Lest anyone need to be reminded, the Confederate flag represents an armed insurrection. Members of the Trump cult have purchased flags that are much more explicit in sending a message that violence is an acceptable way to retire Trump to power.
The Biden administration’s intelligence agencies have identified violent domestic terrorism as a major threat.
Below, from NBC News:
The Biden administration's review of its domestic counterterrorism strategy began with that intelligence assessment. The unclassified version, released in March, concluded that the two most lethal elements of U.S. domestic terrorism are racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as violent militia extremists.
The new strategy is being released just after NBC News obtained a new, unclassified FBI intelligence bulletin highlighting the risk that adherents of the conspiracy theory QAnon may commit political violence.
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The Biden strategy is based on what it calls four pillars, designed to understand, prevent, disrupt and address long-term drivers of domestic terrorism. Although it involves new government scrutiny of what Americans say on social media, officials say they have been careful to avoid any move that infringes on political speech.
"We are not targeting speech. We are not attacking speech," Mayorkas said. "We are working with the social media companies to be able to better identify the false narratives, to be able to identify disinformation and misinformation and really educate the American public."
This is from ABC News:
In its nearly two decades of existence, DHS has been repeatedly accused of violating civil liberties protections in trying to monitor threats.
Hugh Handeyside, a national security lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was concerned the expansion of surveillance programs would renew questions about protecting free speech and privacy rights.
“Responding to security failures by giving law enforcement and intelligence agencies unneeded power and resources amounts to a one-way ratchet,” he said in an email. "The reality is that the federal government already has more than sufficient authority to investigate and prosecute white supremacist violence.”
This is also from NBC News:
Even some more moderate Republicans have qualms. Stewart Baker, a top Homeland Security lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said the new strategy makes him "deeply uneasy," because it appears that "the administration intends to deploy the language and tools of counterterrorism against people on the far right of the U.S. political spectrum."
He added: "Those people are certainly not all innocents. Some of them have committed mass murder, killings of federal officers and the like. But it's hard to say that such violence has been the signature of an organization or, really, of more than one or two individuals whose beliefs border on mental illness. Preventing and punishing such violence is what law enforcement tools are for."
Regarding the above from Stewart Baker I ask what is wrong with “deploy(ing) the language and tools of counterterrorism against people on the far right of the U.S. political spectrum" when they are among the most likely to commit such acts? Baker offers conjecture that it’s hard to say violence has been the signature of an organization or may be the act of one or two individuals who may be borderline mentally ill. I say what difference does it make?
I got to thinking about how addressing this when I watched Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an interview on MSNBC this morning. He said that free speech would be respected and that individuals wouldn't be targeted.
While it is obviously important to identify what Mayorkas calls “false narratives” being promulgated on social media, how do our law enforcement agencies intend to stop violence unless they monitor the communications of those planning to engage in it?
While I believe free speech must be protected there is a way to do this and still monitor potential perpetrators of violence perhaps by utilizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to authorize warrants to track their online activity to determine if they are engaged in preparing to violent acts.
