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Last Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., former Army officer and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking why and how the Pentagon could tolerate an airman like Bushnell in its ranks. Calling his death “an act of horrific violence” that was “in support of a terrorist group [Hamas],” Cotton goes on to ask about the Defense Department’s internal efforts to address extremism and whether Bushnell was ever identified as exhibiting extremist views or behaviors.
Though Bushnell’s suicide was intended to demonstrate his anguish over the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, he also embraced anarchism, or at least a present-day articulation of anarchism that is a general rejection of established authority. Bushnell’s posts on Reddit and other social media platforms before his death reflected this embrace of anarchism, and he chose the anarchist symbol as his profile picture for the Twitch account he used to livestream his self-immolation. His Facebook page also followed and liked pages for several anarchist groups. The anarchist collective CrimethInc. also said in a blog post that Bushnell had emailed the group shortly before his death.
The AGAAVE threat, the FBI says, “includes anarchist violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, and other violent extremists.” FBI data reveals that 31 percent of its investigations relate to AGAAVEs and 60 percent of all investigations include cases categorized as AGAAVE and “civil unrest.” Most of that focus since January 6 has been on groups that participated in the protests at the Capitol and supporters of Donald Trump.
Behind the scenes though, according to congressional testimony reported here for the first time, the FBI maintains a program specifically for combatting anarchists, called the Anarchist Extremism Program. In Senate testimony, the FBI says that it had increased its targeting of anarchist “violent extremists” across the country by using both human and technical sources to spy on them. Since the nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020, the bureau has tasked field offices to tap confidential informants to develop better intelligence about anarchists. In 2021, the FBI more than doubled its domestic terrorism caseload; and Wray told Congress that arrests of what the bureau calls “anarchist violent extremists” were more numerous in 2020-2021 (the months around January 6) than in the three previous years combined.
An internal FBI threat advisory obtained by The Intercept defines Anarchist Violent Extremists as individuals “who consider capitalism and centralized government to be unnecessary and oppressive,” and “oppose economic globalization; political, economic, and social hierarchies based on class, religion, race, gender, or private ownership of capital; and external forms of authority represented by centralized government, the military, and law enforcement.”
At a press briefing last Thursday that discussed Bushnell’s ties to anarchism, the Pentagon appeared to hint that his death might be considered an act of extremism.
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Since 2019, the FBI has used five “threat categories” to describe domestic terrorism: Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism, Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremism (AGAAVE), Animal Rights or Environmental Violent Extremism, Abortion-Related Violent Extremism, and “All Other Domestic Terrorism Threats,” which is defined as “furtherance of political and/or social agendas which are not otherwise exclusively defined under one of the other threat categories.”
“Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism” used to just be “Black Identity Extremism” until somebody told them they were making their racism a little too obvious.
Behind the scenes though, according to congressional testimony reported here for the first time, the FBI maintains a program specifically for combatting anarchists, called the Anarchist Extremism Program. In Senate testimony, the FBI says that it had increased its targeting of anarchist “violent extremists” across the country by using both human and technical sources to spy on them. Since the nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020, the bureau has tasked field offices to tap confidential informants to develop better intelligence about anarchists.
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CIs who will make shit up just to keep getting paid and are usually getting a plea deal on real crimes for their work. Here’s a podcast episode about a rapist piece of shit the FBI paid to spy on BLM activists around Denver a few years ago.
In 2021, the FBI more than doubled its domestic terrorism caseload; and Wray told Congress that arrests of what the bureau calls “anarchist violent extremists” were more numerous in 2020-2021 (the months around January 6) than in the three previous years combined.
An internal FBI threat advisory obtained by The Intercept defines Anarchist Violent Extremists as individuals “who consider capitalism and centralized government to be unnecessary and oppressive,” and “oppose economic globalization; political, economic, and social hierarchies based on class, religion, race, gender, or private ownership of capital; and external forms of authority represented by centralized government, the military, and law enforcement.”
This is what they’re doing instead of going after Republican political corruption, Libs of TikTok and other right wing extremists, police brutality, etc.
Although we have massive amounts of example of police extremism, including shooting people in cold blood with no consequences, the FBI goes after the people responding to the police violence.
The while AGAAVE acronym even existing to label people who don’t like being treated like shit by authority is depressing.
“There’s more
leftistsextremists, the existential threat to the 1%.”There is some statistical sleight of hand happening here, I think. This category includes both fascists and similar ideologies, along with anarchists. They then use this stat to imply that there have been many cases relating to anarchism, when most of the incidents I know of were right-wing in nature.
That’s a pretty good acronym. I guess I know what I’m naming my next band.
As a reminder, the FBI was built to kill anarchists and they’ve been doing unconditional shit to hunt anarchists since before they were the FBI.
The FBI will do anything to avoid fighting actual terrorism like the Klan and all the Nazi groups that have infiltrated the police and military. Nazis infiltrating the military literally tried to build s dirty bomb and the FBI is still more interesting in people protesting against police brutality.
I wouldn’t say trigger a witch hunt since one has been ongoing, albeit with some breaks (such as the all hands on deck for insurrectionaries after Jan 6th).
Even the most pacifist vegan-anarchist orgs that simply feed the needy and unhoused get surveilled under suspicion of ecoterrorism. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/mar/25/fbi-files-food-not-bombs/
Hopefully other mutual aid organizations don’t catch the extremist label for being made by and composed of anarchists, but that might be too optimistic
Whereas right wing nutjobs just shoot up schools and pizza huts, lefties tend to blockade the correct institutions which cause harm. For example Occupy Wall Street. Which is a big no-no.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., former Army officer and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking why and how the Pentagon could tolerate an airman like Bushnell in its ranks.
Calling his death “an act of horrific violence” that was “in support of a terrorist group [Hamas],” Cotton goes on to ask about the Defense Department’s internal efforts to address extremism and whether Bushnell was ever identified as exhibiting extremist views or behaviors.
But it also follows a longstanding urging by other members of Congress like Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — ranking Republican of the Judiciary Committee and former president pro tempore of the Senate — for the military to pursue some kind of similar treatment for leftists.
Soon after taking office, new secretary of defense Austin, a retired Army general, directed the military to conduct an all-hands “stand down” to address extremism in the ranks, commissioning a number of panels and studies to evaluate white nationalism and neo-Nazi support among service members.
Bushnell’s posts on Reddit and other social media platforms before his death reflected this embrace of anarchism, and he chose the anarchist symbol as his profile picture for the Twitch account he used to livestream his self-immolation.
In 2021, the FBI more than doubled its domestic terrorism caseload; and Wray told Congress that arrests of what the bureau calls “anarchist violent extremists” were more numerous in 2020-2021 (the months around January 6) than in the three previous years combined.
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