WEBVTT - The State Strikes Back 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:04.480 They come for you in the night. One minute you're asleep, 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:07.240 warm and swaddled in your blankets, and the next you're 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:10.039 awoken by a loud, crashing sound, defended by the light 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:12.440 on the end of a police officer's a R fifteen. 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:15.720 You raise your hands up defensively, too shocked to think. 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:18.400 Hand grabs you by the wrist and yanks you hard 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.200 off the bed, nearly pulling your arm out of its socket. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.320 Several men shout loudly, all at once. Their voices merge 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:28.640 together into one confusing, chaotic mess. But you know enough 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:31.000 not to resist as they jam your arms behind your 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.120 back and cut your wrists. As the fog of sleep 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.920 gives way to intelligent thought, your conscious mind finally understands 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:41.400 what this is arrayed. As they drag you out into 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.440 the hallway, you realize exactly what this must be about. 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:47.680 Two days ago, two police officers were shot dead just 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.720 outside your building. They weren't the heavily armed, militarized cops 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:54.040 you see at checkpoints near the Separates side of town. 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:57.120 These men were normal patrol officers walking a beat when 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:00.680 some partisan sniper gun them down. At a distance. You 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:02.720 walked past the spot where they died just a few 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.520 hours earlier, on your way home from work, someone had 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.240 spray painted all cops are bastards on the wall above 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.000 where both men had died. You remember staring at the 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:14.280 blood stains on the concrete, fighting down nausea and wondering 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:18.520 what was going to come next. Now you know. The 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.720 officers drop you one ceremoniously against the outside wall of 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.959 your apartment. Your next door neighbor sits opposite from you, 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:27.919 next to his front door. His nose is broken, blood 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.000 streams down his face. You lock eyes. Neither of you 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.160 says anything, but you share a look that says, so, 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.160 let's come to this, huh. Back behind you, armored cops 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.320 tear through your living room, in bedroom, emptying pillows of stuffing, 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.040 turning over your bed and couch, looking at every conceivable 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.880 nook and hidy hole, where a single delirious second, you 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:50.560 find yourself consumed with worry that they might steal some 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.440 of the bags of coffee you stockpiled. You can't afford 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.160 to buy more At the current prices ever since Mexico 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.840 closed their border, good beans cost more than your rent. 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.160 You know you should feel violated, You should be livid 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:05.360 right now, rather than just worried about your stash. A 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.880 distant part of you does feel that way, But after 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.840 the last few years of escalating police patrols, after all 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.120 the hours spent waiting at checkpoints in the constant vehicle searches, 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:18.120 this just sort of feels like the inevitable culmination of events. 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.680 Another group of cops rushes past you down the hallway 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.080 with a clattering of body armor and heavy metal deer. 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:27.440 All their faces are covered by goggles, helmets, and ski 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.560 masks with skulls printed on the face. The skulls are 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:33.239 black and white, just like the colorless American flags on 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:37.000 their shoulders. You realize with some surprise that none of 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.960 them have any visible rank or unit insignias on their armor. 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.200 You don't even really know if they're police or soldiers. 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.239 You guess at this point the difference is mainly academic. 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.040 One of them carries a battering ram, but your eyes 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:50.880 are drawn to a short man at the rear of 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.960 the group. On his hip is a sheathed tomahawk. Something 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.320 about that sets your skin on edge. An ax is 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.520 not the kind of tool you use to restore order 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.600 or to protect people. It has one purpose to cut 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.160 through flesh and bone. The cops or whatever they are, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.800 batter open the next door and rush into the third 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.160 and final apartment on your floor. They're shouting the sound 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.600 of a struggle, and then a single gunshot shatters the night. 