We have seen in recent years the national security state’s counterterrorism apparatus, which was once pointed abroad ostensibly to fight Islamic fundamentalist terror post-9/11, slowly turned inward (as these things always are) to target domestic political opponents of the regime. I have painstakingly documented this about-face at PJ Media and elsewhere.
So-called “domestic terrorists” of the modern day include:
- Critics of authoritarian COVID policies (forced masking, vaxx mandates, lockdowns)
- Parents who prefer their children are not gender-transitioned in public schools without their consent or even knowledge
- Second Amendment advocates
- Libertarians
- Christians
Here’s how CIA-spook-turned-MSNBC-pundit John Brennan characterized the alleged threat of “domestic terrorists” in January 2021, on the eve of the birth of the Brandon regime (emphasis added):
[The Biden intelligence services] are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas…
It brings together an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians. And unfortunately I think there’s been this momentum that generated as a result of unfortunately the demagogic rhetoric of people that’s just departed government, but also those who continue in the halls of Congress. And so I really do think that the law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence, and even the defense officials are doing everything possible to root out what seems to be a very very serious and insidious threat to our democracy and our republic.
.@JohnBrennan: Biden intel community “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” the pro-Trump “insurgency” that harbors “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians” pic.twitter.com/SjVXWhPhR8
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2021
Even non-whites, as we have seen in the curious case of the Indian would-be truck bomber in D.C., can be branded “white supremacists.”
Related: Cori Bush Reveals Her Ignorance About Atlanta’s Domestic Terrorism in Her Tirade on Race and the FBI
In this way, we can see that the designation of “domestic terrorist,” “white supremacist,” etc. can functionally be boiled down to “opponent of the Democrat Party and/or Deep State” (but let’s be honest; those two entities are one and the same at this point).
This is what comes of writing a blank check to largely unaccountable, shadowy bureaucracies in the aftermath of 9/11, capitalizing on the anxieties of a traumatized and propagandized public.
Now the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Righteous Media, Paul Rieckhoff, has continued that tradition via a recent appearance on — you guessed it — MSNBC (emphasis added):
A lot of Americans are up for grabs. I wouldn’t dismiss it as just something only people on the right or watching Fox News latch on to. We are in a battle for hearts and minds and there [are] people [who] are on the fence.
You got to have leaders and messages and messengers and programs to get to those people that bring them over into community organizing and into non-profit organizations and away from the Patriot Front and Oathkeepers.
Here, Rieckhoff revisits the sort of rhetoric outlined above from Former CIA Director John Brennan — now pervasive in the corporate state media — likening the post-9/11 War on Terror aimed at Islamic fundamentalists abroad to the current War on Domestic Terror:
I think the parallels of 9/11 are important. We talked about this before. After 9/11, the laws didn’t work. They made massive changes to respond to a new threat. I think we have to face the fact that many structures, laws and policies may not work. After 9/11 we created the Department of Homeland Security, there was the PATRIOT Act. There was massive change in our entire society to face the number one threat, or at least what was communicated as the number one threat.
We need the same kind of tectonic shift.