First the black, white & blue anti-Black Lives Matter flag flew outside of Trump rallies, then on stage, next to the US flag; in Wisconsin last week it replaced the US flag behind Trump; now the American flag, with all its complications, is just gone, & a fascist banner waves.

Growing dominance of "Blue Lives Matter" flag w/in Trumpism suggests a formation close to but not identical w/ both white nationalism & police state: I'll call it "police nationalism." Identity founded on fetishization of an explicitly brutal & implicitly racist idea of policing.

Police nationalists, like the civilian creator of the Blue Lives Matter flag, are mostly *not* law enforcement. Rather, they're people who form an identity, a sense of themselves, *through* fantasizing punishment for others. Hence the popularity of the Punisher motif.

Police nationalists are white supremacists (including occasional non-white ones; it's an infectious disease) who don't want to think of themselves as such. Police nationalism allows them to fetishize force as "law" and relieves them of having to think about what law is.

Police nationalists often merge "law & order" w/ an authoritarian idea of Christianity. But in essence I think it's a secularization of authoritarian faith, fetishization of a fixed, received "law & order" similar to fundamentalist "natural law" w/ state power replacing divine.

You may have seen a popular meme of the anti-Black Lives Matter police nationalist flag with stripes pulled away to reveal a Nazi flag. I get the sentiment, but it obscures fact that this authoritarian flag is, now at least, far more versatile in its service to neo-fascism.

That's because the Nazi flag only means one thing. The police nationalist flag now means many things: anti-Black Lives Matter (which is how it began), Trump, &, yes, a martyred memory of officers killed in line of duty. It's like Trump: it twists.

I've been reporting on the Right for 20 years. I believe self-definition matters. Police nationalists now call their flag "Back the Blue"--a statement they experience not as non-partisan but as transcending partisanship. It's an assertion of ultimate authority. But worse...

Implicit in the slogan "Back the Blue" when used by police nationlists is the fantasy of a coming conflict (which aligns neatly with QAnon's idea of a "storm") in which "backing the Blue" will mean choosing a side in a civil war not so much feared as anticipated.

Police nationalists endorse police violence under cover of police benevolence. One often finds them trading memes of cops with little kids, often a little blonde white girl or--thought to immunize against charges of racism--a little black boy.

Some examples of two popular police nationalist memes: A cop with a kid, and German shepherds.

The police nationalist memes of cops w/ kids aren't false. Police, for all the profound & fundamental problems w/ American policing, often do good things. One can recognize that & still see police *nationalism* for what it is: The replacement of civil authority w/ armed power.

Addendum: Lot of responses telling me word I'm looking for is "fascism"--a word that *is in the thread's first tweet.* But the point of the thread is to look closer, to consider the particular manifestation of a fascistic phenomenon, the better to oppose what's happening *now.*