Friday, January 15, 2021

Top Socialist Magazine Warns About Joe Biden’s “Domestic Terrorism” Bill

In an essay, which appeared in the socialist magazine Jacobin, a stark warning was put out concerning Joe Biden's coming domestic terrorism bill.

The magazine is terrible on economics, really bad, but when it comes to government oppression the extreme lefty mag is very good.

From the article that was titled,We Should Be Very Worried About Joe Biden’s “Domestic Terrorism” Bill, Luke Savage writes:

Joe Biden used to brag that he practically wrote the Patriot Act, the Bush-era law that massively increased government surveillance powers. Now he’s hoping to pass a further “domestic terrorism” law once in office. The danger is real that the January 6 Capitol attack will be used as an excuse to severely curtail our civil liberties.

Nearly two decades since its initial passage in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Patriot Act has continued to linger in our collective memory. Though few Americans probably remember much about its provisions or specifics, the Bush-era legislation long ago entered into general usage as an synonym for heavy-handed domestic surveillance and institutional overreach — the words “Patriot Act” now being practically synonymous with secrecy, eavesdropping, and the rolling back of civil liberties under the intentionally broad guise of “national security.”

Given the law’s contents and implications in practice, this reputation is well deserved. Passing the Senate with only a single dissenting vote, the Patriot Act dramatically expanded the power of federal authorities to spy on ordinary Americans with minimal oversight: enabling the FBI to obtain detailed information about citizens’ banking history and personal communications without having to seek judicial approval and even allowing “sneak and peek” searches of homes and offices. “The Patriot Act,” in the rather blunt words of a brief prepared by the ACLU, “[turned] regular citizens into suspects.”...

Predictably, a great deal of law enforcement activity resulted from the ludicrously titled law (USA PATRIOT was a backronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”). According to data released by the Department of Justice, the FBI made hundreds of thousands of incursions into personal phone, computer, and financial records in the years immediately following its passage — the utility of these searches in identifying or preventing actual terrorist activities being debatable, to say the least.

Despite passing with widespread support, the Patriot Act was still considered extreme enough for lawmakers to attach sunset clauses to several of its major provisions, guaranteeing their expiry in lieu of congressional renewal (which, incidentally, eventually came under George W. Bush and again under Barack Obama).

One prominent Delaware lawmaker, however, felt it didn’t go far enough.

Ahead of the nearly unanimous October 25, 2001, Senate vote on the Patriot Act, Joe Biden was regularly claiming the law as his own, boasting in an interview with the New Republic: “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.” Biden wasn’t wrong. In fact, key parts of the Bush administration’s signature national security law were drawn from provisions contained in Biden’s own 1995 anti-terrorism bill. Originally called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, Jacobin’s Branco Marcetic summarized it contents as follows:

The bill made “terrorism” a new federal crime, allowed those charged with terrorism to be automatically detained before trial, outlawed donations to government-designated terrorist groups, allowed electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists, and created a special court to deport noncitizens accused of terrorism (ironically, when Bush had proposed a similar measure years before, Biden had denounced it as “the very antithesis of our legal system”). It also let the government use evidence from secret sources in those trials.

Calling the Patriot Act “measured and prudent” during an approving speech on the Senate floor, Biden would nonetheless lament the removal of sections from his 1995 bill that would have given police even more sweeping powers of surveillance...

The Trump era, with its incessant valorizing of security and intelligence officials and general atmosphere of emergency, has worryingly seemed to lay the groundwork for something resembling a second Patriot Act to find support among liberals — especially if they’re encouraged to believe its sole targets will be figures associated with the likes of QAnon. Against this backdrop, the deep (and understandable) sense of shock in the wake of this month’s Capitol storming will probably act like gasoline poured on an open flame...

After the September 11 attacks, Congress hastily approved a sweeping and Orwellian piece of legislation that drew heavily on a bill written by Joe Biden. With Biden about to enter office amid a climate of social instability and deep public anxiety, there’s an all-too-real risk that history will repeat itself.

The magazine is, of course, concerned about how any Biden program would impact Black Lives Matter and other lefty groups but it clearly understands the danger to all groups not supporting the government line. 

We are living in very dangerous times and Jacobin understands the particular dangers of a Biden domestic terror bill more than most.

-RW

8 comments:

  1. They shouldn't worry. Regardless of how the law reads, in practice groups like BLM and Antifa will be given free reign. Only Right Wingers will be arrested as Domestic Terrorists.

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    1. Oh no, they get it. Power when it is not in your hands will get you. It has nothing to do with Left versus Right. It is about in power and out of power. They understand the circumstances surrounding the ice axe to Trotsky's head.

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    2. "Stalin conducts a struggle on a totally different plane. He seeks to strike not at the ideas of his opponent, but at his skull." -- Leon Trotsky, journal entry, 12/30/1936

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  2. Who could've ever guessed that violent riots against the government could have resulted in that very same government pushing for even more control as a justification to limit future violent riots. Its almost as if there is a correlation between violent demonstrations and growth in the State.

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    1. Mostly false flags, as it now seems to be turning out.

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  3. I can see a day when the Mises Institute is declared a terrorist organization, and all donors are arrested for financing it. i look forward to my jailing.

    David B.

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  4. And as a Target Liberty reader you get a knock on your door. Michael http://TheREBT.life

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  5. I don't know how you live there. What a bunch of control freaks.

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