Deep-State Fetishizes New Domestic Terrorism Laws

January 6th (J6) has inspired deep-state authority fetishists to trip over themselves, inventing newer & more devious laws to quell dissent. Despite the fact that the insurrectionist cosplayers did break multiple laws, which could give some of them 20 year prison sentences, apparently, that’s not nearly enough power for the state to have. As usual, they want

MORE!!!!!!

There’s no shortage of security state ghouls from both sides of the political aisle making their voices heard. Voices like the perpetually perfidious House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-California, who said, “we need to elevate our response to domestic terrorism, to put it on a plane with our response to international terrorism.” ¹

Former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (which includes immigration and border enforcement) Elizabeth Neumann said, “While the prosecutors and the FBI are doing the best that they can with the tools that they have — and they will tell you, ‘Hey, I can usually deal with this’ — you also see them having to go the extra mile in a way they really shouldn’t have to.”² (Yeah, why should the government have to work hard to prove someone’s guilt? What a crazy idea.)

The Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, testifying before the Homeland Security Intelligence and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said:

“To fully combat domestic terrorism across the country, changes to federal criminal laws must be made. Labels matter. Prosecuting hate-motivated attackers as terrorists sends the clear message that the threat of extremism is just as significant when it is based on domestic political, religious or social ideologies as it is when it’s based on violent jihadism.”²

Former U.S. Attorney Richard Zabel opines:

“The United States faces a rising threat of violent extremism yet has no law targeting the problem. The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the Department of Homeland Security’s first-ever national domestic terrorism bulletin on Jan. 27 have sounded the alarm that it is time for Congress to fix this gap: We need anti-terrorism laws aimed at domestic terrorism…”

The Patriot act provided “officials with additional authority to investigate domestic terrorism, [but] it created no new criminal offense of engaging in domestic terrorism. This means that a prosecutor cannot charge a defendant with domestic terrorism alone. Instead, prosecutors have to use other available statutes, such as firearms or assault statutes. But when terrorism cases are not pursued as terrorism cases in our courts, it limits our societal condemnation of the defendants and their dangerous ideologies. Juries, judges and the public do not get to pass judgment on the conduct as terrorism.”

Zabel, Richard B. “Opinion | Domestic Terrorism Is a National Problem. It Should Also Be a Federal Crime.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 Feb. 2021.

Just to be clear, it is currently super-illegal to attack, maim, attempt to kill, and/or murder police officers. It is illegal to trespass on government property. It is illegal to damage government property. It is illegal to interfere in the operations of Congress. It is illegal to steal government property. It is illegal to commit an insurrection against the U.S. government. It is illegal to publicly threaten to murder the Vice-President. All of these actions are crimes that can currently be punished with decades behind bars. The Justice department is still finding and arresting more insurrectionists as recently as May 15th.

A domestic terrorism law could dramatically increase the ability to suppress actions and/or thoughts that are constitutionally protected. The capitol was breached by only a few hundred people, out of several thousand individuals present. While I absolutely think most of these people were engaged in a fascist goal, and that their cause is incredibly delusional, and that they are literally the 2nd sorest losers in American history,³ they do technically have a right to those extremely stupid, stupid, stupid beliefs. This includes the belief or the desire for the government to be overthrown.⁴ A domestic terrorism law could potentially charge everyone present, both violent & peaceful protesters.

Maybe you don’t care if these people are punished. They’re deluded neo-fascist insurrectionists after all. But, who do you think these laws are most likely to be applied too? The FBI was literally started to quell anarchist & anti-capitalist activists. The FBI has been attacking Leftist movements for over seventy years: Black Panthers, Anti-war movements, American Indian Movement (AIM), and many more. What if Trump or another neo-fascist gets elected to the presidency? Do you think they’ll hesitate for a second to charge every person at a black liberation protest with terrorism, if a single snowflake statue clutches its pearls and falls over because of the actions of a few? (The state historically focuses most of its energies proactively against the Left, only focusing on the Right in reaction to some horrible event.)

Trump actually attempted to do something like this at the beginning of his presidency. On his Inauguration day, January 20^th, 2017 (J20), there were massive anarchist and anti-fascist protests across the country, but especially in Washington, D.C. These protests included violent actions like property damage & fighting with police.

“In all, 234 people, including activists, journalists, medics and legal observers, were arrested during the protest and charged with felony inciting to riot, rioting, conspiracy to riot, destruction of property and assault on a police officer, which together carry sentences of at least 50 years in prison. Twenty of the people arrested pleaded guilty to lesser charges, and another 20 had their charges dismissed. In December, just days before Christmas, a jury found six of the defendants not guilty. In a hearing last Thursday, the prosecution dropped all charges against 129 of the defendants, leaving 59 remaining defendants to stand trial, including one journalist.”

