Domestic Terrorism American Style – An Analysis (27 August 2012) by Lawrence Davidson

This article is the work of Lawrence Davidson, Professor of History at West Chester University


Part I — Some Background
The Ku Klux Klan (the name derives from the Greek word Kuklos meaning circle with a modification of the word clan added), an American terrorist organization, was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865. It was organized by Southerners who refused to reconcile themselves to the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and its declared mission was to “maintain the supremacy of the white race in the United States.” To this end it adopted tactics in the southern states that would so terrify emancipated African Americans and their white allies, that they would not dare to vote, run for public office, or intermingle with whites except in “racially appropriate” ways.

Intimidation took many forms. Non-whites and their allies who sought to assert civil rights were threatened, assaulted and frequently murdered. If they were women they were subjected to assault and rape. The property of these people was destroyed, their homes and meeting places attacked with bombs or burned. Finally, a favorite tactic was lynching.

Lynching was/is murder carried out by a mob that collectively thinks it is protecting the community and/or its traditions. Between 1882 and 1930 the Klan and allied organizations lynched some 3,000 people, mostly black men. Often the accusation was that the black male victim had sought sexual relations with white women. It was very rare that those involved in these murders, which were carried out quite openly with little effort to hide identities, were arrested for their actions much less convicted and adequately punished. This, in turn, was possible because of a number of factors:

– First and foremost, the belief that African Americans, and subsequently all non-whites, were dangerous to “white civilization.” This belief was built into the cultural perceptions of the majority. With rare exceptions, a white person could not grow up in this environment without acquiring a knee-jerk prejudice against non-whites.

– As a result, local white populations, as well as local law enforcement, often sympathized with the Klan, sometimes feared it, or just did not care about what happened to the non-white population.

In the years following the Civil War, the activities of the Klan only subsided when the U.S. government allowed the Southern states to impose laws that prevented African Americans from voting and acquiesced in a harsh regime of segregation. When the Civil rights movement finally took place in the 1960s, the Klan reappeared and participated in the violent opposition to desegregation and racial equality. This abated only when the federal government started seriously enforcing its own civil rights laws.

Part II – Old Tactics and New Victims

While today the Ku Klux Klan as an organization is nearly (but not quite) gone, it would be a mistake to think that the Klan mentality is dead in the U.S. Quite the contrary. The nation’s deep seated history of racism has helped preserve an apparent permanent subset of Americans who grow up with prejudicial feelings against anyone they perceive as a threat to their version of the “American way of life.”

This background can help us understand the on-going attacks against American Muslims. Since 2010 there has been an increase in the number of attacks on American Muslims, their mosques and other property, as well as American minorities (such as Sikhs) who are regularly mistaken for Muslims. These attacks are not the work of a refurbished Ku Klux Klan but, nonetheless, have about them the same nature: fear of American Muslims as cultural subversives (for instance, the delusion that they seek to impose Sharia law in the United States); anonymous threats of violence (via telephone, internet, and also in the form of abusive graffiti); bomb, arson, and gun fire attacks on property; and finally assaults and murders. The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department has investigated over 800 such incidents in the last eleven years. Eight such attacks occurred in the first half of the present month of August 2012, including the murder of six Sikhs in Milwaukee on August 5.

An important factor in all of this is the role of a number of campaigning politicians who go around proclaiming the threat that American Muslims supposedly represent to the country. For instance, just prior to a spate of arson attacks in the Chicago area, U.S. Representative Joe Walsh held town hall meetings in the area where he proclaimed, “One thing I am sure of is that there are people in this country–there is a radical strain of Islam in this country–it’s not just over there–trying to kill Americans every week.” His talk was filmed and posted on YouTube. Similar rhetoric has been heard from a dozen other politicians including Peter King, the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and Michele Bachmann, who was among those running for GOP candidate for president.

Part III – What It Takes to Break a Bad Habit

This is what you get when you practice a culture that has evolved around racist views. And, you get it more or less in perpetuity. In the case of the United States, the nation spent from 1789 (counting from the establishment of the Constitution which legitimized slavery) to 1954 (the year the Supreme Court declared, in Brown v. Board of Education, mandatory segregation of public schools unconstitutional), or 165 years, building up an “American way of life,” which legitimized discrimination against non-whites. Subsequently, it has spent from 1957 (counting from the year that Brown v. Board of Education actually began to be enforced) to the present, or 55 years trying to undo that legacy. If it takes about as long to undo a nationwide bad habit as it did to establish it, we have a long road ahead of us.

