The “metastasizing domestic terrorism threat,” was the topic, Tuesday, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It comes three weeks after a shooting at a Buffalo, NY supermarket that left 10 black people dead.
The suspect has been charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hate and accused of targeting his victims because of their race.
Lawmakers agree something needs to be done to address domestic terrorism, but today’s hearing started with finger-pointing.
“We cannot deny that has a big platform … there are media figures like Tucker Carlson dragging racist conspiracy theories into mainstream America,” said committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).
“A report by the Center of Strategic and International Studies found that 40 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks in 2021 were from the Left,” Ranking Member, Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-IA) shot back during his opening statement.
After that showing, Professor Robert Pape testified, that it’s these political logjams that make it nearly impossible for Washington to address threats to our Democracy.
“Build from the center, build working groups of Senators who can really work together the most, and build out from there, and then build a national conversation from that group regardless of what happens in the outcome of the 2022 election, and so forth. The difficulty is, the electoral pressures are so intense, it’s getting in the way of any serious governing,” Pape told the committee.
The son of a Buffalo victim called on lawmakers to do something or basically get out of the way for someone else to get the job done.
“My mother’s life mattered, my mother’s life mattered, and your actions here today will tell us how much it matters to you,” he testified.
Former FBI special agent, Michael German, urged that monitoring and acting on social media threats could help prevent future attacks.
“The White Supremacist attackers in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and El Paso all gained access to violent materials online and expressed their hateful and violent intentions on social media,” German noted.
The problem, he pointed out, is the difficulty of zeroing in on comments that truly represent a threat of violence. Homeland Security issued a warning, Tuesday that extremist groups are already going online to encourage copycat attacks of what happened at the Uvalde school.
“Our domestic extremists and domestic terrorists have learned from the TTP, the tactics, techniques, and procedures of Jihadi terrorists and they’re also using online forums effectively to do likewise,” Donell Harvin, a RAND Corp Homeland Security expert, told CBN News.
Because of the overwhelming amount of online threats, state intelligence centers were set up to focus solely on sifting through posts and passing credible threats on to federal authorities. Harvin ran the center in Washington, D.C.
“They set up online filters, they do searches for certain threatening terms plus a location. You do understand you can say just about any hateful, violent thing you want online … our Constitution protects that. But you can’t say that directed towards a person or a place,” Harvin explained.
He says the country is ripe with division that domestic extremist groups can exploit, and they make those fights their own as a recruitment tactic.
We’ve seen this recently as domestic extremists adopt the narrative surrounding abortion rights with acts of violence and vandalism increasing against pro-life groups.
Tuesday morning, for example, a faith-based pregnancy center in Buffalo was fire-bombed by radical abortion advocates.
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