Just about everyone has weighed in on Christopher Jordan Dorner, the rogue ex-LAPD cop said to have taken himself out as fiery Big Bear walls collapsed around him on Feb. 12, the same day he committed his fourth alleged murder.
Count Marxists among those chiming in, asking whether Dorner was a “revolutionary role model.”
The answer may surprise you.
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Author Jose Manuel begins “United States: Understanding Dorner” on The Defence of Marxism site with Malcolm X's famous John F. Kennedy assassination quote about “chickens coming home to roost.”
Manuel accuses the “capitalist media” of protecting police and the military at all cost, half of the “bourgeois media” of only reporting on Dorner's crimes without exploring allegations of LAPD abuse in his online manifest, and the other half of glorifying the former La Palma resident as a “folk hero.”
Wow, that pretty much covers it all.
But just when you think Manuel is about to place a Che beret on Dorner, he writes that the alleged “slaughter” of engaged Irvine couple Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence was inexcusable. Then there was Dorner's long fascination in his manifesto with celebrity, as if he was trying (through fear and a body count) to somehow join the ranks of the beloved.
Which leads into the author's biggest problem with Dorner: his politics.
What were his political convictions? Dorner expressed support for both Chris Christie and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race in his manifesto. He also admired Barack Obama and considers the elder Bush and Bill Clinton to be his favorite presidents. Dorner's spree wasn't even inspired by a hatred for the police; he asked other departments to avoid confronting him. It is clear that not only were Christopher Dorner's tactics indefensible, his politics were also a complete mess.
. . .With counterrevolutionary politics, self-centered motives, and unwarranted tactics, Christopher Dorner is no friend to the proletarian revolution. Sowing false illusions in his story is irresponsible and reflects a pattern of unprincipled, opportunistic tail-ending much of the Left has fallen to in recent decades.
Manuel goes on to blame “America's prided 'rugged individualism'” with leaving mentally ill people like Dorner “in virtual solitary confinement.” His manifesto was a “distorted cry for help.”
Yes, comrades, “There is no safety under capitalism.”
Every gory act of violence exposes an equally macabre reality–the reality of an obsolete order and the gratuitous violence it craves. Shooting sprees stem from the same source as shopping sprees. Our great historic task is to see the destruction of the world that creates such carnage. Humanity has lingered too long in an age of barbarism and brutality. Capitalism's terror of bigotry and repression must be stopped.
OC Weekly Christopher Dorner archives
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.