This feels familiar.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published a security bulletin warning the extremists with grievances against the government may be plotting to carry out attacks.
“Information suggests that some ideologically motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,” the department said in a national terrorism advisory.
There was no information on a specific credible plot but the heightened threat across the United States was likely to persist for weeks, it said.
It was almost exactly this time twelve years ago when the Department of Homeland Security released a similar bulletin warning that right wing extremists including veterans and law enforcement officers may be plotting against the Obama administration.
An uproar from Republicans and the media coerced the department into withdrawing that bulletin, but here we are today. Right wing terrorists including veterans and law enforcement officers literally tried to overthrow the government; killing at least one Capitol Police officer in the process.
In hindsight, the Obama-era department clearly shouldn't have bowed to political pressure to withdraw it, but that was a different time and different atmosphere. It feels difficult to me to play side-seat driver a decade later and the Biden administration isn't going to withdraw this warning because very few if any people who matter are going to make a stink out of it. Well saw just happened three weeks ago. The threat isn't theoretical.
The new bulletin says there will be a heightened threat for weeks, but I believe the threat will persist for years.
There was no such warning when Donald Trump took office because while there are certainly young, left wing agitators who enjoy destroying private property, they are not in the same league as organized militias and extremist groups. Threatening to violently overthrow the government simply isn't a liberal thing.