The Sheepdog Who Cried Wolf

This article aims to contribute to the growing body of research in anthropology that utilizes ethnographic and archival methods to interrogate the United States as a carceral state engaged in domestic warfare against its black, brown, Indigenous, and poor citizens, residents, and others. It shows that Sheepdog Seminars is working with police officers, pastors, and county prosecutors to raise up an extralegal army of soldiers who will surveil and possibly kill in their home churches and towns and who will undertake the work of moving retired military gear from police precincts to church buildings. It highlights the way Sheepdogs use fear to evade legal culpability. And it concludes by offering a speculative account of the Sheepdog “otherwise.”