The Global War on Terror Comes Home

On Wednesday, ICE agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. Hours later, immigration officials raided a high school in the same city; and in Portland, ICE shot two additional civilians. In response, the Trump administration has been blaming the victims and promoting new expansive definitions of “terrorism” to silence dissent. To talk about this, host Esty Dinur is joined by independent journalist, Ken Klippenstein.

They unpack Trump’s recent national security directive which lists new identifiers of “terrorism” including expressing feelings that are anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, or anti-traditional family values (similar to this bill in Wisconsin). Klippenstein says that if you look at polling, these feelings are expressed by millions of voters. The effect of this directive is “bringing what was the global war on terror home,” by making enemies of American people. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s expanded these qualities of “terrorism” to include anti-Ice sentiment. 

Klippenstein says we have to understand that federal law enforcement has been instructed to view impeding ICE actions as terrorism, and there’s no precedent in the US for this. Trump and Bondi’s directives create a psychological environment in which ICE agents can view their fellow citizens as combatants. It’s a world based in fear, one that MAGA supporters have been primed to accept as the dominant narrative by the media. 

They also discuss the unpopularity of the Democratic Party and how top Democrats in Washington aren’t in touch with rank and file voters. Klippenstein says we should be skeptical of calls for impeachment of Kristi Noem and alarmed by Bondi’s directive to the FBI to offer cash bounties for “radicals.”

Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who previously worked at The Intercept before announcing his decision to go independent, believing the move necessary in order to report critically on national security. Soon after going independent, Klippenstein published the JD Vance Dossier, a hacked document numerous major media organizations — the very ecosystem he just left — refused to publish. Before The Intercept, Klippenstein was The Nation magazine’s DC correspondent. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Featured image of a group in Minnesota protesting ICE in 2018 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

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