The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun -- Even Without the New
Laws Biden Wants
Homeland Security just issued its fourth danger bulletin this year. And both
the weapons and rhetorical tactics of the first War on Terror are
increasingly visible.
Glenn Greenwald
Jun 2
Photo taken in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, on June 1, 2021 shows
a screen displaying U.S. President Joe Biden delivering a speech
commemorating the 100th anniversary of Tulsa massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma
(Photo by Liu Jie/Xinhua via Getty Images).
The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin,
alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the
100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth
such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the
same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into
the American population has materialized.
The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including
DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was
likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not
materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of "a heightened
threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over
the coming weeks" from "ideologically-motivated violent extremists with
objections to the exercise of governmental authority" (that warning also was
not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing
violence "to attack higher-capacity targets," exacerbated by the lifting of
COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this
new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over
Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).
Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually
no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in
fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of
military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the
country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about
domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network,
in an "update," called "the additional information from the Department of
Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this
time." And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day
was such a flop that even The Washington Post - one of the outlets most
vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in
particular - had to explicitly acknowledge the failure:
Thousands [of National Guard troops] had been deployed to capitals across
the country late last week, ahead of a weekend in which potentially violent
demonstrations were predicted by the FBI - but never materialized.
Once again on Wednesday, security officials' worst fears weren't borne out:
In some states, it was close to business as usual. In others, demonstrations
were small and peaceful, with only occasional tense moments.
Americans have seen this scam before. Throughout the first War on Terror,
DHS, which was created in 2002, was frequently used to keep fear levels high
and thus foster support for draconian government powers of spying,
detention, and war. Even prior to the Department's creation, its first
Secretary, Tom Ridge, when he was still the White House's Homeland Security
Chief in early 2002, created an elaborate color-coded warning system to
supply a constant alert to Americans about the evolving threat levels they
faced from Islamic extremists.
DHS Bulletin on domestic extremists, Jan. 27, 2021; DHS Bulletin on domestic
extremists, May 14, 2021.
In 2004, Ridge admitted that he had been repeatedly pressured by Bush
officials to elevate the warnings and threat levels for political gain and
to keep the population in fear. He claims that he, in particular, was
coerced against his will to raise the threat level just prior to the 2004
presidential election and resigned for that reason shortly thereafter. DHS's
color scheme became "the brunt of endless jokes and derision," concluded a
2007 scholarly study in the journal International Security, noting that it
"became perceived as being politically motivated" largely due to the
complete lack of specific information about what Americans were supposed to
fear or avoid. Moreover, "its designers assumed that the population would
trust in the national leadership and believe in the utility of the system's
information." It failed because of how often the alleged threats failed to
materialize, and because the warnings were rarely accompanied by any
specificity that could permit action to be taken or avoided.
Though Obama scrapped the unpopular color-coded system in 2011, he - in a
classic Obama gesture - merely replaced it with an equally vague and
fear-generating bureaucratic alternative that was also subject to political
manipulation. National security writers at Lawfare ultimately acknowledged
that "like the [Bush/Ridge] system, there were no clear triggers for alerts
[under Obama's new scheme,] so the system remained objective and opaque." As
a result, they said, "the lack of specificity over time has resulted in
similar levels of confusion as surrounded the [Bush/Ridge] color alerts."
Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it,
they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire
in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will
crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official
claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too
secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure
they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.
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I saw first-hand how this dynamic functions when doing the Snowden-enabled
reporting on mass domestic NSA surveillance under the Obama administration.
By the time we broke the stories of mass domestic surveillance on Americans
- twelve years after the 9/11 attack - fear levels over Al Qaeda in the U.S.
had diminished greatly, especially after the 2011 killing of Osama bin
Laden. As a result, anger over Obama's sprawling domestic surveillance
programs was pervasive and bipartisan. A bill jointly sponsored by then-Rep.
Justin Amash (R-MI) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) - which would have greatly
reined in NSA domestic spying powers - was on its way to easy, bipartisan
victory as a result of that anger over NSA spying. But suddenly, the Obama
White House convinced Nancy Pelosi to whip enough Democratic votes to ensure
its defeat and save NSA domestic spying from reform. But the momentum which
that bill had - it would have been the first since 9/11 to rollback rather
than expand government powers - along with anti-surveillance-and-pro-privacy
polling data, proved how significantly the playing field had shifted as a
result of those revelations and, especially, the reduction in fear levels
experienced by Americans.
