{"id":175943,"date":"2020-10-18T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T23:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/10\/18\/police-are-the-same-everywhere\/"},"modified":"2020-10-18T18:48:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T23:48:00","slug":"police-are-the-same-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/10\/18\/police-are-the-same-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Police are the Same Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

And by that, I mean, as Yanis Varoufakis notes, that they are objectively pro-Fascist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He is talking about Greece, but the same thing happens in the US, France, Germany, the UK, former Soviet Republics, etc.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the only police force that MIGHT<\/b> not tilt toward Nazis is the Saint Petersburg constabulary, but that is an accident of history, specifically the 872 day Siege of Leningrad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I rather imagine that even in the former Leningrad, the police are still reactionary:<\/p>\n

October 7 was a good day for democrats. The Greek Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the leaders of Golden Dawn, the only openly Nazi party to have won seats in any parliament since the 1940s, on charges of murder, grievous bodily harm, and directing a criminal organization. A crowd of 20,000 Athenians celebrated outside the court. <\/p>\n

Our celebration lasted precisely 40 seconds, before the police dispersed us with teargas. Gasping for air, my wife and I tried to join hundreds of others struggling to escape via a narrow street leading to the safety of nearby Mount Lycabettus. A dozen riot police were there, firing gas canisters into the fleeing crowd. I pleaded with their commanding officer to stop. \u201cThere is no purpose in gassing people trying to go home,\u201d I told him calmly. He swore at me. When I produced my parliamentary ID card, his response startled me: \u201cYet another reason to fuck you.\u201d <\/p>\n

The conviction of Greece\u2019s Nazi leaders is a decisive victory against the revival of far-right extremism in Europe. But while they were being sent to prison, their ideas, manners, and hatred of parliamentary democracy were in police uniform, terrorizing the streets. <\/p>\n

A week later, a police internal affairs officer interviewed me as part of an investigation triggered by my testimony. I could not recognize the riot policeman\u2019s face, because I was unable to breathe or see properly at the time of the incident. But I did recognize one thing: the look of calm loathing in his eyes \u2013 a look that reminded me of Kapnias, once a trained Gestapo interrogator.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

When I met him in 1991, I had assumed that figures like Kapnias were relics that would disappear one funeral at a time. I was wrong. A sense of permanent defeat, hopelessness, and widespread humiliation create an environment in which Nazism\u2019s dormant DNA reawakens. Once Greek society was immersed in wholesale indignity, following our state\u2019s bankruptcy in 2010, a new generation of Nazis, with Kapnias\u2019s look in their eyes, took their seats in Parliament. Now, most of them are in prison for heinous crimes. But that look remains in the eyes of too many, not all of them in uniform. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this I’m inclined to believe that law enforcement is INHERENTLY<\/b> pro-Fascist, and pro-Nazi.  It just comes with the job. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And by that, I mean, as Yanis Varoufakis notes, that they are objectively pro-Fascist. He is talking about Greece, but the same thing happens in the US, France, Germany, the UK, former Soviet Republics, etc. Perhaps the only police force that MIGHT not tilt toward Nazis is the Saint Petersburg constabulary, but that is an …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,629,526,604,374,590],"class_list":["post-175943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-fascism","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-policing","tag-politics","tag-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}