12 January 21
We started the month at a modest but steady pace. It’s slowing now, which in turn extends the duration of the drive, and ultimately puts in jeopardy the whole organization.
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Marc Ash
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12 January 21
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Juan Cole | Vanilla ISIL: Social Media Is Forced to Treat Trump and Trumpists Like Terrorists
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Not everyone who mobbed the Capitol on 1/6 was a terrorist, but there were many terrorists among them."
Some people came armed, or with ties for taking congressional representatives and senators hostage. Some were desperately looking for Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi in order to assassinate them for, in their fevered minds, stealing the election and giving Trump’s victory treacherously to Joe Biden. Although the Capitol police had a major failure when they did not stop the breach of the building by the mob, they were remarkably successful at spiriting the politicians down to the basement and its tunnels that led to nearby offices. Otherwise the sinister events of that day, in which one policeman was deliberately crushed to death by a massed crowd in a doorway, would have claimed many more lives.
The goal of the Trump-inspired insurrection was to stop Congress from certifying the election of Joe Biden as president. Trump moved on several levels to accomplish that goal. He conspired with senators to have them object to the Arizona and Pennsylvania vote counts. In fact, he was trying to convince senators to join this effort by telephone even after the Capitol had been breached and senators were being escorted to the basement, according to Mike Lee. He also tried to disrupt the proceedings by encouraging the breach of the Capitol by a flashmob and by cadres. He may have stopped security forces from being deployed, as part of his coup, to ensure that the insurrection was not stopped prematurely. When the governor of Maryland sought authorization to send that state’s National Guard, he was stonewalled for a crucial 90 minutes, during which Pence, Pelosi and others could have been killed. If they had been, it is not clear Biden’s election could have been certified in a timely manner. Trump spent December moving his ideologues into key positions at the Pentagon, likely hoping to use them to make sure the military could not be deployed at the capitol. That is, the insurrection was in part a coup.
Terrorism was defined in the 1990s US Federal code as non-state actors deploying force against civilians to achieve a political goal. The law has been tinkered with in light of Bush’s “war on terror,” but I think the Clinton-era definition has virtues for analysis since it is very clear. Only the state has a legitimate monopoly on the use of force in modern society, according to Max Weber. Terrorists are vigilantes.
Internet terrorist networks like the Trumpist have posed a challenge to law enforcement for decades, and students of terrorism have learned a great deal about them and how to combat them. The internet is a communications medium, and terrorism is all about communication. ISIL was among the best at working social media, and initially ran rings around the governments it targeted.
The use of social media by designated terrorist groups has been a horrifying success. But the use of “de-platforming,” kicking large numbers of members off platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, has been among the more effective tools in reducing the influence and operational effectiveness of groups such as ISIL.
As of Friday, the large social media platforms are treating Trump and the more virulent forms of Trumpism the way they did ISIL, de-platforming them. Trump has been banned from Twitter and Facebook. The far right wing Parler app has been kicked off Google Play and will likely be expelled from Apple Apps. The indicted fraudster Steve Bannon has lost his YouTube perch.
The Trump insurgency used the internet at several levels, just as ISIL had done. (Here, I am talking about techniques of terrorist organizations, not comparing them for brutality. Obviously, ISIL is far more murderous by orders of magnitude).
1. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (Alex Jones, Steve Bannon), the Breitbart blog and other platforms were used by Trump and his allies to build an audience for their white nationalist ideology. One of their first messages was that the Obama presidency was illegitimate because only white men can legitimately be president. This message was expressed through a conspiracy theory denying that Obama was born in the United States.
2. This messaging was expensive. Moreover, white supremacy of the old KKK sort was also disreputable. In order to succeed, a lot of money had to be thrown at the project, and white supremacy had to be put in a business suit, given Ivy League degrees, and made respectable. Hence, the term “Alt-Right,” a fancy word for Neo-Nazi. The project was not centralized. It is not clear that Robert Mercer, a computer engineer and artificial intelligence expert who came to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, even knew Trump. His backing for Breitbart, however, turned a cranky little far right wing blog into a major publication with millions of hits a day. Breitbart in turn heavily backed Trump in 2015. So too did other far right cult-news sites such as Newsmax. And, of course, the media behemoth backing the New White Supremacy was Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, with an ideology I suspect is rooted in the old twentieth-century White Australia policy.