But shortly thereafter, a new group - ISIS - emerged to replace Al Qaeda. It
had a two-year stint with middling success in scaring Americans, but it was
sufficient to turn back the tide of pro-privacy sentiment (at one point in
2014, the U.S. intelligence community claimed out of nowhere that a
Syria-based group that virtually nobody in the U.S. had ever heard of
previously or since - "the Khorasan Group" - was "a more direct and imminent
threat to the United States," but that new villain disappeared as quickly as
it materialized). After ISIS's star turn in the role of existential threat,
the Democrats, during the 2016 campaign, elevated Russia, Putin and the
Kremlin to that role, abandoning without explanation Obama's eight-year
argument that Russia was merely a regional power of no threat to the U.S.
This revolving carousel of scary villains ensured that the pressure to
reduce the powers and secrecy of the U.S. security state eroded in the name
of staying safe.
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Before Joe Biden was even inaugurated, he and his allies knew they needed a
new villain. Putin never generated much fear in anyone beyond MSNBC panels,
the CNN Green Room, and the newsrooms and op-ed pages of The New York Times
and The Washington Post. While negative views of Russia increased in the
U.S. during Russiagate mania, few outside of hard-core Democratic partisans
viewed that country as a genuine threat or primary enemy. Few Americans woke
up shaking in fear about what the Kremlin might do to them.
The search for a new enemy around which the Biden administration could
coalesce and in whose name they could keep fear levels high was quickly
settled. Cast in that role would be right-wing domestic extremists. In
January, The Wall Street Journal reported that "Biden has said he plans to
make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been
urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against
ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat
them."
Pending Domestic War on Terror legislation favored by the White House -
sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) - would simply amend the old War on
Terror laws, which permitted a wide range of powers to fight foreign
terrorist organizations, so as to now allow the U.S. government to also use
those powers against groups designated as domestic terror organizations.
Just as was true of the first War on Terror, this second one would thus vest
the government with new, wide-ranging powers of surveillance, detention,
prosecution and imprisonment, though this time for use against U.S. citizens
on U.S. soil.
Even while that legislation is pending, the U.S. government is already
waging an aggressive new domestic war on terror that has largely flown under
the radar. Grave warnings from DHS are now just as common, vague and
unreliable - but also fear-inducing - as they were in the days of Tom Ridge.
Domestic surveillance is also on the rise. Last month, CNN reported that
"the Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track
extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the
government's ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over
surveillance of US citizens."
CNN, May 3, 2021
The security mindset has subsumed the Democratic Party in particular. Just
last week, the same Party that spent the summer of 2020 denouncing the
police approved $1.9 billion in additional spending for Capitol security and
police. The very faction of that party which chanted "Defund the Police" -
the Squad - had the power to stop that expenditure, but half of them instead
voted "present," ensuring its passage.
Meanwhile, one of the most repressive features of the first War on Terror -
due-process-free no-fly lists against American citizens - is now back in
full force. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) have both been
demanding that the FBI ban January 6 protesters and other "domestic
extremists" from air travel without being convicted of any crime or even
given a hearing to determine whether this prohibition is justified. Rep.
Thompson even demanded that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) be
put on the no-fly list, then took to Twitter to boast of how proud he was of
this demand:
Bennie G. Thompson @BennieGThompson
I am not ashamed. However, they should be.
Linda Marie Lovison @lilo623
@lawcrimenews The House Homeland Security Chair should be ashamed. Homeland
Security Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (Democrat-Mississippi) Wants
Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley on the No-Fly List @BennieGThompson
January 11th 2021
25 Retweets154 Likes
Beyond the DHS bulletins, that agency and other intelligence operatives
continue to issue reports, for both public and classified consumption,
warning that the greatest national security threat the U.S now faces is
domestic extremism. As we reported here last month, that "domestic
extremist" designation includes not just anti-Biden and anti-government
protesters on the right but also leftist groups including animal rights
activists - essentially anyone who objects to prevailing ruling class dogma
and wants to use their constitutional rights to advance those views. To
compile these reports, the CIA appears clearly to be breaking the law in
using its vast intelligence weapons for domestic monitoring and control.
Online censorship, of course, is also rapidly increasing in the name of
stopping the threat of domestic extremism. The extraordinary destruction of
Parler in January by three Silicon Valley monopolies - Apple, Google and
Amazon - occurred after leading Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) - publicly demanded the platform's removal from the
internet. And Democratic-led Congressional committees continue to summon
Silicon Valley executives to demand they impose greater degrees of political
censorship against their political adversaries or else face legislative and
regulatory reprisals.
