The events surrounding last week’s shooting and killing of one police officer, two civilians and injuring two others by former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, Christopher Dorner is disturbing and symptomatic of a society in profound crisis. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has unleashed a manhunt for Dorner who left an eleven page manifesto on February 4, detailing his firing from the police force, his personal battle with depression and his views on gun control, systemic racism and homophobia within the department as well as his admiration for certain celebrities. In a twist that illustrates the ties between the militaristic culture of the U.S. empire and the violence at home, a drone is being sent in search of Dorner. Similar drones have killed thousands, including hundreds of civilians, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A Culture of Alienation and Violence

The corporate news media coverage of Christopher Dorner’s eleven page manifesto as a deranged gun man with deep psychological problems (particularly with women) hell-bent on revenge against those that were involved in his firing from the LAPD and his discharge from the Navy is misleading. Yes, revenge is a central theme of the manifesto, but what is not dissected in the media is Dorner’s charge of racism, the violence within the LAPD, and events surrounding his firing from the force after reporting police brutality to his supervisor and internal affairs.

Dorner was a product of a militarized U.S. culture, which solves issues and conflicts and accumulates resources through unbridled violence, divide-and-rule propaganda and corporate domination. Both political parties direct more money to military spending than to all social programs combined, resulting in war crimes, mass destruction, torture and a lack of regard for human life. Little attention has been paid to the fact that Dorner suffered from concussions related to playing football. Dorner felt that this contributed to his depression and therefore his estrangement from family. Being an LAPD officer had been his dream profession, and the ostracism he faced after exposing racism and police violence deeply devastated him. Dorner was a ticking time-bomb.

The City of Angeles: A Record of Corruption, Racism and Police Violence

Christopher Dorner states in his manifesto, “The department (LAPD) has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse… Those officers involved in the Rampart scandal and Rodney King incidents have since [been] promoted to supervisor, commanders, and command staff, and executive positions.” The LAPD officials’ first response to Dorner’s manifesto’s charge of racism and corruption is that his statement is “self-serving” and “rambling on the Internet.” On February, 9 LAPD officials made an about-face, indicating “that they will re-examine Christopher Dorner’s allegations that his law enforcement career was undone by racist colleagues, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told KCBS-TV. He also urged Dorner to surrender.” (AP news, 2/9/13) What can’t be denied is the long and dark history of the Los Angeles police force. Did Dorner break the “blue wall” of silence?

The role of the police, courts and military in the capitalist system is to protect and serve the interest of the ruling elite. The police in poor communities of color function like an occupying army. Historically, the LAPD top officers have been rotten to the core with cases of racist police violence and blatant corruption from the murders of Nation of Islam activist Ronald Stokes in 1962 to the killing of Latino journalist Ruben Salazar and the frame-up of Black Panther Geronimo Pratt in the 1970s.

The Ramparts scandal in the 1990s showed that the LAPD’s anti-gang unit was involved in selling drugs, bank robbery, and ongoing perjury. In 1991, the Rodney King beating and police acquittal provoked riots and made headlines. Behind this high-profile case is systemic violent attacks particularly on black and Latino men, from the Black Panthers in 1968 to the immigrant rights movement in 2006. Dorner’s anger at the violence and institutional racism shows the divisions that can open up within the police when rank-and-file cops get upset at the way capitalism pushes them to repress people in the communities they grew up in.

Individual Terrorism

This is the course of action of Christopher Dorner in his own words “I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty.” To combat the racism and corruption inside the LAPD and his discharge from the force, in the absence of a strong workers movement to oppose the policies of big business and the violence that flows from it, Dorner has engaged in a campaign of individual terrorism.

As Marxist and working-class activists, we oppose such actions. Individual terrorism historically is a failed method of fighting back against big business and its figure heads. It is a dead end strategy that provides the state license to leave a trail of blood and working people as cannon fodder for the itchy trigger fingers of the LAPD. Support can be drummed up for institutions of the capitalist state when tragedies like the murders of random cops takes place. Working people’s civil liberties and human rights are being violated in this unrelenting manhunt. Case in point–two women were shot by LAPD in Torrance, Southern California on Thursday February, 7. The two women were delivering newspapers; one woman was shot in the hand and the other was shot in the back.

A Way Forward only the Working Class Can Provide

In this decaying system of exploitation and violence, attacks on civil liberties are on the increase against activists, people of color, and working people in general.

The force that can effectively combat the racism, class exploitation, police violence and corruption in the LAPD and alienation in society is the working class and the poor. A united working-class movement using the method of mass protests, non-violent civil disobedience, walk-outs and strikes, based on a program that puts people’s needs first, can bring down the walls of racial and class oppression.

The case of Christopher Dorner is an indictment of U.S. capitalism and the dictatorship of Wall Street. Dorner’s actions are not an isolated event, but a disturbing pattern of uncontrolled violence over the past few years. The United States is a tinder box, a society in deep turmoil and crisis where the next round of budget cuts, layoffs, and increasing rates of poverty will increase the anxiety of working people and the poor. The working class must take the lead in providing the political, economic, social and cultural alternative to capitalism that has given rise to such destructive behavior and actions. It’s the struggle for genuine democratic socialism and workers’ democracy that can begin to address these social and cultural ills that plague working people and the poor.