The Real Homeland: Nick Brody and a number of unmentionables

In the wake of this week’s news that Australia foiled a public beheading plot involving at least 15 suspects in support of ISIS, and that the US-led airstrikes also included Khorasan targets in Syria because of intelligence that they were planning to attack US planes, I thought I’d spend a little time covering what I believe to be the most insidious threat to the homeland in the post 9/11 war on terror. 

This threat, as I see it, is sort of related to the kind of lone wolf knife and gun attacks we've already seen, so I’ll spend a little time on them, as I understand some may not fully realize the extent to which our borders are already fairly well permeated by extremist groups.  I am not, however, going to put their names in print.  Hence the reference in the title to Nick Brody [the activated lone wolf operative in Showtime’s Homeland] and “other unmentionables”].  Like school shooters and mall shooters, many of these young men do what they do hoping for some sort of fame or glory, or even notoriety (any standard of attention) afterwards and so I will not use their names.

When I talk about “the most insidious threat” I am not really talking about these guys who read Al Qaeda’s “Build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” magazine articles and decide to go out and take jihad into their own hands, however.  Rather, I am talking about the really ugly thread of extremism and bigotry in our own country (and in Europe) that isolates and “others” Muslim communities and young Muslim men and makes them easy fodder for extremist groups hoping to radicalize them for their own ends.

I have noticed a derisive tendency among pundits in the last few days, usually when dismissing the possibility of attacks on American soil, to lump all of these guys together with the underwear bomber, the toner cartridge bomber, and the Times Square bomber.  The unspoken commonality is that all of these bombs failed to detonate.  I worry that the self-congratulatory pat on the back that comes with this snide derision has us looking the wrong direction while something (or multiple somethings) more dangerous sneaks up over our other shoulder.  For one thing, these guys are not all “failed” bombers, most obviously the Boston Marathon bombers succeeded at their goal, and for another thing, not all of these guys are bombers. 

Weirdly, when the terrorists aren't bombers, we tend to hear less about them, or somehow associate them less with terrorists, and I wonder if this isn't due at least somewhat in part to a gentle nudging, a “look over there!” on the part of conservative media to take the attention off how easily terrorists are able to commit mass murder with guns in this country.  The terrorists themselves have widely circulated this information in magazines and websites to potential lone wolves, that all they have to do is get themselves into the US, where guns are easy to come by legally, and then they can stock up as needed.

The Fort Hood shooting of November 2009, which left 13 people dead and 32 injured was a terror attack, at least according to its perpetrator (the government insisted on calling it “workplace violence” denying a terrorist motive), who was in communication with Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki before the shootings and visited numerous extremist websites.

In May 2013, two young men inspired by Al Shabaab websites hacked British soldier Lee Rigby to death with knives and a meat cleaver after first running him over with a car.  One of the suspects had previously been arrested in Kenya for trying to join and train with Al Shabaab.

In March 2012, a 23 year old French petty thief of Algerian descent carried out three shooting attacks in the French cities of Toulouse and Montauban, killing three soldiers, a Jewish teacher, and three school children.

But what really creeps me out are stories like this one, where a normal seeming guy from freaking Seattle of all places just decides that US foreign policy has resulted in enough civilian deaths in the Middle East and he is going to start killing fighting age American men in retaliation.  He shot four young men in two states.  Now yeah, okay, we can say there’s mental instability here, obviously.  Lots of us disagree with American foreign policy and spree killing isn't really our go-to mode of expression (hello, blogging, anyone?), but my point is lots of angry, disaffected young men in Seattle also just go out and commit normal boring crimes like burglary and drug dealing too, so what made this guy take up jihad instead of Black Ops 3?  Was it just radical ideologies on extremist websites?  Maybe?  But why was he looking for those websites in the first place?  What made him seek out those online communities?   

