Thursday, January 23, 2025

The Enemy Is Within

The mob is the mother of tyrants. — Diogenes

Almost lost in the flurry of last-minute pardons and commutations issued by Biden was the case of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, who had been serving a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.

I made a reporting trip to Pine Ridge not long after those killings and what strikes me is the imbalance when you stack Peltier’s commutation up against the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump.

The left argued that Peltier was a political prisoner while the right (led by Trump) labeled the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other criminals convicted in the assault on the Capitol as political “hostages.” 

So it was one old leftist vs. 1,500 relatively young rightists. There is no equivalency here. And you don’t have to be a math major to figure out which group represents the greater threat to our democracy.

“It’s harder to imagine a greater affront to the rule of law than to give pardons to those who tried to overthrow the government,” Rick Hasen, a University of California, Los Angeles law professor, told the AP.

But that’s what Trump did and the question now is whether these extremists will now rebuild their networks of militias to carry out new actions at his behest.

Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, spoke with Slate on this question:

  • “This is pretty devastating moment for counterterrorism in the U.S., particularly counterterrorism against domestic paramilitary groups. It sets a terrible precedent for rule of law, for violence against institutions, violence against law enforcement. 

  • “And it sends a message of permission—that political violence will be tolerated as long as it’s on behalf of a certain movement and a certain man. And that’s tremendously dangerous. We’re in unprecedented territory where people who sought to overthrow the government have now been allowed back on our streets as returning warriors.

  • “You also have those who acted out on Jan. 6 because they had a grievance against the government. And that victimhood has now been propelled further. They feel they now have more evidence that they are struggling against a tyrannical government. 

  • “Certainly, I would expect those people to double down in their activism and go back to their paramilitary and militia groups as battle-hardened leaders who now can speak with authority about the violence against the government that they’ve been promising all these years. I do think this will be a shot in the arm for the movement and for several groups who had been relatively dormant since Jan. 6.”

***

I was on Pine Ridge Reservation, reporting for Rolling Stone not long after the shootout between AIM activists and the FBI that led to Leonard Peltier’s conviction. Although we were investigating another, related case at the time, I reviewed enough of the evidence to conclude he was probably guilty of killing the FBI agents as charged.

But his subsequent conviction seemed problematic, and more to the point, AIM and other revolutionary groups of the 1960s and 70s never represented a major threat to the U.S. government in the consensus opinion of historians and experts in counter-terrorism. And whatever minor threat AIM, the Black Panthers and others did pose at the time was quickly crushed by COINTELPRO and other illegal government actions.

Trump’s loyalist militias, by contrast, are a real and active threat. They never encountered any sort of government counter-measures like COINTELPRO, only due process for breaking the law. Now Trump has cleared their convictions away, they may easily be convinced to rise to his defense again should he issue a call to do so. And in that context, we do not yet know how far Trump intends to go to neutralize his perceived political enemies.

Remember the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity? This was Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s ominous summation: “During arguments on this case, a question was posed to Trump lawyers about whether a President could dispatch a ‘SEAL Team’ to kill his political enemies…Under this ruling, if a President, in their official capacity, orders the military to kill other Americans – judges, elected officials, reporters, your neighbor – they can do so.”

U-C Berkeley political scientist Terri Bimes, a scholar in the history and operation of the U.S. presidency, agrees, stating: “The decision seems to permit the president to use the power of the office to commit acts that are illegal, that are criminal. The fact that these actions are being taken in the name of the presidency, that they’re official acts, makes them immune from prosecution. That is really problematic.”

Bimes added that “we really need the courts to step in to help control the president, to make the president more accountable.Now I’m not so sure that we can rely on that — I’m not confident. I’m worried about our democracy because of the character of Donald Trump.”

So maybe someone can help me out here. Am I being unduly paranoid that Trump could be planning on sending hit teams to eliminate leaders of what he views as the political opposition? After all, he’s repeatedly declared that the radical left is a serious internal threat to democracy and uses a very broad brush indeed as to who he considers as members of that dangerous left. All they need to do is criticize him.

I’ll tell you who is a major threat to the survival of our democracy at this moment and that is Donald John Trump, the sitting President of the United States of America. And I’ll close by recalling the words of Frederick Douglass: The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress.

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It Makes No Difference (Remastered 2000) The Band. R.I.P. Garth Hudson

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Special Report: Who Killed Betty Van Patter?

(Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)

Welcome, readers of The Oaklandside, Berkeleyside and Richmondside who are looking for the rest of the ten-part series, “Who Killed Betty Van Patter?” Just click on the links below to read each part.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

See also: Betty Van Patter, the Black Panthers’ bookkeeper, was murdered 50 years ago. Who killed her? Investigative reporter David Weir and others have spent decades searching for answers. (Berkeleyside) (Richmondside) (The Oaklandside) 

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