3. This vast social- and traditional-media operation helped create a mass viewership for Trumpism, a constituency from which activists could be recruited. It also helped him make inroads into the Republican Party. Trumpism, however ugly, is not synonymous with terrorism or insurrection, in fact very few Trumpists fit the definition given above. Likewise, I have pointed out that very few Muslim fundamentalists were ever terrorists, and many were quietists, avoiding politics. Still, Muslim terrorists emerged from fundamentalist backgrounds. Terrorism is a set of techniques for the attainment of a political goal, not an ideology. The father of Muhammad Amir Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, was an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member, an attorney in Giza. The father had apocalyptic dreams of social transformation but never harmed a soul. The son helped murder nearly 3,000 innocents. It is from the perfervid true believers that the operatives are recruited.
4. The internet could thus be used to recruit small numbers of terrorists from the vast fascist network that Trump and others created and to organize 1/6. White grievance was stoked, with hatred of minorities and immigrants. The network had mostly been used as a vote bank and for the purposes of propaganda, such as convincing people that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. It was, however, always available for more specialized recruitment and missions.
5. One phenomenon associated with social media organizing is the flashmob. A person could say, “Everybody meet at the mall at 3 pm on Saturday the 11th.” Sometimes it happens that such a suggestion is unexpectedly responded to by 5,000 teenagers and creates a security danger. 1/6 was in part a flashmob. Seasoned observers of white supremacist terrorist networks on the internet saw it building.
6. Those willing to engage in terrorism in the Capitol could also use social media to communicate with one another, using code words to fly under the radar of law enforcement. In the zeroes, al-Qaeda used the code word technique. An operative might refer to an operation as a “banquet” and to a bombing as a “very big meal.”
7. Aside from movement-building, terrorist-recruitment, and logistics such as the creation of a flashmob, the internet can also be used for stochastic or random terrorism. Word can be put out to unconnected, random individuals that Something Must be Done. Since these individuals are not part of organizations, they are typically not under surveillance by law enforcement and can act as lone wolves, taking the establishment by surprise. The flashmob at the Capitol on 1/6 was a mixture of social networks (people who knew each other face to face), internet networks (Facebook circles e.g.), and stochastic lone wolf terrorists. This mixture made the aims and techniques of the flashmob opaque.
ISIL had engaged in all these activities and used all these techniques ultimately to create a state and to attempt to terrorize potential Western adversaries such as France into standing down. (France was the former colonial power in Syria and Lebanon and takes a postcolonial interest in what happens there). ISIL activists were wizards at the production of slick video and the use of Twitter and Facebook for recruitment and operations.
Once it became clear how successful ISIL was in using Twitter, for example, the company launched a campaign to de-platform the terrorist organization by cancelling 125,000 accounts in 2016 alone. De-platforming on a large scale is devastating, since when an account is closed, all of its tweets are deleted and all of the connections established to other accounts are lost. Some of the success law enforcement has had against ISIL has derived from de-platforming, though of course the military victories in Syrian and Iraq against the organization were also important in demoting it from a phony “caliphate” to a small transnational terrorist organization.
For every successful counter-terrorism technique and advance, however, terrorists have found ways to evade them. That is, counter-terrorism is not the sort of endeavor where you can have a success and just keep doing things the same way. It is a contest in which the adversary constantly evolves. Even which groups are terrorist in character change over time, with previously nonviolent groups becoming violent, and vice versa.
Significant blows have been dealt to the Trump terrorist network in the past two days, but the vast well of support it has built up among less violent supporters, and among media enablers like Fox, Breitbart and Newsmax, will make it very difficult to root out.
