{"id":55936,"date":"2020-12-09T12:36:26","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T17:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55936"},"modified":"2020-12-09T12:36:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T17:36:26","slug":"the-rcmps-x-men-fixation-is-more-sinister-than-comic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55936","title":{"rendered":"The RCMP\u2019s X-Men Fixation Is More Sinister than Comic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The RCMP\u2019s X-Men Fixation Is More Sinister than Comic<\/a><\/h3>\n

The force\u2019s \u2018Project Wide Awake\u2019 name choice shows a broken police culture that harms Black and Indigenous communities.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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The RCMP\u2019s spy programs affected marginalized communities the most. They should not be named after comic book series.\u00a0Illustration by Christopher Cheung.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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The RCMP\u2019s decision to name its Project Wide Awake online surveillance program after mutant trackers in the X-Men comic book series might seem like harmless fun.<\/p>\n

But viewed against the scathing revelations of systemic racism and misogyny in police forces nationwide, it\u2019s a troubling glimpse into police culture that unmasks the institution\u2019s casual dehumanization of marginalized groups.<\/p>\n

The Tyee first revealed the existence of\u00a0Project Wide Awake<\/a>, an operation monitoring individuals\u2019 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media activity, in 2019.<\/p>\n

In the X-Men comic series, Project Wide Awake is a covert government program that employs mutant-hunters, or \u201csentinels,\u201d to monitor, track down and exterminate human mutants \u2014 the X-Men.<\/p>\n

In the real world, Project Wide Awake is the RCMP\u2019s large-scale online surveillance program designed to monitor internet users and political protest activity. In the RCMP\u2019s version, Canadian residents are the mutants being targeted by \u201cthe hunters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But not everyone is an equal target. Due to power dynamics and social discrimination, poor, Black and Indigenous communities are disproportionately policed and surveilled. They\u2019re often cast as the \u201cbad guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

The operation\u2019s mutant-hunting eponym is not coincidental or even an isolated incident within the RCMP. Documents obtained by The Tyee exposed references to two projects connected to Project Wide Awake with names plucked directly from the\u00a0X-Men series: Sentinel<\/a>\u00a0(mutant hunting robots in the comic book series) and\u00a0Cerebro<\/a>\u00a0(a powerful device to detect mutants\u2019 locations).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The RCMP\u2019s X-Men Fixation Is More Sinister than Comic The force\u2019s \u2018Project Wide Awake\u2019 name choice shows a broken police culture that harms Black and Indigenous communities. The RCMP\u2019s spy programs affected marginalized communities the most. They should not be named after comic book series.\u00a0Illustration by Christopher Cheung. The RCMP\u2019s decision to name its Project […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[103,30694,24815,3542,23884,30695],"class_list":["post-55936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-canada","tag-daniella-barreto","tag-project-wide-awake","tag-rcmp","tag-thetyee-ca","tag-x-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55937,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55936\/revisions\/55937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}