A worthy caution. Perhaps this was written before they caught the guy.
As of now though, I think we have enough information to make a pretty good
guess that this guy was a strong Trump supporter. The stickers all over his
van would be enough to clinch that. If that's the case, then it is fair to
blame Trump for turning up the rhetorical heat to such an extent that it
sent this guy, hopefully no others, over the edge into action.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 12:18 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Is It Fair to Blame Trumpism for These Latest
Explosive Devices?
Is It Fair to Blame Trumpism for These Latest Explosive Devices?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 October 18
This history of terror reporting says to wait a day or two before the facts
come out
Explosive devices and/or suspicious packages were sent to a number of major
Democratic Party-linked figures this week, including Barack Obama, Hillary
Clinton, philanthropist and financier George Soros, former DNC chair Debbie
Wasserman-Schultz, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), and former CIA chief John
Brennan.
The offices of the San Diego Union-Tribune were also evacuated after
"suspicious packages" were found, and a device was removed from the Time
Warner center in Manhattan, home to CNN.
Early news stories drew immediate connections to aggressive and
irresponsible rhetoric from the right, including from President Trump. The
Guardian noted that Soros has long been the target of right-wing paranoia,
with Trump claiming Soros paid protesters against the nomination of Justice
Brett Kavanaugh. The New York Times story about the incidents was quick to
draw a similar connection:
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Soros and CNN have all figured prominently in
conservative political attacks - many of which have been led by President
Trump. He has often referred to major news organizations as "the enemy of
the people," and has had a particular animus for CNN.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo - who also received a suspicious package that
was quickly deemed "safe" by police - was asked if he had a message for
Donald Trump.
"Bring down the heat. I want to bring down the rancor. There is an apparent
political pattern to this," he said.
I have no love for Trump, his disgraceful rhetoric, or the blatantly
anti-Semitic attacks against the likes of Soros. And no sane person can have
anything but contempt for the kind of incitement of violence that has become
routine online (witness Bill McKibben's story about anti-environmentalists
calling for someone to dig up his address and bring "civil disobedience" to
his home). Even without these bomb incidents, this should all be denounced
in the strongest terms.
But if there's one thing history tells us about terrorism, it's that these
stories often end up having very different narratives than what is first
suspected in the heat of the moment. Facts that later emerge often leave us
in a completely different place than we'd have expected.
Because of the 24-hour news cycle and our addiction to second-to-second
updates from reporters, celebrities and politicians alike on social media,
it's almost impossible not to speculate and point fingers right after we
hear scary news. This is a form of journalistic malpractice that has gone
sideways on more than a few of us in the business over the years.
The worst case was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, in which reports after
the attack said police were seeking two men of "Middle Eastern" appearance
for questioning. The New York Times noted the bombing had taken place on the
anniversary of Federal agents' assault on Waco.
But unnamed officials told them domestic right-wing groups lacked "the
technical expertise to engage in bombings like the one today," and the paper
speculated at length about Muslim connections.
CBS after the OKC bombing quoted a "terrorism expert" who said the apparent
intent to inflict as many casualties as possible was a "Middle Eastern
trait." Columnist Cal Thomas pointed the finger at immigrants. Georgie Ann
Geyer said the attack had the "earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the
Middle East."
Rampant speculation led to more threats and misbehavior, with Muslims around
the country called baby-killers and worse. The furor didn't end until Janet
Reno announced the attacks appeared "domestic in nature," and the arrest of
Timothy McVeigh taught us to look inward when terror attacks take place.
When TWA flight 800 blew up over the Long Island Sound a year later, the
Times reported that investigators were focused on "terrorism" and speculated
the Boeing 747 could have been detonated by a Stinger missile, "such as the
mujahidin used in Afghanistan." But that case remains unsolved.
Ten days after the TWA crash, a pipe bomb went off at the Atlanta Olympics.
This led to rampant speculation that the guard who found the bomb, Richard
Jewell, had planted the explosive himself.
