There are almost no “lone wolf” terrorists in the United States anymore; even these so-called “loners” can be radicalized and combined with others equally angry and committed without leaving their homes. They can start through social media, chat rooms or through a little web-surfing looking for “information,” friends and allies. There are other changes. A rise in domestic terrorist, egged on by leaders hell-bent on painting a desperate and devolving nation that will disappear if “patriotic” citizens do not “fight” to keep their country intact. The acceptable domestic vocabulary now embraces vituperatives that have been legitimized by self-aggrandizing politicians with little or no concern for the consequences.
Not only are there more guns in civilian hands in this country than people – guns are the leading cause of child/teen deaths in the US – but there are over 30 million military-grade assault weapons in civilian hands… with more people ready to use them than at any time since our Civil War. As the flurry of domestic terrorists rises, replete with training grounds and uniforms, overseas terrorist groups we felt had fizzled out – from ISIS and al Qaeda to the Iranian-surrogates (Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, etc.) are also stirring, unable to differentiate between Israel and the United States – are reassembling… often sharing information and planning among and between themselves. With Russia, China and North Korea fomenting that unrest, the world has become an even scarier place.
What all these means for our anti-terrorism agencies and operations is that they have a lot more groups to track, knowing that there are mainstream elected Americans who side with some of these groups… egging them on as part of their highly polarized and divisive rhetoric. They throw out rivers and tsunamis of toxic mis- and dis-information, now emanating from everything from minor social media pockets with just a few people to mainstream media misreporting the news and effectively giving angry people reason to vet that anger in the worst possible way. Remember the days when we really did believe that there were rising bona fide communist bombers amongst us, when “red” was a label they embraced for their violent leftwing aspirations? Those groups seem relegated to a very distant past.
Today, there is religious rightwing zeal and nationalism on steroids that should frighten all of us. Yet even terrorism has mainstream political support. Remember, that the January 6, 2021 storming the Capitol, beating and gassing the Capitol Police, wreaking havoc inside the building, breaking in, breaking windows and furniture, resulting in death and serious injury, including to fallen officers, was officially labeled by the Republican National Committee (RNC) in February of 2022, as they passed a resolution to this effect, describing the rioters as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Notwithstanding that clear mislabeling, with malice aforethought, hundreds of the invaders were subsequently convicted of serious felonies. Simply put, those felons were mostly terrorists.
Writing for the August 12th Los Angeles Times, Jeffrey Fleishman surveys the landscape: “The U.S. is facing security threats in a presidential election year coming from Islamic militants, far-right extremists, leftist radicals and an array of zealots disgruntled over the nation’s culture wars and our polarized society. Officials are increasingly worried about the deepening strands of left- and right-wing venom rooted in antiestablishment anger and amplified by social media that are testing the government’s ability to track militants like [those who speak in code or encrypt their messages].
“‘The threat’s not more potent than it was around 9/11, but it’s certainly more diverse and difficult to counter,’ said Colin P. Clarke, the director of research at the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consulting firm in New York City. ‘We’re dealing with a more aggressive far-right, left-wing and what we call ‘salad bar people,’ who take a little bit of each ideology and thread them together. Incels. QAnon. The range of actors at play now is a lot broader than what we’re used to.’
“The assassination attempt that wounded Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in July was carried out by what has long haunted American life: the lone gunman… Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by the Secret Service while lying on a rooftop, appeared to harbor no intense political ideology. A nursing home employee who liked video games, Crooks, 20, scrolled the internet for topics including depression and information on both Trump and President Biden. But unlike other shooters who leave behind manifestos, Crooks was largely silent about his motives.
“The danger of the lone gunman, as well as the potential for politically motivated violence around the Israel-Hamas war, will have authorities on alert at the Democratic National Convention this month. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are expected to arrive in Chicago en masse… At the Democrats’ convention in the same city in 1968, during an era of intense upheaval around the Vietnam War that some suggest parallels today’s political tremors, police beat and tear-gassed marchers.
“A threat assessment by local and federal authorities obtained by Chicago’s ABC7 investigative team notes a number of disruptive tactics they could face at the Aug. 19-22 convention, including ‘targeted attacks, violent threats, swatting and doxing, mailing or delivering suspicious items, arson, and property destruction.’… In recent years, most of the violence and ‘other threat indicators [are] from groups that lean more conservative,’ said Amy Cooter, a terrorism expert with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. What’s notable, she added, was that the extremist narratives, particularly accelerationist ones — like those espoused by [so many domestic terrorist wannabes] that use violence to speed up social collapse — can appeal to radicals across the political spectrum… ‘There’s potential for people who have very different underlying political beliefs,’ said Cooter, ‘to join forces on issues they have common ground on.”
How much worse can it get when a US President, during and after his term of office, describes obviously violent individuals, openly trying to change the status quo by force if they believe that to be necessary (including embracing a civil war), as “fine people” and even “patriots”? When he repeats that if he loses, there will be “bloodshed,” and when his followers are not remotely interested in the truth?
I’m Peter Dekom, and I am hoping that the tide is turning hard away from politicians who live under an umbrella of conspiracy theories, denigrating their political opponents as subhuman and have long since placed their political power high above the welfare and survival of the nation.
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