From an MSNBC discussion a few days ago with liberals’ favorite militarist fruitbat:
Thomas Roberts: General, a lot of people would say you reap what you sow, so how do you fix self-radicalized lone wolves domestically?
Wesley Clark: Well we’ve got to identify the people most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning. There are always a certain number of people who are alienated. They won’t get a job, they lost their girlfriend, their family doesn’t feel happy here and we can watch for signs of that and there are members of the community who will bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here.
But I do think on a national policy level, we need to look at them and what this self-radicalization means, because we are at war with this group of terrorists. They do have an ideology. In World War 2, if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, well, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put ’em in a camp. They were prisoners of war. So if these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States, they’re disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle, fine, that’s their right. It’s our right and our obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict. I think we’re going to have to increasingly get tough on this, not only in the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.
Naturally, there’s lots of liberal What-The-Fucking over this, and Clark is being widely disparaged by people inclined to temper their complaints with a litany of his virtues. “The comments were shockingly out of character for Clark” wrote Maz Hussain in The Intercept.
Of course there is no imminent danger of official internment camps for thought crimes. A “progressive” talking like this merely turns up the heat a little on the frog in the kettle, while injecting as much fear into the ether as he possibly can.
The Rancid Honeytrap 
Protection? Not going far enough? Radical what? Is ignorance always this kind of pseudo-Darwinian order?
“we’ve got to identify the people…”
“We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning.”
“we need to look at them…”
“we are at war with this group of terrorists”
Never has the flattening of everything to ‘we’ been more terrifying to me. I dissent! More than I’ve ever dissented to just about anything, I dissent!
That being said, I also want to point out how something like this terrifying laying out of ‘our’ national interests, and what ‘we’ must do about it dovetails with all of the ‘treason’ talk recently, particularly from the Hillary Dem camp. I can’t pinpoint when I first saw it (though I think it was in relation to the confederate flag, lots of ‘republicans are supporting this treasonous symbol’ type of tweets/writing), but I have seen more & more Dems crowing about treason the last few weeks then I have in years prior. Anytime they all start using the same language/talking points, I assume coordination. Combine this sudden streak of nationalism in Dems with things like the above and all that ‘we’ talk, it’s clear where we are headed.
Scary, scary stuff.
Wow. I’ve been steering clear of most Hillary talk so I wasn’t aware of the treason thing. Do you recall who they were accusing of treason?
There’s nothing the luminaries of the Democratic Party do without coordination. They’re definitely trying to normalize this shit. It makes so much more sense to have Clark do it than one of the usual suspects on the right. His military background makes him the perfect spokesperson.
Mostly just a general indictment of repubs:
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/09/what_tradition_does_the_confederate_battle_flag_represent_is_it_slavery_rape_genocide_treason_or_all_of_the_above/
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/16/right_wing_racist_whack_a_mole_confederate_flag_comes_down_donald_trump_pops_up/ (look under the heading “People Can Change?” in that article)
And any number of tweets: https://twitter.com/search?q=treason%20confederate%20flag&src=typd
I agree that this is coordinated – and maybe I’m reaching here, reading into the interview above & the treason stuff as together, but I don’t think so. I searched for a while trying to find the originating source of all the treason talk but I couldn’t find it. But there’s a definite shift when you move from calling the flag ‘racist’ to calling it ‘treasonous’ – I can’t help but feel like it’s dogwhistling nationalism, and the above interview seems the logical next steps in that. Especially coming from a source that’s friendly to Dems, as you said.
Oh and Vox of course getting in on the action: http://www.vox.com/2015/7/16/8977099/confederate-flag-obama-oklahoma
I take that back, looks like Vox doesn’t say treason after all, although I swear it was in an earlier version of that story.
The coordination is international I believe. Cameron:
“And as we do so, we should together challenge the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the extremists. The world is not conspiring against Islam; the security services aren’t behind terrorist attacks; our new Prevent duty for schools is not about criminalising or spying on Muslim children. This is paranoia in the extreme.”
