Police officers detain demonstrators during a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside the Jacob K. Javits federal building in New York City on Thursday. (Yuki Iwamura / The Associated Press)
Police officers detain demonstrators during a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside the Jacob K. Javits federal building in New York City on Thursday. (Yuki Iwamura / The Associated Press)
By Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times (thanks to Marilyn W.)
The hunt is on — for “they.”
The alleged killer of conservative organizer Charlie Kirk is locked up, but top officials of the American government say they are launching a mass pursuit of who really did it.
“Terrorists killed Charlie Kirk,” declared Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and former Washington state congressional candidate.
“They hate us,” echoed U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. “They assassinated our nice guy who actually talked to them peacefully debating ideas.”
Announced President Donald Trump: “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”
Who is “they” in all this?
I don’t ask this snidely. This clannish instinct to blame “they” or “them” has been building for years in this country. This past week it spilled over into all-out federal inquisition.
“With God as my witness,” declared Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
When asked to be more specific, the White House offered up three names. A Congressional call to form a “Select Committee to Investigate the Left’s Assault on America” added a few more.
“The radicals on the left are the problem,” Trump said. “They’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”
The named targets included two charities, the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the protest group Indivisible and a progressive criminal justice reform group called the Wren Collective.
None had anything to do with this shooting, according to evidence released so far, or advocate violence. Yet they’re being called out for political terrorism anyway.
“The closest comparison that comes to mind, of using the apparatus of the state to go after political enemies like this, is J. Edgar Hoover’s years at the FBI,” said Patrick Schoettmer, a political science professor at Seattle University.
Schoettmer is teaching a freshman seminar this fall titled “The Politics of the End.” It’s about the swirling forces that can tip societies and governments over the edge into collapse.
The news is giving him a lot of material to work with. (continued on page 2 or here)