What kind of neurotic person takes it upon themselves to spy on citizens exercising their rights in the name of fighting terrorism?
A new memoir by a retired Arizona cop later promoted to FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force officer Mattson Browning, The Hate Next Door: Undercover Within The Face of White Supremacy, gives us a glimpse into the mentality of a proud member of the American secret police.
Browning’s career of chasing “Nazis” began as a Mesa Police Department detective hungry for glory and purpose. As one of the few white officers in the East Valley city’s gang unit, Browning was frustrated over being forced to work cases in a purely logistical capacity while minority officers got to play more active roles as infiltrators due to the fact that the area’s investigative targets were Mexican and black organized crime. Most active during the days of heightened anger over the open border and SB1070 in the 2000s and early 2010s, the ambitious police officer decided to search far and wide for white criminals with any possible link to the rising anti-immigration movement.
He catches a big break after a violent confrontation with a white ex- con, who has “white supremacist” tattoos. Following the incident, he parlays the thin soup into permission from his superiors to open up investigations into local skinheads in the Maricopa County area.
Browning is proud of his flagrant disregard for basic ethics and rights. At the start of his investigation, he is able to obtain leads about pro- white groups in the area by impersonating a New York Times journalist and approaching a skinhead leader to conduct a bogus interview, a highly controversial East Germany-like strategy deployed by federal agents that has faced legal scrutiny in recent years. In another callback to the Stasi, the officer arrives at a music venue to spy on “racist” rock bands dressed in Doctor Martens boots and suspenders, with hopes of ingratiating himself with the young white people there.
Eventually, his fishing expedition pays off and he begins sliding down the civil liberty’s slippery slope. What began as a legitimate investigation into a white prison gang engaging in criminal activity turns into an odyssey fueled almost entirely by political prejudices rather than public safety concerns. Browning ends up penetrating the local law-abiding National Alliance chapter, spying on a wide array of anti-immigration and pro-border groups, and even came out to collect intelligence on supporters of Donald Trump at the 2020 Stop The Steal rally outside the Arizona State Capitol.
Browning is repeatedly subjected to criticism from black and Mexican police colleagues, who make fun of him for burning up law enforcement resources harassing white groups engaging in low-level or no criminal activity while most of the area’s violent criminal activity came from minority groups. One memorable instance was when he reports a volunteer border militia for stopping illegal alien traffickers on the border to the Mexican federales, only for them to respond with confusion about what these white “vigilantes” are even doing wrong. Despite encountering resistance from the very non-white people he is saving from evil racist white terrorists in his own mind, he finally finds allies in the Anti- Defamation League and FBI to get political, media and financial backing for his anti-white crusade.
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