Billions of dollars are spent each year on security and intelligence, on keeping America safe, yet somehow ragtag right-wing rabble managed to storm into the U.S. Capitol in a mere 20 minutes.
How was that possible? On social media, MAGA goons had long been signaling their intentions – egged on by the domestic terrorist maestro who needs to be hauled from the White House in handcuffs. Former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, a Bush alum, told reporters yesterday: “You didn’t need intelligence. You just needed to read the newspaper. They were advertising, ‘Let’s go wild. Bring your guns.’ You don’t need to have an FBI investigation. You just need to be able to be able to read.”
But we really need to put the siege in context, to step back and look at the big picture. We can start by turning back the clock 12 years, by revisiting a Homeland Security report that was released back in 2009. It was titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” and it featured a grim warning:
Right-wing extremists, particularly white supremacists, “pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat…the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”
But, naturally, the Republicans went ballistic. A Texas congressman fumed that the report “painted law-abiding Americans as extremists.” House Speaker John Boehner said the report unfairly attacked “American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking the nation.” Conservative pundits called the report “a shoddy piece of propaganda.” The right-wing outrage was so intense that the new Obama administration withdrew the report and removed it from the DHS website.
That’s been the pattern ever since. The reality of home-grown right-wing terrorism keeps metastasizing, without sufficient government vigilance.
Two years ago, when the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the issue, committee chairman Jerry Nadler concluded, “White nationalism and its proliferation online have real consequences. Americans have died because of it.” But Republicans on the panel kept trying to change the subject – accusing colleges of not booking conservative speakers, stuff like that – and they brought in nutcase activist Candace Owens to dispute the panel’s findings. She testified: “White supremacy, racism, white nationalism – words that once held real meaning – have now become nothing more than election strategies.”
Trump’s longstanding attitude only made things worse. Lauding neo-Nazis as “very fine people” was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. In 2018, his regime released its National Strategy for Counterterrorism. In 34 pages, it referenced Islamic terrorism two dozen times. It mentioned white nationalism and right-wing extremism zero times. Also that year, his regime slashed the annual budget of the federal Counter Violent Extremism program from $21 million to $3 million, and it canceled a federal grant to the only recipient group that targeted right-wing extremism.
In other words – big picture, folks – the violent MAGA threat was not taken seriously because there has never been a consensus that right-wing threats should be taken seriously. And hey, maybe it’s because right-wing terrorists tend to be white people. Could that be a factor? Duh.
Former FBI agent and domestic terrorism specialist Michael German, now a fellow at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, speaks the truth: “Obviously, there is some sympathy for these far-right militants and the conspiracies they promote within law enforcement, and it will require a national initiative to determine how these attitudes are influencing the lack of response to this violence and how to root it out. The failure of the FBI and state and local law enforcement to police the public violence we’ve seen from far-right militants over the last several years has conditioned (militants) to believe they can act with impunity.”
That’s why hallowed halls were desecrated on Wednesday. That’s why a Capitol officer was murdered, bashed to death with a fire extinguisher. Trump isn’t solely to blame – the warnings go back 12 years – but our top terrorist lit the match. The blood of that cop is on his hands, and no fake Teleprompter contrition can cleanse his fetid soul.