President Donald Trump shows the facial mask of Rep. Andy Biggs at the international airport in Yuma, Arizona, Aug. 18, 2020. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs Helped Plan January 6 Event, Lead Organizer Says
Ryan Grim and Aída Chávez, The Intercept
Excerpt: "In December, Ali Alexander claimed he and three House Republicans were organizing the rally that led to a storming of the Capitol on January 6."
he head of the House Freedom Caucus, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, helped plan the January 6 event that culminated in a storming of the Capitol, according to Ali Alexander, a lead organizer of the gathering. Alexander, a pro-Trump personality, was an early founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement, and helped bring together various right-wing factions around a mass event on January 6, aimed to coincide with objections to the counting of Electoral College votes.
Alexander made his claim in three separate livestreams in late December, adding that Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama were also involved. “We’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event,” Alexander said. On December 8, the Arizona Republican Party boosted Alexander, asking supporters if they were willing to give their lives in the fight over the results of the presidential election.
His claim is also buttressed by a fourth video from a December 19 rally at the Arizona state Capitol, at which Alexander played a video that Biggs had supplied. In the video, Biggs mentions Brooks as his ally in the fight. Gosar spoke in person at the event.
Biggs’s connection to Alexander was reported on Sunday by the Arizona Republic, which quoted his spokesperson, Daniel Stefanski, denying any connection to Alexander. “Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point — let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest,” Stefanski said. “He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests.”
Neither Gosar nor Brooks responded to inquiries from The Intercept. Brooks, after the event, sought to legitimize political violence in a radio interview. Alexander did not respond to a text or phone call; his voicemail was full. Alexander, who adopted a new name after pleading guilty to felony property theft in 2007 and felony credit card abuse in 2008, has been suspended from Twitter and other platforms for his role in organizing the January 6 event. As the Daily Beast reported, he has said he has been unfairly blamed for the violence on January 6, and has gone underground.
Alexander’s contemporaneous claims have taken on new relevance as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has floated the possibility of expelling members of Congress who are found to have been involved in the riot. “Your views on the 25th Amendment, 14th Amendment Section 3 and impeachment are valued as we continue,” she wrote to her colleagues over the weekend.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, reads:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Alexander made his comments in a livestream posted December 28. Jason Paladino, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, archived the video from Alexander’s now-suspended account and provided it to The Intercept. “I was the person who came up with the January 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and then Congressman Andy Biggs. We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside,” Alexander said in the livestream.
Alexander reiterated the claim of collaborating with Biggs, Gosar, and Brooks a second time, using almost identical language in a December 29 livestream similarly provided by Paladino, who has tracked Alexander. “I’m the guy who came up with the idea of January 6 when I was talking with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Andy Biggs, and Congressman Mo Brooks. So we’re the four guys who came up with a January 6 event — #DoNotCertify — and it was to build momentum and pressure, and then on the day change hearts and minds of congresspeoples who weren’t yet decided, or saw everyone outside and said, ‘I can’t be on the other side of that mob,’” Alexander said a week before the event he predicted would bring more than a million people to Washington, D.C.
On December 21, Alexander made the same claim on a livestream. “We’re working closely with Congressman Mo Brooks, we’re working closely with Congressman Andy Biggs, and closely with, obviously, Congressman Paul Gosar, my great friend,” Alexander said. “I believe that the president should do something brave, I think the vice president should do something brave. I believe that that’s how we maintain the White House. … It’s a moral imperative to maintain the White House.”
The Office of Congressional Ethics has seen some of the claims made by Alexander and is looking into the connection between him, Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs, according to two sources familiar with the situation. The OCE was unable to confirm or deny whether any specific investigations are underway, in accordance with the office’s rules.
At the December 19 rally, two days before that claim, Alexander more clearly delineated the different roles Biggs and Gosar were playing. “Congressman Gosar has been the spirit animal of this movement, and he’s helped out where he could. He’s offered to call donors. We actually had our first D.C. march because he called me and he said, ‘You need to go to the Supreme Court.’ I said, ‘All right, my captain,’” Alexander told the audience at the Arizona state Capitol.
