VOLUME 22, ISSUE 2, PAGES I – V (2021) Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society

E-ISSN 2332-886X Available online at https://scholasticahq.com/criminology-criminal-justice-law-society/

On the Verge of : The Need for Scholarship on Police in an Era of Rising Extremism

Foreword by Randy Blazak

Historians will likely spend countless pages current events. With the advent of the internet, comparing 2020 to 1968. Both years saw large scale countless “news” websites have emerged, catering to urban protests, some violent, as America wrestled with every conceivable niche interest group, include neo- its journey to both maintain and dismantle its own Nazis. The rhetoric of extremist right wing ideologies internalized racist culture. Importantly, 1968 was also proliferated on both easily accessible websites as well the year the Johnson Administration released the as the “dark web.” As legitimate news sources were report of the Kerner Commission. The report, The branded “fake news,” Americans sought out Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (President’s information outlets that reinforced their pre-existing Commission, 1968), found that the catalysts for the narratives, often legitimizing stories authored by self- “race riots” that took place in 159 cities during the proclaimed journalists. These news silos ended the “long, hot summer” of 1967 were primarily police common frame of reference and replaced the news brutality and racism. Both years were also marked by landscape with competing narratives. This was most a presidential election in which the rhetoric of “law evident in 2020 when the reporting around the and order” was utilized to rally the support of racially coronavirus pandemic was transformed from a public fearful white voters, as suburban white voters were health story, affecting all Americans, into a political urged to support crack downs on America’s “urban issue, leading many conservative news consumers to jungles.” proclaim the virus a “hoax” and the vaccine effort a While 1968 and 2020 had many parallels, “socialist power grab.” like political pundits pitting civil rights protesters The other component of the media difference (“Black lives”) against the police (“Blue lives”), there is the predominance of social media platforms. There were many differences as well, two stand in glaring was no Twitter, Facebook, Parler, or Reddit in contrast to the dramatic upheaval of the 1960s. 1968. The ability of anti-government conspiracy The first difference is the nature of the media theories to spread has exploded as people share landscape. In 1968, news seekers had three television evidence of the “stolen election” or proof that climate networks (and PBS) and their local newspaper to change is “liberal hysteria” on their Facebook pages. consume daily events. The flow of daily information This global web of individuals opened the door for came mostly through Walter Cronkite’s nightly manipulation by foreign actors, like Russia, and the broadcast on the CBS Evening News. Whether it was rapid dissemination of QAnon-like disinformation. reporting from the war in Vietnam or the riots in The combination of news silos and social media Watts, Americans had a common frame of reference to spreading disinformation, misinformation, and wild

© 2021 Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society and The Western Society of Criminology Hosting by Scholastica. All rights reserved. ii BLAZAK conspiracy theories has created both distrust in persistence of racial inequities in policing has ignited mainstream institutions and increased political calls to “” and shift resources to polarity in the populace. Walter Cronkite’s “and that’s community crime prevention, including funding the way it is,” has been transformed into “and that’s mental health and homeless services. This campaign the way I say it is.” to “re-imagine” policing has been framed as a conflict The other major difference from 1968 is the between “Black lives” and “Blue lives” by the right social and cultural evolution that occurred in those 52 and brought back the demands for “law and order” years. One of the recommendations from the Kerner policing that were championed by Richard Nixon in Commission was that police departments reflect the 1968. communities they police. President Johnson had Comparisons between Richard Nixon in 1968 signed the executive order launching Affirmative and Donald Trump in 2020 aside, the social conflict Action (EO 11246) in 1965, but Kerner pushed police around race in policing has generated similar issues departments to hire more minority officers. In 1970, with regard to extremism. While we think of the 1960s African-Americans made up only 6 percent of all as the era of the “new left” and the student anti-war sworn police officers. By the early 2000s, 18 percent movement, the decade also saw the rise of George of officers were Black. And in larger cities, 20 percent Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party. The same of officers were Black and 14 percent were Latino. In decade saw the right-wing John Birch Society position 2005, for the first time, the majority of new officers in itself against everything from hippies to sex-education were from minority racial and ethnic and water fluoridation, framing each as a “communist backgrounds (Sklansky, 2006). While some of the Bull plot.” In America, the Ku Klux Klan were burning Conner tactics that were common in 1968 may still Beatles records and in Britain the (not initially racist) remain, police departments were demographically skinheads were forming as a hyper-masculine different 2020. working-class response to the youth counterculture. The civil unrest that followed the 2014 police All set the stage for the street conflicts between Proud killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, also Boys and Antifa we’ve experienced so far in the resulted in massive calls for police reform. A 2015 2020s. federal investigation found that the Ferguson Police In the realm of scholarship there are also stark Department regularly engaged in unconstitutional differences with 1968. As researchers turned their stops and arrests of Black civilians and engage in attention to the role reform plays in communities excessive force in those communities. The ripples of plagued by crime, the practice of policing became the reform included an end of the “stop and frisk” tactic subject of much analysis. For example, research on de- by New York City police the routinely targeted Black escalation was employed by police on Portland, and Brown people. Additionally the report, completed Oregon during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in March, 2015, highlighted what has become known in 2011, providing a dramatic contrast to the tactics as the Ferguson Effect. This refers to the increase in used by police at the 1968 Democratic violent crime rates resulting from community distrust Convention. Other areas of research that have been and hostility towards local police departments arising folded into policy by law enforcement departments from histories of discriminatory practices. include community policing, use of force, use of body Reforms in law enforcement, including the cameras, community-police engagement, and police, utilization of community policing and the recruitment guardian and Crisis Intervention Team training. The of female officers (12.8 percent of all officers in 2020), utilization of this scholarship, long with efforts to had their roots in the unrest of the 1960s. Municipal, address DEI issues within police departments, provide county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies evidence of the changing nature of the culture of now have institutionalized diversity, equity, and policing (Helfgott, 2020) stands in contrast to the inclusion (DEI) practices in their policies and “Bull Connor” tactics that were common in 1968. practices. In 2020, Texas required all officers in the While the research that has encouraged state to receive training on implicit bias. As a result of moving police practices to towards more community President Obama’s 2015 Task Force on 21st Century responsive approaches became the focus of much Policing, twenty-nine states now mandate de- public attention in 2020, the work on the relationship escalation training for all police (Stockton, 2021). One between law enforcement and extremism remained an of the six pillars of the reform supported by the task understudied area. This issue began to receive more force, “Office Training and Wellness,” included a attention before the events of 2020. In 2019, in one of recommendation for mandatory Crisis Intervention may similar cases, the police department Training (CIT), which would prepare officers to put seventy-two police officers on leave (and appropriately deal with individuals in crisis, including dismissed 13) because of racist Facebook posts those needing mental health resources. However, the (MacFarquhar, 2021). The presence of officers

Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society – Volume 22, Issue 2 ON THE VERGE OF CIVIL WAR iii subscribing to right-wing beliefs was normative in novel written by white supremacist William Pierce. 1968. (The Georgia town I grew up in had police The book follows a small band of “racial patriots” as officers show where known members of the Ku Klux they launch a second American revolution to wrestle Klan.) The current social climate rejects extremist America from global Jewish control. McVeigh, activity in law enforcement as contrary to the public followed the Diaries playbook, intending the mission of contemporary policing. This was evident in to inspire his “brothers in the response to the presence of sworn police officers arms” in the white power movement (as he described who participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol them shortly before his 2001 execution) to rise up and building in 2021. begin a race war. McVeigh has served as an inspiration to other Gaging the Threat of Extremist Violence like minded racial patriots. His devotees include,

