John Fund is trying to revive the outrage that surrounded the 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists. Remember, the right won that battle, probably to the detriment of the public’s safety. This time, the outrage is over a report produced at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. In the introduction of the report, they attempt to inoculate themselves against any Republican freakout:
It is important to note that this study concentrates on those individuals and groups who have actually perpetuated violence and is not a comprehensive analysis of the political causes with which some far-right extremists identify. While the ability to hold and appropriately articulate diverse political views is an American strength, extremists committing acts of violence in the name of those causes undermine the freedoms that they purport to espouse.
In other words, it’s a study of violent acts carried out by far right-wingers, and an attempt to understand the motivations behind the attacks. But it will be used to accuse the government of liberal bias and hostility to conservative political thought.
It should be good for a few weeks of Fox News programming. And it will feed into the paranoia that Obama’s federal government is coming for everyone’s guns. The last time we had federal gun laws debated in Washington, the result was a dramatic rise in far-right activity. The DHS and FBI need to be vigilant, but John Fund worries that they will take their eyeballs off of Muslim extremists if they keep a watch out for the next Sikh shooter or Timothy McVeigh. Fund needn’t worry. After the 2009 freakout, the author left is position at the DHS, and he now has this to say:
[Daryl] Johnson’s former unit has yet to recover from the onslaught. Before the conservative backlash, he managed a team of seven. Johnson says the agency “retaliated” against him by decimating his budget and staff. He and his colleagues were humiliated when agency chiefs conceded under oath that their report showed a lack of “concern for privacy, civil rights and civil liberties” of Americans. “They basically made life miserable for me,” says Johnson, who resigned in 2010.
“There are currently between one and two officers responsible for analyzing the threat of non-Islamic domestic extremism,” Johnson tells Media Matters. “Groups like the SPLC and the ADL have more people studying this threat than the entire federal government.”
I’m pretty sure there are people at the FBI and probably in Naval Intelligence who are looking at far-right domestic threats, but if the DHS only has one or two people working the issue, I am also pretty sure John Fund’s concern is misplaced and that he is totally full of shit.
“Groups like the SPLC and the ADL have more people studying this threat than the entire federal government.”
Which also means so do our actual enemies.
Fund’s just kicking the hornet’s nest of the black helicopter crowd before the upcoming debate on universal background checks for purchasing weapons.
But it is progressives who ought to be vigilant. The tendency of the government security/law enforcement database people is to want to do it the “easy” way–have a complete dragnet of everybody regarding everything and then query as needed. There are some significantly Orwellian implications of that approach–which is what the NSA is still doing with electronic communications. Many corporations “pre-qualify” credit of customers by having expansive databases of everyone–an issue that has not reached public awareness. And those databases can be accessed by the FBI without a warrant if it falls under a FISA claim.
I understand that Ted Nugent got a Secret Service visit. It’s about time. An investigation of Randall Terry’s participation in the systematic assassination of abortion doctors over twenty years is way overdue.
But the persistent JEdgarHooverism of the law enforcement community provides a big pass to all not on the left. And when things get bad enough for law enforcement to pay attention, the propaganda goons get rolled out to cover the flank.
Fund’s remark about Muslims is just Islamophobic nonsense about a community that has been harassed and framed by law enforcement agents for a dozen years. Maybe Fund needs a taste of a real police state instead of depending on his idle romantic fantasies.
And btw, my neighbors are pretty clear that the whole purpose of the NRA’s attack on the protections that the Obama daughters get is because they want to intimidate Obama into ordering the Secret Service to back down. In other words, the NRA wants the Secret Service to stand down so the hornets from the whacked hornets nest can get a clearer shot.
All of it is just another way of attempting to nullify two elections.
Ahh yes, that bastion of liberal anti-American sentiment, the US Military Academy.
Couldn’t someone attacking the United States Military Academy at West Point and defending right wing terrorists be considered in violation of the PATRIOT ACT under the section pertaining to engagement in terrorist related activities intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”?
Just asking…