“One of the other heroes has been Congressman Andy Biggs. Now, when the good doctor Paul, now a friend, has been concentrating on the movement, Andy Biggs has been running ahead of him and whipping votes in Congress. So he stayed in Washington, D.C.,” Alexander noted, explaining that Biggs had “sent us a video.”
In the video, Biggs tells the audience:
I wish I could be with you today. I pledge to you that I’m going to keep fighting for President Trump. And when it comes to January 6, I’ll be right down there in the well of the House with my friend from Alabama, Mo Brooks, and dozens of others who will join me as we look at some of the elections around the country and we say, “How do you explain that?” And more than that, we’re going to stand up for this president and for the voters of America. That’s legal; not only is it legal, that’s constitutional; not only is it constitutional, it’s the moral thing to do. And we’re going to keep fighting. And I implore you to keep fighting too.
When asked why Biggs would record a video for someone he doesn’t know, Stefanski told The Intercept: “Rep. Gosar’s team asked for the video, and he provided it.”
On the day of the riot, Gosar used his official Twitter account to call for peaceful protest, urging Trump supporters “not to get carried away” so no one gets hurt, while spreading an entirely different message on Parler, a right-wing social media platform created in opposition to Twitter. “Americans are upset,” he wrote, sharing a photo of the rioters climbing the Capitol walls.
At the December 19 rally, Alexander also thanked Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward. “I want to thank chairwoman Kelli Ward and the Arizona Republican Party. I work in seven states, and there is no party like the Arizona GOP Party, so let’s thank Kelli Ward,” Alexander said. Ward spoke at the rally.
“Let me tell you an open secret. The president watches these rallies, and he’s watching you today,” Alexander said, leading the crowd variously in “Fight for Trump,” “1776,” and “Christ is King” chants.
That day, Donald Trump posted to his since-suspended Twitter account: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
Gosar tagged Alexander on Twitter twice on January 6, and tagged him repeatedly in his posts throughout November and December.
As the mob broke into the Capitol, Gosar was in the middle of his speech objecting to the certification of Arizona’s Electoral College votes. Once the Capitol was cleared, Gosar continued to object, as blood dried on the marble floors just steps away.
Lisa Montgomery was set to be executed by lethal injection in December. (photo: NBC)
Judge Halts Execution of Lisa Montgomery on Her Final Day
Heather Hollingsworth, Associated Press
Hollingsworth writes: "A judge has granted a stay in what was slated to be the U.S. government's first execution of a female inmate in nearly seven decades."
.... saying a court must first determine whether the Kansas woman who killed an expectant mother, cut the baby from her womb and then tried to pass off the newborn as her own is mentally competent.
The order, handed down less than 24 hours before Lisa Montgomery was set to be executed Tuesday at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, temporarily blocks the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with her execution. The Justice Department didn’t immediately comment.
Montgomery’s lawyers have said their client suffers from hallucinations — including hearing her abusive mother’s voice — as well as a disoriented sense of reality and gaps in her consciousness. They have long argued that she is not mentally fit to be executed because she suffers from serious mental illness and faced years of emotional and sexual trauma as a child.
U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon found that the court must first hold a hearing to determine whether Montgomery meets the legal criteria for competency before the execution can move forward, finding she “would be irreparably injured if the government executes her when she is not competent to be executed.”
Kelley Henry, one of Montgomery's attorneys, praised the ruling and said her client is “mentally deteriorating.”
“Mrs. Montgomery has brain damage and severe mental illness that was exacerbated by the lifetime of sexual torture she suffered at the hands of caretakers," Henry said.
Separately, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued another stay in Montgomery’s case for an appeal related to the Justice Department’s execution protocols and said briefs must be fully filed in that case by Jan. 29, raising the prospect her execution could be delayed until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Biden has said he opposes the death penalty and a spokesman told the AP he would work to end its use in office, but Biden’s team has not said whether he would halt executions after his inauguration on Jan. 20.
