The U.S. is ill-equipped to combat domestic terrorism

The New York Times is reporting on how the federal government is not only ill-equipped to deal with domestic terrorism, but because most of the terrorism is coming from white supremacists who are derived from a “base” that Republican politicians are loath to alienate, almost nothing can be expected to seriously combat domestic terrorism. Civil rights lawyer Martin Stolar was quoted as saying that you can’t just suggest any white person is a potential terrorist, because the “blowback would be outrageous”; he could also have mentioned that the loudest “blowback” usually comes from the people most guilty. As long as they don’t announce a plan for genocide, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are protected by the right of “freedom of speech”; it has been reported that the FBI was aware of Patrick Crusius’ manifesto just before the El Paso shooting, but even if they wished to there was simply not enough to go on to stop him, since 8chan allowed complete anonymity for any murderous fanatic. It seems that white people want it both ways: they want the right to apply any ugly stereotype against a minority group that they wish to and formulate policy based on it; it could be something “benign” like opposition to affirmative action, or the crime bill passed during the Clinton administration that led to a massive increase in the black prison population—or today, fear of a Hispanic “takeover” of the country leading to “executive action” by Trump to bring legal Hispanic immigration down to a dribble. 

Irony: despite its reputation as a bluest of blue states, Washington—three decades ago a haven for extremist hate groups like The Order, whose members were convicted of numerous local bank robberies and accused of the murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg—is now once again, according to a hate group tracker quoted by the NYT, “attractive” to white supremacists and neo-Nazis who wish to form an “ethnostate” here. Why is Washington and the Northwest in general so “popular” with white supremacists and neo-Nazis? It really isn’t a surprise to me; maybe The Seattle Times would like to “enlighten” those mired in self-denial. More irony: why are some people calling for the abolition of ICE? Because ICE was formed in the wake of 9/11 to identify and detain foreign terrorists on U.S. soil—a job that should have been the responsibility of the FBI—but because ICE agents ended up having too much time on their hands, they had to find something else to do to justify their existence: Hispanic immigrants suddenly became the latest “national security threat,” despite the fact that federal agencies have been hard put to identify anyone who could legitimately be called a “terrorist threat” attempting to cross the southern border. Some people might even call the way ICE conducts its activities similar to that of a “terrorist” organization.

It is true that  law enforcement on any level of government has not had a great track record in recent times in its confrontations with troublesome organizations who operate even out in plain sight; some people might be old enough to recall the 1985 standoff between Philadelphia police and the MOVE anarchist group, whose principle occupation was to ignore community standards for cleanliness and neighborliness. After the group refused to leave the house they were occupying, an explosive device was dropped on the roof, which ignited gasoline used for a generator—resulting in an out-of-control fire which eventually burned  to the ground 65 homes while the fire department trucks never left their stations. And then there was Waco, where David Koresh and his cult followers held out against federal authorities until a wall was knocked over, either causing a fire and being the occasion for Koresh setting the fire himself;  80 people in the compound were eventually found dead, many if not most by apparent suicide. The bad public relations fiasco of this other and incidents (Ruby Ridge) likely influenced the tepid federal law enforcement actions during the Bundy standoff, in which Cliven Bundy illegally grazed his cattle on federal lands without paying rights dues, attracting other armed anti-government fanatics who felt it was their “right” to threaten federal agents with gunplay. Wishing to avoid another public relations disaster, federal agents back down and withdrew. Although Bundy was eventually arrested, all charges against him were dropped last year--a move which likely only emboldens similar actions.

Although there have been a few instances where the FBI has arrested persons on charges of plotting domestic terrorist acts, this almost always involves explosive devices rather than legal guns; after all, you can’t go “hunting” or to a target range with a bomb without arousing suspicion, and thus the combination of “free speech” and the “right” to own an automatic assault rifle obviously hinders law enforcement on taking action on someone who actually is a legitimate domestic terrorism threat. To show how politically-fraught the issue is, the DHS recently disbanded its domestic terrorism intelligence unit, clearly a politically-motivated move. Republicans and the right-wing media oppose  a firm definition of what constitutes domestic terrorism, and  strengthening the power of the FBI to deal with it, because they know that, save for a left turn or two, all roads lead to their culpability in fostering the toxic atmosphere in which only needs to infect an already feverish mind to be translated into murderous action. I’m not saying that Trump’s party or Trump himself engage in “terrorism,” but through his rallies and tweet storms he acts like your standard fanatical “mullah” haranguing his followers to crush the “infidels”—and that a few actually take him at his word more seriously than others, just like the knights who murdered Thomas Becket, who “believed” that this is what Henry II desired after the king loudly and contimuously denounced Becket as a danger to the realm.