What the years since 1957 have done is to legally enforce non-racist public behavior. This is certainly a necessary step which, if consistently applied, will eventually lead to an internalized change in the outlook and morality of most of the population. In this regard Barack Obama’s election as the first African American president in 2008 was a sure sign of progress. However, the virulent reaction to Obama by more than a few is another sign that, while 55 years is long enough to alter the public behavior of some people, it is not long enough to change the private attitudes of many. Thus, there are still those groups of citizens who are deeply racist. Today, under normal circumstances, they keep their feeling to themselves and their like-minded circle. However, when conditions allow, that racism emerges in a public way, often in hate speech but sometimes more brutally. These extremists are the modern day versions of yesterday’s klansmen and, given a chance, they will happily commit mayhem in the name of their cherished traditions. American Muslims are now their target.

Part IV – Another Example = Our Ally Israel

If you want to see another example of a society that has historically cultivated discriminatory outlooks and practices, one that American Zionists consider quite similar to the U.S., take a look at Israel. By the way, If there is any truth to the belief that Israel is “just like us,” it can only refer to the United States prior to 1957–prior to the introduction of civil rights laws.

Much like the American south of that pre-legal equality era, Israel is shaped by a culture of ethno/religious exclusiveness practiced amidst a larger out-group (in this case the Palestinian Arabs). This has led the Israeli Jews to teach successive generations that it is proper and necessary to discriminate against Palestinians. And, sure enough, over the years Israel has produced its own terrorist organizations that intimidate and attack Palestinian Arabs: the Irgun and Lehi during the years leading to the establishment of the state in 1948, Gush Emunim and Terror Against Terror in the 1970s and 1980s, and today’s “Price-Taggers” and West Bank settler vigilantes. Just like klansmen in the American south, these terrorists are rarely prosecuted and almost never adequately punished for their crimes because much of the Jewish population as well as the organs of the state sympathize with them. And, just like the American south, they operate in an environment conducive to an Israeli version of lynching.

That brings us to the Isreaeli style lynching that occurred on the night of August 17 in Jerusalem. Raised in an environment that purposely cultivates prejudice and hatred against Arabs, a mob of some fifty Israeli Jewish young people attacked four Palestinian male youths, almost killing one of them. The attack was unprovoked and apparently random, though the attackers “claimed they wanted to prevent them [the Arab boys] from speaking to Jewish girls.” “Hundreds” witnessed this event but did not interfere. The entire thing was predictable, and indeed inevitable. It is what you get when you practice a culture that has evolved around racist views.

Part V – Conclusion

There might be a human genetic inclination toward group solidarity, but its worst manifestations are not inevitable. You can feel solidarity with your family, your religious community, your ethnic group, your nation, etc. without hating others. The hating part is a learned attitude. And, as is often the case, fear will underlie the hatred.

Both American and Israeli bigots or terrorists have focused on Arabs and Muslims as a threatening out-group. Both the Americans and the Israelis who do so draw strength from a culture that has deep racist roots. In today’s U.S.A. many know that this is wrong and so there is a moral position from which to combat this behavior. Unfortunately, it is not possible to say the same thing about Israel.

In the United States the core need is consistent educational and legal pressure against racist behavior both in terms of individual and institutional behavior. When I say consistent I mean over multiple generations, for at least as many years as it took to create the nationwide bigotry in the first place. If we do not succeed in this endeavor then American Zionists will be proven correct. We in the U.S. will be just like the Israelis.





Blog: www.tothepointanalyses.com

Poll Reveals Alarming Depth of Dislike of American Muslims

By William Fisher

Most Americans are aware of the negative attitudes our country has toward American Muslims and Arab-Americans. But what they may not be so aware of is the depth of the vitriol with which they attack these two groups and the utter ignorance they apply to make their vitriol even more incendiary.

At a press conference earlier this week, Dr. James Zogby – who is president of the Arab American Institute – presented the results of a poll of 2100 Americans who were asked about their views about various aspects of Arab-America and American Muslim life.

The quick takeaway from Zogby’s presentation is that Arab-Americans and American Muslims are not just disliked – they are detested. They are despised.

Substantial majorities of Americans in various demographic niches believe people in these two groups are disloyal to the United States, though hundreds of thousands have been in the US for generations. It is estimated that there are approximately five to eight million Muslims living in the U.S. now.

In 2000, 1.2 million people reported an Arab ancestry in the United States. In December 2003, the U.S. census bureau released data for the first time on the Arab population of the United States. The data is from the 2000 census. The census does not break down the figures by religion, but the Arab-American Institute estimates that about 77% of Arab-Americans are Christians (42% Catholic, 23% Orthodox, 12% Protestant) and 23% Muslim.

