"Don't even think about it"

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella writing at Mother Jones:

Largely ignored by the mainstream candidates—as well as the mainstream media—are the latest efforts to bring the fear home by targeting "homegrown terrorism"—another new catchphrase. Only liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich and libertarian Republican Ron Paul have warned that in the name of stopping domestic terrorist plots before they happen, Congress is in the midst of passing legislation aimed not at actual hate crimes or even terrorist conspiracies, but at talking, Web surfing, or even thinking about jihadism or other "extremist belief systems." Last October, a piece of legislation called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed through the House with near-universal bipartisan support; it is likely to reach the floor of the Senate early this year and appears certain to be signed into law.

...The bill raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation according to the prevailing political winds.

In addition, simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."

...Robert Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation points out that some of the most significant First Amendment battles have been fought over precisely when "speech transgresses the line from mere advocacy, which is protected by the First Amendment, to incitement, which is not." Through the early twentieth century, when "incitement" was defined broadly as speech that had a "tendency" to cause illegal acts, it was used to prosecute nonviolent abolitionists, anarchists, socialists, and draft resisters. Gradually, the Supreme Court narrowed the definition, so that speech is protected unless it will "intentionally produce a high likelihood of real imminent harm."

What the Homegrown Terrorism bill does is bring back into the equation not just violent actions, and not just violent plots, but the words and ideas that may (or may not) inspire or encourage them somewhere down the road. It moves toward designating people as terrorists based not on what they do, but on what they say and what they think.

...It's the "road" the bill lays out that worries civil libertarians. "This measure looks benign enough, but we should be concerned about where it will lead," Kamau Franklin of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights said when the bill passed the House. The National Commission it creates will have broad power to conduct investigations; one commentator dubbed it the "Son of HUAC"—the House Un-American Activities Committee—because it is supposed to travel around the country, holding hearings and questioning people under oath about their ideological beliefs. Wherever it may ultimately lead, the bill seems clearly part of a growing push toward expanding domestic intelligence operations—spying that is aimed not at any Al Qaeda members who may have slipped across the border, but at U.S. citizens and legal residents. The great civil libertarian Frank J. Donner, in his book The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System, argued that the true goal of domestic intelligence was not to prevent or punish criminal activity, but to protect existing power structures and suppress dissent. Unlike law enforcement, which deals with illegal actions that have already been committed, domestic intelligence is by nature "future-oriented": It is not looking for criminals, but potential criminals, and it does so by relying on "ideology, not behavior, theory not practice." Anyone who thinks the wrong way could at some point act the wrong way—so they have to be watched.

Donner was writing in the late 1970s, following congressional investigations that exposed the abuses of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), which for more than a decade had conducted surveillance and planted informants to spy on and disrupt what J. Edgar Hoover had decided were "enemies of the American way of life"—including civil rights, anti-war, student, and women's liberation groups, as well as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, the bureau tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency." In the end, the Bureau conducted more than half a million investigations of so-called subversives and maintained files on well over a million Americans—all of this without a single conviction for a criminal act.

Plenty of people will argue that the "subversive" groups targeted during the McCarthy era or the COINTELPRO period were nothing like today's Islamic radicals—and there are, of course, differences, not least in terms of new tactics like suicide attacks and dirty bombs. But the Weather Underground set off at least a dozen bombs, which is a dozen more than the homegrown jihadists have managed so far. And just as the FBI spied on Weathermen and anti-war activists alike, it will be unlikely to distinguish between active jihadists and Muslims who are simply ardent or angry. What's more, anything that can be applied to one "extremist" group—laws, policies, law enforcement strategies, domestic intelligence operations—can be applied to others. A case in point is offered by Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corporation terrorism expert who served as a consultant on the NYPD's report. In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Jenkins wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent.