Who will protect us from our protectors?
Tom Burghardt
Dissident Voice
May 15, 2008
In the wake of Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins’ (R-ME) alarmist report,
“Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorism
Threat,” the Senate may be moving towards passage of the Orwellian
“Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007″
(S. 1959).
A companion piece of legislative flotsam to the House bill, “The
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007″
(H.R. 1955), the Democrat-controlled Congress seems ready to jettison
Constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. The bill passed
the House by a 404-6 vote in October. Twenty-three congress members
abstained, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary
Chairman John Conyers.
Under cover of studying “violent radicalization,” both bills would
broaden the already-fluid definition of “terrorism” to encompass
political activity and protest by dissident groups, effectively
criminalizing civil disobedience and non-violent direct action by
developing policies for “prevention, disruption and mitigation.”
Call it COINTELPRO 2.0.
Crafted by former House Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Jane
Harman (D-CA), the legislation would create a domestic commission, a
university-based “Center of Excellence” that would study and then,
target domestic “radicalization” as a “threat” to the “homeland.”
David Price, a professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University
who studies state surveillance and the harassment of dissident
scholars, told Jessica Lee of New York’s Indypendent
newspaper last year that Harman’s bill “is a shot over the bow of
environmental activists, animal-rights activists, anti-globalization
activists and scholars who are working in the Middle East who have
views that go against the administration.”
Evoking disquieting memories of political witchhunters ensconced in
the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, the
anti-radicalization commission would be empowered to “hold hearings and
sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such
evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers
advisable to carry out its duties.”
With the power to subpoena and compel testimony from anyone, the
commission would create the (intended) impression that a person forced
to publicly testify before a congressionally mandated star chamber must
be involved in “subversive” or illegal activities.
According to Naomi Spencer,
The commission would be composed of appointees, one chosen each
respectively by Bush, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, the
Senate and House majority and minority leaders, and by the ranking
majority and minority members of the two congressional homeland
security committees. Such a selection process would certainly result in
an extremely right-wing panel.1
When one considers that elite consensus favoring “muscular”
strategies for fighting “terror”–homegrown or otherwise–emerge during a
period when the Bush regime has illegally wiretapped phone calls,
sifted e-mails, spied on political and religious organizations, and
conducted extensive data mining of financial and other personal
records, it becomes clear that the corporate police state is shifting
into high-gear in a desperate move to criminalize ideological “thought
crimes.”
The intent of the proposed legislation, however, goes far beyond an
academic exercise. According to Jessica Lee, Harman stated that “the
National Commission [will] propose to both Congress and [Department of
Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede
before radicalized individuals turn violent.”
In the context of the post-Constitutional “New Normal” paradigm,
Harman and her acolytes evoke images of Philip K. ***’s Department of
Precrime in his dystopian novella, The Minority Report. Only
here, in the bizarro world of outsourced “homeland security,” mutant
precogs are replaced by high-end–and taxpayer funded–data-miners,
psychological profilers and social network analysts in the employ of
dodgy security firms linked to America’s military-intelligence complex.
The legislation specifically singles out the Internet as a “weapon”
for domestic radicalization. When she introduced her bill to the Senate
last November, Harman remarked, “There can be no doubt: the Internet is
increasingly being used as a tool to reach and radicalize Americans and
legal residents.”
Equating America’s web-surfacing habits with the threat of
ideological infection by Islamist pod-people, Harman avers that the
Internet allows Americans “to become indoctrinated by extremists and to
learn how to kill their neighbors … from the comfort of their own
living rooms.”
(Britney, Paris, better move over… there’s a new truck-bombing instructional posted over on YouTube! OMG!)
Harman’s ludicrous pronouncement is considerably ramped-up by the
Lieberman and Collins report, based on–what else– “expert testimony”
during hearings held by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs.
Lieberman and Collins claim that,
…the report assesses the federal government’s response to the spread
of the violent Islamist message on the Internet and concludes that
there is no cohesive and comprehensive outreach and communications
strategy in place to confront this threat. The report does not discuss
relevant classified tools and tactics employed by the law enforcement
and intelligence communities, but does recognize that there is no plan
to harness all possible resources including adopting new laws,
encouraging and supporting law enforcement and the intelligence
community at the local, state, and federal levels, and more
aggressively implementing an outreach and counter-messaging campaign on
the Internet and elsewhere.
In other words, “independent” Democrat Lieberman and “maverick
Republican” Collins are proposing new “tools” for regulating the
Internet through a counter-propaganda campaign that would create
“message force multipliers” that “support law enforcement” initiatives
to crush the radical “threat.”
By targeting the Internet, House and Senate thought police claim
that “the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization,
ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in
the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of
terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”
But as the American Civil Liberties Union wrote last week,
Experience has demonstrated that in the event of a terrorist attack,
the results of this report will likely be used to recommend the use of
racial, ethnic and religious profiling. This will only heighten, rather
than decrease, the spread of extremist violence. As an organization
dedicated to the principles of freedom of speech, we cannot in good
conscience support this report or any measure that might lead to
censorship and persecution based solely on one’s personal beliefs.
The ACLU is concerned that identifying the Internet as a tool for
terrorists will lead to censorship and regulated speech — especially
since the Internet has become an essential communications and research
tool for everyone. Indeed, some policy makers have advocated shutting
down objectionable websites in violation of the First Amendment. It is
an unworkable solution.2
Precisely. But wait, there’s more! Citing the New York City Police
Department (NYPD) as “experts” in the area of “homegrown radicalism,”
the report avers:
After more than two years of research into homegrown terrorism cases
in the United States and around the world, the New York City Police
Department (NYPD) developed a model to explain how this core enlistment
message, and the “jihadi-Salafi” ideology that provides the foundation
for that message, drive the domestic radicalization process —
transforming “unremarkable people” into terrorists.
Perhaps Lieberman and Collins should have consulted the family of Sean Bell
as to the NYPD’s “expertise” on analogous crime “modeling.” Murdered by
trigger-happy cops after a bachelor party the morning of his wedding,
Bell’s life was snuffed-out after he and his friends were shot some 50
times. The cops–surprise!–were recently found “not guilty” on all
counts by a New York judge.
We can dismiss senatorial allusions to NYPD’s acumen in the area of
“counterterrorist analysis” with the contempt it deserves. But let’s be
clear on one thing: the sole purpose of the “Violent Radicalization and
Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act” is to target the American people’s
constitutionally-protected right to say No.
If the U.S. House and Senate care to examine the “root causes” of
terrorism today, they need look no further than the on-going U.S.
slaughter in Iraq–a “preemptive” war of choice to which they infamously
gave their consent with eyes wide open.
1. “US House passes Democrat-crafted ‘homegrown terrorism prevention’ legislation,” World Socialist Web Site, 1 December 2007. #
2.
American Civil Liberties Union, “ACLU Skeptical of Senate Report on ‘Homegrown’ Terrorism,” Press Release, May 8, 2008. #