Thread by @IGD_News

So much has happened over the last two weeks, it can be hard to process the collection of emotions: pain, sorrow, rage, + joy. But as we look back one year after #Charlottesville, there is still a large hole in our discussions of these events, primarily: the role of the police.

Over the coming days, many of us will be asked a similar question by loved one, friends, + co-workers: "Why do the police protect the Nazis?" "Why did they attack one side in Portland, + not the other?" While it is easy to resort to bumper sticker answers, the truth is complex.

The recent piece from @ACInvestigates + @ProPublica begins to scratch the surface. In their recent doc, they talk with an ex-FBI agent who rightfully concludes that coddling by law enforcement acts as a green light for the far-Right to engage in violence in a variety of settings.

But this still doesn't explain WHY the police give cover to the far-Right, and in the past, even people from the intelligence apparatus have sounded the alarm on far-Right violence, only to be quickly shown the door. wired.com/2012/08/dhs/

If we look at the case of #Charlottesville in 17, we can actually read documents that shed light on why police acted the way that they did, something not discussed in @ACInvestigates new documentary, but written about by @willparrishca in @shadowproofcom. shadowproof.com/2018/03/07/doc…

As @willparrishca wrote: "An August 9 assessment by law enforcement officers of the potential for “domestic terrorist violence” at the August 12 rally mainly focused on the possibility that violence would emanate from anti-racists, who were described as “anarchist extremists.”'

But if law enforcement is creating policy that would affect how things play out on the streets, they have to be getting informed on a certain level from some source, right? There has to be a 'logical' reason police view antifa as a bigger threat than the far-Right, right?

But when one starts to look through FOIAed documents from Fusion Centers, reports from DHS agencies, + the famous "leaked" FBI memo that @politico reported on, we see massive amounts of lies, half-truths, + especially, info coming from far-Right sources - even the Alt-Right.

For instance, in one of the first reports written by DHS, the New Jersey DHS wrote that: "In June 2016, counter-protesters, including anarchist extremists, attacked 25 white supremacists in Sacramento, injuring 10." Unmentioned is the fact that neo-Nazis stabbed 9 people.

In a widely referenced article by @politico, the lie about Sacramento is repeated, that antifa who were stabbed by neo-Nazis, in fact were the stabbers. The report goes even farther however, and claims without evidence, that antifa attacked "Trump supporters" with "firebombs."

This claim seems to have originated from journos who wrote about, but did not attend, the early 2017 protests in #Berkeley against Milo Yiannopoulos, in which a light fixture overturned and a fire started. Later, this lie morphed into "firebombs" being used against actual people.

But aside from influencing #Charlottesville in 2017, such false claims of violence, which are either made up, or are in fact, caused by the far-Right, are also being used for draconian clamp downs against protest, such as with the "UnMasking Antifa Bill." itsgoingdown.org/unmasking-anti…

But when one starts to dig through FOIAed Fusion Center documents, beyond just misinformation, we begin to see a pattern of law enforcement replying on far-Right and even Alt-Right media sources for "facts," and buying into a variety of Alex Jones type conspiracy theories.

An easy example of this at a Northern California Fusion Center, that includes FBI + local police, as well as Joint Terrorism Task Force officers who routinely police activists, LEOs bought into and prepared for the November 4th "ANTIFA Civil War" promoted by lielord, Alex Jones.

Other examples include justifying a policy of targeting antifascists due to info in poorly researched articles from far-Right websites, and also attempting to “connect the dots” between anarchists, crime, radical US “Islamic organizations,” and “left wing billionaires."

Other examples include even pulling Alt-Right memes from far-Right media pages, and passing them off as actual examples of antifascist images.

The end result of course is a collection of police agencies who view broad social movements from Black Lives Matter, to Native Water Protectors, to anarchists and antifascists, as the most violent groups and movements threatening the public at large.

Case in point, the Central California Intelligence Center, a fusion center based in Northern California, wrote in 2017 per-Charlottesville that “ANTIFA” was the “greatest threat to public safety.” itsgoingdown.org/manufacturing-…

Social movements and struggles that challenge and threaten power, the State, capital, and the racial order, will be presented to the public by the established power structure as a threat, but that threat has to be manufactured.

Towards this end, this is where Fox News, Tucker Carlson, InfoWars, and all the rest come in - as a vehicle financed and supported by the elites, corporations, and billionaires, which exists almost solely to attack movements from below.

This is why the police in #Portland attacked the antifascists and were willing to almost killed someone in order to not just protect an idiot like Joey Gibson, but in order to smash us with the upmost brutality, just as they did the next day in Berkeley.

As our movements grow; both in power and in confidence, they will be attacked by the State. And it is this reality we must explain to the vast majority of the population - that such brutality is by design, not a 'neutral' response to threats to the public.