The January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Jeremy Christian, an alt-right activist who stabbed Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Trump three passengers on a Portland commuter train in 2017 was a shock to many Americans who were unaware of amid a racist tirade, and Timothy Wilson, a white the true threat of political violence in the United States. supremacist, whose numerous bombing plots were But there had been preceding events that pointed to thwarted by the FBI in 2020. The 1990s-era militia call violent flashpoints in America’s political divide. This for a “second American revolution” evolved into the included the killing of two anti-racism activists by a in the 2010s with the advent of right-wing teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse in social media and “grey web” discussion forums, like Kenosha, on August 25, 2020 and the 4chan. The expansion of the anti-government killing of a right-wing activist by an Antifa supporter movement in the wake of the January 6 attack on the named Michael Reinoehl in Portland, Oregon on Capitol, elevated the threat of domestic terrorism. August 29, 2020. Both events increased the perception According to an unclassified FBI report in May 2021, that the summer of 2020 was the first step of a second the greatest threat of domestic violence came from civil war. (Before he was killed by federal agents five racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, and days after the Portland shooting, Reinoehl told Vice, militia violent extremists. “Honestly, I hate to say it, but I see a civil war right An alarming element of this threat has been around the corner. That that shot felt like the beginning the participation of veterans, active duty members of of a war” (Vice News, 2020). the military and current and former police officers. An The talk of a second civil war was not new to NPR analysis of those charged in the January 6 attack the the political fringes in 2020-2021. The largest act found that nearly 20 percent of indicted insurgents had of domestic violence in American history was an served or were currently serving in the U.S. military attempt to incite a racial civil war in the country. The (Dreisbach and Anderson, 2021). Oklahoma City bombing, that blew a gaping hole in identified more than 30 active or retired police officers the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, was involved in the Capitol attack, including seven who immediately blamed on jihadists. Fresh from my field were facing charges for their role (MacFarquhar, research on racist skinheads, I spent that evening 2021). scanning talk radio, listening to right-wing In the spring of 2021, several states, like commentators convinced that this news-stopping act Oregon, California, and Minnesota, began to pass laws that killed 168 Americans, including 19 small children to remove police officers who where involved with in a day care facility, had committed by Muslim extremist groups, like the Proud Boys. Military and terrorists. (Their hunch had merit as Islamists, backed police involvement in right wing extremists groups is by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had bombed the World quite literally a page out of The Turner Diaries, as Trade Center in New York City two years earlier.) racists within institutions and with access to stockpiles Two days later, when federal agents took Gulf War of weapons are utilized to bring the U.S. government veteran Timothy McVeigh into custody and charged down. him as the primary conspirator, the radio chatter (after The Value of Research a long pause) switched to commentary that labeled the bomber as “the wacko from Waco.” It was a vivid case No nation is guaranteed to exist in perpetuity. of attribution theory; Muslims are terrorists because In the 20th century, countries like Yugoslavia and they are Muslim. White men are terrorists because Tibet came and went. Thriving democracies collapse there is something wrong with them as individuals. into totalitarian regimes. Margaret Atwood, the author In fact, McVeigh and his co-conspirators had of The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel in which moved through white supremacist and patriot militia the United States falls to a patriarchal theocratic subcultures before the bombing. McVeigh had uprising, said in 2010, “The fabric of democracy is actively promoted The Turner Diaries, a 1978 racist always fragile everywhere because it depends on the

Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society – Volume 22, Issue 2 iv BLAZAK will of citizens to protect it, and when they become encrypted communication platforms, QAnon scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend conspiracy theories, and the instigations of former it, it can go very quickly” (Atwood, 2010). President Trump. Timothy McVeigh remains a martyr Researching the elements of that fragility provides for those believe the media writ large, politicians, insight on how to defend stable institutions while including “RINOS” (Republicans in Name Only), and transforming them towards more equitable ends. educators are part of a global conspiracy to deprive the The desire to understand extremism has a “God-given” status of straight white males as the sole long history, from Frankfurt School theorists, like voice of authority. While there were many Capitol Adorno and Horkheimer, looking to explain the rise of police who were savagely beaten by insurgents on fascism and Stanley Milgram’s experiments to unlock January 6, there were other Capitol police who stood the mechanics of , to internet research of by and let people who looked like them in the door. tech outfits, like Moonshot CVE, who study the online The policing-extremism nexus is a wide open paths to violent extremism. Each step in the research field for future research. As social movement and process adds to the knowledge base of this complex criminological research expands to map out the flow phenomenon and points to strategies that allows actors of digital data, traditional survey and ethnographic to interrupt violence and stave off political instability research, along with analyzing data collected by that opens the door for authoritarianism. government agencies, like police departments, is now This issue of Criminology, Criminal Justice, making room for the charting of algorithms that push Law & Society, which focuses on police violence, online actors, including cops, into extremist protests, and violent extremism, offers some of the subcultures. The proliferation of conspiracy theories, leading research on this issue, helping us to grapple especially related to the coronavirus and the agendas with the hows and whys of this unprecedented time of a Democratic president and congress, have served and, in turn, developed informed policy. The articles to push many “law and order” populations towards the contained in this issue focus on some of the most extremist “Boogaloo,” position that sees violence as pressing issues to emerge from this zeitgeist moment, an appropriate response. Solid scholarship can unlock including examining ideologically motivated strategies to counter this form of violent extremism. homicides, the relationship between far-right extremists and the police, the role of social media by police agencies as a tool of propaganda, and the methods of maintaining officer wellbeing during times References of heightened protest. Dreisbach, T., & Anderson, M. (2021, January 21). In the wake of the 1992 L.A. riots that were a Nearly 1 in 5 defendants in Capitol riot cases result of the failure to convict the police officers who served in the military. NPR. beat Black motorist Rodney King, there was a renewed https://www.npr.org/2021/01/21/958915267/near emphasis on understanding police-minority ly-one-in-five-defendants-in-capitol-riot-cases- relationships, revisiting many of the issues first served-in-the-military. unpacked by the Kerner Commission in 1968. Police advocates argued that sworn police officers were Helfgott, J. (2020, June 9). The movement to defund unfairly cast into a “Superman role,” with an ever the police is wrong, and here’s why. The Seattle expanding list of job duties, including mental health Times. worker, domestic violence negotiator, and drug https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/the- counselor. Like Superman, they received both praise movement-to-defund-the-police-is-wrong-and- and ridicule Hated until needed. Expected to save the heres-why/ day but subject to racial flashpoints. Understanding the internal and external lives MacFarquhar, N. (2021, May 11). Efforts to weed out of law enforcement agents can both help us to map extremists in law enforcement meet resistance. paths towards extremism and direct police cultures The New York Times. that reinforce . That knowledge can https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/us/police- also be useful in improving relationships with extremists-state-laws.html?. communities that have been victimized by police. The Levine, M., Margolin, J., Courts, J. W., & Hosenball, institutional and cultural forces that create various A. (2020, October 6). Nation’s deadliest domestic overlaps between extremism and law enforcement can terrorist inspiring new generation of hate-filled be interrupted. The Turner Diaries is not prophecy. ‘monsters,’ FBI records show. ABC News. Talk of another American civil war is not https://abcnews.go.com/US/nations-deadliest- hyperbole. The anti-government underground has domestic-terrorist-inspiring-generation-hate- grown exponentially in the era of social media, filled/story?id=73431262.

Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society – Volume 22, Issue 2 ON THE VERGE OF CIVIL WAR v

Matthew, M. (2010). “A Progressive Interview with Margaret Atwood,” in The Progressive, retrieved from https://progressive.org/magazine/margaret- atwood-interview/. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the About the Author Administration of Justice (1968). The Challenge Randy Blazak is currently the vice-chair of the of Crime in a Free Society, Avon Books, New steering committee in charge of implementing York: NY. Oregon’s new bias crime law. His scholarship on hate Rothschild, M. (2010, December 2). A progressive crimes and hate groups has made him a regular interview with Margaret Atwood. The commentator in media outlets from NPR and CNN to Progressive Magazine. BBC and Al Jazeera. Blazak earned his PhD at Emory https://progressive.org/magazine/margaret- University in 1995 after completing an extensive field atwood-interview/ study of racist skinheads that included undercover observations and interviews across the world. He Sklansky, D. A. (2006). Not your father's police became a tenured sociology professor at Portland State department: Making sense of the new University and taught criminology classes at the demographics of law enforcement. Journal of University of Oregon. His work has taken him from Criminal Law and Criminology, 96(3), 1209– classrooms to criminal trials. His research has been 1244. published in academic journals, books and in the https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/ mainstream press. His co-authored book, Teenage cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7244&context=jclc Renegades, Suburban Outlaws (Wadsworth, 2001) Stockton, G. (2021, June 24). 21 states still don’t and his edited volume, Hate Offenders (Praeger, 2009) require de-escalation training for police. have been widely adopted. Since 2002, he has been the American Public Media Reports. chair of the Coalition Against Hate Crimes. He has https://www.apmreports.org/story/2021/06/24/21 worked with the National Institute of Justice and the -states-still-dont-require-deescalation-training- Southern Poverty Law Center on research for-police issues. Blazak regularly speaks at conferences, consults on criminal cases, and leads workshops on the Vice News. (2020, September 3). Man linked to killing topics of hate and bias. at a Portland protest says he acted in self-defense. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-

linked-to-killing-at-a-portland-protest-says-he- acted-in-self-defense

Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society – Volume 22, Issue 2