A shooting in Alexandria, Virginia last week raises the prospect that the nation’s terrorism experts need to expand their vernacular when it comes to terrorist groups. And regrettably, this brand of terrorism is completely homegrown, and one of the major political parties, as well as the mainstream media, are accomplices in fomenting and facilitating this domestic brand of terrorist activity.
Earlier this week, an FBI spokesman explained in a news conference that Hodgkinson had no ties to terrorism. We’ve grown accustomed to Islamofascist terrorism, perpetrated under the guise of jihad, and intended to extirpate infidels from the world. But when thoroughly analyzed, Hodgkinson’s attack is a whole new genre of terrorism, one which the FBI and other law enforcement should be much more aware.
The U.S. Intelligence community defines terrorism based on Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d), which states: “The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. The term ‘international terrorism’ means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country. The term ‘terrorist group’ means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.”
They may want to start monitoring more closely the extremist fringes and membership of the Democrat Party, and the mainstream media who foment and seemingly encourage violence against those who believe differently, politically.
Hodgkinson was a member of the Democrat Party and a devout Bernie Sanders supporter who volunteered to work on his campaign. Before he started shooting at the ball field last week, he reportedly asked one of the bystanders whether those practicing were Republicans or Democrats. It was only after he had ascertained they were Republicans that he commenced his attack.
And Hodgkinson is far from being alone. The New York Times is sponsoring a theatrical production in Central Park that places Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in contemporary America, complete with a Donald Trump lookalike playing the role of Caesar. In the end, of course, Brutus, and the rest of the Senate, turn on Caesar, stabbing him brutally until he collapses in death.
The Huffington Post recently published an article calling for the “execution of Trump,” and everyone “assisting in his agenda.” And erstwhile comedienne, Cathy Griffin, was fired by CNN for publishing a photo of her holding a decapitated head depicting Donald Trump. And this is the tip of the iceberg.
The Daily Caller has compiled a partial list of Democrat and liberal extremist’s terrorist attacks coinciding with the rise, and election, of Donald Trump. They include: “Anti-Trump protesters attacked pushed, spit on and verbally harassed attendees, who were forced to walk a ‘gauntlet’ as they left a Trump fundraiser in Minneapolis, Minn., and beat an elderly man. Protesters also attacked Trump’s motorcade.
“A Tennessee man was assaulted at a garage sale for being a Trump supporter. A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed and spray painted with ‘Nazi Republicans get out of town or else.’ A high school student was attacked after she wrote that she supported Trump on social media.
“Students protesting Trump punched and kicked a Maryland high school student wearing a Make America Great Again hat. A high school student was arrested in Florida after he punched a classmate for carrying a Trump sign at school. Maryland high school students punched a student who was demonstrating in support of Trump and then kicked him repeatedly while he was on the ground.
“FBI agents arrested a person for threatening to shoot Republican Rep. Martha McSally over her support for Trump. Police in Tennessee charged a woman for allegedly trying to run Republican Rep. David Kustoff off the road. A former professor was arrested after police said they identified him on video beating Trump supporters with a U-shaped bike lock, leaving three people with ‘significant injuries.’” And there were many more such incidents.
And following the shooting last week in Alexandria, Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney received an email threat that read, “One down, 216 to go.”
Based on the Intelligence Community’s own guidelines, these are terrorist acts: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,” and it appears to be consistent with the FBI’s explication of such violent acts being perpetrated “to frighten the people as a way of trying to achieve a political goal.” The goal seems to be the elimination of Trump, Republicans, and conservative sympathizers.
To be fair, there have been instances of radical-right extremism as well, but they empirically pale in comparison to the breadth, frequency, and scope of liberal extremism.
The liberal extremist terrorism is arguably more destructive to the nation than Islamic-extremist terrorism is, for it’s entirely homegrown, and is rending our social fabric, pitting neighbor against neighbor, based solely on political differences. Such bigotry represents the ultimate intolerance of people who are different, and is an affront to the principles of freedom and liberty, and free speech and association, that our republic was founded upon!
Associated Press award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, Idaho and is a graduate of Idaho State University with degrees in Political Science and History and coursework completed toward a Master’s in Public Administration. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.
NEW YORK — Prosecutors finally displayed the documents at the heart of Manhattan District Attorney…
Israel is preparing to take their battle to obliterate Hamas to Rafa, and this does…
It’s beginning to look a lot like Kristallnaught from the 1930s Germany with the protest…
I doubt that there is any national or religious group that produces the percentage of…