IS THE GOP NOW A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION?
Keith Olbermann used to be a sports journalist and broadcaster on ESPN. He used to be a political commentator with his own show on MSNBC. I don’t know what he is doing today, professionally, but he continues to speak out on his YouTube channel on issues that he cares deeply about. He has one million Twitter followers who surely care that he continues doing so.
On July 27th, immediately after the first day of testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th storming of the Capitol, Olbermann posted a Twitter video declaring that Homeland Security should identify the Republican Party “as a terrorist organization.” “As hyperbolic as that sounds,” observed Olbermann, the Capitol Police who testified used the term “terrorist” repeatedly when describing both those who assaulted the building and attacked the officers defending it and those who abetted the attack. Some prominent abettors currently reside in the Republican Party.
Hyperbole aside, was Olbermann right to label the GOP a terrorist organization? Without looking very deeply, we can see that the GOP is a party led by privileged white people who monetize their media shows and their political positions by cynically cultivating the sociopathic aspects of their listeners, viewers, and followers. They highlight and exaggerate what their audiences fear and hate.
But does that make the GOP a domestic terrorist organization? If we look into the characteristics of terrorism, a subject that constituted part of my political ideologies course that I taught for 30 years, do we find that the GOP fits the description?
Olbermann defined terrorism as “the use of violence or the threat of violence to achieve political ends.” He is correct on that score. Terrorism is not itself a political ideology. It is instead a tactic used to effect political change.
The term “terrorism” arose in the 18th century, associated with the Jacobin “reign of terror” under Robespierre during the French Revolution. The Jacobin pursuit of “enemies of the people” was intended to terrorize the populace as a way of generating proper behavior or “virtue.” The intention worked; the people grew fretful and wary since the Jacobins offered little guidance on who was and was not an enemy. Robespierre himself became a victim.
In the 19th century “terrorism” was applied to the seemingly lunatic acts of anarchists — assassinations, murders, bombings, and the like. Anarchists were bent on disrupting what they took to be the unjust and oppressive social and political order. Unlike the indiscriminate use of terror by the Jacobins, however, anarchists targeted members of royalty as well as government officials.
Today’s terrorists have something that earlier terrorists lacked: state sponsorship. States like Afghanistan and even Pakistan can be safe havens for terrorists and can even facilitate terrorist training and networking. State sponsorship enables terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda to organize and train as an army.
Despite state sponsorship, however, today’s terrorists are more like criminals than an army. They often operate as distinct cells and thus can be pursued and apprehended as individuals more than organizations. In short, terrorists are often best monitored and dealt with by law enforcement rather than by the military.
Look, for example, at the first attack on the World Trade Center — February 26, 1993, only 38 days after Clinton took office. Six Muslims were caught, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. The Administration treated the act as a common crime, despite the intelligence reports that a terrorist Islamic group, called Al Qaeda, then located in Sudan, was behind the attack.
September 11th changed that. The Bush Administration made it clear to the citizens of the United States and to the world that we would treat these attacks as the terrorist work of irregular troops of an army at war with the United States. We would treat Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups “with global reach,” and the states that sponsored them, as armies against whom we were at war.
The organization of Al Qaeda changed how we thought of terrorist groups. That change brings us to the Republican Party. Is the Republican Party encouraging terrorism? Does it harbor terrorists? If so, then we have a clear example of a state-sponsored terrorist organization operating within the politics of our country.
If terrorism is the deliberate use of political violence to undermine the confidence of the people in their leaders and their leaders’ policies, then the January 6th attack fits the description. Those who assaulted and ransacked the Capitol sought to end the certification of Joe Biden as president. Their intention was not simply to disrupt the proceedings, which they succeeded in doing; their intention was also to “end the steal,” to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. This was an attempted violent overthrow of our government. It was an attempted coup whose participants are, as Olbermann and the Capitol police commented, terrorists.
Did the Party itself foment terror? Was the Republican Party behind the attempted coup? Some members seem to have been, given actions and statements by prominent Republicans in support of attack: Donald Trump, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Majorie Taylor Greene. Perhaps all 147 Republicans who voted, after the attack, against certification of the 2020 election are implicated in this terrorist plot.
The police defending the Capitol were terrified that day. Members of Congress who fled the building or hid in offices were terrified that day. Many citizens and people around the world watching the assault on television were terrified that day. Perhaps even Republicans who encouraged the mob were terrified that day, though Josh Hawley’s infamous salute to the rioters says otherwise. Our democracy, our government, was in jeopardy.
Still, that day passed. Biden is president, and the House Select Committee is in search of the truth of what happened that day, who organized the attack, and who spurred it on.
So did the January 6th assault on the Capitol undermine the confidence of the people in their leaders and in our government? I don’t think so. Democracy and our Constitution stand.
The real terrorist attack wasn’t January 6th. The real terrorist attack is the Republican Party’s continuous perpetuation of “the big lie” — that Trump won the election and that Biden stole it through fraud. This terrifies some segment of our populace that our elections are rigged and thus illegitimate. That lie leads to the Republican Party’s ongoing efforts throughout Republican-led states to install various forms of voter suppression to guarantee election integrity against fraud that doesn’t exist.
Is that terrorism? It isn’t violent, but these Republican actions do undermine our citizens’ confidence in our system and our leaders. Still, Republicans passing laws that suppress the vote are using recognized levers of political power to bring about political change that threatens democracy. Doing so is not terrorism, though the process is cynical and damaging. Nor are the Republicans behind it terrorists. They are mostly duly elected. Their antics might terrify many of us, but that doesn’t make the GOP a terrorist organization.
On the other hand, is the GOP now a fascist organization?
