Here Are 4 Better Responses to the Capitol Riot Than Expanding “Domestic Terror” Crackdowns

 

TomDispatch

  

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At Jacobin, Branko Marcetic on the "domestic terror" crackdown following the Capitol riot.

—Erika

For decades, the US public and the politicians have been conditioned to see more government repression as the solution to just about any ill that strikes the country, especially political violence. So it’s not a shock that in the wake of last week’s Trump-instigated Capitol riot, different sides of the political establishment have agreed that what needs to be done now is to pass a domestic terrorism law, giving law enforcement even more powers and resources.

On a purely policy level, this makes no sense. For one, the Capitol police force that failed to prepare for last week’s protest and subsequent storming of Congress are already well-funded and were repeatedly warned that some participants were planning violence, failing to either act on those alarms or to prepare as they would for any other protest at the Capitol. Secondly, given that police officers were among those who rioted, the backing the incident received from various police officials around the country, and suspicions that some Capitol police may even have been complicit in what happened, handing them more power and a mandate to go after people they deem terrorists is a little like handing the water hose to a suspected arsonist.

Then there’s the matter of civil liberties. Besides its legitimate law enforcement work, the FBI, for one, also has a long, long history of using its resources to go after (mostly left-wing) political dissidents, right up until the present day, when it has targeted what it calls “black identity extremists,” aka activists protesting police brutality. Meanwhile, we’re barely out of a year where we watched police and members of federal law enforcement around the country crack down on mostly peaceful protesters with extraordinary barbarity.

Luckily, there are proactive, constructive measures that can be taken by those in power to prevent something like last week from happening again. Here is a by no means exhaustive list of some of them.

JACOBINMAG.COM

Here Are 4 Better Responses to the Capitol Riot Than Expanding “Domestic Terror” Crackdowns