Montgomery drove about 170 miles (274 kilometers) from her Melvern, Kansas, farmhouse to the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy from Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old dog breeder. She strangled Stinnett with a rope before performing a crude cesarean and fleeing with the baby.
She was arrested the next day after showing off the premature infant, Victoria Jo, who is now 16 years old and hasn’t spoken publicly about the tragedy.
“As we walked across the threshold our Amber Alert was scrolling across the TV at that very moment," recalled Randy Strong, who was part of the northwest Missouri major case squad at the time.
He looked to his right and saw Montgomery holding the newborn and was awash in relief when she handed her over to law enforcement. The preceding hours had been a blur in which he photographed Stinnett’s body and spent a sleepless night looking for clues — unsure of whether the baby was dead or alive and no idea what she looked like.
But then tips began arriving about Montgomery, who had a history of faking pregnancies and suddenly had a baby. Strong, now the sheriff of Nodaway County, where the killing happened, hopped in an unmarked car with another officer. He learned while en route that the email address fischer4kids@hotmail.com that was used to set up the deadly meeting with Stinnett had been sent from a dial-up connection at Montgomery’s home.
“I absolutely knew I was walking into the killer's home,” recalled Strong, saying rat terriers ran around his feet as he approached her house. Like Stinnett, Montgomery also raised rat terriers.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett's mother, Becky Harper, sobbed as she told a Missouri dispatcher about stumbling across her daughter in a pool of blood, her womb slashed open and the child she had been carrying missing.
“It’s like she exploded or something,” Harper told the dispatcher on Dec. 16, 2004, during the desperate yet futile attempt to get help for her daughter.
Prosecutors said her motive was that Stinnett's ex-husband knew she had undergone a tubal ligation that made her sterile and planned to reveal she was lying about being pregnant in an effort to get custody of two of their four children. Needing a baby before a fast-approaching court date, Montgomery turned her focus on Stinnett, whom she had met at dog shows.
Montgomery’s lawyers, though, have argued that sexual abuse during Montgomery’s childhood led to mental illness.
Her stepfather denied the sexual abuse in videotaped testimony and said he didn’t have a good memory when confronted with a transcript of a divorce proceeding in which he admitted some physical abuse. Her mother testified that she never filed a police complaint because he had threatened her and her children.
But the jurors who heard the case, some crying through the gruesome testimony, disregarded the defense in convicting her of kidnapping resulting in death.
Prosecutors argued that Stinnett regained consciousness and tried to defend herself as Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from her womb. Later that day, Montgomery called her husband to pick her up in the parking lot of a Long John Silver’s in Topeka, Kansas, telling him she had delivered the baby earlier in the day at a nearby birthing center.
She eventually confessed, and the rope and bloody knife used to kill Stinnett were found in her car. A search of her computer showed she used it to research caesareans and order a birthing kit.
Montgomery originally was scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 8. But the execution was temporarily blocked after her attorneys contracted the coronavirus visiting her in prison.
The resumption of federal executions after a 17-year pause started on July 14. Anti-death penalty groups said President Donald Trump was pushing for executions prior to the November election in a cynical bid to burnish a reputation as a law-and-order leader.
U.S. officials have portrayed the executions as bringing long-delayed justice for victims and their families.
Police officers in riot gear walk toward the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
We Don't Need New Terror Laws to Defeat the Far Right
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
Marcetic writes: "Last week's riot was an attempt to undermine the nation's democratic procedures. The response from some political elites is unwittingly trying to do the same through calls for unnecessary new terror laws."
ou may remember Arkansas senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed. Surveying the chaos, carnage, and “mob rule” that had engulfed the country, Cotton asserted that “strong leaders maintain order not only to protect their people from criminal violence but also to preserve confidence in civilization,” and called for protesters and rioters to be put down with military force if need be.
