I have spent a lot of hours researching and writing the past three articles about white supremacy. And readers have a right to ask "Why bother?". I'm not saying that there is much chance of these guys seizing power, or even building their numbers in the near or any future. I believe racism is on its way out. Unfortunately, however, I think that as racism becomes less influential in society it may become---in a specific, limited sense---more dangerous.
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Lone Wolves
Part of the reason why I say this comes from my research into the influence that William Luther Pierce's novels had on white nationalism. His books were like that Biblical saying:
Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.
Ecclesiastes 11:1 King James Version
What concerns me is that he did this before the World Wide Web and social media. Back then, someone had to make an effort to find a copy of The Turner Diaries. Timothy McVeigh, for example, had to find a classified advert in the back pages of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, and write to an address, sending a cheque, to buy a copy. In contrast, it took me only a few minutes at a computer to get free Ebook versions of all the texts I mentioned in my previous articles.
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| Yeah, that's the Truth Social logo. |
Having said that, it is the case that the major tech companies have erased a lot of the most overt white nationalism from their media systems. I have had a hard time, for example, posting examples of white nationalist propaganda on this blog because YouTube and Blogger are getting better at editing this crap out with their AI. (They are still totally worthless at making the distinction between using it for recruitment versus public education, though, hence my problems.) But all the while this has been happening, there has been significant growth in alternative social media platforms. And the worst types of racist propaganda have moved from the mainstream providers to them. For example, Donald Trump wants his followers to move to one of them---Truth Social---since he was dumped from Twitter. So purging hate from the mainstream hasn't eliminated it, it's just put it into a "walled garden" where it can fester safely away from public view.
I'm concerned about this, because social media is just about the best possible medium I can think of for engaging and cranking up "loan wolf" terrorists. And, those are the folks who are doing most of the damage.
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What is a "lone wolf" anyway?
On the face of it, a lone wolf is someone who sets out to make a terrorist attack without being affiliated with a group. But when you think about it, there are layers to this isolation. Here are three groupings---I illustrated each with an example---that I got from an academic paper on the subject (Brian J. Phillips (2015): Deadlier in the US? On Lone Wolves, Terrorist Groups, and Attack Lethality, in Terrorism and Political Violence).
- Someone who dreams up his motivation and then does the deed without any support from anyone else: Ted Kaczynski (the "Unabomber")
- Someone indoctrinated and inspired by a group or movement, but then goes on to do the deed all by himself: Alek Minassian (Toronto van attack)
- A person indoctrinated and inspired, who plans the deed and also gets the support of a small number of like-minded friends to help: Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City bombing)
I'd suggest that guys like Ted Kaczynski are extremely rare. Not only is he a genius, but incredibly self-motivated. Luckily, people like him who decide to declare war on society are very rare. Not only because of his intelligence, but also because his extreme isolation made him very difficult to catch. Indeed, he was only caught because his brother recognized his writing style from the manifesto that he sent out to be published in the Washington Post. Had he been an only child, he might still be on the loose.
My big concern are the second and third types. Alek Minassian is a frustrated young man who is neuroatypical on the autism spectrum. As near as I can tell, he's pretty high functioning (like some of my relatives and friends), but he has had some problems dealing with people of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, he fell down the Incel rabbit hole and ended up believing all sorts of crazy things about women. The end result was a drive down the sidewalk in a rented van and the death of lots of random, innocent people.
And, as I pointed out in previous articles, Timothy McVeigh was an intense young man with a very strong gun fetish who read The Turner Diaries and decided to take them from the realm of fiction to history. He seems to have had some trauma from his parent's divorce and PTSD from his experience in the First Gulf War. It does seem that by the end, people who knew him weren't at all surprised by what he did.
What I'm concerned about is the ability of the Web to collect 'lost souls' like Minassian and McVeigh, and nurture whatever problems they have into full-blown, dangerous paranoid fantasies about the world we live in. Cast your net wide enough, and throw enough chum in the water, and you will end up bringing up some pretty terrible monsters from the deep.
Here's an info graphic about the mental states of lone wolves from an FBI report titled A Study of Lone Offender Terrorism in the United States (1972-2015):
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From politics we have the term "useful idiot". It describes someone who is willing to support some sort of nefarious cause for idealistic reasons because they don't really understand what they are getting into. I suppose it depends on your particular beliefs about human psychology, but I would suggest that a great many naive people can get themselves talked into believing some pretty ridiculous things---and can then go on to do some pretty horrible acts.
Please stick with me as I split a pretty thin hair---.
