I've talked about white supremacist domestic terrorist organizations like Three Percent and Proud Boys and Oath Keepers time and time again on ZVTS, but the biggest concentration of armed, trained, lethal white supremacist domestic terrorists remains your local police departments, county sheriffs offices, state police and other law enforcement agencies.
For nearly 10 years, Joseph Moore lived a secret double life.
At times the U.S. Army veteran donned a white robe and hood as a hit man for the Ku Klux Klan in North Florida. He attended clandestine meetings and participated in cross burnings. He even helped plan the murder of a Black man.
However, Moore wore something else during his years in the klan – a wire for the FBI. He recorded his conversations with his fellow klansmen, sometimes even captured video, and shared what he learned with federal agents trying to crack down on white supremacists in Florida law enforcement.
One minor mistake, one tell, he believed, meant a certain, violent death.
“I had to realize that this man would shoot me in the face in a heartbeat,” Moore said in a deep, slow drawl. He sat in his living room recently amid twinkling lights on a Christmas tree, remembering a particularly scary meeting in 2015. But it was true of many of his days.
Before such meetings, he would sit alone in his truck, his diaphragm heaving with the deep breathing techniques he learned as an Army-trained sniper.
The married father of four would help the federal government foil at least two murder plots, according to court records from the criminal trial for two of the klansmen. He was also an active informant when the FBI exposed klan members working as law enforcement officers in Florida at the city, county and state levels.
Today, he and his family live under new names in a Florida subdivision of manicured lawns where his kids play in the street. Geese wander slowly between man-made lakes. Apart from testifying in court, the 50-year-old has never discussed his undercover work in the KKK publicly. But he reached out to a reporter after The Associated Press published a series of stories about white supremacists working in Florida’s prisons that were based, in part, on records and recordings detailing his work with the FBI.
“The FBI wanted me to gather as much information about these individuals and confirm their identities,” Moore said of law enforcement officers who were active members of or working with the klan.
“From where I sat, with the intelligence laid out, I can tell you that none of these agencies have any control over any of it. It is more prevalent and consequential than any of them are willing to admit.”
Police organizations are hotbeds of white supremacists, they are armed and dangerous and they can freely persecute and kill Black and brown folk at will. The second another Republican government gets in charge at the federal level, these local police will be given absolute free reign like they were under Trump. Biden at least is trying to contain them.
When activists say "defund the police" we mean "stop giving avowed white supremacist killers unlimited money to buy military surplus gear to use against Black folks."
And yes, Moore is right, this is beyond pervasive, it's structural. This is what we mean, precisely, by structural racism: institutions that effectively exist to maintain white supremacy. In the case of police, it's through deadly force.
Remember that.
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