Allriot Vs the Special Troll Forces Unit (STFU). This time it’s personal.
On July 7th, protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas, Texas were horrified to watch as five police officers were shot in a 3hour battle with a sharpshooter during their demonstration. Now, initial reports mentioned four suspects, but the winner of last week’s media disinformation raffle became Micah Xavier Johnsona disgruntled veteran and apparently radicalised ‘lone wolf vigilante’. Dallas SWAT teams finally ended the standoff by sending in a bomb robot… with a bomb. After being exploded by JihadiBot v2.0, Micah somehow managed to reattach his mandible and cerebral cortex long enough to utter the words, “I did it because I wanted to… kill… dem… crackas. BLEH!”
This mess, of course, was preceded by the coldblooded executions of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, whom American blue shirts stapled to the ground in cold blood with a Glock 21.
On film, the suspects were complying, in fact, doing nothing out of the ordinary, but nevertheless their brown skin and amicable dispositions were enough to warrant dumping half a clip of ammunition into the suspects without trial or charge.
Of course, this reinvigorated yet another nationwide debate about police brutality, but instead of proposing solutions, American corporate news decided to divide public opinion into two camps: cop killing and cop coddling. The Dallas shootings were the perfect impetus for sparking the discourse; however, we at Allriot don’t buy into either argument and remember that when governments start shepherding people into camps, bad things happen to good people. Additionally, Blacks in America have been treated as a fifth column minority since the days of slavery, and to the police, murdering them is less expensive than jailing them in today’s financially hard times.
However, we discovered that there was more to the story, when last September, we posted a t-shirt on our Amazon.com, which spontaneously stirred the troll-bot pot on the Internet. The shirt, which simply states, “You’ve had a bit too much to think” and features a symbol of Police State Americana, suddenly became the object of neoconservative affliction. Let’s see the top 3 “reviews”:
“Remove this garbage! Absolutely shameful and hatemongering. I will terminate my membership if this and all other items like this are not removed! Amazon, this is an offensive product that should not be sold on your site…..follow your policy!!!”
“I am shocked that Amazon is allowing merchandise that looks to provoke violence and hatred. The anti police and disrespect of the American Flag merchandise does not belong if it continues, I will sadly have to look elsewhere for my shopping needs. Shame on Amazon.”
…and the Oscar goes to:
“This shirt needs to be removed. Pas another officer with a family loses his life and this trash is allowed to be sold! If you hate cops get out of America! They are the peacemakers that protect even ones that hate them! Lord be with our law enforcement and country!”
On appearance alone, it looks as if we’ve made some sacred t-shirt that invokes the Holy Ghost of Butthurt (how about this one, btw?) in America’s far-right. However, looking deeper into the enquiry, we wondered why they chose the convenient time around Sept. 11th to air these grievances? You know, that holiday where the American government uses its version of the Reichstag fire to expand the Patriot Act worldwide? After combing through the 22 negative comments, we found a gold mine.
Firstly, all of the hate mail arrived between Sept. 13-18, and many follow the same forensic pattern. MeKeBo (Sept. 16) and Jordan Wallace (Sept. 13-14) both arbitrarily gave negative ratings to four different police brutality t-shirts before collapsing into sweaty, spent ecstasy on their computers. Jeannette C. Baskin hurled herself on top of Jordan’s burning, self-righteous indignation that same day. One simply called our shirt “disgusting”, along with others. Many gave our products a demeaning “thumbs-down” and bantered on about “how cops R dying across the country” and “I served in the Gulf War against that fucker Saddam”, “how we are terrorists for making this t-shirt” (although this would be a more fitting example) and “should leave the country if we don’t like the free-dumb to get shot dead in the streets by fat, bigoted, rapey fucking police officers…” yadda yadda yadda. It helps to remind our customers that we’re a UK company, and that our Bobbies keep indiscriminate killing, rape, and prejudice to a minimum.
What is the significance of this matter? A ThinkProgress article finally vindicated our suspicions. “During the first week of September [2015], police killed more civilians than the total number of police officers killed so far this year. By the end of the month, 99 people were killed, according to the Killed By Police database. At least 77 of them were shot and killed .” A previous Russia Today article documented that, “…while that number is slightly lower than 125 deaths recorded in July, the number of police killed by suspects has risen sharply – from one in July to six in August, according to a nonprofit that tracks officers killed in the line of duty.”
This spike in civilian murders due to American police was the perfect time for a few all-American trollers to rummage through the hottest topic of September–police brutality–and share the love. Shortly after American blueshirts began ethnically cleansing neighbourhoods, the hardworking bureaucrats at the Pentagon began a campaign of fuelling racial tensions, spreading misinformation, and illegally surveilling anyone supporting the #blacklivesmatter movement around the country. “Records from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination show that since August 2014, DHS officials have been trolling public social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, to map and collect information on #BlackLivesMatter protests –and supposedly related events,” the ACLU mentioned. For cops, though, it was the safest year to be a police officer since the 1980s, so we’re not amused.
Let’s put it in terms that even payrolled trollers can understand: At Allriot, every one of our political tees comes with a complimentary ZERO FUCKS to anyone trying to suppress our freedom of speech. The American Bill of Rights makes this the most important amendment because Americans are obliged to expose every dirty little secret their government does in order protect freedom. Every American cop takes an oath to defend the Constitution with their lives, and every citizen takes an oath to prevent the “tyranny of the majority” that John Stuart Mill so famously wrote about. Unlike many American police officers, our weapon is our words, not a smoking barrel, and we will use it on police forces that are supposed to “serve and protect”, not “shoot first, ask questions later”. As an added bonus, we’ll throw in a wet blanket on your bullshit by noting that none of the 1% have to worry about this problem.
Vicious police are only used in class warfare, to suppress the middle and lower classes , and until you start arresting people like Jamie Dimon or George Soros, we will not stay silent until all of the world’s oppressed have got their freedom. Man up and tell your police forces to stop murdering your citizens. Repeal the 1033 Act.
Joining a Special Troll Forces Unit (STFU) just won’t cut it.
