How is This Not Domestic Terrorism?
I’m still more than a little bemused by this so very typical Trumpist/American peccadillo…
How, in what world, are armed members of a known domestic terrorist group ‘storming’ the Michigan legislature defined as “protesters”? How is threatening to LYNCH the woman governor not terroristic? How is yelling directly into the faces of masked, immobile police officers and guards during a pandemic not assault? How is the brandishing of swastikas and Confederate flags in democratic public spaces not terroristic?
How is it that, similarly to his praise of the Neo-Nazi White Nationalists who marched on Charlottesville as “some very fine people,” the Ameirican president lauds these terrorists as some “very good people”?
How is not universally realized that Freedom of Speech does NOT protect Hate Speech?
If Bush (Cheney, Rumsfeld and Kissinger-era) post-9–11 so-called ‘Homeland Security’ measures are not meant to deal with outrageous domestic threats such as these, then what the hell are they for? Surely not merely to focus exclusively on Muslims and asylum-seeking women and children?
‘A tightly packed crowd of protesters, some carrying rifles, attempted to enter the floor of the legislative chamber, and were held back by a line of state police and capitol staff, according to video footage posted by local journalists. “Let us in! Let us in!” the protesters chanted, as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder inside the statehouse. Few of them were wearing face masks.
‘Some of the protesters shouted anti-government slogans, including comparing the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, to Hitler. One Democratic state lawmaker posted a photograph of men with rifles standing in a gallery yelling down at lawmakers below. “Some of my colleagues who own bullet proof vests are wearing them,” the state senator Dayna Polehanki wrote on Twitter”
Senator Dayna Polehanki
(@SenPolehanki)
“Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us. Some of my colleagues who own bullet proof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today.”
‘One protest sign outside the statehouse on Thursday read: “Tyrants get the rope.”
‘Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia were at the protest, armed with guns, and one member said that the group was there as a “security detail” for the event organizers, MLive.com reported. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors American extremist organizations, includes a “Michigan Liberty Militia” among its list of extreme antigovernment groups.’