Jewell became the focus of intense coverage by CNN, NBC, the New York Post
and countless other outlets. A former Army explosives expert named Eric
Rudolph was ultimately convicted of the crime, along with several abortion
clinic bombings. Ironically, decades later, Sean Spicer seemed to blame the
bombings on Islamic terrorists.
Social media has sped up rushes to judgment. After the Boston Marathon
bombings, Reddit investigators pointed the finger at a (deceased, as it
turned out) Brown University student named Sunil Tripathi. The New York Post
under the headline BAG MEN put two other Middle Easterners on the front
page, after their names and photos had circulated in online discussions.
More recently, an African-American gun-rights advocate named Mark Hughes
became the subject of a public furor after a Dallas police Twitter account
fingered him as a suspect in the sniper killings of five police officers.
If you're thinking the lesson in all these incidents is just to skip past
the foreign suspects and go straight for the homegrown, flag-waving
right-wing patriot, well, that doesn't always work out, either.
The infamous Anthrax letters sent in the wake of 9/11 to press outlets and a
pair of Democratic Senators caused 17 to fall ill, and five to die. They
were written to sound like they came from Islamic terrorists.
Domestic sleuths quickly decided the letters were a pose and shifted their
focus to a former Army doctor named Steven Hatfill. Hatfill was a
flamboyantly patriotic type who regaled acquaintances with stories of
battling communists in youthful trips to then-Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today).
In a column for the Times, Nicholas Kristof, calling Hatfill "Mr. Z," said
that if he "were an Arab national, he would have been imprisoned long ago."
He then went on to speculate that "Mr. Z" was not only guilty of murder, but
genocide. Addressing the FBI in the apostrophic column, he wrote:
Have you examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax
outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000
black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978-80? There is evidence that the anthrax was
released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting against black guerrillas, and
Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in the white army's much-feared
Selous Scouts.
Hatfill, it seems, was innocent. As the Atlantic later pointed out:
Kristof didn't mention that the majority of soldiers in the Rhodesian army,
and in Hatfill's unit, were black; or that many well-respected scientists
who examined the evidence concluded that the Rhodesian anthrax outbreak
emerged naturally when cattle herds went unvaccinated.
A huge problem with terror stories is that journalists are rushed for scoops
and often take short cuts they otherwise wouldn't. An infamous case involved
Channel 4 in England, which relied on one source to identify the culprit in
the Westminster terror attack. The man turned out to be in prison at the
time of the incident.
Worse, a lot of TV programs have national security consultants who are paid
specifically to speculate before facts are in, in cases just like this. Same
with analysts from think tanks, whose job at least partly is to sit at
desks, waiting to supply calling reporters with quotes. This is how you'll
get wildly divergent guesses about how terror incidents have "fingerprints"
that "point to" this or that group, even before there's a suspect or any
kind of evidence.
Just as bad is the penchant for non-press actors these days to engage in
phony terror attacks in order to get eyeballs and clicks. We've seen a
YouTuber pretend to throw acid at people in England, trying to surf on real
fears about a real rise in acid attacks in Britain. There's a whole genre of
staged "terror" attacks online.
***
There's no question that our current climate of vicious political rhetoric
is out of hand, and that our president is significantly responsible. In the
early stages of Trump's campaign in the summer of 2015, a pair of jackasses
beat up a Hispanic homeless man in Boston. One of them was heard saying upon
arrest, "Donald Trump was right, all of these illegals need to be deported."
Trump's infamous response - that his supporters are "very passionate" - told
us even then what he was all about.
But in something on the scale of what's happening this week, waiting a day
or two to freak out makes sense. History tells us perpetrators of such
atrocities often count on media overreactions and stumbles.
Moreover, unless this turns out to be some wannabe Internet celebrity's
unfunniest-ever idea of a Punk'd stunt - in which case said person should be
dropped down to the bottom of the deepest salt mine we have - this series of
incidents will certainly result in calls for sweeping political change.
Something this upsetting will likely inspire radical security proposals that
may alter all our futures on a fundamental level. Given that, let's at least
know exactly what we're dealing with before the next round of our
increasingly savage national argument commences.
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