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.440 An eerie silence descends on the hallway. You and your 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.160 neighbors share another look. The dread on his face says 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.320 more than any words ever could. After a few seconds, 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.120 the short man with the tomahawks steps out of the room, 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.840 his hand on the shoulder of a tall officer. You 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:32.880 see a wisp of smoke curl up off the other 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:36.200 man's rifle. His front is splattered with blood, drops of 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:37.800 its stay in. The black and white flag on his 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.560 shoulder the only color on his dismal uniform, and once 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:47.560 again you find yourself wondering what comes next. In two 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.400 thousand fifteen, I visited Kiev, capital of Ukraine, about a 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.920 year after the successful My Dawn Revolution overthrew that country's 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.800 wanna be dictator Viktor Yanukovich. This was also about a 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.520 year into Ukraine's war with the Russian backed separatists. I 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.680 interviewed a bunch of veterans of the Maidan Revolution. Most 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:08.200 were young men and women. At one point I sat 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.760 down with a married couple, both in their mid twenties. 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.600 They were both fairly small people, of tiny build and stature. 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.520 I listened while they explained how they'd faced off against 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:21.800 the Barkut the Berkout. Where are Ukraine's elite riot police. 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:24.200 If you've ever seen an American cop at a civil 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.240 disturbance or riot wearing full body armor and wielding a 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:29.920 truncheon or a gas gridade launcher, or one of those 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.080 pepper ball guns that looks like a cross between a 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.160 paintball gun and an air fifteen, they looked sort of 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:38.600 like that. All riot cops look pretty much the same. 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.920 That is to say, they look like Darth Vader. You're 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.719 meant to be intimidated by them, awed by the sight 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.360 of dozens or hundreds of these tall armor plated badasses 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.039 slowly tromping towards you while a commanding voice bellows over 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.320 a painfully loud speaker on the back of a tank. 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:59.480 Disperse this is an unlawful gathering. Now. These two people 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:01.479 I was sitting with had gone face to face with 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:04.240 the Verkout as part of a shield wall of volunteers 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.760 who had for weeks successfully pushed back the assaults of 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.599 this army of darth vaders. I knew that intellectually, but 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.720 I could not square that fact with the unimposing reality 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.400 of these two spindly tech geeks who were sitting in 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:20.479 front of me. Eventually, I asked them, both of you 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.640 are tiny, and your software developers not m m A fighters. 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.240 How do you go face to face with armored cops 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.760 and win? The young woman smiled at me and sort 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:32.240 of raised out her arms to pantomime the shape of 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.040 a riot shield. It's similar to the kinds of shields 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:39.120 Roman legionnaires used to carry, but black, she explained, the 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.039 barcoot carried these big shields, and if you're small, you 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:44.000 can get in low and grab the shield by the 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:46.599 bottom and flip it up. With all that armor, they're 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.160 very top heavy. It's easy to get them off balance, 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:51.920 especially with all the ice on the ground. Then when 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:54.120 they fall on their backs, they are like a turtle, 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.320 so you stomp on them. In addition to being a 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:59.840 useful bit of practical advice, if you, dear listener, I 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.280 find yourself facing off against riot cops, I found her 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.920 advice to be powerfully symbolic of the nature of state power, 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.400 it always looks formidable. Perception of a monopoly on the 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.279 use of force is important for any government. If people 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.880 don't think a revolution is possible, they're less likely to revolt. 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.920 But once things get going, once push comes to literal shove, 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.159 the might of the police and even the military often 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.279 proves to be less imposing than it appears on paper. 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:33.200 In other words, the man has a glass jaw. Welcome 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:36.040 to episode three of It could happen here the Second 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:40.599 American Civil War. To recap our hypothetical timeline, a financial 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:43.840 crash has shattered the U S economy into pieces. Left 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.560 wing activists have occupied centers of several a major American cities, 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.840 including Wall Street in New York City. Several of these 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.479 occupations have surely been crushed that others have successfully held 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.920 off the police and created autonomous zones free of state control. 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.520 Terrorist attacks, mash shootings, and perhaps even bombings against demonstrators 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.839 from one side or the other have grown more common. Meanwhile, 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.000 out in the country, separatists resist the government calls to 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.760 disarm them. A potent insurgency has cut off the water 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:15.440 supply and the roads to some of America's most productive farmland. 