On January 9, Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, a radical left-wing student group at the University of Texas issued a tweet seemingly calling for police to be incinerated.
The Autonomous Student Network (ASN) at UT-Austin’s tweet read, “Instead of #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay how about #LawEnforcementIncinerationDay” adjacent to a photo of a French officer aflame when he was struck by a Molotov cocktail during last year’s May Day protests.
ASN-Austin states on its Facebook page:
We are dedicated to the abolition of the State and the logic that upholds it. By the State we mean any central decision-making authority that separates “politics” from people’s everyday lives, possesses a monopoly on violence that it can use to enforce its decisions, and imposes its authority over others. … In tandem with our opposition to the State is our opposition to Capital. By capitalism we mean an economic system defined at its base by the private control of property, the coerced extraction of labor from workers who have no control over how they work, and the drive to accumulate wealth. … We affirm that liberation comes from a process of what we call communisation, the immediate creation of forms of solidarity, mutual support, affinity groups, and networks that can replace the domination of commodities and social roles in our everyday lives. Revolution must arise from the process of reclaiming everyday life from the desperate alienation and nihilism this world presents us with, taking back the means to survive and destroying whatever institutions destroy us. Towards this end, we refuse any negotiation with the current social order. We will not talk to police or invest in any politics that finds its endpoint in reformism and integration into this society and its systems of power.
Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, told Fox News, “These types of antics are so disrespectful, especially coming from Texas where so many police officers helped with recovery efforts after the hurricanes and where police officers died in Dallas.”
The day before their incendiary tweet, the group altered an infographic posted on PragerU’s page which read, “Why are there so many anti-police activists?” ASN Austin responded, “Hey @prageru, we fixed your graphic on the cops for you. Bet you feel real lucky being on the right side of that thin blue line though.” Then the group rewrote the graphic so it stated that police “kill and rob” oppressed peoples while protecting “white supremacist capitalism.” The reworked graphic asked, “Why are there so many police sympathizers?”