I recall a time when George Bush said “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” with no sense of irony as a democratic leader. Same shitty authoritarian mindset on display here
Ibram Kendi says the same thing about “anti-racism.” “If you’re not with us you’re against us.” It’s interesting how authoritarians stoke hate no matter their cause.
Israeli police are truly awful in my experience. They are not the Army, so that’s an important distinction, but they are some of the worst people I’ve crossed paths with in Israel. They don’t need an excuse to be racist and violent, that’s pretty much what they’re there for.
I once called the police on a group of people who were harassing a woman. When the police showed up, all they did was start cracking up, like legit rolling on the ground laughing, because the group of people doing the harassing turned out to be the latest class of police trainees who had just graduated. I guess they were celebrating by harassing a random woman? Needless to say, no one was held accountable, and I was told if I wasn’t American they would have arrested me.
Unlike the Army, they're allowed to use chemical weapons.Well, not that the Israeli military lets the Geneva Conventions get in the way of their offensives.
Yeah surprisingly similar actually. Israeli police are somehow even more flagrant and overt about it though, they openly defend their use of racial profiling and are even less restrained in how they choose to dole out violence. In Israel and the occupied territories, Arab Israelis and Palestinians are targets of suspicion, by default, in a pretty similar way to how black and brown Americans are targeted by authority as a matter of daily life.
Most cops are fucking awful, globally. That’s why they sought out a cop job in the first place; copping enable assholes to apply pressure and power on anyone they feel like with little to no possibile recourse
I’m sure he would rather put them on trains. And still wouldn’t see the hypocrisy.
Funny you mention that... one of the things that barely gets any mention in history books is how enthusiastically Europe's police forces collaborated with the Holocaust - the Vichy police literally rounded up Jewish people by the thousand to send off to the death camps without the Nazis even asking them to do so.
It's almost like the institution of police was invented to act as a distillery for the worst right-wing goons that the people at the top can sicc on anyone that the status quo has painted as a threat and/or scapegoat.
"Don't protest our war efforts where we are indiscriminately killing civilians, or we'll drop you off in the middle of that area, where you'll likely be indiscriminately killed."