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.600 The body count and the cost of food rises, the 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.840 stock market falls. Most people are probably still loath to 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.960 call this a civil war, but deep in Washington, that's 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.480 exactly how the guardians of the state have decided to 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.560 treat it. The government's first line of defense would be 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.320 the police and of course the power of law. So 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.560 if we're going to ponder over how the system might 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.800 strike back against this threat to its very existence, we'd 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:44.120 better start with Congress. Let's assume the government starts by 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:48.000 trying to placate the demonstrators without much success. To appease 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.800 the yellow vest protesters, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, repealed 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.960 the controversial gas tax on December fourth, two thousand eighteen. 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.040 As of mid March when I'm writing this episode, the 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:03.080 protests are still ongoing. Placation does not always work, So 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.280 let's imagine Congress tries to wave a carrot reducing gas 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.800 taxes and promising investigation into the financial industry. May be 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.400 approving some federal funds to help struggling homeowners. Like most 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.640 things our Congress does, it's half hearted and heavily compromised 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:20.840 by partisan bickering. The protesters and separatists are not placated. 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.080 So what happens next when the government's first attempt to 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.760 restore order fails. We can find some clues to this 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:30.240 in the Standing Rock protests and the protests in d 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.120 C during present Trump's inauguration. In the immediate wake of 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:37.280 both of these unprecedented acts of resistance, the man did 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:40.120 what the man does, tried to stomp down on the 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.480 power to actively resist. In the wake of both protests, 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.400 more than twenty states proposed bills that restricted the rights 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.880 of protesters and also protected the rights of people who 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.240 did violence against those protesters. In response to protesters blocking 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:58.439 pipelines under construction on Native American territory, Oklahoma past h 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.160 B one one two three. This increased penalties for trespassing 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:06.760 on critical infrastructure. Protesters who simply showed up to protest at, say, 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.320 the side of a pipeline, could find themselves looking at 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.640 a year in prison. Damaging equipment increase the penalty to 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.760 ten years. In North Dakota, sight of the Standing Rock protest, 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:19.760 two bills were signed into law punishing people who wear 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:23.000 masks or cover their faces at protests and increasing the 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.040 potential prison term of participating in something deemed a riot. 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.679 To ten years. In Tennessee, a bill was proposed that 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.600 would give quote civil immunity for the driver of an 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.840 automobile who injures a protester who was blocking traffic in 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.640 a public right of way if the driver is exercising 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:41.800 do care. By the time Heather Higher was murdered by 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:45.240 an angry fascist demonstrator in a car, six states had 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:49.640 proposed measures similar to that Tennessee bill. In Texas, Representative 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:54.800 Pat Fallon attempted to straight up legalize ramming protesters with cars. Now, 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.080 I want to remind you of a few things. Number One, 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.520 state level congress people like Pat Fallon often wind up 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:05.120 running for and winning federal office. And number two, the 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:09.800 inciting incidents for most of these bills were peaceful protests. 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.280 So when I think of those facts and I imagine 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.079 the government's response to an activist movement that has literally 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:18.680 barricaded chunks of major American cities and said you can't 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:22.400 come in, well, I don't imagine the federal government's first 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.440 response would be violence, But I see them winding up 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:29.160 at violence rather quickly. I don't think we start off 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.160 with police snipers using live rounds on protesters as they 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.120 did in Ukraine, but I can see American police being 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.600 called in from other parts of the state and other states. