“Homegrown Terrorism” and Terrorism by Association
How misleading can a “news” article get? Try this headline: “Federal Reserve bombing plot foiled in NYC”. There never was a plot to foil. There never was a plot independent of the FBI to foil. The plot was of the FBI’s own devising and instigation. There never was an ongoing crime for the FBI to detect and stop.
Foil means counteract. To say something is foiled means there has been an action to counter-act. What? Did the FBI counter-act its own action? We should give the FBI credit for devising a plot and then stopping its own plot? We should credit some inept terrorist for threatening to make a touchdown when he couldn’t get beyond the five-yard line without FBI counseling and guidance and without the FBI pointing out the goal line and supplying the football?
The FBI simply terminated a procedure to entrap some naive would-be bomber. The FBI even helped him select his imaginary target. “FBI arrests dupe” is more like it, or “FBI stings dupe”, or “FBI concludes its bombing sting with an arrest”.
A sting operation like this doesn’t foil anything. It SETS UP someone for a fall. It’s an enhanced frame-up done with the FBI-encouraged participation of the person framed. The FBI agents literally become criminals, conspire as criminals, further the planned crime, and create the crime. They should arrest themselves.
The plot makes no sense as a terror plot. It makes sense, however, as both government propaganda and as a smear of those non-violent persons who are pro-free market money and anti-Federal Reserve.
The biggest negative from this plot and publicity is its propaganda value. It keeps alive the myth that America is under constant terrorist threats. It keeps alive the myth that massive resources must be allocated to federal agencies to counter these threats. It keeps alive the myth that the U.S. needs to remake the Muslim world in order to keep America safe. It keeps alive the myth that Americans must abandon the Bill of Rights or their natural rights in order to be secure from these threats.
Another negative from this plot stems from the target being the Federal Reserve. The FBI steered the would-be bomber to that target. This makes the Federal Reserve into a victim, and victims arouse sympathy. Many people will rally behind the Federal Reserve. This makes it harder for critics of the Federal Reserve like Ron Paul to be heard and make their case. They will be associated with terrorism. They will be looked upon as to blame for motivating or spurring on or influencing such terrorists. The distinction between violent acts and non-violent acts of persuasion will be blurred, to the advantage of the established forces and institutions like the FED. An attack on the FED will be seen as an attack on the republic.
These are the kinds of reasons and ideas why the FBI chose the Federal Reserve as the bomber’s target, before pulling the plug on him.
The same kind of guilt by association is occurring on a broader scale in the very concept of “homegrown terrorism”. What is the victim of homegrown terrorism? If you guessed the government, you are correct, as I shall show.
The word terror comes from “great fear” or “dread”. To terrorize is to fill with fear and frighten. It is to fill with dread. “Terrible” is a related term. The term “terror bombing” came first in 1941 when German air forces attacked Rotterdam. Thereafter, the Allied forces also used terror bombing.
How does one transform the word “terror” into an anti-government act?
Simple. The trick that the government and media use is to define or re-define criminal acts as terror acts, according to the suspected motivations of those who employ the violence. In this way, certain violent acts are defined as terrorist acts, even if they are not acts that cause great dread or fear and even if they are not designed to fill with fear. Which violent acts? The ones that are anti-government. Using this trick, many violent acts that are not meant to instill terror can be defined as terrorism as long as they are violent acts directed against the government. Anti-government violence is made into terrorism.
This definition trick makes government the victim. Homegrown terrorism comes to mean any violence directed at the government, with government being the target and victim of the supposed terrorism.
The proof of this is clear. Congress enshrined the term “homegrown terrorism” in legislation in 2007 in the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007“. In that Act, it defined the term as follows:
“The term ‘homegrown terrorism’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
Notice that the violence is directed first and foremost at “the United States government” and next at the civilian population of that government, and that there is a political or social objective. Homegrown terrorism is, by Congressional definition, anti-government and anti-social.
In creating the crime known as “homegrown terrorism”, Congress used the same trick as it did in defining “hate crime”. That definition occurs in Section 280003 of the “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994“:
“DEFINITION. – In this section, ‘hate crime’ means a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.”
What this definition does is create a set of victimized groups, each of which then can claim sympathy, can solidify, and can further its political aims. Congress then can claim that it is acting on behalf of these groups and deserves their votes.
A hate crime is not a real crime in and of itself. It is not a crime recently discovered in the pantheon of crimes requiring natural justice. It is a politically-inspired crime in a political game. It piggybacks on a real crime and takes it over as a hate crime, because of its motivation.
In the same way, homegrown terrorism piggybacks on some violent crime and takes it over as involving terror directed at government.
By employing this rhetorical device, the government turns “homegrown terrorism” into a term that the establishment powers and media then use to scare and solidify Americans into being for the government and against any and all anti-government sentiments and movements, even if they are non-violent. By turning homegrown terrorism into an anti-government term, Congress and the media impose rhetorical and conceptual collateral damage on non-violent anti-government groups which are forced to separate themselves from the violent anti-government types. It becomes easier to brand all anti-government ideas as extremist or right-wing or both.
This is the same procedure that the FBI used by making the Federal Reserve a target for their bomber-in-training.
In searching Factiva (which covers 8,000 news and publication sources) for “homegrown terrorism”, I can find only two mentions of this term between 1965 and 1990. The term “homegrown terrorism” appeared first in April of 1986 when the Washington Post used it in regard to domestic anti-government groups in Europe and the Toronto Star used it to describe Basque separatists in Spain. The Europeans were experiencing violent attacks from groups like Red Army Faction, Action Directe and Red Brigades. In 1991, there is another mention regarding separatists in Spain.
Hence, at its birth, the media already chose to apply the term “homegrown terrorism” to violent anti-government groups. Congress later adopted the term. This is not as strange or unusual as it may seem. The media, after all, employ people who are wordsmiths. They promote concepts and spread them, and they often conceive them. But it’s also not at all unusual because the media (by this I mean the mainstream media) are pro-government. The media have a very strong pro-government bias. A huge part of their reporting is about government activity, and government sources provide them with a huge amount of copy. Liberal or conservative biases are at times relevant. But the key continuing phenomenon that needs to be recognized and understood is the media’s pro-government bias.
The early media uses of the term “homegrown terrorism” already associated anti-government groups with violent terrorism, whether they used violence or not. If some person or group use violence, then as “terrorists”, they are branded with an added layer of guilt. This procedure is analogous to charging a criminal with a “hate crime”. If they do not use violence, they are smeared by association. Someone who is anti-government is placed in the company of violent criminals or said to approve of them or potentially be one of them or said to have inspired them.........Continue Reading...........
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