Originally published at: Trump Admin Terrorist Designations Show Latest Attempt to Target Domestic Enemies
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio added four European anti-fascist groups to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations last week, he failed to tell the public one thing: how, exactly, these groups threaten Americans. It’s a critical omission. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State can only label a group as a…
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It’s well past time that reporters ask Rubio, and any other Trump supporting podcaster to create a document defining fascism vs antifascism. Maybe start with this country’s beginnings. Was the Continental Army Antifa?
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Thanks for detailing this. On the one hand, obviously incoherent and non-legal performative nonsense. But as noted, on the other, another potential avenue for harassment and/or persecution of any perceived opposition.
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I’m the treasurer of my neighborhood Antifa Lodge 435. We have revolutionary self-criticism sessions on Monday nights, Satanism classes on Wednesdays, and go bowling on Friday evenings. Weekend activities include burning Ayn Rand novels, selling Antifa-Chip cookies, firearms training in the woods, and getting together to write a musical comedy based on Das Kapital. We have great uniforms, including terrorist boots, and merit badges, too. Our main goal this year is to raise enough money to bring George Soros to town to lay out Antifa’s international agenda for the year. Venceremos!
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Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence…we can blow people up in international waters!
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When will this admin go after the profa groups? Oh wait, that would include them!
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Let’s create a parallel situation, and see how it looks. Let’s imagine that we have a state, we’ll call it Iran, and this state is nominally Democratic but not actually Democratic. Seeing democracy as a threat to their values, our imaginary state looks at Democratic institutions in other countries and decides that a way to message to their citizens their hatred for democracy is to place the League of Women Voters on a list of foreign terrorists.
Our imaginary situation does not present any threat to the league of women voters, if anything the publicity is good. It doesn’t provide any benefit for our imaginary country called Iran. The entire point was to send a message domestically in Iran.
The move does not make our imaginary not democracy any more powerful, or have any positive benefits at all. All it does is embarrass them in front of the world.
This is the same.
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I noted the other day that I am the Chief Brigadoon of the Unicorn contingent.
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“You know what I’d love to see? I want to really see that Spanish Antifa group designated, because it’s really interesting to me that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “
So, we have an administration that can’t feel right about itself without its very own Emmanuel Goldstein?
Will he be part of the forthcoming, daily, five minutes of antipathy?
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Thanks, AI:
“In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump heavily criticized Marco Rubio for being a “choke artist,” having the “worst voting record,” and being overly ambitious and not presidential . He frequently mocked Rubio’s physical appearance, particularly his sweating and drinking water during debates, and his use of makeup. Trump also attacked Rubio’s business acumen and career, claiming Rubio would be unable to win even the job of dog catcher.”
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“Marco Rubio failed to tell the public one thing: how, exactly, these groups threaten Americans.”
…”the Secretary of State can only label a group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization —“
“If, among other things, he can show that the groups engage in terrorism and that their activity threatens Americans or American national security interests…nothing in the Department’s announcement suggests that any of these groups pose a threat to Americans”
…”in Pigott’s telling, poses a threat that’s both ideological and violent, harboring a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently topple” the foundations of the U.S…”
Isn’t this what January 6 was about?
By designating foreign groups, the government is opening the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support”
Didn’t they say that the US government investigating Americans adjacent to malign foreign bad actors during the “crossfire hurricane”investigation was a bad thing, and shouldn’t be done?
Is this why, this week, this president and his administration said “quiet piggy” to the Bloomberg reporter and threatened members of Congress that encourage military service members to fulfill their obligations to the Constitution and abiding by the uniform code of military justice? A blatant attempt to squelch dissent?
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Totally tubular, man.
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The amount of corruption and intellectual rot that must exist to indulge this level of hallucinatory nonsense is sort of like the size of the universe, beyond what the human mind can grasp.
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It’s probably a good thing the so-called “Greatest Generation” is dying off. It’s only a matter of time before Putin’s cock-holster* discovers they were/are anti-fascist – eek, Antifa! They’re everywhere! – and have their veteran’s and social security benefits unceremoniously cut off by presidential fiat/tantrum.
*h/t Stephen Colbert.
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Fascism
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Anti-Fascism
A government by the people for the people, characterized by individual liberty, individual property ownership, and the pursuit of personal happiness.
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The East Wing of the White House was demolished because Antifa had infiltrated the offices of the first ladies and they might try for equal rights or talk openly about their husbands and their other women.
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This is the part that makes absolutely no sense to me.
WWII was all about resisting and eliminating fascism in all its forms. We spent a lot of lives and fortune doing so (the latter which revived our economy after the Depression, but that’s a different subject), and the world was demonstrably better after the effort than before.
Now the current bunch is in power in the US, and their goal is to emulate the people and ideology that we fought so hard to suppress/eliminate? I don’t get the attraction of that for so much of our country and never will.
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And the press needs to stop promoting the obfuscation of their cliquish branding – “antifa”.
It’s anti-fascist.
Say it, media. Speak the truthful fact. Not their marketing buzzword.
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Not calling it (us!) anti-fascist is a major part of the problem. It’s little more than the MSM adopting the language of the aggressor, I suspect to aid them in their both-sidesing masquerading as objectivity.
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The abusers are always frames his abuse in the words of “the victim had it coming…”She knows just how to push my buttons…She was asking for it.
The worthless media gobbles it up. The part that the media deep throats is the idea that they have to be 50-50 in order to be fair how they actually could be fair would be to be equitable. To be equitable does not necessarily mean 50-50. It means to listen to the facts. It means to listen to context. It means to pay attention to patterns of behavior.
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