“No quarter for insurrectionists,” he insisted, meaning the military and law enforcement were to kill, not capture, the protesters, an order that is unambiguously barred by both US and international law.
You may remember this. Or you may not. Because this wasn’t the infamous, unhinged op-ed Cotton published in the New York Times back in June 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests, which sparked widespread outrage and internal revolt within the paper that published it, leading to the resignation of an editor, and a retraction and apology, with Times management acknowledging that the piece was “incendiary,” “needlessly harsh, and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate.”
No, this was a Wall Street Journal op-ed Cotton published just last week in response to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. The new piece makes virtually the same arguments, and about virtually the same group of protesters. (Like the first op-ed, this one was heavily focused on the anti-police brutality movement of last year). What’s different is the accepting silence and lack of outrage that has greeted the more recent op-ed.
These very different responses to what are in essence identical op-eds calling for police and military violence against protesters aren’t a coincidence. They reflect an alarming and swiftly emerging consensus within the political and media elite in the wake of last week’s events, that the mass of Trump supporters who rushed the Capitol — not just the small number who came armed and appeared ready to carry out some sort of organized violence, but even those who merely walked around and took selfies — must be treated as terrorists and dealt with exactly as Cotton has fantasized about dealing with all civil unrest.
Long before the dust had cleared, CNN almost instantly approved the use of the label “domestic terrorism” for last week’s events, which its reporters wasted no time in deploying. Lawmakers and political figures, liberal and conservative, united to do the same, whether Lindsay Graham, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or the GOP communications director. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), one of the group of CIA Democrats recruited by the party in 2018, told MSNBC it was now domestic terrorism — not Russia, as the party has been trying to terrify its constituents into believing for four years — that was the country’s biggest national security threat.
This framing was adopted almost immediately, meaning it was prompted by what commentators called the initial wave of “silly costumes, people taking selfies,” and not the “darker, more violent, more sinister” images that came to the fore later, depicting a smaller cabal of armed protesters apparently embarking on organized violence.
“Every person who forced their way into the Capitol should be arrested,” wrote Vox reporter German Lopez just hours after the incident. “Lock them all up.”
“There needs to be a vigorous effort to use the extensive available photography to identity as many mob members as possible, arrest them, try them, and punish them,” wrote liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias the day of. “If this goes down in the books as a fun day at the zoo for the people involved, we will see more of it.”
“The people who breached our capitol and vandalized it, urinating and defecating and smashing historic and precious artifacts that belong to the country, not to them personally, are criminals and terrorists,” wrote MSNBC anchor Joy Reid some days later. “Every one of them should be behind bars. No exceptions.”
Such comments weren’t referring to those protestors who have been suspected of planning to attack lawmakers or take them hostage. For these commentators, doing any kind of property damage in the Capitol, or even simply entering it, was what constituted serious lawbreaking, even terrorism, and needed be punished “with the full force of the law” (as Cotton put it) — a standard that would easily ensnare as terrorists everyone from labor rights campaigners and antiwar protesters, to anti-police brutality demonstrators, a small minority of whom have carried out property destruction and physical violence against police and even lawmakers.
Meanwhile, even as evidence increasingly indicated that police were involved in and supported last week’s events, the idea of vesting them with more power has emerged as the de facto response to them. Figures as disparate as conservative scholar Norman Ornstein and Politico contributing editor Bill Scher have come out in support of a domestic terrorism law, which Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is now swiftly introducing.
This is all happening even as terrorism experts, usually the most bullish in using tragedies to push for vesting military and law enforcement with more powers and resources, are warning of the dangers to civil liberties that such a law would pose. And it’s mere months after collective alarm that Trump was using the national security state for an authoritarian or even fascist power grab, and widespread warnings that this exact kind of law is a threat to freedom, democracy, and people of color. It would be absurd if it wasn’t so alarming.
Make no mistake. The purpose of all of this is not merely to go after the participants in last week’s incident at the Capitol, but to empower the government’s repressive bureaucracies to clamp down on all types of civil unrest and protest. Some of those calling for J20-style mass arrests and prosecution of those involved last week are, helpfully, honest about this.
When Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf predicted that the measures and powers activated against those involved in the riot will be “also used in the future against leftists,” Yglesias responded that it “seems like an okay outcome,” because “the prolonged looting and vandalism across many cities [last summer] was also very bad and reeling it in on all sides would be appropriate.”
Cotton himself has recognized this shift, and is positively giddy. As he put it last week:
Some liberals appear to have shed their reservations about the use of force now that the mob carries different signs and chants different slogans. Some of the same pundits who called roughly half the country “fascists” last year for thinking troops may be necessary to restore order now ask where the troops were on Wednesday.
Poised to capitalize on this emerging liberal-conservative alliance is President-elect Joe Biden, whose vaunted ability to work with Republicans has been almost exclusively limited to increasing the size and power of the national security state. Biden has played major roles in at least three Republican-led assaults on civil liberties over his career, all justified initially by national security and terrorism, and all ultimately directed at nonviolent Americans for unrelated activities.
Biden was a key architect of the federal “war on drugs,” which has in practice become a civil liberties–shredding war on the poor and people of color, and resulted in state murders like those of Breonna Taylor. He played a major role in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, passed in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, later called “one of the worst statutes ever passed” for gutting habeas corpus and sending innocent men to the execution chamber. And he has relentlessly claimed credit, with good reason, for the Patriot Act, the widely criticized surveillance bill passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks that has been used to go after antiwar activists, law-abiding Muslims, and many others (Biden, in fact, was disappointed the bill didn’t go further).
Long before last week, Biden had quietly pledged to pass a domestic terrorism law that would grant Trump the kind of powers that civil libertarians have long feared Trump might have available to use, and he was quick to label the Capitol protesters “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” Biden’s major goals as president are to restore a sense of “normalcy,” and to demonstrate that the typically gridlocked US political system can still work.
Ramming through a domestic terrorism law could quickly fulfill both goals, allowing Democrats and Republicans to come together on a high-profile issue, and giving the government more power to clamp down on future civil unrest — including, as liberals like Yglesias and reactionaries like Cotton fervently hope, when that unrest is driven by issues progressives care about.
Don’t let anyone tell you that opposing such measures and raising these concerns means you support far-right terrorism, as some will inevitably charge. Such lazy talking points are the hallmark of authoritarians who wish to silence debate and use crises and tragedies as excuses to increase repressive powers as quickly as possible.
There are clear, narrow measures that can and should be taken in response to this incident, including investigating and prosecuting those who planned violence, launching an independent investigation into the security failures of last week, and running a broader inquiry into, and subsequent house-cleaning of, far-right elements in law enforcement throughout the country. Whether you decide to call last week a protest, a riot, an insurrection, or terrorism, it makes little sense to vest even more repressive powers in precisely those people who are suspected of being complicit in it.
There is a clear thread running through the protests of 2020 to what happened last week, and that’s the far right, authoritarian, and conspiratorial thinking that is more and more infecting US law enforcement. Unfortunately, for the political and media elite, the problem is a fear of protest and unrest more generally. The fears of authoritarianism under Trump weren’t crazy. Giving the next Trump everything he needs to pull it off is.
Chad Wolf. (photo: Getty Images)
Acting US Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf Resigns
Lauren Gambino, Guardian UK
Gambino writes: "His departure, he said, was compelled in part by 'recent events' and by court rulings invalidating some of the Trump administration's immigration policies, citing findings that Wolf was illegally serving in the role."
Wolf, who played key role in president’s hardline immigration policies, says exit prompted in part by ‘recent events’
had Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, who helped enact key pieces of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda, resigned on Monday, as the nation confronts heightened security threats after an attack on the US capitol by supporters of the president.
Wolf said in a letter to staff at the Department of Homeland Security that he had intended to remain in office until the inauguration of Joe Biden but would instead step down at 11.59pm on Monday night.