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.160 This would bring in huge numbers of officers more used 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:42.880 to handing up parking tickets than using tear gas. They'd 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:45.240 be suddenly thrown in to try and clear out an angry, 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:49.080 organized group of activists behind barricades, tossing jars of fecal 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:52.520 matter and urine firework, stink bombs, whatever they have. I 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:55.400 do not have any trouble imaging debts at several of 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.240 these clashes. There's been a lot of talk and a 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:00.560 lot of articles in the last few years about the 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.240 rise of the warrior cop. As left wing magazine Mother 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.760 Jones put it, militarized policing is a hot button issue. 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.439 At the tail end of his term, President Obama tried 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:12.040 to stem the flow of military grade weapons and vehicles 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:15.320 to law enforcement, but that executive order was reversed in 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:19.840 two thousand seventeen. The thing is, police officers aren't soldiers. 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.120 Some of them are veterans, and a few are even 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:25.480 combat veterans, but most are just cops. Looking like a 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.080 soldier does not necessarily mean you can operate like one. 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.600 More than two point two million Americans have served in 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:34.800 the War on Terror and been deployed to one of 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.760 its many hot spots. Most of those people are not 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.320 combat veterans either, but they all hold valuable skills, the 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.720 kind of skills that could help a group of protesters 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:47.000 occupy the center of a large American city, organized their 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:51.400 supplies and communications, and even physically resist the police. At 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:55.400 Standing Rock, I met veterans with information security backgrounds focused 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:58.600 on providing the protest camps with secure internet access, and 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.280 Kiev during the Might on protests, old Soviet veterans of 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.200 the fighting in Afghanistan helped stiffen the backs of scared, 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.040 young protesters facing off against lines of riot police. American 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.800 veterans are significantly more politically active than the average citizen, 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.360 six percent more likely to vote. Because of their experience 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.040 working as part of a large, organized whole, and because 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:24.199 of their specialized skills, veterans make fantastic activists. They also 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:29.000 make fantastic terrorists, insurgents, and freedom fighters. This is something 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.480 that came up during my talk with David Kilcolin back 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.720 in two thousand sixteen. He told me about something called 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.840 Fuco's boomerang. This is an idea proposed initially by Michelle 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:43.040 Fucot to explain why military techniques originally developed by colonial 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:46.240 powers to put down insurrections and colonies eventually wound up 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:48.679 being used by those same nations on their own people. 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.319 One great example is the concentration camp. It was initially 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.640 deployed by the Spanish against their Cuban colony, and then 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:59.280 by the British against their South African colonies, until eventually, 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.640 during the World War the technique wound up in Europe 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:06.520 being used on Europeans. The science of finger printing and 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.320 the idea of panoptic prisons are two more examples of 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:13.280 techniques Europeans initially developed to maintain colonial order and then 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.160 brought back to their own countries. Fuco himself wrote quote, 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:20.000 it should never be forgotten that while colonization, with its 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.960 techniques and its political and judicial weapons, obviously transported European 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:27.199 models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:29.680 effect on the mechanisms of power in the West and 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:33.040 on the apparatuses, institutions and techniques of power. A whole 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:35.800 series of colonial models was brought back to the West, 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.120 and the result was that the West could practice something 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:43.200 resembling colonization or an internal colonization on itself. In his 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:47.240 important book Cities under Siege the New Military Urbanism, Professor 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.640 Stephen Graham argues convincingly that the same thing is happening 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.080 now in the United States as a result of the 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.520 techniques are military developed initially to fight insurgents in Iraq 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:00.800 and Afghanistan. Quote. These operations act as testing grounds for 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.600 technology and techniques to be sold on through the world's 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:07.960 burgeoning homeland security markets. Through such processes of imitation, explicitly, 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:12.160 colonial models of pacification, militarization, and control honed on the 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.600 streets of the global South are spread to the cities 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.840 of the capitalist heartlands in the North. In other words, 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.080 if you want a picture of how our government and 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:23.160 our military will respond to a separatist movement in the 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.280 United States, just look at what they've done in other 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.800 countries when their cities defied us. This is why, as 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.760 this podcast goes on, I'll repeatedly refer to what the U. S. 