#Trump’s #FBI Poised to Focus Counterterror Strategy on “Things Like BLM and Antifa”
According to current & former officials in the bureau & other #NationalSecurity offices, the shift will jeopardize years of progress combating #violent #WhiteNationalism.
#TrumpCoup #law #KashPatel #ConspiracyTheories #idiocracy #USpol
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/fbi-kash-patel-antifa-blm-terror-groups
…After almost 20 yrs of obsessively focusing on Salafist jihadis, in 2021 under the #Biden admin, agencies including the #DOJ, #FBI, & #DHS began to attend to the spiking threat of #violent #FarRight #extremism. The government had a comprehensive strategy to combat #DomesticTerrorism, which was promptly removed from the #Trump White House’s web page last month. In several conversations, current & former federal #law enforcement officials expressed alarm about the current trajectory.
Data on #DomesticTerrorism investigations indicate #FarRight #extremists have been a rising threat to Americans over the past half decade….The rate of increase in domestic-terrorism-related cases is eye-popping: A Feb 2023 Govt Accountability Office report found the #FBI tallied 9,049 such cases in 2021, up from 5,557 in 2020; 4,092 such cases in 2019; & 3,714 in 2018. In 2017, the year of #UniteTheRight, there were 1,890 domestic-terrorism-related cases, nearly equivalent to the preceding 4yrs.
The GAO is precisely the sort of agency that could be targeted by the #Trump admin to weed out “left wing” career employees. A similar accounting of domestic #extremism will not happen under the current regime—or it will be distorted beyond all recognition to play up the imagined threat from the reactionary bogeymen of BLM & antifa.