The toxic attitudes of American citizens toward their Muslim and Arab countrymen have triggered a rash of attacks and threats. Zogby ran through a litany:

Of the findings, Zogby said, “The numbers from our latest poll highlight that Park 51, the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab tone of the 2010 campaign season, anti-Sharia legislation, calls for Muslim loyalty oaths, and public attacks on American Muslims and Arab American public servants have taken a toll on American public opinion. Park 51 is to be the official name of the controversial community center located near the remains of the World Trade Center.
“Despite the fact that most Americans are unable to make the distinction between Arabs and Muslims, the vitriol that has been aimed at both communities is clearly swaying public opinion along age and party lines,” Zogby said.


Meaning that older people and Republicans have the most deep-seated enmity toward the two groups.

Other findings:

Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and American Muslims have the lowest favorable/highest unfavorable ratings among the eight major religious groups covered.

Muslims are the only group with a net unfavorable rating.

There is a deep generational divide, which is reflected in a partisan divide. Younger Americans (18-25) rate Arabs and Muslims up to 17 points higher than the older generation. They also rate Arab Americans and American Muslims higher as well.

Younger Americans rate Catholics and the various Protestant denominations covered in the survey almost 20 points lower than do older Americans (65+). The younger group also rates Mormons 15 points lower. This is reflected in a deep partisan divide and even more so in a division between those who describe themselves as Obama or Romney voters.
For example, the ratings given to Arabs and Muslims by Obama and Romney voters are mirror reflections of each other. While Obama voters give Arabs a net 51%/29% favorable rating and Muslims a net 53%/29% rating; Romney voters give Arabs a 30%/50% net unfavorable rating and Muslims a 25%/57% unfavorable rating.

Democrats and Obama voters give no group a net negative rating. Republicans and Romney voters only give strong negative ratings to Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and American Muslims.
There is also a racial divide in attitudes toward Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and American Muslims.

Favorable attitudes toward Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and American Muslims are significantly higher among African American, Hispanic, and Asian Americans.

Fifty-seven per cent of voters believe their ethnicity or religion would influence their decision-making of Arab Americans and American Muslims if they were appointed to important government posts.
Again there is a deep partisan divide on this question. By a two to one ratio, Democrats and Obama voters are confident that Arab Americans and American Muslims could do the job, but a strong majority of Republicans and Romney voters fear that the ethnicity or religion of members of these communities would influence their work.

Once again, age plays a significant role.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Government continues to perform its schizoid dance that confuses everyone involved. On the one hand, the government is reaching out to those it considers “good” Arab-Americans and “good” Muslims. It is praising these people whenever it can. On the other hand, it is sending agent provocateurs into mosques and Muslim neighborhoods to gather information on future terror plots. Muslim congregations are crying “entrapment.”

Zogby’s comment:

“In 2010, in the wake of the Park 51 controversy, AAI conducted a similar poll on views toward Arabs and Muslims. The data extracted from both polls indicates that anti-Arab and anti-Muslim political rhetoric has taken a toll on American public opinion, especially along age and party lines.”

How’s that for understatement?
The Arab-American and American Muslim communities suffered through similar attacks in the days and weeks immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The government rounded up thousands of “Middle Eastern people” and jailed hundreds of them. Scores of violent incidents and threats against Arab-Americans and American Muslims were reported. Many took their complaints to court.

And now we are seeing a repeat performance.

For example, The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for an FBI hate crime investigation of an acid bomb attack on a Muslim school in that state. It was the second such incident targeting an Illinois Muslim institution .
Arab immigrants and their community centers, mosques and businesses have been hit by Molotov cocktails, bullets and bricks. Buildings have been defaced with graffiti. Numerous bomb threats have occurred. In one incident a drunken 75-year-old man, screaming, “You’re destroying my country,” tried to run down a Pakistani woman in a Long Island parking lot.

Two air rifle shots were fired at the Muslim Education Center (MEC) mosque in Morton Grove, Ill.

The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice placed a priority on prosecuting bias crimes and incidents of discrimination against Muslims, Sikhs, and persons of Arab and South-Asian descent, as well as persons perceived to be members of these groups.

On July 4th, Joplin, Missouri's Islamic Center — the city's only mosque — suffered roof damage after an unidentified man set it on fire by tossing a burning object onto the building.

The following Monday, there was a second fire, but this time the damage was far more extensive. Fire officials described it as a "complete loss."

A man armed with a hammer was caught on video apparently destroying a sign at a mosque in Rhode Island.
At least seven people were killed and twenty injured as a gunman took over a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The number includes the gunman, who was killed by police. Officials are treating it as a "domestic terrorist-type incident." The attacker is believed to have confused Sikhs and Muslims.

CAIR called for increased police protection at houses of worship across the country following the Joplin fire and the deadly attack on the Sikh temple.

What this ugly bigotry conjures up are pages out of American history’s Book of Shame. For there is where we find our Pilgrim Fathers destroying the lives of the people they found there. There is where we find the sepsis of the slave-trade economy. There is where we find the Italians, the Irish and the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. There is where we find 110,000 Japanese-Americans hauled off to camps in the middle of nowhere. And there is where we find the bloody swamp we know as Jim Crow.

