Okay, so maybe Trump is, and maybe Trump isn’t a Fascist. But can’t we at least say that by promising to pardon all those schmucks who ran around like a bunch of hooligans in the Capitol on January 6th, that he’s certainly encouraging terrorism?
The Fake News loves to throw around words like ‘Fascist’ and ‘terrorist,’ because those kinds of words to generate more clicks. And more clicks mean more people looking at the ads, and more eyes on the ads means … well, you get what it means, right?
Okay, back to terrorism.
I’ll bet you that of the 500 people or so who will read this column today, maybe two have heard of Boko Haram. Most of my readers will think that Boko Haram is some kind of food specialty on the menu of a restaurant specializing in exotic, ethnic foods.
In fact, the Nigerian government, which somehow continued to operate during seven coups which occurred between 1966 and 2007, but is now a constitutional republic, decided yesterday to free more than 300 members of the Boko Haram organization who have been in jail since at least 2014, if not before.
Boko Haram, which was designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization in 2013, launched an insurgency against the Nigerian government in 2002 which resulted in somewhere around 50,000 people being massacred and another2.5 million displaced from their native settlement areas.
The organization, whose professed goal is to create a sharia state, found itself fighting against an ISIS-led terrorist group, during which time the Boko Haram chief, or amir, Abubakar Shekau, killed himself to avoid being captured by the ISIS contingent, with the result that membership in Boko Haram declined to the point that the Nigerian government doesn’t currently consider the organization to represent a serious threat.
When we use the word ‘terrorism,’ as it really should be used, we’re talking about groups like Boko Haram, we’re not talking about those jerk-offs who ran through the Capitol building for a couple of hours, shouted a couple of curse words as they stood on the rostrum of the empty Senate chamber or stole the date book off of Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
Yea, yea, I know that 4 or 5 people died in or around the Capitol on January 6th. I know that some assholes in the crowd chanted ‘hang Mike Pence.’ I also know that, with the exception of I think two putzes who carried handguns onto the Capitol grounds but didn’t fire a single shot at anyone, that the ‘terrorists’ who helped the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers assault American democracy were armed with bear spray, home-made spears and wooden or metal clubs.
We have absolutely no idea what it’s like to live in a country facing an active terrorist threat. On April 14, 2014, a Boko Haram group marched into a school in Borno State and abducted 276 young female students. Many of the victims escaped or were released, but at least 100(!) are still missing.
To prove their organization is gender-neutral, a Boko Haram group went into a school in Katsina and kidnapped 344 male students. These lucky kids were released the following week, not because the government located them and forced their abductors to give them up, but because another gang unaffiliated with Boko Haram started taking responsibility for the attack.
In the United States, when some crazy kid walks into a school and unloads an AR-15 at a bunch of students, sometimes killing more than 20 poor young souls, we immediately describe this event as an act of ‘domestic terrorism,’ and then we hold the usual debate over how to stop such ‘mass shootings’ before they take place.
Note that every, single one of these so-called ‘terrorist’ attacks in the United States are the work of one, deranged individual, usually a kid in his early 20’s, who has been sitting in front of his computer looking at websites which contain information about mass shootings, then gets his hands on an AR-15, walks into a school or some other public space, shoots a bunch of people and then either shoots himself or gives himself up.
There are more than 60 groups which have been designated by the State Department as ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ which seem to be operating in at least 40 or maybe 50 different countries – we don’t really know the extent of this activity and often learn about the existence of a particular terrorist organization after a major assault has occurred.
If somebody walks down the street, pulls out a gun, shoots someone else and then tells the cops that he’s a member of this or that terrorist group, this guy doesn’t even make the State Department list.
But if that shooting occurs in the United States, the media will immediately announce that the country has suffered another ‘domestic terrorist’ attack. And the cops will go along with that nonsense because there’s nothing which feeds a law enforcement budget better than protecting America from terrorism, right?
I’ve said it many times but repetition’s the key to effective teaching so I’ll say it again: We have no idea how stable and secure we are in a world where groups like Boko Haram operate openly and resist official suppression for years at a time.
Know what would happen if President (God forbid) Trump were to pardon all those January 6th assholes currently sitting in jail? Every, single one of them would go home, make up some bullshit story about what they did on January 6th and spend the rest of their stupid lives lying around the local Hardee’s biscuit house shooting the shit with their friends.