Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 1 • February-March 2008

Ominous new "Homegrown Terrorism" Act
Who's that knocking at your door?

by Luma Nichol

Credit Kansas City Star archives

The domestic expression of the 1950s Cold War was the Red Scare. Today, if Congress has its way, the "war on terror" will open a major front at home with the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Duck and cover - 21st-century McCarthyism is on its way!

These are volatile times in the U.S. with an unpopular war, a shaky economy, and still-raw fury at the racist debacle of Hurricane Katrina. These are times when a spark can mobilize multitudes, as seen in the May 2005 mass marches for immigrant rights and last year's outpouring of protest over the unjust sentences of the Jena Six. These are times when the government rightly fears that radical words will find an audience.

The Homegrown Terrorism Act is the establishment's counter strike, a witch hunt created through word associations: radical = violent = homegrown terrorism. Under this cover, First Amendment rights are being torpedoed.

A terrifying bill. House bill HR1955 was stealthily passed by a vote of 404-6 in October 2007. Sponsor Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) says the $22 million measure will stop "Made in the USA" suicide bombers.

The bill would fund the study of "violent radicalization" and determine preventative measures. A special commission would be empowered to hold public hearings, with no limits on whom it investigates. Funds would go to university programs at Homeland Security Centers of Excellence (six exist now), designed to gather academic experts and federal, state, local and tribal Homeland Security officials for training and research.

From its first sentence, the bill's wording is so broad it could accommodate an entire fishing fleet: "An Act to prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes" (emphasis added). It is vague and alarmist: "Violent radicalization means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change" including "the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence."

The Internet is pinpointed as a source of "broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda," raising the fear of yet more extensive surveillance of the Web.

Needless to say, civil libertarians are up in arms.

New rhetoric, same targets. Conspicuous in its absence is the bill's designation of a specific target. House Reps at the Congressional hearings referred to "radical Islamic" and "Jihadist" elements. There were also frequent mentions of the Oklahoma City bombing, neo-Nazis, and Internet-driven youth extremism. But the main, if unstated, targets of the New McCarthyism are the same as the targets of the old: left radicals.

This becomes clear by looking at the theorists behind the bill. A major player is the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank with military ties whose luminaries have included Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. A 2005 RAND study stated that "homegrown terrorism" could emerge from anti-globalization activists, anarchists and radical environmentalists who "challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism." RAND representative Brian Michael Jenkins testified twice on HR 1955. In a book called Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Jenkins states: "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common ground with leftist, anti-American and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe."

Similar conclusions were stated in 2006 by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, who announced that "animal rights and environmental extremism is one of the FBI's highest domestic terrorism priorities."

There is a method to their madness. Color-coded threat alerts, barefoot air travelers, and the ever-present signs, "If you see something, say something," on New York subways have aimed at keeping the public on alert for an enemy within. Now that enemy is being given form.

Reviving an ugly history. McCarthyism was not so much about running Communists out of town as it was about frightening people away from militancy and subverting a post-WWII labor upsurge. Both the Senate and the House had witch hunt committees that hyped Commie terror throughout the 1950s. Vibrant movements for social justice were derailed, unions were housebroken, gays were pilloried, the Feminine Mystique was enshrined, and hundreds of communists were imprisoned.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover directed this frenzy over several decades. A sinister Hoover plot came to light only months ago in declassified State Department documents. At the outset of the Korean War, Hoover outlined a plan "in the event of an emergency" to round up and intern 12,000 left-wing opponents whom the FBI believed to be "potentially dangerous to internal security."

This plan didn't materialize, but in the 1960s and '70s, the FBI's COINTELPRO used dirty tricks to infiltrate and disrupt dissident organizations. The G-men targeted the civil rights Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society. But their main focus was the anti-capitalist influence of the Socialist Workers Party, the Black Panther Party, and the American Indian Movement (AIM). FBI sabotage critically damaged these groups.

Threat level to the Bill of Rights: extreme. The Senate version of the Homegrown Terrorist Act (S1959) is currently in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. (Senator Barack Obama sits on this committee. He has not taken a stand against the bill, but has pledged to "work to insure that this legislation helps to achieve our domestic security objectives while protecting civil liberties and constitutional rights.") Upholders of civil liberties must attempt to keep the bill from reaching the full Senate.

Here are some ideas for action to take:

• Use discussions of the presidential campaign to raise awareness and outrage, and call Obama to account. Call and write senators about the issue, but don't count on salvation from the Democrats, who proudly proclaim their bipartisan efforts on this act.

• Build united front mobilizations against the bill and connect with the Black Panthers, AIM stalwarts, and socialists who suffered at the hands of the FBI in the 1960s.

• Defend radicals under attack today, such as the New York Puerto Rican independistas subpoenaed by a grand jury in relation to an FBI investigation of the Puerto Rican Popular Army, also known as Los Macheteros. Fight to save the life of radical death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and to keep courageous defense attorney Lynne Stewart from prison for zealously defending an unpopular client.

• Challenge every infringement of civil liberties, especially the right to protest. No more penned-off "Free Speech" zones at demonstrations! Stop police seizure of bullhorns at rallies. Counter the notion that permits and police escorts are legitimate requirements for exercising free speech in the streets. Challenge the incendiary rhetoric that associates "violence" with radicalism in order to create divisions among militants and liberals.

Stand up now for the right to dissent in thought, action, and association!