sorrow to keep these front door on the clock

598
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 1: in NATO, Because I don't just the cops, y'all, says

599
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: he knowing everyno' all I do is laugh that spine

600
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: on the spine here. Everybody's gone test taking Norris taking

601
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 1: no exacting where you stand and understand that this me

602
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: is strapping. Hey, it's about time. I'm a little friend,

603
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: spouts when speaking in It'll be your voices, Stern wings

604
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: when of that stats that the dead cats, but the

605
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 1: weapon's around black pantacton and snap back turned back and

606
00:33:47,280 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 1: the hands on. Anybody questions he's fucked up? We all knowing, baby.

607
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: The question is when the fun we wait? Some president

608
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 1: take the name you can fix. You can fix your fix.

609
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,759
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans and I'm just exhausted from reading all

610
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:11,719
Speaker 1: of that. You can find me on Twitter at I

611
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 1: right okay. You can find this show on Twitter at

612
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,840
Speaker 1: happen here pod, and you can find the show online

613
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: at it could happen here pod dot com. Our music,

614
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 1: as always, is from Four Fists