“We need the police to step up and not stand by as crimes take place. We need universities to stand up against extremism; broadcasters to give platforms to different voices; and internet service providers to do their bit too. Together, we can do this. Britain has never been cowed by fear or hatred or terror. Our Great British resolve faced down Hitler; it defeated Communism; it saw off the IRA’s assaults on our way of life. Time and again we have stood up to aggression and tyranny.”
https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/david-cameron-says-britain-needs-to-empower-big-business-to-combat-conspiracy-theorists-in-order-to-stop-isis/
but I have seen more & more Dems crowing about treason the last few weeks then I have in years prior
funny that, ’cause i still have to remind myself every once in a while that every POTUS in living memory has gotten away with it. treason that is.
be careful now, that could constitute substantial support for a listed terrorist group!
US Military authorized to snatch (rendition), torture, and detain indefinitely for that.
I didn’t know Averell Harriman & Prescott Bush spent time in an internment camp.
“The comments were shockingly out of character for Hussain” wrote Hummus, who demands more content as living in the social media desert is harsh.
Though I missed all the David Geithner/Gawker fesitivities
Well soooooooorry! Of course it’s my job to keep you entertained once you quit Twitter.
I started working on a doozy of a post but had to shelve it, at least temporarily. I got a lot of new shit making demands on my time. I’m not just yer blogging monkey, y’know!
Yeah I know it’s not fair especially from me, oh generator of so little content.
Read banjolin’s comments and it reminded me of a St Patrick’s Day party where some terrified conservative was telling a liberal 9/11 truther he needed to leave the country if he thought that. Then they both left to snort coke. I’ve always enjoyed the “CSA were traitors/America hates a loser” angle, but liberals taking up the treachery banner in 21st Century Corporate NeoAmerica is exactly what I’d expect, and now that he mentions it, the sheer volume of it on social media when I found it to uncommon sentiment prior to Charleston isn’t unintentional.
“Are you against Coca-Cola’s labor practices? Traitor! UnAmerican! Violation of TPP, he’s trying to interfere with the free market, stop him!”
(I always use Coca-Cola for my examples of a hypothetical because a long time ago a 14 year old read an article on the internet about Coca-Cola using armed paramilitaries in Latin America. Maybe that 14 year old thought the premise was absurd, but it turned out he was only scratching the surface.)
Dammit, given that I consider leaving Twitter at least twice a day I can’t really fault you for it, but your snark & insight are missed
Oh and it was tinyfist that first pointed out the treason/racism switch so I cant take credit for it.
Well, sure it turns up the heat a little, especially in this country where a whole shit-ton of people now think Muslims and immigrants (not to mention Muslim immigrants) are the “big problem”. But I think Clark’s statements exhibit a bit more than fear-mongering of radicalized “others” in “our” communities. I don’t want to downplay the fear-mongering, which certainly helps keep Das People going along with the idea that monitoring our conversations and reporting on the neighbors is a good thing, but look at the rewriting of history here.
We did not have internment camps for Nazi sympathizers during WW2; we had internment camps for Japanese-Americans. They weren’t rounded up because they were Nazis or had expressed interest in Nazi ideas, but simply because they were of Japanese descent. If we had had internment camps for Nazi sympathizers, Henry Ford would have been there, as well as the entire Bush family, amongst others. Clark obviously would know the history, being a high-ranking military dude, retired or not. And why conflate the Nazis with whatever terrorist groups he might be referring to here? (Note he doesn’t name a particular group, the implication being that all of “them” – pick a terrorist, any terrorist – are akin to Nazis.) The fact is we support Nazis now, having just installed a bunch of them in Ukraine and given them heavy arms and military aid, including boots on the ground. The fact is that there would be no al Qaeda or ISIS without US intervention in the ME and the fact is that we are now supporting, arming, and aligning with al Qaeda in Syria. (I suspect that ISIS is a CIA group and we actually support them too, but I’ll let that thought go for now.) Since it is now official policy to support modern Nazis and al Qaeda, it’s no wonder he has to leave the “terrorists” unnamed.
