How Big is the Threat?
January 20, 2021
The Biden Inaugural extravaganza should be scrapped until the country knows exactly what it’s dealing with.
This week, the FBI warned of armed violence on January 20 in Washington and 50 state capitols. It sounds preposterous and might be, but America’s intelligence, police, and security establishments haven’t a clue as to the size of the country’s domestic terrorist threat. Is this a disparate scattering of lunatics, or has it become an organized underclass of a million or more maladjusted males in body armor bearing automatic weapons.
Such woeful ignorance is why the Inauguration should be reduced to a simple oath-taking ceremony and speech conducted in an undisclosed location in private. This is what most countries do and what America did until Inaugurals became television specials produced by networks to sell Coca Cola and Nike shoes and used by political fundraisers to peddle seats, tickets to balls, and political access.
America’s transfer of power has become a political version of the Super Bowl, complete with a parade, A-list celebrities in camera shots, and the arrival of women in sparkling gowns at evening parties ten times’ pricier than proposed stimulus payments to COVID-challenged Americans.
The absence of solid counter-insurrection intelligence means that a defense cannot be mounted. It means that the country will have to become an armed camp that will breathe oxygen into anti-democracy movements, demoralize and frighten Americans, and provide a global stage for fascists, white supremacists, and Trump swag.
America’s intelligence lapse is due, in large measure, to its warped politics which has impeded the creation of a domestic terrorism statute such as Germany and others have. In those jurisdictions, the distinction between ordinary crimes and those that are politically driven, right or left-wing, result in the precise collection of data. These countries know what they’re up against, have beefed up their counter-terrorist measures, and are able to monitor and pre-empt attacks.
For instance, Germany announced that in 2019 police recorded 41,000 cases of politically motivated crime, an increase of 14.2 percent compared to the year before. More than half were right-wing, and crimes ranged from verbal abuse to spreading racist or hate propaganda, hate speech to assault, arson, and murder.
In the United States, crimes involving hate or political terrorism, such as murder or trespassing or assault, are not designated, testified counterterrorism and cybersecurity expert and author Clint Watts before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
“Lacking designations for initiating a nationwide case for pursuing connected violence, federal law enforcement largely pursues cases reactively after an attack,” he said. “Individual cases are pursued across dozens or even hundreds of jurisdictions even though subjects congregate, communicate, and collaborate with each other in online environments. Domestic terrorism’s lack of designation also results in no effective measure for understanding the size, shape, and scale of each violent extremist threat.”
Even after Charlottesville in 2017, and in September 2019 FBI Director Christopher Wray could only speculate that domestic terrorism, mostly white supremacists, was the greatest threat to Americans. The Department of Homeland Security concurred this summer and, weeks later, the FBI arrested 13 men in Michigan for allegedly plotting to kidnap and execute the governor of Michigan and overthrow its government.
In 2020, another report confirmed what many suspected which was these far-right movements had infiltrated military and police across the country. This explains why there has been resistance against terrorism statutes, and why police abuses against blacks and other minorities have remained disproportionately high.
Now reports have leaked this week that the FBI suspects the breach of the Capitol building in Washington was an inside job. Several Capitol police officers have been suspended or more are under investigation. And the Department of Defense is reportedly checking for “terrorists” among the 15,000 troops who will defend the Inauguration event. Hopefully, similar vetting is underway concerning Secret Service, police, White House, and Congressional personnel.
Given the known unknowns, any notion of proceeding with a public Inauguration, no matter how trimmed down or in defiance of threats, is neither prudent nor shrewd. America is asleep at the switch and cannot play catch-up this weekend by imperiling the next President.
As Sun Tzu wrote, in his classic The Art of War: “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Useful links:
https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-examining-the-evolving-threat/
I heard Diane speaking òn " The Shjft" on my way into work this morning.
It was a very good discussion about Facebook. Learning she has this venue for offering her investigative reporting I decided to subscribe.
This is the first topic I read ..
I loved the insight and overview.
It is possibly too short but there is also merit in being concise.. It offered a flavor, with sprinklings of details yet has me yearning for more. I know , its endless and for that it captures snapshots of time with glimpses into both history and potentially futures.
More to come ?
I also loved the replies to the topic, and had to agree .
Awesome reply by Blaine Melnyk.
Glad I subscribed.
Ian Matthews - Power Enginer/ Oil Worker in Ontario Canada
Like all expressions of critical thinking, issues examination must define the problem and compare points of view, consider pro and con, strong and weak points of each, and evaluate with a conclusion or point of view. The lack of such patient analysis and the adoption of one of the points of view on an embattled issue by journalists undermines the value and credibility of their views, so that they become regarded as a mouthpiece of one side, a voice of propaganda, lacking both credibility and the trust a truly objective evaluation provides. Your work often builds the trust you have earned for your critical thinking. Yet concerning the above article, I feel concerned for your review. In a country where the right to bear arms, free speech and free assembly are foundational, and when such polarized voters following such polemic leadership contest an election with such a close result, my surprise is the small scale of the expression of discontent by the populace. The polemic loser has provided characteristic drama for the whole world to watch, and America to be embarrassed by. The polemic victor and the bulk of big tech and media reporters have taken advantage of this to further divide right and left and turn up the heat . Who speaks for peace between the camps? Civil war and revolution at the change of regimes are often ugly reality of history: America, France, most of South America, Russia, etc. The new world of technology has only magnified the power of weapons, surveillance, hidden power groups and wealth concentrations, social design and entrenchment by powerful 'lobbyist' or influencer groups.
That America at its recent crossroads has mildly walked through the occassion is a surprise. This is the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth, the most fiercesomely armed, the most experienced and battlehardened military, where social divisions, inequalities of opportunity, and champions of every underdog community on the planet live and prosper. For a people whose history demonstrates that revolution, not evolution, is a practiced and an adopted means of regime founding and changing, the ongoing confrontation of the old paradigm of life and the new leftist social vision as played out in the most recent presidential election appear like a tea party (but not in Boston). Beware of the fall of this last bastion of individual freedoms, small government and the rise of the tax and spend, national income security vision of the latest social engineers, who work to entrench in wealth, privilege and power, their invisible group of clever friends. Follow the money, not the rhetoric.