radicalize

radicalize https://www.dailykos.com/news/radicalize News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Tue, 28 Jan 2020 01:47:47 +0000 Tue, 28 Jan 2020 01:47:47 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Boston to Houston: a right to be radicalized? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/5/7/1207033/-Boston-to-Houston-a-right-to-be-radicalized "As Tamerlan's devotion to Islam became more intense and radicalized, Dzhokhar showed signs of his brother's influence" - <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/curious-case-burying-tamerlan-tsarnaev-anywhere-cambridge/64895/">The Atlantic Wire</a>, May 5, 2013 "A YouTube account apparently belonging to Tamerlan Tsarnaev gives tantalising hints of his radicalisation before the Boston bombings" - <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/22/tamerlan-tsarnaev-youtube-jihadist-radicalisation">The (UK) Guardian</a>, April 22, 2013 "Rojanksy will speak to the notion that Islamic extremists, and Chechen ties, contributed to the radicalization of the suspected bombers" - <a href="http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/24/tonight-the-roles-of-islam-and-the-radicalization-of-the-brothers-tsarnaev/?hpt=pm_mid">programming notes</a> for the April 24, 2013, episode of CNN's Piers Morgan Live [emphasis mine] Since the horrible events in Boston, last month, it is impossible to browse a news site or watch television news without having the word thrown in your face like a water soaked towel. Guantanamo radicalizes. Middle East politics radicalizes. Islam radicalizes. The Internet radicalizes. "I think that this is a very difficult challenge when you have individuals who are self-radicalizing, they’re not part of some massive conspiracy or a network," President Obama told a Univision interviewer, Friday. To that end, Newsweek's Michael Moynihan, in a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/05/06/michael-moynihan-my-week-in-the-jihad-online-terror-underworld.html">piece</a> where he uses a pseudonym to explore extremist websites, defines "self-radicalization" as "the process by which those unconnected to organized jihad are lured toward extremism via the Web." If the online snuff films and photographs of dead children that Moynihan describes are part of the jihadist call to arms, then coming down from the dark cloud of the terrorist underworld can only be countered with an equally potent validation of community and belonging. "A lot of these videos, they are very emotive," Haris Tarin, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/may-3-2013/muslim-antiterrorism/16296/">told PBS</a>' Bob Abernethy, last week. "These sermons, they use violence and gruesome images to tug at the emotion of young people." But while the media is scrambling to compartmentalize "self-radicalization" as a behavior in which only a handful of sociopathic,  homegrown Islamic terrorists engage, there's one place in the American conversation where radicalization from an organized group gets only minimal attention from the press, as an existential threat. I'm speaking, of course, of the National Rifle Association. In Houston, this past weekend, the NRA paraded speaker after speaker, who railed against Obama and gun safety advocates with the hateful energy of a radical imam. Through the exhortations of their leadership, the NRA are behaving like American jihadis. Like the terrorist who twists the Qur'an to defend their murderous ways, the anti-government, cultural isolationists of the NRA re-interpret the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights to justify arming themselves for revolution. "I am looking at an army," freshman Texas Senator, and Tea Party darling, Ted Cruz, told the 70,000 convention attendees, after saying he felt like Gen. George Patton, because he was speaking in front of a "ginormous American flag." "Stand for America. Fight for America," former GOP presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, put to the crowd. Newly installed NRA president, Jim Porter, reminded the conference, "[You] here in this room are the fighters for freedom. We are the protectors." Wayne La Pierre reminded the audience that the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey, background check bill, two weeks ago, "is but one skirmish in what could only be described as a long war against our Constitutional rights." <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/06/nine-extreme-moments-from-the-nras-2013-annual/193928">Media Matters: Nine Extreme Moments From The NRA's 2013 Annual Meeting</a> The war analogy that the NRA brought to the fore in Houston may be shocking and scary to most of the ninety percent of Americans who want background checks, but it is a consistent echo on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security. In 2009, DHS published a nine page, unclassified study, called <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf">Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment</a>. In it, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis cites the 2008, Supreme Court decision known as District of Columbia v. Heller, "in which the Court reaffirmed an individual’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment... but left open to debate the precise contours of that right." The report goes on to warn: <blockquote>"Because debates over constitutional rights are intense, and parties on all sides have deeply held, sincere, but vastly divergent beliefs, violent extremists may attempt to co-opt the debate and use the controversy as a radicalization tool."</blockquote> Maybe this is the line they were talking about, from La Pierre: "No matter what it takes, we will never give up or compromise our Constitutional freedom - not one single inch." Or this one, from Porter, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/jim-porter-nra_n_3211287.html">at a pro gun event</a> during last year's presidential campaign: "I say, let me tell you something bad that [Obama]’s done. His entire administration is anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment." <div class="dkimg-r"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/31269/small/ObamaZombie.jpg?1367931523" alt="" defang_rocky="" defang_target="" defang_actually="" defang_sold="" defang_by="" defang_a="" defang_vendor="" defang_at="" defang_the="" defang_nra="" /> <div class="dkimg-cap">"Rocky Zombie" target actually sold by a vendor at the 2013 NRA convention</div> </div> Or, maybe it's simply the theme of Houston's gun gathering, "Stand and Fight." Of course, it could also be things like the Obama effigy they use for target practice. The folks at the NRA aren't arming themselves against some possible future tyranny. For them, the tyranny is here, now. They're just trying to convince the rest of us that it's time to take up arms, to protect the "culture." According to a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/may/2/republicans-say-us-headed-toward-armed-revolution-/">Farleigh Dickinson University run poll</a>, "44 percent of registered Republicans believed an armed rebellion could come in the next few years." In fact, the DHS study warns, it's not just Second Amendment extremists who could radicalize the right. It's also the unsteady economy, continuing high unemployment and the immigration debate. "Over the past five years," the 2009 report says, "various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool... DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence." It's a wonder, then, that the administration chose two major touchstones of right-wing extremism - guns and immigration - as the impetus to the president's second term agenda. It could be argued, though, that this has been going on since the furor over Obamacare, which was obviously not something the DHS predicted, other than the study's assertion that "the election of the first African American president present[s] unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment." That alone presented a platform from which American right-wing extremists could speak. The actual issues of the day just give them political cover for their racism and xenophobia. rss@dailykos.com (ProseAndThorn) BostonBombing Homeland Security HomelandSecurity Muslim NRA Politics radicalize _1207033 Tue, 07 May 2013 19:05:39 +0000