The 1/6 committee’s threat to civil liberties

Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent post questioning the constitutionality of the Select Committee on 1/6’s investigation.  All the abuses of power of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in an earlier are being repeated, this time with the support of self-described liberals. 

The committee’s mandate was to investigate why the Capitol Police were so unprepared to defend the Capitol against rioters, which is a proper and important matter to investigate.  

So is the role of the FBI, which had heavily infiltrated three of the major right-wing organizations, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.  To what degree did the FBI hold back its knowledge, or even possibly help instigate the riots?

What is not a proper topic for investigation is the activities and beliefs of private citizens.  Law enforcement is the function of the executive and judicial branches, not the legislative.  

The executive branch is responsible for investigating and prosecuting federal crimes.  The judicial branch is responsible for judging criminal charges and sentencing convicted criminals.

The investigative powers of Congress are limited to oversight of the executive branch and to research in connection with legislation.  It has no constitutional authority to investigate the activities of individuals just our of curiosity, or the desire to humiliate and punish.

Greenwald points out the extensive legal precedent for this, much of it dating from the McCarthy era.

Deplorables and liberal hate speech

When I was a small boy, one of the things my mother forbid me to do was to say I “hated” someone.  I could say I was angry with them or annoyed with them or use some other word, but to hate someone is to wish they were dead, and I certainly didn’t want that, did I?

Nowadays I hear and read complaints from self-described progressives about un-vaccinated people who get COVID, and how wrong it is for these willfully ignorant Trump supporters to be given space in hospitals when decent, rational liberal people need the space.

The idea is that if willfully un-vaccinated people (although presumably not including un-vaccinated African-Americans and Hispanics, I presume) die of COVID, maybe they have it coming, maybe they should be allowed to die, because they had a choice to be vaccinated and didn’t take it.  I’m guessing the people who talk this way don’t literally mean what they say, but still……

On the other hand, I don’t doubt the sincerity of the exterminationist rhetoric of a blogger named Chris Ladd,  who wrote that democracy can only be saved my meeting radical Trump supporters with deadly force.

Ashli Babbit, the traitor shot by police during the attempted coup, deserved what happened to her.  Every other traitor who mounted those steps that day deserved the same end.  The only tragedy in that incident is that she was the only attacker killed.

No, her death wasn’t “unfortunate,” any more than every death of every living thing is unfortunate.  Violence used to protect our most fundamental institutions was necessary, just, and in the service of a brighter future.  Babbit’s death deserves just as much regret or discomfort as the death of one of the 9/11 plotters or some random Nazi.

The loss of any life is regrettable and also often necessary.  If we cannot embrace what happened to Ashli Babbit, and make sure it happens to others like her, we will very soon live in a post-democratic, disintegrating former nation.

He called for the suppression of the Republican Party.

There’s little need to worry about what happens to hardened Trump cultists.  There aren’t as many of them as it seems and they have minimal cultural and financial power.  Faced with a real confrontation, with real material consequences, the number of them who will continue the fight will drop off precipitously, leaving the rest to be easily isolated and neutralized. ……

For now, isolate Republicans from every center of cultural influence by any available means.  Make it expensive and risky for anyone to identify publicly with the GOP.  When Republicans attempt their coup, as they will, make sure they have nothing to support them but their small band of idiot cultists and the financial backing of a handful of millionaire weirdos.

Bring whatever organized violence is necessary to blunt Republican attempts to destroy democracy.  And don’t flinch.  On the backside of that coup, rout them from every remaining position of public trust and jail as many of them as possible.

In a different post, Ladd said the founding myth of the United States is white supremacy.  Americans, he said, defined ourselves as not being the non-white “other.”  We need a new founding myth, he wrote, one in which we demonize the right-wing deplorables.  In other words, we substitute one powerless minority for another as national scapegoats.

Ladd equated Republicans with Trump supporters, white evangelical Christians, white supremacists and terrorists, and people who take ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment—all, in his view, incapable of rational thinking.

If you created a Venn diagram of all the groups he mentioned, it would be complicated and confusing.  Many Republicans despise Trump.  On the other hand, a small but significant number of former Obama voters voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

White evangelical Protestants are not all of one mind and, as a group, they are not racists in any meaningful sense of that word, unless you think that religious and political conservatives are by definition racist.  Actual white supremacists, whose works I read on the Internet, despise the Republican party and feel betrayed by Trump.

Although Donald Trump was anti-lockdown and anti-mask, he advocated vaccination and launched the successful Warp Speech program to develop vaccinations.  While he was in office, many liberals warned against the possibility of vaccines being released before they were ready, then changed their minds right after the 2020 elections.  Republicans are not the only ones who are politicizing medicine.

