Let Us Protect You
Trust us - this shiny new domestic terrorism fear is so big that we need more power, fewer rights, less debate, less oversight
A specter is haunting America - the specter of domestic terrorism. The only questions are: how terrified should you be?
And if 17 intelligence agencies, with a $62bn budget, 57 existing federal crimes of terrorism to prosecute with, and a prison or parole population of 7 million isn’t enough to keep us safe, what will be enough?
Read on to find out - and to see additional content at the bottom including what we can learn from Star Wars and a roundup of key stories from the past two weeks
Be afraid
The media is afraid. And they are never ones to blow something out of proportion. When they say that our democracy is under threat, we can trust it. Just see a small sample of New York Times coverage:
The Department for Homeland Security is afraid. They even released a National Terrorism Advisory bulletin. There is nothing quite so terrifying as having no “information to indicate a specific, credible threat.” The National Guard may remain in DC until after summer. Scary stuff.
Even stout hearted intelligence veterans are afraid. Trusted guardian of democracy and Senate oversight committee hacker John Brennan lamented on MSNBC about the growing insurgency threat. But he took heart in the Biden administration’s “lazer-like” focus on this “unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians”.
The libertarians are coming. Be afraid.
Now hand over power and we’ll protect you
These domestic extremists are the new bullies on the playground. And when you’re cowering beneath the slide, the logical thing to do is put your faith in an even bigger bully. In the continental playground that is America, the Federal Government is the spottiest, most foul-breathed bully around, and he is going to crack some skulls, playground fight etiquette be dammed.
Life imitates art. Beware the fearmongers
So what is our playground savior doing? They are arresting people for activity that in the past would just get monitored. The FBI may get more resources to counter domestic extremism.
But using current powers more aggressively is small potatoes. What we really need is new, bigger, better powers. The cogs are in motion to pass a domestic terrorism bill, with the Senate holding meetings and Biden issuing an executive order.
Every bully needs an associate. And the tech titans are the perfect partners. Misinformation is the oxygen feeding the fire of domestic extremism, which Amazon, Google, and Apple were willing to douse when they crushed Parler. Weirdly enough, alternative platforms like Parler are also the oxygen for tech competition. Two birds one stone I guess.
The media is the cheerleader that completes the dream team to protect us. When intelligence agencies are constrained by civil liberties, why not just leak non-anonymised smartphone location data to the New York Times? And why bother with government censorship when the media is so good at attacking wrongthink? And advocating to get right wing Fox News investigated?
But Seriously…
…domestic extremism is the latest Big Fear. It’s 2021’s answer to Ebola, ISIS, Russian agents in the White House and more It is just the latest example of the media monetizing fear, and the government using a massive public cortisol spike to increase its power.
Fear has become the new norm. After a brief lull in the 90s, when the threat of nuclear annihilation all but disappeared, it has just been one existential fear after another. 9/11, Islamist terrorism, climate change, mass shootings, ISIS, immigration, recession, Ebola, a Russian agent in white house, racist police, fascism, Covid, and now domestic extremism.
Politicians have an excellent track record of using this fear to get what they want. Lyndon Johnson had a great big fear to work with in the form of nuclear annihilation, and he did not hesitate to use it in his re-election campaign with this eery attack ad.
George Bush took some artistic liberties with his attack ad on John Kerry, which used the fear of terrorist attacks to help win the 2004 election.
And of course Trump was a fearmonger’s dream target. Sure, why not link Trump to genuine fascism and genocide so that your side wins the political game?
Goldwater didn’t want to atomise humanity (probably). Kerry wasn’t suggesting that we let people bring bombs onto planes. And Trump disavowed white supremacy about 38 times. But that is by the by. When there is a nicely baked attack narrative marinaded in fear ready to serve your audience, you don’t serve them cold cuts instead because of some quibble about the truth.
Where does this go? With luck, only so far - given the Constitution. But there could be a resurgence of support to revive NSA mass surveillance programmes. And the intelligence agency - technopoly - media alliance can achieve a lot outside of government channels. For example, by tech platforms agreeing to censor speech that protects government interests, in order to avoid regulation.
But the message is clear that politicians and the media are expert (and incentivised) to use fear. And that emergency powers, once given, are seldom temporary. The Patriot Act rumbled on for 19 years, after initially having a 4 year term. The AUMF is still going strong over 20 years after 9/11, and has been used over 40 times in 18 countries.
Going even further back in history, to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, we all know what happened when the Galactic Senate gave Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers.
In addition to the usual article, this week (because it’s late) there is also a roundup of recent stories by theme. The themes being a few of the Horsemen of Concentrated Power:
Executive Power: the filibuster is a blocker to the Biden agenda so has switched from key check / balance to gross impediment to democracy. See here, here, and here. Checks and balances more broadly are under attack here too.
Media: the New York Times parted ways with its long time science reporter for using the N-word 2 years ago in a discussion about the N-word, saying intent does not matter. They took flak for that, and the manner in which they did it (first investigating and not firing him, then succombing to staff anger) here and here. See excellent longer piece on the forces driving the NYT that direction here. A few outlets realised that now the election is over, they can do their job and report about how the Lincoln Project (a snazzy collection of ex-Republican Big Names that worked to prevent Trump from winning re-election) sort of looks like a fraudulent, sexual assault concealing mess (see a good take on this here). And in terms of shit writing, see Thomas Friedman’s claim that Trump worked with Russia to suppress black voter turnout here (which funnily enough he uses to justify increased government control of the internet to control fake news). He links to this article for evidence, which makes no such claim.
Tech: surprise! Big tech grew massively during Covid! Police requested smartphone location data from Google while investigating the BLM riots in Minneapolis. Prvacy focused apps Signal and Telegram are in the cross hairs for…being good at privacy. China banned the Clubhouse app. Luckily in America the government does not have to do things like that because tech titans will do it for them.
And in case you missed it, some election updates:
Time had a long piece about the shadow campaign to save the election. From fraud? Or from Trump winning? Hard to say
In the New York House election where Republican Claudia Tenney declared victory with a 109 vote margin, democrat lawyer Mark Elias is suing to have votes recounted, alleging voting machine irregularities.
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