An extensive no-fly list. New crimes in the books. More use of the death penalty.
These are some of the ways politicians, pundits and law enforcement want to prevent a repeat of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But a renewed national security boost aimed at tackling domestic terrorism has led civil liberty groups to push, concerned that measures to combat far-right extremism will instead be rolled back against communities of color and left-wing activists.
Last summer’s protests against racial justice sparked a national discussion about the endurance of racism within the US law enforcement and security apparatus. But despite campaigning over the need to reform those institutions, some mainstream Democrats are now leading the way with calls for them to be expanded.
Senate leader Chuck Schumer has called for the Capitol’s rioters to be placed on the no-fly list. President Joe Biden, whose campaign website promises his government “will work for a domestic terrorism law,” has commissioned a comprehensive assessment of violent extremism in the home. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has called for a new “9/11 type committee”. And the first domestic terrorism legislation after the Capitol attack was introduced in Parliament last week by Illinois Democrat Brad Schneider.
However, the Democratic Party is not completely unanimous on this issue.
Ten progressive members of Congress, led by Congressman Rashida Tlaib in Michigan, have sent a letter to Congressional leaders expressing their opposition to an expansion of national security forces.
“The Trump crowd’s success in breaking the Capitol was not due to a lack of resources available to federal law enforcement,” the letter read. “We firmly believe that the US government’s national security and surveillance powers are overly broad, undefined, and unaccountable to the people.”
“Our history is littered with examples of initiatives being marketed as necessary to combat extremism and rapidly turning into tools used for the massive violation of the human and civil rights of the American people,” the letter continues.
It cites as examples the McCarthy-era House Un-American Activities Committee, the scrutiny of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and the invention of a category in 2017 called “Black Identity Extremism” that the FBI claimed posed a risk of domestic terrorism. .
More than 100 civil and human rights organizations have also joined a declaration of opposition to new domestic terror law.
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