Arabs and Muslims in America are going to have to fight hate and discrimination – many are doing so now. To be successful, they are going to need the proactive backing of the heavy hitters in our government – beginning with the President -- and in our business and financial communities over a substantial period of time. And these are not groups that embrace change unless there is absolutely no alternative. The more enlightened attitudes of the younger American generation offer some hope for healing.

While some observers have urged Mr. Obama to provide stronger and more consistent leadership on this issue, others are suggesting that now may be too soon; the wounds of 9/11 may be too fresh.

But time alone would not have given us the Civil Rights Act of 1965 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

And – let’s face it -- it wouldn’t have mattered a whit if a posse of American Muslims and Arab Americans had killed Osama bin Laden. Nobody would have believed it!
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This article originally appeared in the pages of Prism Magazine

America: How Exceptional?

By William Fisher

During this crazy campaign season, we’re never very far from hearing the words “American Exceptionalism.” We – candidates and others – persist in using this meaningless and hackneyed phrase despite what most of us now know about all the times in history when our America was not-so-exceptional.

Not-So-Exceptional-At-All.

Let me illustrate my point with a letter. You need to read this letter. You really do. It was written this summer by a former resident of Death Row in a Louisiana state prison. His name is John Thompson. Here are the key parts of what he wrote:

I was sentenced to death in 1984 for a crime I didn’t commit. I spent 14 years on death row and another four in prison before I was exonerated and freed. I came weeks from execution for something I knew I didn’t do.

The prosecutors at my trials hid evidence of my innocence in both a robbery case and a murder case that got me convicted and sentenced to death.

While I was on death row, I met other condemned men (and teenagers) including Ryan Matthews, Shareef Cousin, Dan Bright, Curtis Kyles, Albert Burrell and Michael Graham. All six of them were exonerated and freed, not killed by lethal injection.

We were condemned for over 60 years between us. And we were from all over the state: four of us from New Orleans, one from Jefferson Parish and two from Union Parish. All of us had lawyers to represent us at our trials. But you can bet none of us had an “O.J.”

After we were condemned, all of us were “lucky”enough to get lawyers from groups with the money to properly investigate our cases. Because they had the money and time to properly investigate, each of us was exonerated and freed.

My lawyers were from a law firm in Philadelphia who dedicated 16 years of their lives to proving my innocence. If they hadn’t, I’d be dead. No doubt about it.

Of course, if Louisiana had paid for us to have real defenses in the first place, we wouldn’t have been wrongly condemned to die, our families wouldn’t have suffered years of trauma, the families of the victims wouldn’t have suffered as long, the state would have saved money and the real perpetrators might have been more quickly caught.

John Thompson is now the director of a prison rights organization called “Resurrection After Exoneration” in New Orleans.

My attention was drawn to the past paragraph in Thompson’s letter, where he says, “… if Louisiana had paid for us to have real defenses in the first place, we wouldn’t have been wrongly condemned to die….”

He is referring to the “loser pays” principle that’s in effect in many countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom. Lawyers are of divided opinions on the issue, which is incredibly complicated and littered with examples of unintended consequences.

The nation’s lawyers are nowhere near addressing, much less resolving, resolving this problem. And, while some states have already implemented some version of the rule, it applies only to civil, not criminal, cases.

Compensation for unlawful imprisonment obligates some states to compensate the exonoree , some not. Today, 22 states, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government, will make a cash award to those freed after doing unlawful jail time;  the rest have no such provision. In those, the outward-bound gift is something like $75.00 and a bus ticket. In other states, the award can be substantial – in the millions, depending on the length of incarceration.

And sometimes, that system itself goes wrong. One exonoree was awarded $14 million for spending a generation on death row. Within days, the state did a 180 and withdrew the award, giving the former prisoner nothing.

The quality of lawyering in defense cases often leaves just about everything to be desired. States are cutting back on funding for legal aid lawyers. Lawyers tell me, anecdotally, that public defenders seem to be getting both younger and older. Murder cases are being handled by lawyers who have never dealt with a capital crime before. Not infrequently, older lawyers have been known to sleep through substantial parts of trials, miss court dates, and fail to file documents – even last-minute motions -- on deadline.

Most of the court cases in the US take place in State (or lower) Courts, not in the Federal Justice System. That means that, as a country, we have a patchwork of different rules, regulations, procedures, and sentences.

While large law firms are keeping up the pace of their pro bono work, some are beginning to try to put distance between their firms and certain kinds of pro bono work – for example, defending Guantanamo Bay detainees before Military Commissions. Their reason is that the current Military Commission law represents a system that has never been tried and which has virtually no track record.