In any case, I worry over how easily Americans can be re-taught history, and that is a huge movement amongst our politicians and talking heads now. The media plays a large role. There will be a LOT of people who will now parrot Clark’s “we interned Nazis in this country, after all, why not now…..” Did Thomas Roberts not know what bullshit Clark was selling? i don’t believe that; I think he knew and just let Clark get away with it. To a lesser extent, you can see Hillary doing the same thing with her erased emails don’t matter, all of us use private servers, etc. Fact is, Nixon was impeached for erasing 14 minutes of tape. In fact, she did break the law, and she did erase millions of emails from a server she wasn’t supposed to be using. And it is a conflict of interest, and against the law, for her to have made millions from brokering secret deals while serving as Sec State. You want to know how quickly the American media can erase our memory? A couple of weeks ago, people were discussing whether or not the Clinton Foundation could legally profit from Hillary’s escapades into Shadow Governance Land. Since the media decided that this was no big thing and let it go, thereby ipso facto declaring it no impediment to holding high office and taking it out of the national conversation, it has come out in the foreign press that our current Sec State, John Kerry, is involved in a lucrative oil deal in Israel. He holds major shares in an oil company that was given a quick “preferred status” and the contract for the drilling rights in some offshore oil fields in Israel’s waters. Turns out this happened after he made a little phone call to Netanyahu. Israelis are now pissed off because Netanyahu doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally approve the deal, and they are calling for the deal to be re-brokered through proper channels. The US press decided this was not worthy of air time. And thus, our media has decided for us that a sitting US Sec of State can make jack on the side as a result of his/her position and it is so “normal” that they don’t even report on it.
This comment is rather a mess, Tarzie, I know. I have much to do today and I am sure you get the gist of what I am saying here, so I am just leaving it as is.
I, for one, enjoyed the rant.
“Clark obviously would know the history, being a high-ranking military dude, retired or not.”
I have to politely disagree with that. If I had to bet money on a demographic that is most likely to have their history wrong, the military would top the list. The military is a cesspool of propaganda and re-written history. I’m sure that some of it is deliberate, but I think a lot of it originates subconsciously, perhaps as a coping mechanism for explaining and living with the atrocities they commit. But enough speculation on the origin.
Clark spent his entire career inside the military, internalizing years and years of falsehoods, ignored history, and re-written history, just like nearly every other military man or woman.
Of course this is all secondary, really. It doesn’t matter much if Clark knowingly lied about the history in this instance, or if he thought he was telling the truth. I just wanted to remind you that there is a laundry list of subjects we should not trust army generals to discuss accurately and truthfully, and history is certainly one of them.
Ah, yes, I concede to your point. Perhaps I should have suggested that a reasonably educated adult in the US should know better. But then that would open another whole can of caveats, wouldn’t it? So, never mind. This is the US and there is no end to the dumb at any level.
It’s a great comment, teri.
I wondered about that Nazi internment idea myself as I had never heard that either. Interesting that no one as far as I know has corrected that. I admit I was far too willing to give benefit of the doubt myself even though I was only aware of the program against the Japanese.
UPDATE: I just checked with Wikipedia, which had this: “Internment was not limited to those who had been to Japan, but included a very small number of German and Italian enemy aliens.” I was not aware of the internment of Italians and Germans, but its still consistent with your point that internment was based on descent.
Thanks for your comments & welcome back Tarzie from your brief hiatus. I was sitting on the DC metro bus the other day & some pocket protector wearing pen pusher* was reading “The Military Times” in h/c. the 1st article i chortled at: “How to solve the Pentagon’s Windows XP problem.” lol, what? is that why the Joint Force Strike Fighter won’t fly in sunshine? But the 2nd: “Iran estimated [by who?] to have killed 500 US soldiers in Iraq war.” and a couple of other distorted if not false, ahistorical, super-jingo articles whose memory i’ve thankfully supressed. something about how, kudos to military vigilance, no barbecues were attacked by ISIS over the 4th of July.
operation Jade Helm 15 (wtf came up with that name?) is also going on now.
*there are millions of these bureaucrats around D.C. completely abstracted from the consequences of anything they do or say professionally. they are all over the country as well, i know. being “successful” means being one of these assholes for a great many people, whether its DOD, DHS, or HUD.
