Yes, I have been harping on the promulgation of fear in our society rather a lot lately, but Glenn Greenwald said it better than I ever have!
Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.
Mr Greenwald wasn’t even talking about the restrictions so many have accepted, to out freedom of peaceable assembly, to our free exercise of religion, to mask mandates and the other things government has imposed on us due to COVID-19, though he certainly could have been. No, he was talking about the Biden Administration and its cranking out of ‘domestic terror’ alerts.
The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants
Homeland Security just issued its fourth danger bulletin this year. And both the weapons and rhetorical tactics of the first War on Terror are increasingly visible.
Glenn Greenwald | June 2, 2021The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.
The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks” from “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” (that warning also was not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing violence “to attack higher-capacity targets,” exacerbated by the lifting of COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).
Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network, in an “update,” called “the additional information from the Department of Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this time.” And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day was such a flop that even The Washington Post — one of the outlets most vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in particular — had to explicitly acknowledge the failure:
Thousands [of National Guard troops] had been deployed to capitals across the country late last week, ahead of a weekend in which potentially violent demonstrations were predicted by the FBI — but never materialized.
Once again on Wednesday, security officials’ worst fears weren’t borne out: In some states, it was close to business as usual. In others, demonstrations were small and peaceful, with only occasional tense moments.
Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda, white supremacy.
Here’s the video:
According to the Philadelphia Police Department, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 2nd, 221 people had been murdered in the city so far this year. That’s 1.444 per day in the City of Brotherly Love, a rate, which if maintained throughout the year would mean 527 people spilling out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets.
In Chicago, 266 people have been murdered so far this year, 1.739 every single day, putting the Windy City on track for 635 homicides.
In much smaller St Louis, 78 people have been killed, ‘only’ 0.510 per day, for ‘just’ 186 for 2021.
In just those three cities, that’s a total of 565 people murdered so far this year, and a projected 1,348 for the entire year.
White supremacists? So far they’ve killed exactly zero people in 2021![1]The claim that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the Capitol kerfuffle is untrue. The Washington medical examiner found the Officer Sicknick had died of “acute brainstem and … Continue reading Yet President Biden tells us that they are “the most lethal threat to the homeland today.”
Mr Greenwald compares the measures the Democrats are taking today to those under Presidents Bush and Obama following the September 11th attacks, and finds them shockingly similar.
Yeah, I want you to keep reading The First Street Journal, every day, but this is the time in which you should follow the embedded link and read Mr Greenwald’s article on substack. It’s just plain brilliant!
References
| ↑1 | The claim that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the Capitol kerfuffle is untrue. The Washington medical examiner found the Officer Sicknick had died of “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis,” also known as a stroke. |
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