The stories of two men-a former State Department official, Matthew Q. The most important plank of such an approach would be the creation of a special designation for domestic terror organizations, enabling the conviction and imprisonment of those who offer material support. If the FBI could step up its intelligence gathering, the argument goes, it could more effectively disrupt plots, and elevating certain offenses to the level of federal crimes would serve as a deterrent against future organizing. Supporters of a domestic terrorism statute claim that it would provide the government with a mandate to redirect its sprawling intelligence and investigative resources toward pursuing white supremacists. “And that happened just at the time that the public was growing more concerned about unenforced white supremacist violence.” “You had all these people who were looking for a new target,” German explained. Rhetoric supporting these tactics arose out of the cottage counterterrorism industry that blossomed in the aftermath of 9/11, said Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former FBI agent. Likewise, the federal No Fly list-which names people who are prohibited from boarding commercial aircraft for travel within, into, or out of the country, and has been referred to as a “ due-process nightmare” by civil liberties advocates-has been trotted out as a potential means of restricting the freedom of movement of insurrectionists. The Department of Homeland Security, a sprawling bureaucratic behemoth created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and branded during the Bush era as one of the “essential institutions” in fighting terrorism, has reportedly been tapped by the Biden administration to play a greater role in combating white supremacist extremism. Among the more troubling developments is an explosion in calls for a domestic “war on terrorism.” Proposals along this line, emanating from federal law enforcement, intelligence officials, and lawmakers, have run the gamut, from invocations to use the tools and institutions refined during the Bush- and Obama-era “war on terrorism” to demands for a new criminal domestic terrorism statute. But many of the solutions offered pose serious problems themselves. In the months since, the question of how to stem the tide of domestic extremism has been met with appropriate seriousness from most corners, save certain factions on the right. “This was democracy itself being challenged.” “The call was from inside the house,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, the author of Hate in the Homeland and the director of American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab. Meanwhile, the president himself made clear, time and again, that he would, at best, ignore the extreme right’s acts of terroristic violence or, at worst, encourage them-just as he did on January 6. Over the course of his administration, they found comfort in Trump’s America. Trump’s early comments, disparaging Mexicans as “rapists” and demanding a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” had animated far-right extremists. The display of white resentment that day hearkened back to the former president’s 2016 campaign. The attack, which left five dead, was the crowning moment of a slew of eminently preventable instances of far-right violence throughout the Trump era. In one photo, taken by a reporter from USA Today, a woman draped in a Trump flag stands on the wooden gallows, clutching the unambiguous symbol of white supremacist terror. Capitol building, pro-Trump rioters outside set up a noose. On January 6, as insurrectionists stormed the U.S.
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