I never thought I would read something from Matt Taibbi, one of the most cynical commentators out there, and consider it naive:
There’s some disturbing rhetoric flying around in the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things contains passages that a) officially codify the already-accepted practice of indefinite detention of “terrorist” suspects, and b) transfer the responsibility for such detentions exclusively to the military.
The fact that there’s been only some muted public uproar about this provision…is mildly surprising, given what’s been going on with the Occupy movement. Protesters in fact should be keenly interested in the potential applications of this provision, which essentially gives the executive branch unlimited powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects without trial.
Taibbi then goes on to detail why the NDAA’s provisions are so problematic–the War on Terror would be extended to not just Al Qaeda and the Taliban and “associated forces,” and the government’s power to throw accused terrorists in military prisons with no due process or trial is explicitly extended to American citizens–but: really? Taibbi doesn’t understand why public response, and even the response of Occupy and Tea Party protesters, has been muted when the law could (as he notes) easily be used to target them?
It’s because, as Glenn Greenwald noted last week, none of this is new:
…as odious and definitively radical as the powers are which this bill endorses, it doesn’t actually change the status quo all that much. That’s because the Bush and Obama administrations have already successfully claimed most of the powers in the bill, and courts have largely acquiesced. To be sure, there are dangers to having Congress formally codify these powers. But a powerful sign of how degraded our political culture has become is that this bill — which in any other time would be shockingly extremist — actually fits right in with who we are as a nation and what our political institutions are already doing.
Indeed, the scenario Taibbi envisons – that people with Occupy or Tea Party-style grievances who cross the line into talking about or planning violent acts will be considered terrorists under this bill – is already happening. The line has also been crossed into targeting nonviolent protesters, too. There’s a long history now of law enforcement agencies considering nonviolent protesters as a terrorist threat (and of trying to provoke protesters into violent acts), and that appears to again be the case with the Occupies.
Local and federal law enforcement already closely work together with the post-9-11 creation of over 100 Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which have been linked, among other things, to infiltrating nonviolent protestors, peace groups, and vegan potlucks. Even the Department of Justice has questioned whether the FBI has effectively expanded its definition of terrorism to include nonviolent civil disobedience. And the Pentagon also has its own intelligence and infiltration efforts, which have included such post 9-11 lowlights as infiltrating a Quaker peace group in Florida.
While there is a long and rich history of such law enforcement and military harassment and provocation of grass roots activists, the erosion of civil liberties under the banner of counter-terrorism since 9-11 seems to have already led to the most concerted effort to target nonviolent activists since COINTELPRO. These activities have been so pervasive that the ACLU has reports of such cases in nearly 40 states.
All but the least experienced folks in the Occupy encampments are well aware of all this history, recent and not, and well aware that elements of America’s law enforcement community consider anyone exercising their First Amendment rights for political reasons to be potential or actual terrorists. It is accepted as a given, regardless of what the law or Congress actually says. For the last decade, law enforcement agencies at major protests have adapted a tactic of blatantly unconstitutional “preemptive arrests,” knowing that the jurisdictions involved will eventually have to pay out significant sums to settle the inevitable lawsuits, and accepting that as a cost of suppressing dissent. The cases get thrown out, but the point is to lock people up whether they’ve done anything illegal or not. Invariably, such arrests — part of a cluster of tactics known as the “Miami model,” after the 2003 FTAA protests in Miami — also include a concerted media effort by law enforcement and politicians to paint grass roots activists as “terrorists” or “violent demonstrators.”
Activists know that US citizens have already been held without charges in military courts on US soil due to unproven accusations of terrorism. They know that national and local law enforcement often views nonviolent protesters as potential or actual terrorists. Adding two and two isn’t such a leap. There’s actually been quite a bit of paranoia, on both the left and right, about FEMA detention centers and the like; if anything activists are too aware of the possibility that they will be whisked away simply for speaking out. But you know what they said about being paranoid – it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
This is by no means strictly a US phenomenon – for example, there was a kerfluffle this week when London police named Occupy London as a terrorist group – but the erosion of civil liberties, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, has either inspired or enabled a lot of similiar crackdowns around the world. Is it any wonder nobody’s much worked up over the NDAA provisions? Many people have been numbed by years of reflexive media coverage into think of all such DFH protesters as thugs, degenerates, or terrorists; and the protesters themselves, while trying to sound the alarm, also recognize that all the DFAA does is institutionalize what’s already going on and give it the veneer of law. Taibbi is sounding the right alarm, but several years too late. As slippery slopes go, it’s just another sliding step down the hill.