These are all the same weapons as the ones invoked for the first War on
Terror. Yet what is perhaps most notable about comparing this new domestic
War on Terror to the first one is not the common weapons invoked to fight it
but rather how identical are the rhetorical strategies used to demand
submission to it.
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No nuance or questioning is permitted when it comes to discussions of how
much danger America really faces from domestic extremists. The parallels
with the first War on Terror are manifest.
I know of nobody who dismissed the significance of the 9/11 attacks. A
one-day attack that wipes out 3,000 human beings and crashes four passenger
jets into three large buildings is a gravely serious event. But there were
plenty of people - including myself - who spent years arguing that the
threat reflected by that attack was being aggressively and deliberately
exaggerated by U.S. officials and both political parties in order to justify
extraordinary power grabs for themselves.
In response, a standard tactic was deployed against those who, after 9/11,
urged that the threat be placed in rational context rather than
melodramatically and cynically inflated. Anyone urging sober restraint was
instantly accused of being sympathetic toward if not outright supportive of
anti-American terrorism. The Bush administration demanded a binary framework
most vividly expressed by the then-president's decree in his late September,
2001, address to the Congress: "Either you are with us or you are with the
terrorists." And thus was any middle ground - I condemn the 9/11 attack but
oppose dangerous overreaction or authoritarian power grabs in the name of
combatting it - abolished.
That Bush "with-us-or-with-the-terrorists" directive provoked a fair amount
of outrage at the time but is now the prevailing mentality within U.S.
liberalism and the broader Democratic Party. I do not know a single
prominent commentator or political figure who, after seeing what transpired,
expressed support for the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Quite the contrary:
all of them, at least to my knowledge, condemned the conduct of at least
some of the protesters on that day. From the start, that group certainly
included me (on January 7, I wrote: "It is not hard to understand why [the
Capitol riot] has generated intense political passion and pervasive rage:
the introduction of physical force into political protest is always
lamentable, usually dangerous, and, except in the rarest of circumstances
that are plainly inapplicable here, unjustifiable"). That is still my view,
even as I denounce the Biden administration's expansive domestic powers and
attempts to exaggerate the threats and dangers that protest illustrated.
But that position is disallowed, or at least not recognized. Just as was
true of the first War on Terror, any attempt to place the actual lingering
threat in context (by rejecting the claim that the danger is so grave that
it requires vast new powers), or to suggest it is being manipulatively
exaggerated (by calling it The Insurrection), or to document actual lies
being told in service of the prevailing narrative (such as the ongoing lie
that a pro-Trump crowd murdered Officer Brian Sicknick) provokes furious
accusations that one must be sympathetic to if not supportive of the January
6 rioters and any groups associated with them. Attempts to suggest that
those charged in connection with the January 6 riot are being excessively
prosecuted and punished provoke even greater rage - despite the fact that
not a single one of them has been charged with treason, sedition,
insurrection or domestic terrorism, and despite the fact that concerns about
overzelaous prosecutors and the carceral state are supposed to be staples of
liberals politics (though ones which, like anti-police sentiment and
opposition to killing unarmed protesters, instantly disappear when
convenient, such as when it comes time to exploit Officer Sicknick or cheer
the fatal point-blank shooting of the unarmed Ashli Babbitt).
Objections to new powers vested in the U.S. security state in the name of
fighting domestic terrorism are met with still greater scorn. If you oppose
new anti-terrorism legislation for use on U.S. soil or are deeply concerned
about the invocation of civil-liberties-destroying weapons such as no-fly
lists, online censorship, and heightened domestic surveillance, then it is
assumed that you must support domestic extremists - just as those who
opposed the war in Iraq or the Patriot Act or NSA spying or torture were
accused of supporting Al Qaeda.
It is a shoddy, anti-intellectual and deceitful tactic, to be sure, but it
is now commonplace. And that is particularly concerning as the Democrats'
devotion to a new War on Terror continues to grow. On Monday, President
Biden, citing "the intelligence community," asserted that white supremacist
terrorism is "the most lethal threat to the Homeland today."
Opposing this new domestic War on Terror and all those new powers and
secrecy authorities that go with it does not require support for or even
indifference toward what happened at the Capitol on January 6. It merely
requires a basic knowledge of recent U.S. history and how these powers are
invariably used by the secretive U.S. security state when
government-generated fears lead to their widespread enactment. The dangers
of the first War on Terror were grave enough. Transferring it to "the
Homeland," as President Biden calls it, is bound to be far more dangerous
still.
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