Who has more moral culpability? The naive person with "issues" who gets talked into doing something pretty awful, or the person behind the scenes who winds him up like a clockwork doll? Even deeper, who's worse: the "true believer" who actually thinks turning the keys of his army of dolls is a good thing? or the cynic who knows that this is all nonsense but goes along because he thinks it serves his purpose (eg: career or party policy objectives)?
I don't generally believe in evil, or even guilt for that matter. But I do believe that some systems of thought and organizations can cause a lot of damage and it is important to work against them as much as possible. I'd like to see a world where people like Minassian and McVeigh get proper counselling and support before they commit crimes. I'd also like to see things like the Incel and Gun fetish cultures get excluded from the Web before they get out of control and damage society. I'm not talking about government censorship, but rather governments forcing Internet companies to exert editorial control in order to prevent legal liability. These are the rules that already exist for magazines and newspapers---but which have, for some reason that has never been explained to me, are not applied to anything that involves the World Wide Web.
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I'm especially concerned about this problem because one of the lessons that white nationalists have learned over the last few decades is the same thing that Islamic terrorists and other groups bent on violence have figured out. If the general public is against them, it isn't that hard for the police to infiltrate and shut them down.
This doesn't mean the end of terrorism, though. That's because groups don't have to recruit and train people anymore. Instead, all they have to do is spread the message and add the odd suggestion about what would be the best way to achieve the best "bang for the buck". They know that if you spread the message wide enough, you will find someone who is willing to commit the violence you want. And because there is no membership list for the FBI to look at, it is almost impossible to predict when and where the next lone wolf actor will hit.
Indeed, I read an academic study on the issue of lone wolf terror attacks and it seems that while in less-developed nations (ie: with less sophisticated police forces), the worst attacks are done by organized groups, the opposite seems to be the case in First World countries. Consider the following table of figures.
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| Brian J. Phillips (2015): Deadlier in the US? On Lone Wolves, Terrorist Groups, and Attack Lethality, in Terrorism and Political Violence, 0:1-17, 2015. |
If you remove the one event that skews the numbers (the air attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon), you can see that the number of casualties caused by lone wolf attacks in the US are between seven and eight times higher than those initiated by groups in the years between 1970 and 2010, and in 15 developed countries there is near parity. Contrast that with the result from the Global sample that includes developing nations.
If you think about Canadian examples, I'd suggest that the same phenomenon is at work. Wikipedia has a list of massacres that have occurred over Canadian history. I've removed various battles involving the First Nations, obvious random mental illness, and, organized crime. Please note, that these are just massacres, as there have been a great many other politically-motivated killings that certainly fall under the title "terrorism", but I'm just trying to identify the worst ones that have happened relatively recently. Here's the list that remains plus the casualty count and motivation:
- Ecole Polytechnique, (15 killed/14 injured), hatred of women
- Quebec City Mosque (6/19), Islamophobia
- Toronto Van Attack (11/15), hatred of women
- London Ontario Truck Attack (4/1), Islamophobia
Every single one of these was a lone wolf attack. The only recent attempt at a group attack that I can think of was the 2006 Ontario terrorism plot. Personally, I don't know what to make of that event because parts of the story seem somewhat farcical while others seem to have been legitimate cause for concern. But whether or not it was a serious conspiracy, the fact remains that it was quickly infiltrated by police and shut down.
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This has been the most disturbing series of articles that I've written for this blog. At times it's got me to question whether or not humanity is such a good idea. But I do think that the result is useful. If you think so too---and you can afford it---why not subscribe? Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy to do.
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Ghost Skins
Most Saturdays I walk to the Guelph Farmer's Market, and I often pass through the parking lot across from the Guelph Police Services building. One thing that I sometimes see that creeps me out is a giant black pickup truck with a big Canadian "thin blue line" flag held up by a hockey stick (of course) anchored on the trailer hitch.
I'm not about to ascribe any motives to the individual who parks their truck in that parking lot on Saturdays. I have no idea who it is, and I don't even know if he is a police officer. (I think a lot of people park in that lot.) But I would like to point out that this image is completely at odds with the official doctrine of policing that has guided Commonwealth nations since the late 19th century.
Just like modern nursing---which draws much of its philosophy and ethos from Florence Nightingale---our core policing ideas come from one man, Sir Robert Peel. His "Nine Principles of Policing" are commonly held up by police departments all over the English-speaking world and I've even heard a past Chief of Police in Guelph quote from them at a breakfast meeting. Here's a video that does a good job explaining them.
First, I'd like to draw reader's attention to one part of the 7th of Peel's Nine Principles:
"the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence"
Peel's emphasis is on the idea that the police aren't distinct from the general public (ie: "the police are the public---etc"). Indeed, the only difference is that the police are paid to do full-time what all citizens are expected to be doing as citizens.