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.680 Military did in Mosul and Rocah. But right now, for 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.880 this episode, what's important is that the boomerang effect cuts 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.840 both ways. The state right now is armed with a 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.200 whole host of weapons and tactics it perfected fighting insurgents 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.920 in Iraq in Afghanistan. But American cities and the American 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:52.680 countryside are also filled with men and women who spent 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:56.240 years of their lives fighting those wars and those insurgents. 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.760 They paid attention to what the enemy did, what worked, 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.440 and what didn't. Now, I want to make it clear 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:05.800 before we go on that I'm not saying veterans are 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:08.600 inherently violent people or anything like that. I don't think 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.240 they're more likely to become terrorists than anyone else. But 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:13.400 if they do make that choice, they have a much 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:17.840 wider range of capabilities than say, a radicalized former kindergarten teacher. 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.560 We already have a significant history in the very recent 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.240 past of U. S. Military veterans coming back from deployments 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.680 abroad and embarking on one man crusades to bring the 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:43.200 war home. We do. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.320 was a combat veteran. He killed people for his country 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:50.040 before he murdered the people of his country. Tim probably 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.360 never heard of Fucot's Boomerang, but without knowing it, his 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.960 life perfectly embodied the theory I'd like to quote from 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:00.440 the book American Terrorists, probably the best buy graphye of 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:04.720 Timothy McVeigh quote. In reaching his decision to bomb a 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.160 federal building, McVeigh had been operating in a purely military 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.320 state of mind. The bombing, to him, was an act 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:15.280 of tactical aggression, nothing more, nothing less. The Army had 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:17.640 been his teacher in the horrors of war. He had 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.720 learned to cope with unthinkable cruelty, and now he would 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.160 put the lessons the army had taught him to practice 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.040 on native soil. You learn how to handle killing in 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.440 the military, he explained. I faced the consequences, but you 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.120 learn to accept it. This brings me to the story 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:37.160 of Christopher Dorner. Before he was a Los Angeles cop, 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.920 Chris Dorner was a Naval reserve officer who had been 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.360 deployed to Bahrain with the Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Unit 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:46.480 for two years. He was a well trained and experienced 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:49.840 soldier and a qualified marksman with both rifle and pistol. 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.640 Up until two thousand thirteen, Officer Dorner seemed like a 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:57.040 model human being. In two thousand two, while training Advanced 0:16:57.040 --> 0:16:59.640 Air Force Base, he and a comrade found a bag 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.760 with a thousand dollars of cash inside it, property of 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.879 the Enid Korean Church of Grace. They turned in. They 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.280 turned the money into the police. At the time. When interviewed, 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.280 Dorner stated, quote, there was a couple of thousand dollars 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:14.000 and if people are willing to give that to a church, 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.960 it must be pretty important to them. He emphasized that 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.439 his mother and the military had both taught him to 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:24.080 be an honorable man. And two thousand thirteen, Christopher Dorner 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.880 was fired by the l a p D. He claimed 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:28.960 that this was because he reported on the use of 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:32.840 excessive force within the department, beatings of suspects and homeless 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.000 people for no reason. He tried to report these things 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.040 and was shut down. Rather than next going to a 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.639 journalist or the a c l U, or generally taking 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.280 any of what we consider to be the acceptable roads 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.560 our society provides people to attempt to redress these grievances, 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.920 Chris Dorner decided that none of that was likely to work. 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:56.200 He chose a redder path. On February one, two thousand thirteen, 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.879 Anderson Cooper's office received a package from Dorner. It in 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.119 included a DVD laying out his case against the department 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:05.600 and a challenge coin issued by l a p D 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.760 Chief William Bratton. Challenge coins are basically POGs for soldiers 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:12.720 in law enforcement, metal coins and blazoned with the logo 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.280 of this department, that office, through this general, et cetera. 