At Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall in the Editor’s Blog (member’s only) lays down the main reason “the US government’s vaunted intelligence capabilities were caught utterly flatfooted” during the Capitol insurrection.
A key cause of the failure is that no one wanted to raise an alarm about a security threat from the President’s own supporters. Indeed, no one really wanted to be caught investigating it...we can’t understand this development without understanding or simply remembering that this is our fourth or fifth round of this cycle: the institutional Republican party rushing forward to claim that any effort to combat far right terrorism or organized political violence amounts to a crackdown on conservatives or bias against the GOP.
As someone who’s grew up in the 1960’s and ‘70’s it seemed that all domestic terrorist that made the National News were on the extreme Political Left, the WUO and SLA being some of the main groups (After we ended the Vietnam war they disappeared).
My first awareness of the Right Wing Domestic Terrorist (RWDT) Groups was when I was stationed at Fort Lewis WA in the 1980’s. A nasty POS named Robert Matthews as part of a White Supremacist Terror Group called The Order was responsible for the murder of a Colorado Talk Show host and several bank robberies (don’t ask why). He was cornered by the FBI on Whidbey Island and refused to surrender, resulting in (literally) a fiery death. Surprisingly there were no screams from the right or talk show host bemoaning Government overreach. Amazing what happens when you still had the Fairness Doctrine in place.
All this changed after the siege at Ruby Ridge and the raid on the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, TX. (It did not help that both incidents were not the finest hour for law enforcement). When President Bill Clinton appointed the most diverse cabinet in US history the anti-government types (read White Power Movement minus the Klan Robes) made these 2 events the symbol of all their grievances and the Mighty Wurlitzer echoed this paranoia.
Even after McVeigh and Nichols blew up the Federal Building in 1995 the RWDT was given a free pass. AG Janet Napolitano tried to issue a Report in 2010 and the GOP Con's forced her to retract it. The Bundy’s openly flaunted flouted the law and paid no penalty. The Michigan Militia Cos Players show up at the State Capitol in May of this year armed to the teeth and were not arrested. Indeed, AG William Barr’s Statement 2 weeks later specifically mentioned who he believed was really responsible for the violence and domestic terrorism:
The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”
For the last 30 years the States and the Federal Government (even under a Democratic President and Congress) have been blackmailed by the Conservatives into appeasing these RWT’s under the false illusion that if you were not confrontational, they would just go away.
It does not work.
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
Rudyard Kipling
Dane-geld