DHS officials have a decision to make.
With cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection underway and being actively prosecuted, attention is shifting away from the immediate crisis posed by that attack and its aftermath to a longer-term question: how can the government help to prevent violent, right-wing radicalization — and further attacks — in the future?
Lock 'em ALL up!
A flower for every gun. Typical liberal approach. Not gonna work too well given how many guns are out there, and how itchy their triggers are. I sincerely hope they’re working on a significantly more muscular approach, you know, in case the flowers don’t work.
OT. Too soon to tell, but I get the feeling this involves one of those anti-goverment wingnuts that cops love. And I bet it involves one of those “Modern Sporting Rifles”, that only tyrants will dare to ban.
What this piece doesn’t mention is that as early as 2009, the Obama DHS under Janet Napolitano rolled out a report delineating right-right extremism as the coming threat. But, then the Obama administration withdrew it because Republicans complained.
So there you have it 12 years avant la lettre: the GOP exhibiting the same behavior that enabled the January 6th insurrection. Arguably, 2009 was the point at which the GOP became the party of violent extremism.
And the Obama administration, whose behavior in that incident was pusillanimous as hell, didn’t really call it out. One hopes Biden learned something from that.
We will need some effort to cleanse the Augean stables that we call social media.
I, frankly, don’t know how to do it, but any efforts against radicalization have to begin with some control of the crap on social media. You listening Zuckerberg?
Given the reputedly extensive foreign agitprop campaigns directed at disrupting our politics and fomenting civil disorder it would seem there is quite a bit of crossover going on; i.e., inside, outside may help identify where the end-use agents are (violent evangelical whites et al) but not where significant elements of their activation is coming from.
The entire effort wasn’t helped by the Trump administration’s decision to backtrack, pivoting the program towards instead funding law enforcement engagement efforts with the Muslim community — a repeat of earlier mistakes.
But Republican donors loved getting the money, which is the point of every conservative program.
A whole bunch of people in this country need to lose their guns and find their balls.
I wonder if it would help to try to drive a wedge between extremist groups and members of the public who might have some sympathy with what they are saying, not so much the specific racist content but more the economic and social problems they are facing that they don’t see being addressed in their community.
If you don’t call it “white extremism anti-terrorist countermeasures,” but rather “jobs for Bobs and Jennys,” and infused cash and immediate job training for the incoming tidal wave of infrastructure projects, maybe you can refocus their attention on the good life and away from the pull of the low-lifes.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Call me crazy, call me foolish, but I still don’t get how the debate around gun rights reconciled the issues of a “well regulated Militia” or “the security of a free State.” Gun ownership is hardly regulated and we are not secure.
Here in TN, we just made it possible to carry handguns without a permit.
48 hours later, the 1st idiot shot himself in the local Wal-Mart.
He was white, so of course he wasn’t charged with unlawful discharge of a weapon inside the city limits.
Daryl Johnson should be a household name because he more or less predicted all of this a decade before it happened:
Here is his article near the beginning of the Trump presidency:
Eight years ago, I warned of a singular threat — the resurgence of right-wing extremist activity and associated violence in the United States as a result of the 2008 presidential election, the financial crisis and the stock market crash. My intelligence report, meant only for law enforcement, was leaked by conservative media.
A political backlash ensued because of an objection to the label “right-wing extremism.” The report also rightly pointed out that returning military veterans may be targeted for recruitment by extremists. Republican lawmakers demanded then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rescind my report. The American Legion formally requested an apology to veterans. Some in Congress called for me to be fired. Amid the turmoil, my warning went unheeded by Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security caved to the political pressure: Work related to violent right-wing extremism was halted. Law enforcement training also stopped. My unit was disbanded. And, one-by-one, my team of analysts left for other employment. By 2010, there were no intelligence analysts at DHS working domestic terrorism threats.
Take it up with the Supreme Court.
Those fucking idiots don’t think the founding fathers didn’t know what they were talking about when they said Well Regulated Militia.
Today, it is known as the National Guard.
Also too On April 12, 2021, Will Smith, Antoine Fuqua, and Apple Studios decided that starting production on their new Apple TV series, “Emancipation,” in Georgia simply wasn’t worth it, especially in consideration of current events.
They are going to Louisiana to produce the series now.
This goes back much, much farther than that. Turning a blind eye to the threat of domestic white terrorists is a recurring theme in American history. Sometimes it blooms into full-on support, as with the current GOP.
Generally, as long as the targets are Black individuals, or abortion providers, or immigrant families, it’s written off as “troubled (but isolated!) individuals” by sympathetic politicians who don’t want to get their hands too dirty. Once in a while though, they blow up a federal building or try to interfere with a peaceful transition of power, and that job gets a little harder.
Maybe it’s where I’m from, but I always feel no more than a couple of degrees of separation from people firmly embedded in these truly frightening conspiracies. I can’t think of a time since I was a teenager and coming into political consciousness that there wasn’t a dark threat from “eccentric” individuals being laughed off or even encouraged by law enforcement and the Republican media/political complex.
The Revolutionary War was primarily fought by State militias, there was a big mistrust of having a Standing Army, since, well, that was the very embodiment of the occupying redcoats.
Since people brought their own guns with them to the militias, you needed a pool of able-bodied men with toys in order to form the militias.
So it was eminently sensible at the time to create a rule that the federal government couldn’t prevent citizens of a State from having weapons, or the State would be unable to raise a militia if needed.
And the National Guard only partly fills the need. See the events on January 6th for how the Feds were able to prevent, for a time, the States from using their own National Guard troops.
As the Biden administration takes the reins, it is seeking to learn from the Obama administration’s efforts, and put community groups at the forefront of its outreach to individuals in danger of radicalization.
There was a time when those community groups would have been the church. Now, though, that’s where people go to become radicalized. The likes of Joel Osteen, Pat Robertson, William Graham, Jim Baker, Jerry Falwell, and on and on and on, have turned Jesus into a symbol of capitalistic totalitarianism. Churches that use the airwaves to demand money from gullible followers should not be tax exempt.
OT
If the Biden administration really wants to take on right wing radicalization, the other elephant in the room (besides the GOP) is Fox and the rest of the right wing propaganda mills. Tucker Carlson openly promotes white supremacist talking points. They engage in deliberate culture war fights, and demagoguery against center and left groups. They spread disinformation 24/7 - it’s why Republicans refuse to get vaccinated and still believe the election was stolen. They take extreme right fringe views and mainstream them.
Until we figure out how to counter right wing media, they will continue to add fuel to the fire.