Right Wing terrorist Robert Dear blurts out his guilt in court, in December, 2015.
It was back in November, 2015 that domestic terrorist Robert Lewis Dear, 57, had been arrested and charged with shooting three people to death and wounding nine others, including five police officers. This was at a Planned Parenthood clinic here in Colorado Springs, in which he took aim using an AK-47, the same type of weapon used by the White Nationalist terrorist Patrick Crusius in the El Paso butchery.
At the time I recall going at it with my (now deceased) brother Mike, a strong NRA guy, e.g.
who himself owned an AR, and leaned toward Rightist ideology, though to my knowledge he never entertained ideations of retribution against Jews, undocumented immigrants or LGBT people. Nonetheless, he did feel Dear was getting a raw deal - and like other right wingers- had come out strongly against a 2009 Dept. Of Homeland Security report by domestic terror specialist Darryl Johnson. Johnson at the time headed up a 6-person team at DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis which had focused on right wing extremism and terrorism The paper produced at the time exposed a linkage between Christian fundie religious terrorists (like Dear) who kill abortion providers, as well as anti-immigration and other anti-Semitic extremists.
Alas, the report was pilloried by conservatives and GOP groups as picking on their lot while leaving the left alone, and ignoring the Islamic terrorists. In the words of Johnson - a self-described conservative Republican: "I didn't think the whole Republican party would basically throw a hissy fit."
Well, they sure did and the effect grew as conservative media's usual whiners (like O'Reilly et al on FOX) painted it as a political hit job by the Obama administration. My brother Mike (in his blog postings), also depicted it this way, to the point of suggesting Obama had "ordered it". Ultimately - following the "squeaky wheel" model - funding and oversight for domestic terrorism was pulled back in reaction to right wing squeals. In its wake, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano issued an apology to the American Legion (since one report section concerned returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets) and the number of domestic terror analysts fell to zero by 2010. It was literally a gold-engraved invitation for the rats and roaches to crawl out of the rotting, racist national woodwork.
No one, certainly in the wider media, was able to see how the spread of domestic right wing terror was to metastasize like a cancer gone wild. Indeed, Johnson's report and the energy devoted to the right wing terrorists proved prescient given that since 9/11 far right extremists (including white nationalists) have been responsible for 3 times as many attacks in the U.S. as Islamic extremists. That stat alone speaks with force to the idea that the full power of the national security state now needs to be brought to bear on the domestic terror elements - including surveillance of all their web cesspools and hiding places. Not necessarily to shut them down but to surveil them for information much as the national security apparatus now does for Isis and al Qaeda bad actors.
This follows the advice of former FBI special agent Cliff Watts in his recent WSJ Review piece, 'Our New Terrorism Problem' (Aug. 10-11, p. C1) wherein he writes:
"Today's white supremacist terrorists band together online, further radicalize themselves and fire one another up in much the same manner as their jihadist counterparts."
For example, to give an idea of this "firing up" we learned (WSJ, 'Suspect Got Ideas Online', Aug. 6, p. A9):
"In the hours after the attack a discussion broke out on 8chan about his place in the history of mass shooters. One commenter offered: ' The new guy deserves some praise, he reached almost a third of the high score."
This referred to the fact these cockroaches actually keep score by using the published death counts. Hence, at the time the largest such toll was due to the Orlando Pulse nightclub killer (59) and at the time of the comment Crusius had slaughtered 20. (The death toll has since climbed to 22). Still other roaches in the vile den of losers were unimpressed and mocked Crusius for failing to kill more people, or for targeting Hispanics instead of Jews.
Others spewed out praise of the New Zealand mass murderer with this drivel: "Hail St. Tarrant!" referring to Brenton Tarrant, the slime who killed 51 Muslims in two Christchurch mosques.
Crusius himself, appeared to lose nerve when first posting on this roach den, writing (ibid.):
"I have to do this before I lose my nerve. I figured that an underprepared attack and a meh manifesto is better than no attack and no manifesto."