Instead of seeing a difference between the "good" and the "bad", with the police standing in between, Peel sees everyone as being part of the public. He emphasizes this point by saying that the mark of an effective police force isn't by how many criminals it has arrested, but rather how few crimes there are in a community.
"To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them."
I'd like to contrast the above with the following quote I found on a website explaining the significance of the thin blue line flag:
"The Thin Blue Line emblem was established to symbolize all law enforcement personnel similar to the Red Cross symbol representing all medical personnel. The Thin Blue Line embodies the unbreakable component of law enforcement standing as a safety barrier between the law-abiding citizens of America and the criminally inclined."
The thin blue line flag is profoundly different from the Peelian vision. Peel sees everyone as part of the public, whereas the thin blue line mentality makes a distinction between "the law-abiding citizens of America and the criminally inclined".
Think about this distinction. How is a police officer supposed to actually believe that people are innocent until proved guilty if he sees himself as being part of a wall that separates "law-abiding" from "the criminally inclined"? Moreover, notice the other part of the distinction---one part are "citizens of America" as opposed to the others who we are left to assume are not real Americans?
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This gets me back to white nationalism. I don't think that it's much of a stretch to go from seeing "us and them" in terms of "honest citizens" versus "the criminal element" to seeing the distinction in terms of "whites" versus "non-whites". This is the point where police go from being alienated from the community to racists.
And this is where we have to discuss "Ghost Skins".
This term originated decades ago, before the creation of the alt-right and social media, when white nationalism was dominated by the "skinheads". They took on this name because many members took on a "style" that involved shaved heads, steel-toed boots, and, suspenders.
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| Here's a photo from a 2009 Alberta rally of the "Aryan Front". Image from the Southern Poverty Law Centre, used under the "Fair Dealing" copyright provision. |
The "ghost" part of the name involves someone not showing any overt signs of white nationalism (shaved head, tattoos, espoused beliefs, etc) so they can function undercover in mainstream society.
In The Turner Diaries and Hunter certain elements of the plot turned around the fact that there were sympathizers to the white nationalist terrorists within the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. They helped by sharing information and by protecting racists. Let's also not forget that in times past, the KKK in the South often had members in police, government, and, political parties.
Consider, if you will, that in at least one US city there exists two different predominately white and black police unions. Saint Louis Missouri has the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 68 and the Ethical Society of Police (wow, the difference in titles says a lot). Here's a video that explains why a group of officers went to the trouble of setting up the new organization.
As if to underline what I've been talking about, take a look at 1:20 in the above video. You'll see this frame:
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| I doubt Marvel approved this use. |
Pay attention to the image at the top left of my screen grab from the video. It's an avatar that is a conflation of both the thin blue line flag and the icon of The Punisher, a Marvel "super-hero" who recently gained a high profile because of a recent two season mini-series put out by Netflixs. (My wife and I are actually big fans.)
It's extremely troubling to see this image being used because the Punisher is not like Superman or Batman. He's a damaged ex US Marine with PTSD who has been pushed into taking the law into his own hands by combination of extreme police corruption and incompetence. He wages a one-man war against vicious killers who work for organized crime and rogue government agencies.
And make no mistake, it's a WAR. Unlike every other comic superhero I've ever heard of, the Punisher simply kills people---with pistols, grenades, mines, heavy machine guns, etc. He tries not to kill innocent bystanders and protects people from his enemies. But make no mistake, he's judge, jury, and, executioner all wrapped up into one angry ball of rage. In short, the Punisher is the absolutely last role model you ever want the police to emulate.
And yet, here's Jeff Roorda, the Business Manager for the Saint Louis Police Union using the icon as his social media avatar. (I wonder if this attitude might have something to do with all the police shootings in Saint Louis?)
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I'll tone down my anger at this point a wee bit and make a few points.
There are all sorts of subtleties involved in discrimination. People can simply draw a line between "law-abiding citizens" and "criminals" without being racist. I'll just raise but then ignore the point that a lot of white-collar criminals create a lot of misery while looking like peaceful, middle-class folks (dare I say "real American citizens"?). And that a lot of people who lead important social justice movements get viewed as "dangerous radicals". (Remember Martin Luther King was hated by many 'establishment types' before he was assassinated and his ideas edited to take out the bits where he opposed the Vietnam war and called for redistribution of wealth to end poverty. That might be why the head of the FBI had people trying to convince him to commit suicide.)
People can also discriminate against others because they are afraid of them, not because they hate them.
