The Dorner complex

Submitted by Matthew on 20 February, 2013 - 8:56

Christopher Dorner was a former Los Angeles cop. He was sacked in 2008, alleging racism. In February 2013 he allegedly conducted a series of shooting in which he killed four people. Hunted by police, he eventually died as they set fire to the cabin where he was hiding. This article was written by Matthew Cunningham-Cook for the left-wing American magazine Jacobin. It is reproduced, abridged, from their website, and can be read in full here.


[…] Dorner’s “manifesto” has been selectively quoted, focusing on the sections where his mental illness and homicidal rage come into full view, while the allegations of racism and human rights violations by the LAPD have been slyly deemphasised.

What are those allegations, exactly? Usage of the n-word among colleagues, the lack of institutional self-reflection in the aftermath of Rodney King, retaliation against deputies for breaking the “blue line,” officers singing songs celebrating the burning of Jewish ghettos by Nazi stormtroopers, assaulting a woman in her 70s, and assaulting a man who suffers from dementia and schizophrenia by kicking him in the face. Throughout, Dorner attacks the LAPD’s pervasive culture of institutional racism: something that most Angelenos of colour will confirm.

Two other black officers have since come forward, largely confirming Dorner’s account of the racism on the force (the former, however, defends the role of the current chief of police). No one seems to have seriously considered giving in to Dorner’s one demand: that the record be set straight by releasing all the documents related to his disciplinary hearings, and clearing his name from the prior disciplinary actions against him. He pledged to end his warfare if the LAPD would do so. Considering his apparent death, one wonders if that life could have been saved at the price of the department’s momentary embarrassment. “A man is nothing without his name,” repeats Dorner.

Dorner’s reaction is partly rooted in a corrosive version of American masculinity — his response to institutional corruption is uniquely Jack Bauer and John Wayne. Gratuitous violence included. Dorner is a wholesale product of a society gone mad on racism and war, of a state that aggressively punishes dissent, of an intellectual milieu where telling the truth has become a dangerous act. There was no internal institutional outlet for him to address injustices against him: the blue line prevented that. […]

The initial response to the Dorner phenomena […] has been to isolate it as an individual event, extrinsic to our society. Why does he hate us? Indeed, the presentation of most criminality is as something monstrous. This formulation ignores something crucial: it is impossible to arbitrarily separate some parts of our lives from the others. It is as foolish to presume that criminality is monstrous as it is to presume that the leg operates independently of the hip.

And so the Dorner incident, like all incidents involving madmen, requires us to consider the madness that structures life in America.

[…] We do need to take a hard look at ourselves. Why has Dorner attracted such support online, especially in communities of colour? Why have two more LAPD officers, at great risk, come forward to address the free-flowing racism that characterizes their worklife? The questions we might ask will be fraught with peril, but there could be great positives: one of the key things that this experience has exposed is that a broader social consideration of what it means to live life ethically is gravely absent.

In Dorner’s case, the allegory of life to a furnace takes literal weight — he has died, consumed by fire. The police will celebrate, the chorus will quiet, the lives of his victims mourned. It is unlikely that the fire that burned away Dorner will burn away any illusion: this is unfortunate, and disturbing.

His allegations will be dismissed as the rantings of a lunatic, things will return to normal. Until the fire, next time.

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