Certainly the Jan. 6 mob deserve to be punished for their acts of assault, trespass and vandalism.  But most of them sincerely believed they were defending democracy, not attacking it, by protesting election rigging.  There never was a possibility they would threaten the transition of government.  And so on.

On the other hand, if you created a Venn diagram of those who are trying to suppress discussion of ivermectin, and a Venn diagram of those who oppose winding down the forever wars, I think they would pretty much overlap.

‘Domestic terrorism’ war planned before Jan. 6.

The USA Patriot Act was drafted, and in desk drawers, before the 9/11 attacks that supposedly were the reason for passing it.

The same is true of “war on domestic terrorism” legislation.  It was in the works before the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. 

Neither of these “wars” were reactions to events.  They were the result of long-term plans.

As Kit Knightly of the OffGuardian reported back on January 8:

Soon-to-be-President Joe Biden promised a new “domestic terrorism bill” back in November, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That is why you’re seeing so much usage of the phrase “domestic terrorism” in the last couple of days. It’s the meme-phrase. The primary talking point for this whole exercise. It was underlined in all the memos sent out to all the media outlets.

That’s why Joe Biden went to such lengths to distinguish “domestic terrorists” from “protesters” in his speech following the riots.

That’s why the Council on Foreign Relations had an interview with a “counter-terrorism and national security expert” published within 24 hours of the incident, in which he spends 4 paragraphs arguing that the people who “stormed the capitol” were domestic terrorists.

That’s why the Washington Post has got an article dedicated to “lawmakers and experts” arguing that the Capitol Hill protest was an act of “domestic terrorism.” And so have Vox.  And Mother Jones.

That’s why ABC had an article about how “domestic terrorism and hate crimes” were a growing problem in America…a week before the riot took place.

And that’s why #TrumpisaDomesticTerrorist is trending on Twitter.

Georgetown University, a well-known spook college, published a paper in September 2020 titled the “The Need for a Specific Law Against Domestic Terrorism,” and op-ed pieces bemoaning the lack of such a law have been dotted through the press going back to last summer and even late 2019.

There was one published yesterday [Jan. 7], in which a “senior FBI official” says “more could have been done” if there had been a “specific law outlawing” domestic terrorism.

Knightly also had an excellent analysis a few days ago of the sweeping nature of the administration’s domestic terrorism strategy.

I don’t have any reason to think that either the 9/11 attacks or the 1/6 riots were anything other than what they appeared to be.

But both events were very convenient to powers that be, for stripping away civil liberties and drumming up support for the surveillance police state. 

And if they hadn’t happened, some other excuse would have been found for the continuing “global war on terror” and the new “domestic war on terror.”

What is the definition of “terror”?  Anything the government wants it to be.

LINKS

Prepare for the new “Domestic Terrorism Bill” by Kit Knightly for OffGuardian on Jan. 8, 2021

Inside Biden’s new “domestic terrorism” strategy by Kit Knightly for OffGuardian on July 1, 2021.

A new ‘war on terror’ is declared

I just got around to reading the National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which was released a couple of weeks ago.  It is alarming.

There is no reason to think that the coming domestic war on terrorism will end any better than the George W. Bush administration’s global war on terrorism.

The threat, according to the document, is not primarily from terrorist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan or al Qaeda, but from lone individuals, such as recent mass shooters, and ad hoc groups, such as the pro-Trump protesters on Jan. 6.

To protect society, it is not only necessary to suppress and disrupt inflammatory material on the Internet that might inspire violent action, but to conduct a society-wide educational campaign to counteract terrorist and pro-violence propaganda.

It is necessary to be aware of “inconography, symbology and phaseology” used by many domestic violent extremists, and to use “data-driven guidance” on how to identify them.

This could be used to develop watch lists of “known and suspected” terrorists to bar them from sensitive employment or put them on no-fly lists.

All this requires a coordinated effort involving federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments, but also bringing in civil society, the technology sector, academia and friendly foreign governments.

The document is full of boiler-plate language about the need to respect freedom of speech and other constitutional rights, but I do not take this seriously.  There are too many blurrings of distinctions between beliefs and deeds, between violence and nonviolent civil disobedience, and between actual and potential lawbreaking.

I recall the eclipse of civil liberties in the post 9/11 era, and I also am aware of how government and social media companies work together in the present era to suppress dissident opinion.

Interestingly, the document does not propose any legislation.  As I myself and others have pointed out, the legal and administrative machinery for dictatorship already exists.  All that is needed is to activate it.