If my memory serves, the first chapter of Gwynne Dyer's latest edition of the book War says that anthropology suggests that through most of humanity's existence people lived in a constant state of low-intensity warfare between different tribes. The "Other" was anyone who wasn't a member of one's own group, and generally the first instinct was to kill anyone that you didn't know---if you thought you could get away with it. And if you'd asked any of those people, they probably would have suggested that the reason why would be because if you didn't kill them first, they'd kill you.
I'm not the sort of person who says that human beings are totally at the mercy of instincts created by evolution. Human cultural adaptation is far more important to to our behaviour. But I do think that some people---if they don't get the right type of education---are prone to projecting their fear onto people who can be easily identified as being from a different "tribe". I believe in a lot of cases this results in people who are irrationally afraid of people of colour or poor folks.
Part of the education designed to overcome this tribalism is encapsulated in Peel's Nine Principles. You select for a certain type of police officer and train them in the idea that "the people are the police, and the police are the people". In contrast, the thin blue line teaches police that not only are there two types of people: "American citizens" and "the criminally inclined", there is in fact a third tribe, the people who make up "the thin blue line".
If you don't see some of the people you interact with (the poor and the non-white) as being of "your tribe", it's easy to get into the mindset that they are potentially dangerous. And then you get into the warrior-cop mindset that suggests it is better to be judged by twelve members of a jury than to be carried to your grave by six pall bearers.
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Even if a lot of bad police behaviour can be explained by irrational fear instead of out-and-out white nationalism, this fear creates a cloud that allows the white nationalist to hide behind. They get protected by the "blue wall" of silence that says that no matter what a fellow officer does, they should be protected. (Hence the Saint Louis Ethical Society of Police.)
But beyond the people who are irrationally afraid of the Other, there do seem to be self-consciously racist police officers (and in other positions of authority too, no doubt). This is such a problem that in 2006 the FBI published a report titled White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement. Unfortunately the public version has been so heavily redacted that it's pretty much worthless as an information source.
What might be underneath this layer of secrecy can be inferred from a story I found from an Associated Press article under the by-line of Jason Dearen that was published on December 22, 2021. It describes the 10 year career of Joseph Moore who worked as an undercover agent under contract to the FBI. His job was to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in Florida.
The FBI first asked Moore to infiltrate a klan group called the United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK in rural north Florida in 2007. At klan gatherings, Moore noted license plate numbers and other identifying information of suspected law enforcement officers who were members.
Moore said he noted connections between the hate group and law enforcement in Florida and Georgia. He said he came across dozens of police officers, prison guards, sheriff deputies and other law enforcement officers who were involved with the klan and outlaw motorcycle clubs.
Moore says that connections between the Ku Klux Klan were extensive both in law enforcement and prisons. As part of his work, he uncovered a plot to murder a man that was being organized by several prison guards. Unfortunately, as part of the legal case that was used to protect the individual under threat, his cover was blown and he had to roll up that part of his work.
Over his decade inside, Moore said his list of other law enforcement officers tied to the klan grew. The links, he said, were commonplace in Florida and Georgia, and easier to identify once he was inside.
“I was on track to uncover more activity in law enforcement, but the immediate threat to the public with the murder plot was a priority,” Moore said. “And I was only one person. There was only so much I could do.”
Moore said the three current and former prison guards implicated in the murder plot case operated among a group of other officer-klan members at the Reception and Medical Center in Lake Butler, Florida, a prison where new inmates are processed and given health checks. He said the officers he knew were actively recruiting at the prison.
The Florida Department of Corrections pushes back on Moore statement, suggesting that Moore is overstating the situation, but he sticks to his guns.
“That statement by the state is not accurate based on the facts,” said Moore, who asserts he saw evidence of a more pervasive problem than the state is publicly acknowledging. He said he gave the FBI information about other active white supremacists who were working as state prison guards and at other law enforcement agencies. He said he also provided information about klansmen applying to be state prison guards.
After testifying in the murder conspiracy case against the klansmen he’d spent years working with, Moore’s work with the FBI ended. He’d been publicly identified, and in 2018 he began life under a new name.
Dearen ends his story with a last quote from Moore about law enforcement and it's relationship to the police that apropos.
“If you want to know why people don’t trust the police, it’s because they have a relative or friend that they witness being targeted by an extremist who happens to have a badge and a gun. And I know as a fact that this has occurred. I stopped a murder plot of law enforcement officers,” said Moore.
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This is as good a point as any other to end this series of articles. It is yet one more deep dig that has left me really depressed. Next time, look for something more uplifting from The Guelph-Back-Grounder.
I know this Omicron wave sucks. But because it spreads so fast, it'll peak and decline really fast too---maybe it will on its way out by the end of January. In the interim, you know what to do.
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