I knew a couple of people who were following the White Supremacist movement and then I heard Professor Kathleen Belew at a conference on Disinformation and the Impact on Democracy held at the University of Chicago. So, I read her book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Then I started reading about the White Power movement internationally. I now subscribe to daily terrorism briefings, just to have a sense of what is going on. In the USA, the briefings can either be about Muslim or White Nationalist terrorists. Formerly, I got the Southern Poverty Law Center Newsletter, and they always tracked White Supremacist activity, so I had a sense of it then as well, which means that when the Oklahoma city bombing happened I did not immediately think it must have been Muslims. I think that Prof. Belew's book is a must read for understanding that what is going on is not isolated incidents, but systematic, and for understanding when one is seeing such things. She also has a book for journalists, which she co-edited, A Field Guide for Journalists, because the press is not reporting the incidents as part of a sustained movement, but as isolated incidents. So, both law enforcement and the press needs to understand these players in domestic terrorism. In Germany the AfD Alternative for Deutschland is really just a renaming of the Nazi party since it is illegal to have a Nazi party here. I am surprised that it has been allowed to exist. This is how they slip a White Supremacist agenda in, by being anti -immigration instead of more directly racist. That is how the Republican party is doing it in the USA too. According to Belew it is a plan. I have been following the attempts to destroy the energy grid, clearly Putin followers, and it is quite concerning. Our energy grids are quite vulnerable to attack, and I am glad that the Biden administration has stressed that the energy sector needs to be vigilant.
I am appreciative of the detailed way you have outlined this issue in this offering..While I read it I could hear in my head all of the times I have heard former FBI Counterterrorism Agent Frank Figluzzi say how the United States does not have a statue to charge Domestic Terrorism..
No Statute 18 U.S. Code § xxxx..Domestic Terrorism..which he says is a mandatory thing to have..How can this be?
I think this goes back to JEdgar's focus on "Commies" and Black civil rights activists. There is no equivalence, the FBI has ALWAYS considered the left, however defined, to be the threat. I believe they identify with the right to much to take it seriously as a threat.
Thank you Joyce for stating unequivocally the glaring blindness of LE to domestic terrorists is an historically systemic issue. Tyre's sadistic lynching and the FBI's willful ignorance of massive amts of intelligence about terrorists gathering on J6 exhibit in real time an LE culture that must be changed. I do not think Garland is up to the task.
Wondered for years why white supremacy isn’t taken seriously. I was saddened when the Bundy group was able to take over a government facility/park and nothing happened to them! Acquittal? Really? We don’t take this seriously enough, no matter how often the right-wing groups demonstrate that we should. I think it’s a cognitive disconnect that “we” think that our “:own kind” would never do that to us. OKC bombing should have been enough to dispel that myth.
Joyce, thank you for bringing this issue front and center. I found Linda’s comment very important, that the right is using immigration as the issue, not racism. It’s all there in front of us but once again, we are not paying as close attention as we should, which may be a factor of endless breaking news cycles. I’m concerned that our institutions may be imploding from within, and I think of Bannon’s statement while Trump was running for election, that he wanted to bring down our government. We see the infiltration of the radical right in our institutions, made clear by the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol.
I sure would not hold out much hope of Garland causing or seeking a sea change. He seems to love hiding in the shadows, weighing the evidence, and never making the ultimate decision. It seems to me this opens a possibility, though with our Court, I doubt it will work, of putting a national security gloss in gun control arguments. Seems to me that it is mighty easy to get high powered rifles and drive down heavy industrial corridors. Who knows what all those rifles in the gun racks are going to be used for and they do not even have to be hidden. Just think of all the petrochemical complexes along the roadsides, much less the power grid, and with railroads plenty of hazardous materials in our city centers as we have seen recently. The cost of easy access to high powered weapons that are in plain sight and untouchable as things stand now is increasing over time and aided by our jurisprudence. The bullets are just the fuses in the bombs.
Thank you Joyce for everything you do! It is difficult to watch what is happening to our country. We can only hope that our current president can clean up the former bad actors left over in our justice department and FBI (if I am reading it correctly). It is obvious that we have multiple groups of people who are working to disrupt not only our government but our vulnerable infrastructure. WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!
