Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The news last month that acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf (The Bad Wolf™) was sitting on a DHS report outlining just how much of a domestic terrorism threat white supremacists militia groups were in the US in the Trump era turned out to be completely true, not that any ZVTS readers doubted the whole white supremacist domestic terrorism militia thing, or the whole Trump regime being less than truthful about the existence of the report thing.

In response to criticism that Donald Trump was quite literally asking white supremacist terrorist groups like the Proud Boys to "stand by" at the first presidential debate last week to be ready to commit election-related violence in his name, the DHS has released their full yearly domestic terrorism threat assessment, and it's gruesome, chilling stuff.

The threat assessment highlighted white supremacists as the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years and Russia as the primary threat to spreading disinformation.

“I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, wrote in the foreward to the assessment. The threat report also stated that “Russia is the likely primary covert influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation within the homeland.”

The agency also highlighted Iran and China’s cyberwarfare abilities and warned of a potential surge in migration to the southwest border.

The delayed release of the report has been a point of scrutiny for a department that has faced consistent accusations of morphing into a tool for Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign. After the department singled out domestic terrorists and specifically white supremacists in a terrorism framework in September 2019, the agency’s leadership committed to releasing a follow-up assessment to the threat as well as a blueprint to confront it within months. It took far longer.

Brian Murphy, who was demoted from his post as the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence chief in August, said last month in a whistle-blower complaint that Mr. Wolf and his deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, blocked the release of the assessment because of how it would “reflect upon President Trump.”

The Homeland Security blueprint did finally emerge, shortly after Mr. Murphy’s complaint. It included $10 million for nonprofits and other organizations to prevent extremist violence.

The administration’s treatment of white supremacy re-emerged as an issue last week, when Mr. Trump failed to condemn white racist violence during the presidential debate, even after Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, affirmed to Congress the lethal threat of the racist extremists.

Now, the Homeland Security Department has done so in the assessment.

“This threat assessment confirms two things: that white supremacist extremists are the top domestic threat to the homeland, and they are often inspired by President Trump’s rhetoric,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

But this is the Trump regime, and every aspect, every facet of American government exists in part to serve Dear Leader, and the DHS and this report are no different.

The threat assessment for the most part mirrored drafts that were leaked to the public, refuting concerns that the department would dilute any warnings. The department did add a section absent from previous versions of the report, titled “exploitation of lawful and protected speech and protests.”

The section echoed Mr. Trump’s description of city governments led by Democrats as fostering chaos.

“We have seen over 100 days of violence and destruction in our cities,” according to the report. “The co-opting of lawful protests led to destruction of government property and have turned deadly.” 

While a majority of the protests against police violence and racism this summer were peaceful, some did include individuals who committed violent acts, including in Portland, Ore., where the Homeland Security Department sent teams of tactical agents. The aggressive methods of those agents, including forcing demonstrators into unmarked cars and using tear gas, is under investigation by the inspectors general for the Homeland Security and Justice Departments.

In other words, VIOLENT DEADLY EXTREMISTS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM or something and the Democrats are just as guilty of encouraging their people to be violent too in the name of political expediency.

Which is horseshit in the same way that civil rights leaders were "terrorists" sixty years ago during the Jim Crow era of literally constructing separate neighborhoods, restaurants, hotels, schools, and goddamn drinking fountains for Black America because government policies mandated our second-class citizenship.

Only that's a bigger threat than ever. In the last four years this regime has paved the way to overturn the entire voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ rights era and take us back to Jim Crow. They remain one Supreme Court justice appointment away from enough votes to overturn as much of it as they want to as "unnecessary relics of an era that no longer needs legislation to protect".

Thomas Jefferson said all men are created equal, and the guy owned slaves the day he wrote those words, because slaves weren't people (and women and anyone who wasn't a land-owning white male didn't count either.)

I'm tired of this. In the space of five years we went from real hope in this country to fighting for basic rights in the middle of a pandemic that government is trying to pretend doesn't exist and a lifetime trying to fix everything that's been broken.

We have to win.