Marco Rubio: A war against domestic terrorism

www.americanthinker.com

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a powerful public declaration against domestic political terrorism in front of an international audience Thursday in Washington, D.C.

His concept of terrorism got at the heart of what fuels it: radical progressive leftism.

As he put it, radical leftism is "a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice."

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Moreover, he put his finger on where this ideology comes from, what fuels it, and what protects it: universities, media and the courts.

Domestic radicalism has many roots and branches, but those three institutions make up the primary “radicalism triangle” that is self-reinforcing. Their common output is language and ideology. Radical ideology works through symbols and words.

The degree to which the DNC has changed over the last two decades didn’t just happen out of nowhere. It wasn’t organic; it didn’t emerge from some bottom-up mass political revolt. It was contemplated, organized, financed, and is legally entrenched.

Rubio rightly pointed to the “Summer of 2020” as one of the most visible manifestations of the left’s destructive, organized, and legally protected operations.

As he stated, "It is time to crush this evil forever.”

Strong language. But will it stick?

Given the administration’s nuanced insight into the problem, and the president’s determination, I would rate the likelihood high. But it also depends on the midterms, and whether the president’s battle to confront election fraud is successful. That is because election fraud is itself a key manifestation of domestic terrorism. The Trump administration must have the political “runway” to get the job done. The DNC will violently shoot down reform if they gain legislative control.

Their form of political terror, moreover, isn’t only a visible, violent or lethal group like antifa, but also a slow-creeping, psychological tool that, by constant repetition, gradually makes its agenda seem justified, tolerable or even normal. Language is its power. Think about the left’s abuse and corruption of terminology and plain words that are now accepted as having new meaning and cause: diversity, equity, reparation, climate change, biosecurity, white supremacy, firearms, empire, birthright, truth, safety, and more.

The left uses fear and self-doubt as its central psychological weapon, and the constant theme they broadcast is what “harms” will occur if the left doesn’t intervene with its plans, and their people.

The White House is right to point to the university system as a key source of terror ideology formation: Domestic terrorism is a learned behavior. As Rubio pointed out to his international audience, ”A whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with [an] unspoken understanding among them.” It was no coincidence that Education Secretary Linda McMahon was present.

The president is also right to use OMB restrictions on university finance as one way to begin pulling the bottom out from under extremist ideology. Universities not only incubate extremism, but supply “extremist experts” who go to work in the Left’s causes including climate change, population engineering, biosecurity, green energy, carbon schemes, gun control, and of course lawfare: what were illegal open borders and COVID lockdowns, but forms of domestic lawfare terrorism?

Universities, not surprisingly, are invoking fear and widespread risk if any conditions are placed on federal finance.

Cutting their funds, or tying them to outcomes, will lead, according to them, to untold risks, along with all forms of social and racial inequality.

What is not generally appreciated, however, is that university “research” is often the very cause of the disasters they claim to be fighting. Global warming and unregulated geoengineering is an example, where federal funds for universities are underwriting the Left’s corrupted research such as “solar blocking” that sprays particulates in the atmosphere to “cool” the planet, and save it from purported catastrophe (there is credible analysis indicating that current large-scale, “forest fire smoke” such as that currently blanketing sections of the U.S., is exploited to measure changes in temperatures, among other effects, and all due to climate change of course).

Domestic terror, moreover, is not only stemming from university ideologies, or visibly taking the form of organized gangs and street violence, transportation disruption, or ransomware. It also escalates to systematic, global ethno-religious terror attacks, and other forms of terror that depend on sophisticated organization, intent, and especially, money. With upwards of 20 million illegals in the U.S. who were sponsored in a large-scale global financial operation, the terror possibilities are high, and complex.

Terrorism has always relied on arson, and can include large-scale wildfires, industrial, medical supply and food processing attacks, ecoterrorism, and regional infrastructure attacks on power, water, and gas. That is why the Biden administration’s open release of over $2 trillion in “relief aid” that remains unaccounted for, is so dangerous: it isn’t tracked, and it resulted in massive fraud and diversion, not including USAID dark money.

The White House has its work cut out, but is focusing on the right risks, and the right causes, including the risks on U.S. borders: a narco-terrorist Mexico, a far-left, open-border socialist Canada, and a historic security threat, Cuba. Consistent progress against US domestic terror, however, will be frustrated unless the sources—political terrorists—are kept out of power through election reform.

Whether near-term elections can be tolerated may be a question, along with reinvigorated White House security doctrine that includes the National Guard, and select martial law. That may sound excessive, but waiting until political left terror risk explodes into civil chaos and destruction, may make it conservative. As in war, a preemptive strike responds to imminent attack, and is a recognized act of national self-defense.

Matthew G. Andersson is a former aerospace CEO and author. He has testified before the US Senate and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the University of Texas at Austin where he worked with White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Image: Screenshot from Fox News video, via YouTube.