Which brings me to the insidious threat I really worry about, lurking in the shadows of our homeland.  The poison turning our own boys’ hearts away from their nation and toward an online network of worldwide haters.  Exposure to radical websites just isn't enough to turn an ordinary American kid into a terrorist.  Even an ordinary mentally unstable American kid is going to turn into an ordinary drop out, thug, or criminal before he turns into a terrorist.  No, we all confront all kinds of crap on the internet all the time.  To be vulnerable to the kind of seething nonsense Al Qaeda or Al Shabaab puts out there, something has to be carved out of a kid first.   And I think we are doing it to ourselves by letting crap like this slide by unremarked upon and unpunished. 

Oklahoma State Representative John Bennett (who is running for re-election unopposed) told a campaign rally last Wednesday that the goal of American Muslims "is the destruction of Western Civilization from within.  Muslims have worked their way into the government at every level.  Their teachings give them permission to lie to unbelievers to gain their trust.”  His speech took a darker turn when he called Muslims a “cancer that must be cut out of the American Society.”  He went on to say “I’m not advocating violence against anyone.  This country was founded on the freedom of religion, but I am not going to stand back and allow them to let Islam take over this nation.”  

Despite his head fake to the contrary, words like “cancer that must be cut out” and “not going to stand back” clearly advocate taking action against our fellow Americans based on religious identity.  Not only does this nonsense go unpunished, but gets applauded, with a standing ovation no less!  This bonehead in Oklahoma hardly “stands his ground” (according to the Sequoyah County Times’ gushing coverage of the speech) alone.  

A video went viral back in June, which I am not linking to here so as not to add even one view to its views, in which an American University law student in hijab asks a question at the Heritage Foundation’s panel, supposedly on Benghazi (but really on Muslim bashing) and is subjected to a series of false statistics and ad hominem attacks. What she asked was why all 1.8 billion followers of Islam worldwide are being generally lumped together as evil, and why the 8 million American Muslims weren't represented on the panel.  The panelist who answers her that 180 to 300 million Muslims are “dedicated to the destruction of Western Civilization,” dismisses the peaceful majority as irrelevant, compares them to the Germans during World War II, and questions the student’s citizenship also gets a standing ovation.

It isn't like these words of hatred and bigotry die quietly in the Heritage Foundation’s convention center or the Oklahoma restaurant where John Bennett spewed his filth.  These words get picked up on social media and spread around, from ear to ear and eye to eye.  Parents get them on their friends’ Facebook feeds and they remember that it is not okay to be kind to Muslim Americans in their lives.  They are a cancer, after all, and cannot be trusted.  That mom who watches the Heritage Foundation video on Facebook will decline the birthday party invitation from the little girl in her child’s class who wears hijab or has an Arabic sounding name, or won’t let her child go to an Eid celebration, because what would her friends think if she let her daughter be friends with those people?  And our communities move farther and farther apart and learn less and less about each other.   

Early and constant exposure to racism, ostracism, religious discrimination and bigotry in America will lay a foundation that will make our kids, American kids, more vulnerable to the predatory tactics of extremist groups in the future.  It is already happening.  As if looking in a mirror, we can see it even more clearly in the case of the Toulouse shooter in France.  After his arrest, his family made anti-Semitic comments, his brother said he was proud of him, people at the housing tenements created a sort of memorial for him.  Hate begets hate.  Describing the relationship between police and Muslim kids in the projects where he grew up, where the same kids get detained over and over, his friend told the Telegraph "All they do is chase you, search you, and insult you. They hate us and we hate them."

Public figures like John Bennet and Heritage Foundation Benghazi panelist Brigitte Gabriel and their ilk who spew hate and encourage others to hate and ostracize Americans out of fear and ignorance are the real Nick Brodys operating on American soil.  The applause they receive is a poison.  "Viral" videos of their bullying are truly an infection of social media.  Hate weakens the foundation of our democracy, it turns our children away from our communities and toward extremism, and it is going to come back and bite us in the ass.  Bigotry is the most insidious threat to our Homeland.