Joe Kent, a former Green Beret who is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, completed 11 combat deployments during the War on Terror. The combat left scars. In 2019, an ISIS suicide bomber killed his wife, a Navy cryptologist and linguist, in Syria. By the time he returned home, his worldview had shifted: Kent came to believe, as I wrote in a 2022 profile, that his early tours in Iraq gave him a “special gift of clarity.” He understood how quickly a society could come undone.

After this, Kent went from apolitical to active. The Black Lives Matter and antifa protests in Portland during the summer of 2020 triggered fears for him that the United States could similarly implode. Everything, he felt, was crumbling. He and his two young boys quickly left the city for rural Washington.

“We need to treat antifa and BLM like terrorist organizations. We need to use the tools of the federal government, the FBI, the US Marshals—go after them like organized criminals and terrorists,” Kent said in a 2021 conversation with the podcaster Tim Pool about the group’s leaders. “So, when we start arresting these guys and charging them with federal terrorism charges, that’s going to take away a lot of the incentive to go out and riot.”

  • TheObviousSolution
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    115 hours ago

    When everything is a terrorist organization, nothing is - and you might be living in a fascist state.

  • @[email protected]
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    75 hours ago

    Below here are more “Thanks Obama Biden”-ery at it finest ignoring the article and ignoring who is trying to put this person in power.

  • @grue
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    338 hours ago

    Terrorism is when leftists exercise their First Amendment rights.

  • HubertManne
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    188 hours ago

    I hate how much I can imagine history professors talking about this period… Well students ironicaly a key figure in the implosion and crumbling of the US was a soldier who was trying to prevent just that…

    • @[email protected]
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      45 hours ago

      Ha ha ha.

      History teachers will only be teaching the approved curriculum about how God Emperor Trump the First blessed us with his presence to purge the world of the Satan led Communist Woke Transgender Army™.

      To suggest anything else happened, even in jest, is a treasonous executable act good sir, and you have been reported to the X Office of Wrongthink.

      I do thank you for the opportunity as it means my family will have enough rationa for the month thanks tonthe reward program.

      • @[email protected]
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        54 hours ago

        All empires crumble even the ones with the strongest bases such as Rome fell inevitably, and let me make this clear The United States is no Rome.

  • @DrFistington
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    268 hours ago

    What boggles my mind is that Biden didn’t immediately declare the proud boys a terrorist organization so that we could completely dismantle them. I mean at least thwart Trump’s plans at creating Brown shirts

    • @Wogi
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      178 hours ago

      Biden pulled a Buchanan. Do nothing and nope out.

      • @grue
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        108 hours ago

        A Neville Chamberlain, even.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 hours ago

          To defend Chamberlain he didnt think Britain was capable of fighting a war at that time. He started Britains rearmament that allowed the fuck up at Dunkirk, but just cause ya give folks guns doesnt mean they know how to use them.

  • Flying Squid
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    7110 hours ago

    These so-called groups are not organizations. That means they can accuse anyone of being in BLM and/or Antifa.

    Which I guess is the point.

    • andrew_bidlaw
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      87 hours ago

      They look jealously at Russia that named LGBT an extremist org, and the overreach in law coupled with targeted execution you mention is very characteristical of the state top figureheads of the right like to visit and promote. In a form of a proverb it supposedly dates back to 19th century (russian), although it’s not clear who really wrote that and when. What is known though is that today it’s what every henchperson whishes as it favors everyone loyal to it, guarantees kids and friends getting into cozy positions and denies interest of (pocketed) media and services as long as you toy the line.

      • Flying Squid
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        7 hours ago

        And they don’t even have to do that here. They can just declare every queer person to be a member of antifa. Because there is literally no definition of who is a member of antifa since it is not an organization.

        • andrew_bidlaw
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          47 hours ago

          There’s a ritual of finding an antifa with a gas chamber. If the person survives the gas chamber, they are an antifa and should be killed, and if they are not, they are just a casualty of the culture war antifas waged on the world as we know it.

          • Flying Squid
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            37 hours ago

            This seems complicated. Can’t we just go back to what they did in the old days- seeing if they’re not guilty of being antifa if you drown them and they don’t die?

            • andrew_bidlaw
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              46 hours ago

              Modern problems and modern solutions. But to be trully modern, it would need to be a trap in a cask of a cybertruck with microplastics air dispenser nearby that gives you achivements at every 5% percent of your body becoming a fiberflesh matter. Tasteless, weightless particles flowing to choke every bloodflow and shut down every organ, all under cheap gaming RGB lighting flickering ignogant of your high and lows, indifferent to you struggle to breath in one time more.

  • @[email protected]
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    37 hours ago

    it makes sense for a counter terrorist expert to be paranoid, but damn… counter here is pulling a lot of work.

  • @givesomefucks
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    1010 hours ago

    This is why not protesting when a Dem is president never made sense.

    trump won’t care, so the last four years we should have been protesting Biden’s inaction (on so many different issues) which would have at least got him to acknowledge the left and would have likely stopped Trump from winning

    But Biden had a D by his name, so the screechers kept calling anyone that didn’t agree with Biden 100% a Russian.

    Biden felt no pressure from the left, which made him and Kamala move too far right and lose what should have been another incredibly easy election.

    And like we saw at the inauguration, Biden doesn’t even care, we’re the ones that have to deal with consequences while Biden apparently goes into acting without a care in the world

    • @TrickDacy
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      13 hours ago

      Yes I love how millions of people not voting for Harris didn’t matter at all /s

    • @[email protected]
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      35 hours ago

      I agree about your main point, but:

      And like we saw at the inauguration, Biden doesn’t even care

      The inauguration where Trump droned on about seeking revenge on Biden, while he was sitting right there?

      The inauguration during which the White House released a series of scheduled preemptive pardons for Biden’s immediate family?

      I think he does care, but he thinks that:

      • Neoliberal policies are the right answer
      • Whatever policies we do opt for, we should follow established law and procedure, down to the letter, when implementing them
      • Funding the number one factor in winning elections

      I think all three of those are outdated ideas, but I can understand a geriatic lifelong politician believing them earnestly.

      • @givesomefucks
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        5 hours ago

        The inauguration during which the White House released a series of scheduled preemptive pardons for Biden’s immediate family?

        Which is why Biden doesn’t care about the rest of us…

        His “us” or in-group doesn’t include Americans at large, which is why he didn’t do well with dem voters. As long as his immediately family was gonna be ok, he’s not worried about the rest of us.

        Like, not to get too into the weeds, but the reason political leaning can be identified with an ~80% accuracy with just a brain scan is people with a larger pre-frontal cortex are overwhelmingly more likely to vote D.

        That includes the part responsible for that whole “empathy” thing in the first place.

        “Bleeding heart lib” isn’t just some saying republicans and moderates use to shit on progressives, empathy is the largest identifiable trait of Dem voters.

        When the candidate doesn’t reflect that, it results in lower Dem turnout.

        And it’s also one of the first areas of the brain to suffer from the completely normal signs of aging we’ll all go thru if we’re lucky to live long enough.

        Which is why Republican voters are more likely to support geriatric candidates compared to Dems. Losing prefrontal cortex functionality doesn’t change anything republican voters care about.

        Like, there’s real-world facts and data to back up how the current DNC has been doing the wrong things, it’s not just an unfounded opinion because I don’t like neoliberals on a personal level.

        It’s just explaining all this goes over most heads.