Thank you for the in-depth look at the issue. Your institutional memory illuminates the full scope of the danger.
I would offer one alternate theory of the pre-Jan6 failure to recognize the threat. They did not accidentally focus on the possibility of far left wing violence. It was purposeful misdirection.
Good Evening Joyce - this is a frightening situation with lots of moving parts. I too hope Garland will lend his careful attention to these terrorists and the methods that may counter their collective movement. I much appreciate your details and it is a lot to digest. I look forward to your followups. Thanks again.
Garland are you reading this????? Garland are you listening????? Garland what are you doing except ocd mindwork? INDICT Trump, it is not Georgia’s and New Yorks responsibility to do so. Pay attention to jovce Vance’s brilliant warnings. To me you have been nothing but a consequential disappointment.
Thanks for this awesome summary and call for action. Could you please swap The Netherlands for Norway? Breivik slaughtered over 65 children in Utoya and set off a bomb in Oslo. This was not in The Netherlands. Thanks!
From your essay, quoting the NYT: "[the FBI's] misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right." Now THAT'S a disturbing statement if I ever read one. It never ceases to amaze me how the Pugs repeat over and over that the FBI has been "weaponized", with the assumption that the weapons have been pointed against THEM. I see it so differently.
From The Guardian, 7/22/21: "In the case of Kavanaugh's hearings to become a Justice of the SCOTUS: A group of US Democratic senators on Thursday said that newly released materials show the FBI failed to fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against the US supreme court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the court in 2018. The senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, said a letter they received from the FBI director, Chris Wray, last month shows the FBI gathered more than 4,500 tips relating to Kavanaugh without any apparent further action by investigators. 'The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information "highly relevant to … allegations" of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored.'" Leftist bias? I don't think so.
I knew a couple of people who were following the White Supremacist movement and then I heard Professor Kathleen Belew at a conference on Disinformation and the Impact on Democracy held at the University of Chicago. So, I read her book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Then I started reading about the White Power movement internationally. I now subscribe to daily terrorism briefings, just to have a sense of what is going on. In the USA, the briefings can either be about Muslim or White Nationalist terrorists. Formerly, I got the Southern Poverty Law Center Newsletter, and they always tracked White Supremacist activity, so I had a sense of it then as well, which means that when the Oklahoma city bombing happened I did not immediately think it must have been Muslims. I think that Prof. Belew's book is a must read for understanding that what is going on is not isolated incidents, but systematic, and for understanding when one is seeing such things. She also has a book for journalists, which she co-edited, A Field Guide for Journalists, because the press is not reporting the incidents as part of a sustained movement, but as isolated incidents. So, both law enforcement and the press needs to understand these players in domestic terrorism. In Germany the AfD Alternative for Deutschland is really just a renaming of the Nazi party since it is illegal to have a Nazi party here. I am surprised that it has been allowed to exist. This is how they slip a White Supremacist agenda in, by being anti -immigration instead of more directly racist. That is how the Republican party is doing it in the USA too. According to Belew it is a plan. I have been following the attempts to destroy the energy grid, clearly Putin followers, and it is quite concerning. Our energy grids are quite vulnerable to attack, and I am glad that the Biden administration has stressed that the energy sector needs to be vigilant.
‘no one told the FBI a mob was going to storm the Capitol. “Why didn’t we have one source come forward and tell me that?”’
And yet it seemed like everyone on Twitter knew it was going to happen. Why the disconnect?
All of your essays are good, Joyce, but I think this is one of the most important and urgent I have read. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I am appreciative of the detailed way you have outlined this issue in this offering..While I read it I could hear in my head all of the times I have heard former FBI Counterterrorism Agent Frank Figluzzi say how the United States does not have a statue to charge Domestic Terrorism..
No Statute 18 U.S. Code § xxxx..Domestic Terrorism..which he says is a mandatory thing to have..How can this be?
I think this goes back to JEdgar's focus on "Commies" and Black civil rights activists. There is no equivalence, the FBI has ALWAYS considered the left, however defined, to be the threat. I believe they identify with the right to much to take it seriously as a threat.