And then there was this from John Thompson’s letter: “The prosecutors at my trials hid evidence of my innocence.” For me, this is the most egregious part of Thompson’s letter.

Here’s what it means, according to USA TODAY:

The jurors who helped put Nino Lyons in jail for three years had every reason to think that he was a drug trafficker, and, until July, no reason to doubt that justice had been done. For more than a week in 2001, the jurors listened to one witness after another, almost all of them prison inmates, describe how Lyons had sold them packages of cocaine. One said that Lyons, who ran clothing shops and nightclubs around Orlando, even tried to hire him to kill two drug suppliers. But the federal prosecutors handling the case did not let the jury hear all the facts. Instead, the prosecutors covered up evidence that could have discredited many of Lyons' accusers. They never revealed that a convict who claimed to have purchased hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Lyons struggled even to identify his photograph. And they hid the fact that prosecutors had promised to let others out of prison early in exchange for their cooperation.

Prosecutors have immense power. And their abuse of that power is not just a once-in-a-while transgression. It happens all the time and usually goes unnoticed – how do you see something that’s not there?

Worse, as revealed by the current Innocence Project’s research into prosecutorial misconduct, County and State Bar Associations rarely ask prosecutors to explain what looks distinctly fishy to their fellow lawyers. And the reason is exactly that: Most of the time, it’s the fellow lawyer angle that shuts down the bar associations. It’s go along to get along.

In general, we’re only reminded about prosecutorial misconduct when it triggers a major news story. The most heartless one I know concerns the FBI laboratory, as it used to be. Twenty years ago, as many as 10,000 accused men and women were convicted on the strength of bogus forensic tests and were sentenced to prison terms. The Department of Justice attempted a wholesale cover up and gave correct information only to prosecutors, not defense attorneys.

Thanks to the Washington Post, the DOJ fessed up and promised to review every one of the convictions meted out on the basis of faux “evidence.”

Time – and insistent journalism – will help tell us whether the DOJ is making good on its promise.

As to other promises – cleaning up the forensics racket, for example – there are glimmers of hope. In addition to the DOJ’s investigation of the FBI’s faux “evidence,” proposed legislation has recently been introduced in both House and Senate.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Donna Edwards and Daniel Lipinski of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology have introduced bills mandating scientific review and standards for forensic sciences.

The bills are designed to address the wide ranging deficiencies in scientific validation and the lack of oversight of forensic sciences that were highlighted in a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences.

Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, said, “Today, leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Science Committee took a giant step forward in ensuring that forensic science is based on strong scientific research and governed by consistent and meaningful standards. For far too long, the forensic science disciplines have suffered from the lack of these components, resulting in practices that hamper law enforcement’s ability to solve crimes and contribute to wrongful convictions.

These bills “are an important component of ensuring that forensic sciences are based on solid, reliable research. We urge Congress to act quickly to enact this legislation and to develop and support mechanisms for the practical implementation of the resulting research and standards.”

Can We All Breathe a Sigh of Relief?

By William Fisher

Maybe we all ought to be overcome with joy to learn that the threat from those all-American homegrown terrorists is no more.
One less thing to worry about.

That might well have been your first thought upon reading that the Department of Homeland Security has reduced its monitoring of the violent right-wing of American terrorism. It has folded up the Unit that used to do this work and reduced its head count from six to one analyst.

Daryl Johnson, who headed that DHS unit, was the principal author of the April 7, 2009, report "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

The report was intended only for distribution to law enforcement agencies. But after it was leaked to the media, a firestorm erupted among conservative commentators who wrongly claimed it equated conservatives with terrorists.
No, not terrorists of the Al Qaeda stripe. Rather, those rosy- cheeked patriots known as white supremacists, skinheads, militias, neo-Nazis, and so-called Sovereign Citizens who may well resemble Timothy McVeigh. How quickly we forget!

Spencer Ackerman of Wired reported that, within days, Secretary Napolitano had disowned Johnson’s report. Today, the department no longer produces its own analytical reports on this subject. Presumably, this job has been handed off to the FBI, although the DHS would neither confirm nor deny that. It had the same reaction when asked if the Unit once headed by Daryl Johnson had been gutted.

What we do know is that our all-American miscreants have kept themselves busy. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, since Johnson’s report was leaked, in 2009, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Nothing dealing with …domestic extremism – whether it’s anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, 'sovereign citizens,' eco-terrorists, the whole gamut."

The SPLC catalogs the crimes committed since then: “The murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion zealot in May 2009; the shooting of a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum by a neo-Nazi in June 2009; the March 2010 arrest of Michigan militia members for plotting to attack police officers and wage war against the government; the murder of two Arkansas police officers by "sovereign citizen" extremists in May 2010; the arrest of a neo-Nazi in the January attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash.; the January arrest of another neo-Nazi who was heading to the Arizona-Mexico border and later charged with possessing explosive devices packed with ball bearings; the arrests in March of members of an Alaska militia for conspiring to murder law enforcement officers and a judge; the murderous attack on the Sikhs; and the massacre of the Batman movie audience.