And in the UK, David Cameron just gave a speech that makes the same points that Clark does, only Cameron got to cover the full monte with a prepared speech: we have to watch our neighbors and children for signs of impending dissent and dissatisfaction with our wonderful capitalist system, we need more police and security forces to combat the Evil running Rampant in our towns, we must Nip it all in the Bud, take whatever Measures are Necessary even if it means Certain Repugnant Steps, blah, blah, blah. (Trouble, oh we got trouble, Right here in River City! With a capital “T”, that rhymes with “P”, and that stands for Pool. We’ve surely got trouble! Right here in River City, right here! Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones moral after school! Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble… Mothers of River City! Heed that warning before it’s too late! Watch for the tell-tale sign of corruption! The minute your son leaves the house, does he rebuckle his knickerbockers below the knee? Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger? A dime novel hidden in the corn crib? Is he starting to memorize jokes from Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang? Are certain words creeping into his conversation? Words like, like ‘swell?” and ‘so’s your old man?’ Well, if so my friends, ya got trouble. Right here in River City! With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for Pool. We’ve surely got trouble! […] http://www.metrolyrics.com/ya-got-trouble-lyrics-music-man.html)
Gee-whiz, do you suppose Cameron and Wesley Clark talked to each other a couple of days ago? (Or he and Obama, who then talked to Clark? Or he and Susan Rice, who then talked to Clark?) ‘Cause someone sure passed out the speaking points so they’d mesh up on both sides of the pond. And the media got the memo, too.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-extremism-speech-read-the-transcript-in-full-10401948.html
Thanks, Teri. I was not aware of Cameron’s speech. As you suggest, it is chillingly in the same vein as Clark’s much briefer remarks. The obvious coordination makes it all that much scarier.
Well, look at this shit. No, no, not your comment, Tarzie; you bad and you nationwide. I mean the articles I will link to in a moment. It turns out that the whole thing IS coordinated. Back in Feb. this year, the WH held a three-day Global Summit on Countering Violent Extremism. The UK participated, as did (LOL) freaking Saudi Arabia, they being a bastion of democracy and and not at all an example of strong-arm thuggery, amongst various other nations. While the idea of internment camps did not come up, the assorted countries most certainly focused on enjoining the propaganda war against radicalization and this is to include law enforcement, community watchdogs, and schools as part of the solution in each country. Online social media is to play a part in monitoring “youthful radicalization” (which one can take to mean Facebook and Twitter are encouraged to See Something, Say Something). The steps Cameron went on at length about in his speech come from the ideas presented and worked out at this summit. I guess Clark threw in the camps as his own contribution to the Counter-Propaganda section. Maybe he was loosely playing off the “re-education of our youth” concept. Or maybe he just really thinks it’s a good idea and was miffed they didn’t focus on that during the summit. [Goddamnit, what’s a General got to do to get his own internment camp around here? All the popular generals get their own black sites and detainment centers!]
I found an opinion piece about the summit from the head of Amnesty International (yeah, I know), printed at al Jazeera online, which points out some rather obvious flaws in the plans. But the really interesting shit is the White House’ own summary of the meeting. Lots of law enforcement and re-educating the youth ideas. If you can tolerate some long-winded bullshit, you ought to read the WH fact sheet. Apparently NO-ONE thought of stopping the fucking drone-bombing, or not giving weapons to everyone across the globe, or ending the CIA coups and NGO interference in sovereign governance, or how’s about this – stop invading countries and stealing their shit, all of which tend to radicalize the hell out of people.
Okay, I’m done.
Here’s links:
Feb., 2015: “The White House summit on countering violent extremism kicked off in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Consider the three-day conference a global pep talk before a long game: A U.S.-led effort to address the underlying causes of violent extremism, including the economic, social and political circumstances that make youth vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups around the world.
“ ‘Eliminating the terrorists who confront us today actually only solves part of the problem,’ Secretary of State John Kerry said last month at the World Economic Forum, explaining the summit’s goal. ‘We have to transform the very environment from which these movements emerge.’ […]”
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/obamas-extremism-plan-lacks-human-rights-safeguards.html
And:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/18/fact-sheet-white-house-summit-countering-violent-extremism
That explains why mouthpieces in the US, the UK and apparently also Canada all came out with this shit at the same time.
Great stuff. Will def take a look at those links.
As a 19 year old, I attended a recruitment thing by the Wes Clark for President campaign because like Webb’s campaign, they figured they would clean up in the South. It was staged outdoors, a very ‘picnic with friends’ sorta thing. When you look back and remember how weird, awkward but rigorously-enforced-pleasant it all was, you think you might understand what those intimate neighborhood gatherings in Germany must have been like in the early 1930s. Just sitting around talking about who should leave and who stay. Hopeful for the future!