Thank you Joyce for stating unequivocally the glaring blindness of LE to domestic terrorists is an historically systemic issue. Tyre's sadistic lynching and the FBI's willful ignorance of massive amts of intelligence about terrorists gathering on J6 exhibit in real time an LE culture that must be changed. I do not think Garland is up to the task.
Wondered for years why white supremacy isn’t taken seriously. I was saddened when the Bundy group was able to take over a government facility/park and nothing happened to them! Acquittal? Really? We don’t take this seriously enough, no matter how often the right-wing groups demonstrate that we should. I think it’s a cognitive disconnect that “we” think that our “:own kind” would never do that to us. OKC bombing should have been enough to dispel that myth.
Joyce, thank you for bringing this issue front and center. I found Linda’s comment very important, that the right is using immigration as the issue, not racism. It’s all there in front of us but once again, we are not paying as close attention as we should, which may be a factor of endless breaking news cycles. I’m concerned that our institutions may be imploding from within, and I think of Bannon’s statement while Trump was running for election, that he wanted to bring down our government. We see the infiltration of the radical right in our institutions, made clear by the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol.
I sure would not hold out much hope of Garland causing or seeking a sea change. He seems to love hiding in the shadows, weighing the evidence, and never making the ultimate decision. It seems to me this opens a possibility, though with our Court, I doubt it will work, of putting a national security gloss in gun control arguments. Seems to me that it is mighty easy to get high powered rifles and drive down heavy industrial corridors. Who knows what all those rifles in the gun racks are going to be used for and they do not even have to be hidden. Just think of all the petrochemical complexes along the roadsides, much less the power grid, and with railroads plenty of hazardous materials in our city centers as we have seen recently. The cost of easy access to high powered weapons that are in plain sight and untouchable as things stand now is increasing over time and aided by our jurisprudence. The bullets are just the fuses in the bombs.
Thank you Joyce for everything you do! It is difficult to watch what is happening to our country. We can only hope that our current president can clean up the former bad actors left over in our justice department and FBI (if I am reading it correctly). It is obvious that we have multiple groups of people who are working to disrupt not only our government but our vulnerable infrastructure. WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!
Thank you for the in-depth look at the issue. Your institutional memory illuminates the full scope of the danger.
I would offer one alternate theory of the pre-Jan6 failure to recognize the threat. They did not accidentally focus on the possibility of far left wing violence. It was purposeful misdirection.
Good Evening Joyce - this is a frightening situation with lots of moving parts. I too hope Garland will lend his careful attention to these terrorists and the methods that may counter their collective movement. I much appreciate your details and it is a lot to digest. I look forward to your followups. Thanks again.
Garland are you reading this????? Garland are you listening????? Garland what are you doing except ocd mindwork? INDICT Trump, it is not Georgia’s and New Yorks responsibility to do so. Pay attention to jovce Vance’s brilliant warnings. To me you have been nothing but a consequential disappointment.
Thanks for this awesome summary and call for action. Could you please swap The Netherlands for Norway? Breivik slaughtered over 65 children in Utoya and set off a bomb in Oslo. This was not in The Netherlands. Thanks!
Too bad the FBI is too frequently still what we used to call them 50+ years ago in the days of J. Edgar Fruitfly: Fools & Buffoons, Inc.
From your essay, quoting the NYT: "[the FBI's] misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right." Now THAT'S a disturbing statement if I ever read one. It never ceases to amaze me how the Pugs repeat over and over that the FBI has been "weaponized", with the assumption that the weapons have been pointed against THEM. I see it so differently.
From The Guardian, 7/22/21: "In the case of Kavanaugh's hearings to become a Justice of the SCOTUS: A group of US Democratic senators on Thursday said that newly released materials show the FBI failed to fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against the US supreme court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the court in 2018. The senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, said a letter they received from the FBI director, Chris Wray, last month shows the FBI gathered more than 4,500 tips relating to Kavanaugh without any apparent further action by investigators. 'The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information "highly relevant to … allegations" of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored.'" Leftist bias? I don't think so.