His departure, he said, was compelled in part by “recent events” and by court rulings invalidating some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, citing findings that Wolf was illegally serving in the role.
“I am saddened to take this step, as it was my intention to serve the Department until the end of this Administration,” said Wolf, who had been serving in an acting capacity since November 2019 and was never confirmed by the Senate.
A report by the Government Accountability Office determined that Wolf’s appointment to the role violated the rules of succession and as such he had been serving unlawfully in the role. Judges cited that finding in court rulings to invalidate some of the policy changes enacted by the Trump administration during his tenure.
On Monday, Wolf cited the “ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary” as a reason for stepping down.
“These events and concerns increasingly serve to divert attention and resources away from the important work of the Department in this critical time of a transition of power,” he wrote.
The letter does not explicitly mention last week’s assault on the Capitol, which Wolf described as “tragic and sickening” in a statement on 7 January. In that statement, he also called on Trump to “strongly condemn” the violence that had been carried out in his name and committed to staying in his position to ensure an “orderly transition” to a Biden administration. He is the third cabinet secretary to resign following the attack.
Pete Gaynor, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will take over as acting homeland security secretary, less than two weeks before the department will help coordinate security for Biden’s inauguration amid heightened threats of violence and protests.
As a last act, Wolf announced that he had authorized the US Secret Service to begin enhanced security operations on 13 January, nearly a full week before the inauguration ceremony, “in light of events of the past week and the evolving security landscape leading up to the inauguration”. Before the riots, the secret service was due to begin implementing special security measures on 19 January.
During his time in office, Wolf was among the president’s most loyal lieutenants, eagerly stepping into the spotlight to defend the administration’s actions before Congress and on cable news. This summer, he became the public face of the administration’s crackdown on protesters in the wake of nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racism. His decision to deploy tactical agents to detain protesters in Portland sparked national backlash and criticism that he was bending the department to Trump’s political agenda.
Wolf’s resignation comes hours before Trump is due to visit Alamo, Texas, where he will survey progress on the US-Mexico border wall.
“I leave knowing that the Department has positioned itself for an orderly and smooth transition to President-elect Biden’s DHS team,” he wrote. “Welcome them, educate them, and learn from them. They are your leaders for the next four years – a time which undoubtedly will be full of challenges and opportunities to show the American public the value of DHS and why it is worth the investment.”
Riot police surround a protester in Hong Kong, China. (photo: Getty Images)
China Plans Further Hong Kong Crackdown After Mass Arrest
James Pomfret, Reuters
Pomfret writes: "The arrest of more than 50 democrats in Hong Kong last week intensifies a drive by Beijing to stifle any return of a populist challenge to Chinese rule and more measures are likely, according to two individuals with direct knowledge of China's plans."
READ MORE
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to know who defaced the animal in the headwaters of the Homosassa River in Citrus County. (photo: NBC 6)
Florida Manatee Has 'TRUMP' Etched Into Its Side; Officials Seek Information
Doha Madani, NBC News
Madani writes: "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to know who defaced the animal in the headwaters of the Homosassa River in Citrus County."
The massive sea cow was swimming in the Homosassa River in Citrus County when it was spotted with the graffiti on its body.
n investigation has been opened after a manatee in a Florida river had the word "TRUMP" written onto its side, officials said Monday.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to know who defaced the animal in the headwaters of the Homosassa River in Citrus County. The manatee did not appear to be hurt, the agency said, because it seemed that the word was etched into algae on its body.
The manatee enjoys protection in state and federal law. Manatees, often referred to as sea cows, were on the endangered species list until 2017, when they were downgraded to a threatened species because of increased population growth.
Manatees move slowly, which has made them vulnerable to fishing nets, motorboat engines and human interaction.
The creature comes under shields of the national Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act of 1978. Federal conviction of harassing a manatee is punishable by a fine of $50,000 and up to a year in prison, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Fish and Wildlife asks that anyone with information call its wildlife crime tips hotline at 1-844-397-8477.
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