And Mark Potok of the SPLC said, "The fact is, the DHS report accurately predicted the sort of radical-right terrorism that we’re now seeing across the country."

He added, It’s troubling that the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security would bow to unfounded criticism from the political right."

In his SPLC interview, Johnson said, "What worries me is the fact that our country is under attack from within, from our own radical citizenry. My greatest fear is that domestic extremists in this country will somehow become emboldened to the point of carrying out a mass-casualty attack, because they perceive that no one is being vigilant about the threat from within. That is what keeps me up at night."

It’s what keeps us up at night too. Prism calls on Secretary Napolitano to share her thinking with the American people. The thing is: We know how difficult it is to apprehend terrorists of any kind – whether of the all-American or Al-Qaeda variety. Much of their activity is in the form of speech – protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

But doesn’t this give us more, not less, reason to keep a watchful eye on these figures while they are terrorists in speech only? If anyone should know when they cross that line from speech to action, it’s the Department of Homeland Security.

Secretary Napolitano needs to reassure us that we’re all on the same page.

The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of Daryl Johnson

By William Fisher

In 2009, Daryl Johnson was at the apex of a 15-year career as an expert on domestic terrorist groups — particularly white supremacists and neo-Nazis — as a senior government counterterrorism analyst, the last six of them at the Department of Homeland Security.

As the DHS “go-to” guy for what the DHS called non-Muslim counter-terrorism, Johnson’s six-person unit was about to release a comprehensive report on domestic terrorist groups as a government counterterrorism analyst.

But in 2009, according to WIRED Magazine’s Spencer Ackerman, Johnson’s career took an unexpected nosedive. That’s when he wrote an analysis on the rise of “Right-Wing Extremism” (.pdf). The work triggered a testy political controversy, under pressure from conservatives inside and outside DHS. Conservative writers feared the DHS as demonizing — even, potentially, criminalizing — mainstream right-wing speech.
Stung, DHS responded by cutting “the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled numerous state and local law enforcement briefings, and held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups,” the Washington Post reported in June 2009.

According to Johnson, his former team now consisted of a single analyst tasked with tracking all domestic non-Islamic extremism. His database has been shuttered. A Tea Party activist expressed his displeasure with Johnson’s 2009 report on the danger of far-right extremism. Rightwing hysteria came in the person of pundit Michelle Malkin.

Napolitano caved. As a craven and cowardly sop to her right-wing base, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano repudiated Johnson’s paper, deep-sixed it, and would soon close down Johnson’s unit, leaving only one analyst to track what it called non-Muslim domestic terrorism.

Journalist Ackerman describes Johnson’s frustrations regarding the Sikh massacre. For Johnson, Ackerman writes, “ …the shooting was a reminder that the government’s counterterrorism efforts are almost exclusively focused on al-Qaida, even as non-Islamist groups threaten Americans domestically.” Johnson told WIRED magazine.



“DHS is scoffing at the mission of doing domestic counterterrorism, as is Congress,” Johnson told Danger Room. “There’ve been no hearings about the rising white supremacist threat, but there’s been a long list of attacks over the last few years. But they still hold hearings about Muslim extremism. It’s out of balance.” But even if that balance was reset, he concedes, that doesn’t necessarily mean the feds could have found Page before Sunday’s rampage.



“Johnson’s team was dissolved in April 2010,” Johnson told Danger Room, at which point he left. He says had he been at DHS, he “would have published an analysis calling attention to a growing number of attacks on mosques”, which he thinks could serve as a “warning” to Sikh communities that are often mistaken for Muslim ones.



But, as WIRED correctly points out, finding so-called ‘lone wolf” terrorists like Page is a challenge no matter their motivations, since they operate outside established extremist cells and often don’t have criminal records, making it difficult for law enforcement or homeland security officials to spot them.



Now a security consultant in the Washington D.C. area, Johnson used to work for DHS’ analysis shop, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). He supervised a team of six analysts studying what he calls “domestic non-Islamic extremism.”



Looking at al-Qaida, the DHS employed as many as 40 analysts who looked at al-Qaida and other jihadist groups’ inroads into the homeland.
According to WIRED Johnson ran everything else. One person on his team worked on the threat from anarchists; another, the threat from animal-rights extremists. Still others looked at anti-abortion radicalism, white supremacy and radical environmentalism. They were supplemented by analysts at the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; but outnumbered by the literally thousands of analysts, operatives and other counterterrorism officials throughout the government who focus on jihadism. “Salaries were our major budget item,” he recalls.
Then, in April 2009, Johnson warned that the election of the first African-American president, combined with recession-era economic anxieties, could fuel a rise in far-right violence.
“The Department of Homeland Security protects our country from all threats, whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence,” spokesman Matt Chandler told Danger Room.

