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[nenjin]

So basically, we get to be held hostage by hate groups because the FBI is afraid of antagonizing them?

Sounds like complete bullshit. You could make that argument for every group out there, American or not. It sounds like more "we don't want to police our own" thinking than anything else. They're threats to people's safety whether we look for them or not. Violent anti-government groups are going to hate the government regardless of what it does or doesn't do. That is not an excuse for law enforcement to turn to "safer" extremists to monitor and prosecute while domestic ones sit here under our noses.

Maybe if we had more "hate and kill whitey" groups out there, we'd have a basis for comparison on how law enforcement views them.

Again, why is someone who owns weapons and is willing to use them to hurt people to make a political point any different than anyone else who does the same thing. Because they're American? This is the exact kind of thinking that has let these groups grow and metastasize in this country, because "someone" is afraid of what they'll do if we actually treat them like the threats they are.

The FBI is still basically afraid of the PR it got from Waco and Ruby Ridge, IMO. Those are the last time I remember a real confrontation between a fringe white group and the government.

Assuming this isn't good old fashioned "if they're not shooting at middle class white people, it's not a priority" covert racism in law enforcement.

[RedKing]

Actually, that was ATF that got most of the PR damage from Waco. And DOJ to a lesser extent.

Aqizzar's right, it's about not playing into the rhetoric. Extremist groups have to have a narrative of being the resistance against an oppressive evil system in power, because precious few people join up with groups to be the bad guy. I'd wager that the majority of ISIS fighters believe they're the good guys in all this. After incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge, membership in the militia movement SOARED. Because it gave some credence to the claims being made of a NWO government ready to trample on its citizens.

It's a real quandary. On the one hand, you need to monitor and stop these kinds of people. On the other hand, we can't become a police state and abandon our principles just because wackos. Despite the fact that we kinda already did after 9/11. 

Which was Jon Stewart's point -- foreign terrorism, we spend trillions to bomb countries into the Stone Age that were only slightly out of the Stone Age to begin with. Domestic terrorism, we just wring our hands and can't even agree to call it terrorism.

The FBI is still basically afraid of the PR it got from Waco and Ruby Ridge, IMO. Those are the last time I remember a real confrontation between a fringe white group and the government.

Well, it wasn't a shooting conflict, but we had that dustup with Cliven Bundy last year. Which very well could have turned into a live-fire exercise. Personally, a part of me wishes they had pulled out the BLM personnel and just napalmed the whole goddamn ranch. Which would have been horrible and bad, but fuckin' schadenfreude, man.

[Reelya]

Speaking on Friday about the murder of nine African Americans by a self-avowed white supremacist, Comey said, “Terrorism is act of violence…to try to influence a public body or citizenry, so it’s more of a political act. And again based on what I know so far I don’t see it as a political act.”

Muslim terrorists blowing up the twin towers was not meant to "influence a public body or citizenry", it was a plain act of revenge. They weren't trying to influence Americans, it was just a big "fuck you!" How exactly was 9/11 influencing Americans as citizens any more than killing black people sends a message to black people? Both acts send the same message really.

So a lot of islamic terror attacks must be excluded from being considered terrorism according to the FBI chief's rules. Isn't it funny how people play loose and fast with the definitions when it suits them, yet when they don't want to call something terrorism they take the most narrow technical definition possible.

[nenjin]

After incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge, membership in the militia movement SOARED. Because it gave some credence to the claims being made of a NWO government ready to trample on its citizens.

They're going to stock pile guns, either way. They're going to hate black people, either way. They're going to hate and fear government, either way. So we effectively just sit on our hands until they or someone who reads their bible does something like this today, and then go "Oh, we have no way of knowing when this will happen except when it does"?

It boggles my mind that we can put out as much effort to monitor and catch terrorists as we do, when they haven't technically broken the law either, but when it comes to our own domestic groups suddenly "the problem is too large to monitor" "the fallout is too much to handle" "the PR is too negative to risk." Do you think membership in terrorist organization soars when we blow up the leadership with a cruise missile, nuke half a dozen people in a village to kill one person or invade other countries because of threats to America? The only difference here is that one group are American citizens, and one is not. And yes, while that comes with a boatload of protections, it doesn't change the simple fact that they're both armed, violent, extremist fringe groups.

Put another way. How many crazy southerner sons of confederate soldiers are going to take offense at taking down the SC flag and go and do something stupid, or re-enlist in the KKK or hate black people even more because of it? And should we actually care or let that stop us from doing what's right and fair?

Plain and simple: brown terrorists are simpler to prosecute. No one in America likes them, no one in America cares if we violate their rights to find and take them down. It's not an easy choice, but in my mind it's not a choice. We already lost a bunch of civil protections thanks to 9/11, if there would be one silver lining in it, I think it would be some of that loss has a direct impact on domestic terror groups here at home. But not even that has happened.

[Aqizzar]

If you read that article I linked, there have been tons of interviews and surveys of state and local police forces around the country, and they're pretty much uniformally afraid of domestic hate groups way more than any other kind of politically motivated violence.  The problem is, they're really hard to find before they do anything.  Like I said earlier, people like Dylann Roof, the guy who shot up that Sihk temple, Jared Loughner, the anthrax guy, the multiple traveling snipers, the Unibomber himself, they're all people who had at best very tenuous connections to any organized ideologies before they went out and killed people, and in many cases not even a prior criminal history.

It's not a crime to be a racist jackass, it's not a crime to know racist jackasses, and for the most part it's not illegal to own a gun unless you've done something really stupid already.  As long as those three things are still true, it's really easy to be The Last Sane Man and pull off a stunt like this, and there's really nothing the FBI or anyone else can do to stop you until you actually show up and pull a weapon.