And of course, the most outspoken in the 8chan roach nest urged him on to action. But stop for a moment: If the FBI had been monitoring the site they'd have been alerted to his plans, put a GPS or other tracking on his vehicle, then taken him out before he even got to the outskirts of El Paso Then 22 lives could have been saved. As Cliff Watts aptly noted (ibid.):
"The overall goal is clear and urgent: detect violent white supremacists online and intercept them on the ground by increasing the volume of intelligence and the speed with which it is shared among federal, state and local law enforcement officers."
Adding:
"As white supremacists have been pushed from more mainstream social media platforms, they have descended on less policed, more anonymous platforms such as Gab.com and 8chan."
It is true Crusius' manifesto on 8chan didn't include specific plans to carry out the shooting and as the WSJ piece notes "it isn't clear law enforcement would have taken action even if they had known about it."
This is because "there are many vague threats of hate-filled violence" including 2,730 in a single hour two days following the shooting. Fair enough, but we've since learned Crusius purchased an AK-style weapon and his mother Lori had alerted local authorities. That ought to have been a major red flag in tandem with his 8chan post, especially on the "fear of losing his nerve". Which I would always take 100 times more seriously than an ordinary threat, i.e. minus any expression of fear. And as Cliff Watts points out, this is all the more urgent given "violent white supremacism in the U.S. has grown from the bottom up, not the top down."
Basically then, we are dealing with a leaderless, paranoid pseudo resistance to "elite" democratic norms and laws. This means other (peer) extremists, like on 8chan, or the Daily Stormer, will generally be the immediate stimulus for any attacks, not some distant authority - such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who directs the Isis rats. Thus we have a spontaneously emergent - but malignant -- social media entity that irrationally glorifies the worst solo mass killers while extolling their monstrous deeds - and challenging others to surpass them. In many ways, as bio-ethnologist Jacques Monod would put it, we are confronting one of the most malignant mind viruses. And just like smallpox or the Ebola virus it needs to be eradicated but there are right and wrong ways to do it.
Current 8chan operator Jim Watkins describes his site in preposterously vanilla terms as "just an open piece of paper for writing on" (Sunday Denver Post, p. 7 A).. Hardly! It's more akin to an open cyber cesspit inviting every passing hater and miscreant misogynist (incel) or white supremacist to spout his venom and violence and add to the existing, overflowing effluent.
Fortunately, Cliff Watts in his WSJ piece, offers ways to neutralize this effluent and its more violent, would be terror perpetrators Many of his proposals also ought to be acceptable in terms of the First Amendment. My brother Mike always would say 'Show me a decent way to temper online speech - say to prevent mass murders- and I'll accept it!" Well, I believe Mr. Watts has found a way and I suspect Mike might concur if he was still alive.
For example, Watts bids us to honestly acknowledge that "U.S. counterterrorism is behind the times". This also references Director Chris Wray's recent testimony that "the Bureau has recorded roughly as many domestic terrorism arrests as international terror ones in 2019": and yet the FBI still dedicates more investigators to the latter. The question is 'Why?' The answer provided is simply that the "FBI has more resources to tackle the jihadist problem and more legal authority to pursue its adherents."
But this needs to change if the statistics for victims keep accumulating as they are. The most direct way to resolve this issue, which even Mr. Watts has advocated for (in a recent appearance on 'All In' ) is by using human intelligence in conjunction with extending surveillance of social media sites where these dregs of society congregate As he also writes:
"Law enforcement and social media companies must also work more transparently together. to detect likely attackers and stem the flood of terrorist and violent content."