“We face a threat environment where violent extremism is neither constrained by international borders, nor limited to any single ideology. This is not a phenomenon restricted solely to any one particular community and our efforts to counter

violent extremism (CVE) are applicable to all ideologically motivated violence. DHS continues to work with its state, local, tribal, territorial and private partners to prevent and protect against potential threats to the United States by focusing on preventing violence that is motivated by extreme ideological beliefs.”

Johnson, who has written a forthcoming book about far-right extremist groups, concedes that the definition of “right-wing” in his product was imprecise. In retrospect, he says he should have clarified that his focus was on “violent” right-wing organizations, like white supremacists, neo-Nazis and so-called Sovereign Citizens who believe the U.S. government is an illegitimate, tyrannical enterprise. Much like mainstream Muslims denounce terrorism and object to over-broad analysis portraying Islam as an incubator of extremism, so too do mainstream conservatives denounce neo-Nazis and white supremacists and dispute that those groups are authentically right-wing.

Nor does he think DHS should ignore Islamic extremism. “It just needs to be more balanced,” Johnson says. New York congressman Peter King has held three hearings in the past year on Muslim extremism,” he says, referring to the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, “but he’s yet to have a
single hearing on right-wing extremism when there’s been a lot more activity.”

His report – the one that got him fired – contains little that is sensational. People who follow non-Muslim hate groups will be familiar with most of the organizations included in the report.

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.

“The economic downturn and the election of the first

African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment,” the report concluded.

It continued: “Threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts. Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.”

The Report said, “Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.”



“The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.”

“During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.”

“Growth of these groups subsided in reaction to increased

government scrutiny as a result of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and disrupted plots, improvements in the economy, and the continued U.S. standing as the preeminent world power.”
“The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

“Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejectinggovernment authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

“Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of rightwing extremist groups, as well as potentially spur some of them to begin planning and training for violence against the government. The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by rightwing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement.”

“Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.”

“DHS/I&A assesses that a number of economic and political factors are driving a resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity. Despite similarities to the climate of the 1990s, the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years. In addition, the historical election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes are proving to be a driving force for rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalization.”

But Johnson doesn’t contend that more resources would necessarily have stopped Page from attacking the Sikh temple. Lone-wolf terrorists are hard to spot. What the government should do instead is broaden its counterterrorism focus beyond just jihads.

As for the FBI, it appears virtually impossible to separate the contra- terrorism operations into (a) against international terrorists and (homegrown)non-Muslim domestic terrorists. The FBI provides no figures as to budgets or personnel for the two operating tracks.

It is known that FBI brass thinks the international side of the assignment is much sexier and more likely to produce press conferences and headlines from which promotions come. Since 9/11, the FBI, DHS and similar state and federal agencies have been drowning in a tsunami of physical and human resources.

So climbing the FBI international success ladder appears to be a far easier goal to aspire to.

This approach, many believe, is the FBI’s natural inclination. They are having a hard time breaking free of the Middle East/Muslim brand that decimated the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Those frantic days post 9/11 days chasing brown-skinned Muslims are seared into their brain, and it will probably be another generation or two before they begin to recede.

Meanwhile, the skinheads, the neo-Nazis, the KKK, the Sovereign Citizen Movement, the heavily armed militias – and a thousand others – will continue to enjoy their First Amendment rights as they burrow deeply into life blood of our country.


This article originally appeared in the pages of Prism Magazine.

Remember Mubarak?

US silence and a harassment campaign of “political decisions” by Bahrain’s judiciary system are responsible for the three-year jail sentence handed down to the country’s leading human rights defender today for participating in an “illegal gathering and calling for a march without prior notification.”

In a statement, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Gulf Center for Human Rights, said ”When Nabeel Rajab was attacked and beaten by security forces during a protest in January 2012, there was an instant reaction from the US State Department and he was immediately released. He then received representatives of the US embassy in Manama in a visit to his home. When Nabeel Rajab was arrested and imprisoned in May 2012, there was no response from the US administration. As the attacks against Nabeel Rajab escalated, the silent reaction from the US administration continued.”

The King of Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, a Sunni Muslim who rules over a tiny country whose majority is Shia, has been playing a conventional but well implemented PR game with the international community. And it seems it’s being successful, especially with the US.
Step One: The King’s strategy launched with his appointing a commission of outsiders – led by a renowned Egyptian judge – to investigate the human rights situation and call attention to abuses. It was to be no holds barred and the King promised to correct injustices in the system.

