Dan Page is the St. Louis police officer who was relieved of his duty because of this:
The same St. Louis police officer who was seen on CNN earlier this week pushing Don Lemon back during a live broadcast from Ferguson, Missouri, has been relieved of his duty after video emerged of an hour-long speech he delivered railing against African-Americans, the LGBT community and President Barack Obama. CNN reported the news about Officer Dan Page, who made the controversial remarks at an Oath Keepers meeting just months ago.
He has now retired.
I watched the video of Page's remarks at that Oath Keepers meeting one night last week. I even took notes! They were necessary because Page was so very difficult to follow. To give you an example, he mentioned the four horses of the apocalypse, then stated that one of them was light green, and what is the color of the Islamic flag? Right!
Many of the transitions reminded me of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, where
three under-employed editors who work for a minor publishing house decide to amuse themselves by inventing a conspiracy theory. Their conspiracy, which they call "The Plan", is about an immense and intricate plot to take over the world by a secret order descended from the Knights Templar. As the game goes on, the three slowly become obsessed with the details of this plan. The game turns dangerous when outsiders learn of The Plan, and believe that the men have really discovered the secret to regaining the lost treasure of the Templars.
Page refers to the end times, the three final battles, and argues that the Chinese will be involved in the first two. Therefore he shows the audience slides of South Korean Navy Seals.
So what was the rant all about? It's about the end of the United States which Page believes to be coming soon. He talks about the last sixteen hours (or days?) and what's going to happen during that time: First, an emphasis on foreign news, second, and emphasis on domestic racism and third, the resurgence of old hatreds. That last bit seems to be about inner cities igniting but he also warns the ladies (so he says) that domestic violence calls are a waste of police time and that people should just kill each other already.
Page believes that children with his values will be moved to re-education camps. He believes that real men have left the military and all that will soon be left is women and what he calls sodomites. He rants about gays and the "four sodomites" of the Supreme Court, he rants about president Obama as an undocumented illegal alien, and he tells women that women who are in the military are not content to be women and that we got all those "female firsts" by lowering entry standards.
So does he mention killing? Several times. He boasts about having killed and he tells the audience that he will kill some more during those last sixteen time units of the United States.
All that should make the bosses of Dan Page worried, of course, and all of us should be worried if it indeed is true that he held powerful positions in the US military operations in Africa, as he stated. But his rant wasn't about his work as a police officer; it was a rant about end-times, the weird beliefs of certain segments of the extreme US right, of the coming apocalypse.
What I found most frightening is that the audience at the rant seemed to take Page quite seriously and to agree with his conspiracy theories. The underlying assumption is that internal enemies are more important than external enemies.