If you're wondering why a striking percentage of police officers appear to have neo-Nazi tendencies, compared to the general population, the most obvious explanation might be that wielding often-violent authority is an ideal career choice for violent authoritarian-minded people.
Or, as it turns out, maybe it's because police training materials are straight-up telling cadets to Be Like Hitler. Jeeeebus.
The Washington Post brings us a scoop first reported by the Manual RedEye, a high school newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky. A local attorney brought them records obtained from the police agency, including a slideshow used to train Kentucky State Police officers; the slides approvingly quote, multiple times, no kidding, Adolf Hitler.
The presentation is based on "warrior"-styled policing and emphasizes the need for violence "without anger," urging cadets in underlined words to "Be the loving father, spouse and friend as well as the ruthless killer." Toward this goal, several of the slides quote Hitler; one adds a quote from Confederate traitor Robert E. Lee promoting "manliness."
Of the Hitler quotes, they're not subtle. Hitler wasn’t known for being subtle. "The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence," quotes one slide. From another: "It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge."
"And the following page simply said 'Über Alles,' a German phrase meaning 'above all else,'" reports the Post.
Oooookay then. So we're not talking Nazi-adjacent, here. We're talking about a slide deck literally burping out Hitler's greatest hits.
As you can imagine, this is causing all sorts of highly appropriate fury among Kentucky leaders, because Of F--king Course. A state official told the student paper that the slideshow hasn't been used to train cadets since 2013, which is not reassuring when you realize that this means it was used to train cadets who are now in veteran positions in the state police force.
The obvious question: How the holy hell did it just happen that a batshit-insane violence-celebrating Hitler-approving slideshow became standard training material for Kentucky state police, and how the holy hell is it that not one cadet going through the program managed to pipe up to let outsiders know that this was going on?
The now-retired then-assistant commander at the academy whose name appears on the slideshow, Lt. Curt Hall, isn't responding to reporter queries, so it remains a mystery why Hitler's advice that "It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge" was, in addition to an inserted-out-of-nowhere "Über Alles," considered something important for cadets to know.
Seriously though, did nobody complain about this ever, in the history of soon-to-be-police officers? It didn't come up? It wasn't considered something eyebrow-raising, wedged into the patriotism-themed slide deck urging would-be officers to be "ruthless killers?"
Huh?
Source: Daily Kos
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