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), paid for by the government itself and led by Professor Emeritus at De Paul University M. Cherif Bassiouni, found wide-ranging and grave violations of prisoners' human rights committed by government personnel. These include, but are not limited to, civilian deaths attributed to security forces, arbitrary detention, destruction and theft of property on arrest, prisoner injuries consistent with torture, and a deliberate practice of mistreatment by state agents. What is also notable about the BICI is that it does not call for the release of political prisoners. The King accepted the reports, warts and all.
Step Two: The second step was hiring a bunch of New York- and London-based PR high profile firms to communicate all the wonderful things King Hamad was doing. They had taken on a similar job for the King of Saudi Arabia, that neighboring bastion of freedom.

There were reports of dialogue between the protestors and all the king’s men. There were promises of more transparency, more representation, more liberty.

Step Three: So almost every day, I find in my email inbox a highly professional-looking press release reporting on the King’s latest beneficent act or agreement with his opposition. Even reports from the opposition says the King has remained calm and reasoned during these discussions.

Then there are what I recognize as special distraction press releases, like the one that arrived today. It was headed, " King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain ratified the kingdom's first child protection law Tuesday (August 7th),” Bahrain's Al-Watan reported.

According to a statement issued by Bahrain's Royal Court, the law has 69 articles that aim to protect children and their mothers.
It addresses children's health care, health records, nutrition, foster homes, safety, education, rehabilitation for handicapped children, protection against abuse and penalties for any violation of the law.

And sidebars – we must have sidebars to look professional.

Bahrain to investigate cases of torture

Bahrain king denounces 'foreign plot'

Five Bahrain police officers accused of torture

The law was approved by the legislature.

And for the coup de grace – making Parliament more democratic. Parliament has ratified amendments to Bahrain's constitution, with the monarch-led government hoping the new measures will defuse turmoil in the strategic Gulf state.
Opposition groups dismissed the extra powers given to parliament on Thursday as not enough, describing the moves as merely symbolic.

"The process of reform that marked the beginning of my tenure in power will not stop," said the Sunni monarch who succeeded to the throne of the Shia-majority kingdom in 1999.
"We hope in this important period that all forces and groups will assess their actions and join the process of progress and reforms," he said.
"Doors remain open to dialogue, which is aimed at achieving a national accord," he added, alluding to the Shia-led opposition that spearheaded months of pro-democracy protests that were crushed with deadly force in March last year.
According to the amendments, the king now has to consult the heads of the elected parliament and the appointed Consultative Council before dissolving the legislature.

The elected chamber alone now has the right to vote to withhold its co-operation from the prime minister and refer its decision to the king, who then has the final choice on whether to dismiss the premier or keep him in post.

But the amendments fall far short of the demands of the opposition, which has been pushing for an elected government and the scrapping of the appointed upper house.
"The king remains the one to appoint and dismiss the government," said Abdul Jalil Khalil, a leading member of the main Shia opposition group, Al-Wefaq.

The opposition wants "a single-chamber parliament that is elected, just as the constitution of 1973 stipulated", he added.

So: So far, the US has given Bahrain a giant get-out-of-jail-free card. All the signs point to our State Department being snookered by the King and all his trappings.

But how long ago was it the US was trying to show solidarity with those “loyal allies” who would bring “stability” to the region and nurture The Arab Spring into full flower?

Egypt? Tunisia? Yemen? Libya? Syria?
First, we petted these sleeping tigers until they bit us. We always had the military of these states with us, because from us they get the arms to kill their citizens.

But how about THE PEOPLE? The people we are supposed to be defending, nurturing, speaking out for – do they have any legitimate claims? Do you know? Have we looked?

Well, a few of us have. Amongst the 535 cowering souls we elected to Congress, 19 – yes, only 19 – had the guts to speak out against injustice in Bahrain.

In a letter to the King, the 19 Congress persons said: “Nineteen members of the U.S. Congress have written to Bahrain’s king to call for the release of prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who is currently serving a three-month jail sentence for making anti-government statements on Twitter.

Signatories inljuded Keith Ellison, who organized the project, and Patrick Leahy, JohnConyers, Ron Wyden, Rau Grijalva, Alcee Hastings, Rush Holt, Michael Honda, Barbara Lee, Zoe Lofgren, Carol Maloney, Jim McDermott, P. McGove, P. Moran, John Oliver, and Charles Wrangel.

Several other prominent rights groups including U.S.-based Human Rights First have also called for his release. They included the Congressional bloc known as the Tom Lantos Human Rights Group.

But I suspect the King will ignore these pleas. Instead, he will conjure up some magical new law – or abolish one – that gives Bahrainis cause for hope.

This is PR 101.

Remember Mubarak?