This is already being done in the case of child pornography and federal and local authorities can now profile the creators, traffickers, traders and related offenders, as well as track them across the web - to the point of arrest and then prosecution. So why not a similar method to ferret out the mass killers hiding out in assorted rat warrens? Well, it's largely a matter of will, political and legal. One answer for Watts is to create a "joint center for social media intelligence where investigators and personnel at the tech companies share information about extremists." This could work, assuming the social media outfits cooperate, but an even better solution would be to do what is already done for surveillance of child porn creators and purveyors: assign specific task force units to monitor activity 24/7 on supremacist- incel sites - and then drop the hammer when the line is crossed and a transaction or attack is evident.. This can be done with or without social media companies' cooperation. Above all, it ought to be done in the name of national security just as was invoked to monitor Islamic radical attacks. Watt also adds that: "Investigators must know what to look for. That means a comprehensive study of domestic extremist ideologies, however confused or vitriolic."
We can no longer afford to keep separating the two forms of terror, and then claim we are advocating for the general welfare, and protecting the most vulnerable. But when more people were murdered last year by right wing extremists than any year since 1995 (Oklahoma City bombing) and the result is to defund the FBI's counterterrorism domestic task force- well, it's not getting done. No way in hell. Begging the question that if Islamic terrorists were responsible for committing 75% of all extremist -related fatalities (from 2009-18) would such a blind eye similarly be evident? I doubt it.
Watts' other suggestion of conducting online interventions to match right wing extremists with counselors (to provide an "off ramp") could also work. But as my psychology post doc niece Shayl put it: "Yeah, but only if the choice offered is between seeing a counselor or getting ten years in the slammer!"
She has a point. No intervention toward matching a miscreant with a case worker is likely to be of any use if it's purely voluntary.
What about the availability of military -style weapons like the AR-15, or AK-47? Cliff Watts pulls no punches in his take that these don't belong on American streets - or in the hands of any respectable citizen. As he writes (ibid.):
"Reducing the impact of domestic terrorism requires restricting the weaponry available to radicals. America should treat guns much the same way it does cars. Few Americans would want to share the road with unlicensed, untrained and uninsured motorists, but with guns we don't require even one of these elements to protect the public."
Which, of course, is pure, unadulterated insanity, as I often told Mike, including in responding to his then blog posts. Most salient is Watts next point:
"Weapons of war, like the assault rifles used by white supremacists in recent weeks....have no place on American streets. Today's terrorists have cops outgunned."
And as I repeatedly told Mike even after he got his own AR-15, one doesn't need such a weapon to protect home and hearth - OR for hunting. That is bare foolishness. Nor is there some 2nd amendment right to own such weapons, as I previously posted, see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html
As blogger David Lindorff put it soon after the Parkland massacre:
"An AR-15 is not a hunting weapon. In fact there’s a reason it’s called an “assault rifle.” As a hunter, unless you’re an atrocious shot and are hunting random flocks of small birds, you certainly don’t need to be able to fire powerful ammunition of two bullets per second — the rate at which experts say an ordinary person could be able to pull the trigger."
By contrast, the knife -- no matter how sharp or large- must usually be wielded by an assailant in an up close and personal manner. It isn't like taking aim from 20 or more feet away and dispatching victims with the touch of a trigger. To kill seventeen people even in the same room - the assailant would have to work demonically, stabbing from one to the other, and there is no assurance any given slash would be a fatal one say like an AR-15 bullet fired into a chest. Even if it took only 3 seconds per stab, this is much longer than firing 2 rounds per second. And you can't assume the people will just stand there like tackling dummies and let you do them in, oh no. They will react and more than likely several will gang up to take the assailant down.
This is the first point that the assault rifle lovers must be forced to admit, that it is far more difficult to kill with a knife than an assault weapon.
Cliff Watts has admirably addressed the menace of domestic terrorism with a multi-pronged approach that ought to be taken seriously and implemented with due dispatch. If it isn't we will see many more of these slaughters - and the extremists behind them will become ever more emboldened. The time is now to act and for the sane and rational to cease making excuses. As Watts noted,the targeted minorities - whether Jews, Hispanics or LGBT people - "still haven't been properly heard or supported by their political leaders." That needs to change and pronto. Either we're serious about all forms of terrorism- and that includes the use of assault weapons- or we are merely play- acting when we profess outrage at mass shootings such as occurred in El Paso.
See also:
And:
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