[nenjin]

It's not a crime to be a racist jackass, it's not a crime to know racist jackasses, and for the most part it's not illegal to own a gun unless you've done something really stupid already.  As long as those three things are still true, it's really easy to be The Last Sane Man and pull off a stunt like this, and there's really nothing the FBI or anyone else can do to stop you until you actually show up and pull a weapon

At the very least, they can and should be monitoring groups that share their ideology as closely as they're listening to the phone calls of Muslim males. Who knows, maybe they'd catch a Dylan Roof posting there one day and make the connection instead of repeatedly acting blindsided. I sort of refuse to believe Muslim Extremists are so much easier to find and these quiet, buttoned down little crazy white dudes left no tells about their intentions.

[smjjames]

How do they do it over in Europe though? I mean, it can't be any worse over there with hate groups, and like Sheb said, even French wine makers go nuts. I'm just wondering here since other countries deal with the same racist jackasses even if they're being racist about different things.

Or is it mainly 'illegal to be a racist jackass' the main difference?

Of course though, our rampaging gun culture doesn't help things.

the anthrax guy, 

From what I've heard, he wasn't being malicious, just extremely misguided in a mad scientist sort of way. Not that I condone the actions, even if it did make us wake up to the vulnerabilities of the mail system as the guy intended. Which is a lession that we would have had to learn sooner or later anyhow.

Edit: Although I would prefer that we not learn it through security breaches.

[Zangi]

It's not a crime to be a racist jackass, it's not a crime to know racist jackasses, and for the most part it's not illegal to own a gun unless you've done something really stupid already.  As long as those three things are still true, it's really easy to be The Last Sane Man and pull off a stunt like this, and there's really nothing the FBI or anyone else can do to stop you until you actually show up and pull a weapon

At the very least, they can and should be monitoring groups that share their ideology as closely as they're listening to the phone calls of Muslim males. Who knows, maybe they'd catch a Dylan Roof posting there one day and make the connection instead of repeatedly acting blindsided. I sort of refuse to believe Muslim Extremists are so much easier to find and these quiet, buttoned down little crazy white dudes left no tells about their intentions.

Militia probably leave all sorts of tells, but never actually act on it over the many years you could be monitoring em.
I think that is the difference between how they deal with/see militia and Muslim terrorists. 
The militia can be provoked to do shit/go out in blaze of bullets if you start cracking down on them. Otherwise, they are a minor statistic that only happens every now and then.  The Muslim terrorists are already doing shit and are likely to go to the next step if you catch them preparing for shit.

EDIT: Innocent till proven guilty for Mericans.

[nenjin]

Otherwise, they are a minor statistic that only happens every now and then.

Yeah, just costs a few black lives every few years once their rhetoric gets someone worked up enough to start killing. (Setting aside the effect letting that rhetoric float around America for so long has.....like maybe getting guys into law enforcement who don't value black lives? Hhrrrrrrmmmm.)

[misko27]

Quote of the Week:

What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (‘n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility’).”

[smjjames]

The Mississippi state flag (and some others) are getting caught up in the controversy: http://www.wapt.com/news/mississippi/mississippi-state-flag-brought-into-confederate-flag-controversy/33715484

http://www.wapt.com/national/7-states-with-confederate-symbols-on-their-flags/33728084 I think they're really stretching the symbolism with Tennessee though.

For me, the Alabama flag sort of resembles the (very old) Spanish flag or even Englands.

[SalmonGod]

Muslim terrorists blowing up the twin towers was not meant to "influence a public body or citizenry", it was a plain act of revenge. They weren't trying to influence Americans, it was just a big "fuck you!" How exactly was 9/11 influencing Americans as citizens any more than killing black people sends a message to black people? Both acts send the same message really.

This just lends weight to the idea that the definition is based on self-determination.  Despite intentions, one does influence American politics, and the other does not.

As for the debate over surveillance of domestic terror groups... keep in mind that the amount of death and suffering they cause is incredibly small if put in perspective.  There are many other issues that cause far more misery that are even more easily preventable that get no attention, because they're just far less sensational realities than compared to the occasional random act of violence that kills a handful of people.  It's not that those victim's lives don't matter, but if you take a step back and look at where we allocate our sacrifices, I find that the benefits do not justify the costs on this issue.  Just like our response to 9/11 has not in any way honored the lives of 9/11 victims.  And yes, it's fucked up how this compares with our attitude towards muslim terrorism, but that's an argument for scaling back our aggression on that issue, not scaling up our aggression on domestic terror.

[nenjin]

I'm pretty sure if there was a domestic group in the US that specifically targeted affluent white people, they'd be on the terrorism watch list before the blood on the pavement was even dried.

[RedKing]

Quote of the Week:

What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (‘n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility’).”

Admittedly, the citation was in a case regarding Marvel copyright on Spider-Man. So it was totes legit, if tongue-in-cheek.

Also, Kagan is now my favorite Justice. 

[wierd]

Otherwise, they are a minor statistic that only happens every now and then.

Yeah, just costs a few black lives every few years once their rhetoric gets someone worked up enough to start killing. (Setting aside the effect letting that rhetoric float around America for so long has.....like maybe getting guys into law enforcement who don't value black lives? Hhrrrrrrmmmm.)

Nenjin, please dont make the mistake that racial hateds only go in one direction; white->black.  Racial hatreds go EVERY direction, between EVERY group.

Take this little story for instance.

The real problem here is that we (the US) have people like Al Sharpton who make a living out of turning EVERYTHING into a racially motivated issue, and a media that is every so ready to lap that shit up like it was icecream, and then shit it on everyone's TV set, because RATINGS! 

When you whip up passions with statements like yours, you only fan the flames.  Please dont do that.