King, Elizabeth. “J20, One Year Later: Defendants Facing Decades in Prison for Protesting.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2018.

The Trump administration, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, tried all the protesters under the legal theory that the nonviolent protesters provided cover for rioters, and therefore should be held criminally liable for those crimes. It didn’t work, and the government dropped the charges.⁵ But a domestic terrorism charge could justify this legal theory allowing the government wide latitude to shut-down dissent.

Yet, Democrats seem to be salivating over the possibility of passing new domestic terror laws.

We should not be surprised that the neo-liberal establishment favors increased state power. The Third Way Clinton Democrats were notoriously tough-on-crime, leading to the mass incarceration we see today. All the while, deregulation of financial markets and globalization to China left the working class in increasingly precarious economic conditions. This necessitates more reliance in illegal alternative economies by working people putting them right in the iron hands of the state. Whether it’s broken-windows policing,⁶ the war on drugs,⁷ or novel ways of using debt-mechanisms to keep those fined by the state in perpetual poverty,⁸ if you are not homo economicus, if you as an individual cannot be profitable in the economic Darwinism of neoliberalism,⁹ the iron fist of the state will happily make you profitable. Endless municipal fines, debt obligations, even incarceration will find a way to extract profit from you.¹⁰

All of this talk reveals an inherent contradiction between neoliberalism & democracy. Alexis Cortez, in describing the neoliberal experiment in Chile mentioned previously, says,

Under neoliberalism “democracy has been limited, to the extent that there is a crucial area of collective life, the economy, which would be excluded from the decision-making capacity of citizens. But not only that, especially in the Chilean case, neoliberalism was presented not only as inevitable, but also as desirable. The free market economy would not only be the natural result of social forces, or, according to this logic, the market, but it was the best possible option to maximize the social well-being of the population, according to its proponents.” 

Cortés, Alexis. “The Chilean October: Neoliberalism Was Born and Will Die in Chile?” OpenDemocracy, 23 Jan. 2020.

In neoliberalism, the real vote you have is the dollar; the more dollars you have the more of a say you have in society. This isn’t just because our millionaire lawmakers only ever talk to multi-millionaire (and above) donors. In a consumer-based economy, supply & demand is the law, and it’s wielded by the capitalist class (using artificial scarcity) with the consent & protection of the state. As long as neoliberals in both parties control the government, the inherent contradiction between a democracy of the people & neoliberal addiction to the profit motive will grow more intense leading to more state-repression.

But, I digress. So, we don’t really need to give the security state more money or authority to punish insurrectionists and prevent the next one. What’s left to do that isn’t already being done regarding the aftermath of J6? Obviously, punish Trump for his role in the insurrection (and all the other horrible shit he’s done).¹¹ How are the Democrats doing holding Trump accountable for his many crimes?

This article was originally published on Strangecornersofthought.com.

1. Jenks, Paul. “Lawmakers Divided over Need for New Domestic Terrorism Law.” Roll Call, Roll Call, 30 Apr. 202.
2. Ibid.
3. Second only to confederate traitors.
4. You’re just not allowed to advocate specific actions that would accomplish this like storming the capital.
5. In fact, the District of Columbia actually had to pay out settlements to some protesters totaling $1.6 million. See: Beaujon, Anthony. “DC Settles Cases From Protest Arrests During Trump’s 2017 Inauguration.” Washingtonian, 26 Apr. 2021.
6. The police practice of heavily focusing enforcement on low-level or minor infractions, e.g., jaywalking, panhandling, littering, etc.
7. Especially on crack, meth, and opiates which keeps the prison population diverse among all races.
8. See John Oliver’s episode of Last Week Tonight entitled “Municipal Fines.” #shutdownthefuckbarrel
9. The ideal form of neoliberalism–its raison d’etre–is the survival of the fittest (i.e., most profitable) mentality that causes libertarians to have both wet dreams & spontaneous emissions concurrently.
10. Incarceration extracts profit in that it costs so much money a year to keep a prisoner alive which benefits companies that sell food, medicine, communications, etc. to federal, state, & municipal corrections facilities. The more people incarcerated, the more profit these companies make, and the more value extracted from society’s undesirables. In this way, even government-run corrections facilities are sites of wealth-creation.
11. E.g., emolument clause violations, crimes against humanity at the border, numerous Hatch Act violations, threatening Georgia election officials to tamper with ballots, and I’m sure so much more.