An extensive list with no flies. New crimes posted. Increased use of the death penalty.
These are some of the ways politicians, experts and law enforcers want to fend off a repeat of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But a renewed push for national security aimed at addressing domestic terrorism has left civil freedom groups concerned that the move to combat right-wing extremism would rather colored communities and left-wing activists be.
Last summer’s protests against racial justice sparked a national debate over the endurance of racism in America’s law enforcement and security apparatus. But despite a campaign on the need for institutional reform, some mainstream Democrats are now taking the lead in calls to expand it.
Senate leader Chuck Schumer called for the Capitol rioters to be placed on the no-fly list. President Joe Biden, whose website on his campaign promises the government will push for a domestic terrorism law, has ordered a comprehensive review of domestic violent extremism. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a new “9/11-type commission”. And the first local anti-terrorism legislation that followed the Capitol attack was introduced in the House last week by Illinois Democrat Brad Schneider.
However, the Democratic Party is not entirely united on the issue.
Ten progressive members of Congress, led by Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, have sent a letter to the congressional leadership expressing opposition to the expansion of national security forces.
“The Trump mob’s success in violating the Capitol was not due to a lack of resources available to federal law enforcement,” the letter said. “We firmly believe that the US Government’s security and oversight powers are already too broad, undefined and irresponsible for the people.”
“Our history is littered with examples of initiatives deemed necessary to combat extremism that are rapidly being transferred to instruments used for the massive violation of the human rights and civil rights of the American people,” the letter continues.
It cites as examples the House Un-American Activity Committee of the McCarthy era, the surveillance of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the invention of a category in 2017 called “Black Identity Extremism” which according to the FBI poses a risk to domestic terrorism inhou.
More than a hundred civil and human rights organizations have also joined a statement of opposition to any new domestic terrorism legislation.
Since January 6, security officials have raised the same enchanting argument when the debate over domestic terrorism resurfaces: that the law hinders the police from effectively fighting white nationalist violence. “There are so many restrictions on law enforcement,” former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton recently told CNBC. “We do not have much of the tools to fight domestic terrorism that we have to fight international terrorism.”
Experts on civil rights and civil liberties believe that the argument is unimportant, a ploy to seize power in a time of national crisis, and point to the many laws at the disposal of law enforcers in the fight against domestic extremism. What they lack, they say, is the will to treat white supremacists as they do colored communities, despite white supremacists declaring the vast majority of criminal acts that can be classified as domestic terrorism by law.
“For the past four years, white supremacists and far-right militias have used public violence and made public statements about their intent to do so,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent now at the Brennan Justice Center. . “So it’s a little difficult for me to understand how the FBI and local law enforcement had no idea that the attack on the Capitol was planned.”
The government does have more extensive powers – powers that have flown in the decades since 9/11 – to target alleged Americans, they are associated with groups designated by the State Department as “Foreign Terrorism Organizations”. While the Patriot Act and other authorities did expand after 9/11 the ability of the government to investigate and prosecute domestic terrorism, it has so far avoided extending all the authorities to domestic groups. This is due in part to concerns about the First Amendment, as the U.S. Constitution allows for nonviolent association with hate groups.
Advocates also point out how damaging the anti-terrorism forces were to Muslim-American communities and the rule of law. The label “terrorism” was used to justify the oversight of entire communities, mass arrests and deportations, imprisonment, harassment, an inflated watch list system and, of course, the Muslim ban, one of the original sins of the Trump presidency.
“An expansion of domestic terrorism will no longer mean focusing on white terrorism,” said Diala Shamas, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights. ‘When you think about the prejudices that law enforcement has – with a focus on black political disagreement, Muslim political disagreement, Palestinian organization – it is not far-fetched to think that these are the groups that will be disproportionately represented in any so-called domestic terrorism. not. framework. ”
Shamas says the concept of terrorism cannot be separated from the legacy of politicization and abuse. “The caveat I make with the use of the terminology is because of this acute realization that it will eventually cause such extensive state action.”
Asad Dandia, a community organizer in Brooklyn, has first-hand experience with the upheaval that the label for terrorism can cause.
When Dandia was a teenager, his charity was infiltrated by an informant who worked for the NYPD, who spent months on Dandia, his family and friends, as part of the infamous, years-long surveillance program of the Muslim Community Police Department. . Dandia joined a lawsuit against the NYPD in 2013 that was settled in 2017 after the NYPD agreed to a series of reforms.
He recently reread the confession the informant posted on Facebook. “I was an informant for the NYPD for a while to investigate terrorism,” it reads.
“I completely forgot that the keyword was there,” Dandia says of the word terrorism. “We, my community and my friends, got the name. Arguing for the name for another community implicitly means accepting it for myself. And I refuse to accept it for myself. ”
Policymakers are currently considering a number of options. The bill, introduced last week, calls for the establishment of domestic terrorism offices within the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and Justice, and for increased monitoring and reporting on threats and investigations.
The proposal with the most concerned civil liberties is a bill first introduced in 2019 by House Speaker Adam Schiff, which gives the Attorney General the authority to identify certain crimes as terrorism. Given the aggressive policing and prosecution of protesters over racial justice this past summer – in just one example, an indigenous man now faces ten years in prison for his Facebook messages – they say it’s easy to think that the charges against protesters were even more inflated with a terrorist designation – ignited by an unsympathetic attorney general like William Barr.
“In addition to further harming already marginalized communities, these charges can also be used to label people as terrorists who protest people against injustices by the government through civil disobedience or actions that lead to property damage,” the U.S. Civil Liberties Union said in ‘ wrote a letter in which he opposed the bill.
German, the former FBI agent, recently published a report linking biased policing to the extensive infiltration of police departments by white rulers.
Germany accuses the FBI of playing a ‘semantic game’ by claiming that the US has a domestic terrorism law, pointing to the dozens of laws related to what the law defines as domestic terrorism. The best way for the police to target white supremacist violence, he says, is to eradicate racists within their ranks and enforce existing laws.
Shamas and German both point to the need for a broader account of the reasons why the government has historically turned a blind eye to extreme-right extremism. “In my opinion, the real problem with white rule is the proximity to the state,” says Shamas. ‘It’s the fact that we have representatives in Congress who are white supremacists, it’s the fact that police departments are infiltrated by these groups.
“None of this is captured when you say ‘these are not terrorists’. The relationship with the state becomes vague. ”