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.639 Chris Dorner had shot this coin and attached to it 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.760 a note that said one m o A. An m 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:24.639 o A is a minute of angle. By writing this, 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.040 he was essentially saying that he had shot the coin 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.240 from a hundred yards away with a grouping of one inch. 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.640 In other words, Chris Dorner was saying, I am a 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:39.280 very very good shot. Be afraid. On February third, two 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:43.080 thousand thirteen, Chris Dorner shot and killed Monica Quan, the 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:45.399 daughter of a former l a p D captain and 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.679 Keith Lawrence, her fiancee, and a campus police officer. This 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:52.919 kicked off a rampage that would last until February the twelfth. 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.119 It was a chaotic, terrifying time for the l a 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.719 p D. Many officers went to work feeling like, in essence, 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:02.880 the predator was after them. It was also a terrifying 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.040 time for black men who looked vaguely like Chris. There 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.399 are pictures of one guy wearing a white T shirt 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.480 with the words not Chris Dorner written on his chest 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:14.920 and sharpie. Over the course of his rampage, Chris killed 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.800 two additional police officers and wounded three others. The l 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.160 a p D took all patrol officers off their motorcycles 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.840 for the duration of his spree. Protection details were set 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.760 up for the forty police officials named in his manifesto, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.080 and thousands of officers were redeployed to watch the highways 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.440 of southern California. I went to read you some exerpts 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.359 from the manifesto Chris sent out on February fourth, in 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.680 the middle of his one man war against the l 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:44.800 a p D. Citizens slash non combatants. Do not render 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.800 medical aid to downed officers slash enemy combatants. They would 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:51.320 not do the same for you. They will let you 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:54.040 bleed out just so they can brag to other officers 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.120 that they had a one eight seven caper the other 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.040 day and can't wait to accrue the overtime in future 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.920 court subpoenas. As they always say, that's the paramedics job, 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:06.520 not mine. Let the balance of loss of life take place. 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:10.480 Sometimes a reset needs to occur. This will be a 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.040 war of attrition and a pyrac and Camdean victory for myself. 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:16.719 You may have the resources in manpower, but you are 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.159 reactive and predictable in your apt plans. I have the 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:24.719 strength and benefits of being unpredictable, unconventional, and unforgiving. Do 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:29.000 not waste your time with briefs and table tops. Chris 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.640 was finally cornered in a cabin on a mountaineer big 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:34.920 Bear Lake, California. It's presumed he shot himself after the 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.720 police fired in munitions that lit the cabin on fire 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:42.560 around him. Three years later, in two thousand sixteen, Micah 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.080 Xavier Johnson followed in Chris's footsteps when he opened fire 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:49.760 on and killed five Dallas police officers during a protest. 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.119 Johnson was an Army reserve officer and veteran of the 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:57.440 Afghan War. Later that same year, Gavin Eugene Long ambushed 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.359 and shot six Louisiana police officers in Baton Rouge. Three 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.480 of his victims died. Gavin Long had spent five years 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.280 in the United States Marine Corps. He'd served one tour 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:11.040 in Iraq. Now Long was not a combat soldier, but 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.119 every Marine is a trained rifleman, and every Marine receives 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:17.400 training on basic combat tactics, including how to set up 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:20.520 the sort of ambush he carried out expertly against those 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:25.280 baton rouge cops. The United States military has gotten extraordinarily 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:28.159 good at training young men for battle. Even the soldiers 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:31.800 who don't see combat can wind up quite proficient. These 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:35.120 three cases are ample evidence of how much damage a competent, 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:39.080 trained person can inflict on American police officers. But Chris 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:41.720 Dorner is the case that's most interesting to me and 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.639 I think most relevant to our discussion here. He was 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:48.160 clearly a man of passionate beliefs, a man who felt 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.880 that something terribly wrong had been done by the police. 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.040 His actions effectively tied up the l a p D, 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:57.800 one of the largest armed forces on this planet for 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:00.760 more than a week. Imagine if he'd been out there 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.800 hunting cops in the middle of a major protest campaign. 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:07.480