Leaked documents first shared by The Young Turks – revealed that the FBI under Donald Trump has identified and prioritized “Black Identity Extremists” and “animal rights activists” as more dangerous threats to the U.S. than White domestic terrorists (like the two that shot up El Paso and Dayton this week and the bulk of the other 250 mass shootings this year). The Term BIE was coined in a document released by the FBI in 2017 interestingly in August 2017 – the same month as the White Domestic Terrorist Rally in Charlottesville that resulted in at least 1 death and multiple injuries.
The FBI’s priority list documents, obtained by The Young Turks Thursday, lay out the Bureau’s 2018 fiscal year focal points in counterterrorism, cyber crime and counterintelligence.
According to Newsweek, “The 2018-19 “Threat Guidance” documents describe black identity extremists (BIEs) as those who “use force or violence in violation of criminal law in response to perceived racism and injustice in American society.” The files claimed some BIEs acted in hopes of “establishing a separate black homeland or autonomous black social institutions, communities or governing organizations within the USA.”
Ultimately, what this document truly reveals is that in the eyes of the current administration – what qualifies as a threat to “America” is not quantified by actual acts committed on the soil but by to WHOM the actor actually is a “threat”. It appears that because white domestic terrorists are no threat to the “America” that the current administration perceives to be America – White America- they are less of a threat by the 2018-2019 threat guidance documents than ” Black Identity Extremists” are. If it is a non-threat to whiteness- then it is not a threat that to America, according to the way what is prioritized must be interpreted.
In spite of the fact that there’s no real data that indicates that there is truly a such thing as “black identity extremists” the perception that they exist is enough for the Trump Administration to prioritize them as a threat over Al Qaeda and the people that are actually killing Americans currently.
What truly jumped out is the language in the document. Specifically, the name of the project – Iron Fist- and the methodology behind how to tactically advance the initiative. How apropos is the term Iron Fist in describing this particular document. To Rule with an Iron Fist, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means:
“to rule a country, area, group, etc., in a very strict and often cruel way. A dictator.”
Merriam-Webster
What also should be highlighted is their desire to get local and state law enforcement departments as well as “source development” to partner with them in an effort to keep surveillance on “BIEs” to “lower the national level of extremist threat.” The interesting thing about Federal documents is the language. This particular term, Source Development, jumped out at me as a euphemism for “Spies”. Yes, they want to “spy” on “Black Identity Extremists” by infiltrating the groups with “Confidential Human Sources” (sound familiar)?
Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be a program targeting networks like 8Chan and 4Chan – known breeding grounds for White Domestic terrorists and a place where some of them even share their manifestos prior to committing the heinous acts like the aforementioned El Paso and Dayton shootings. The language of the document explicitly states “THE FBIHQ led Threat Mitigation Strategy IRON FIST was implemented to mitigate the potential threat posed by the BIE Movement at the national level.” They go on to state that their methods will be to utilize “actionable intelligence” or in other words… they are going to deploy surveillance on black people and truly put major resources into understanding, identifying, and thwarting the threat. In other words… COUNTERINTELLIGENCE.
This is not a conspiracy theory and we are not conspiracy theorists. We simply deal in facts and these are their words. Under the Trump administration, this imaginary group “Black Identity Extremists” are considered a bigger threat than terror groups such as Al Qaeda and White Domestic Terrorists.
Other documents label black “extremists” as “racist”. “Likely to target civilian and government entities that are perceived as oppressors, including, but not limited to, law enforcement officers, the U.S. government, members of rival BSE [Black Supremacist Extremists] groups, and individuals based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion,” read one section called “Key Domain Entities.”
Elsewhere in the document the groups that are often referred to as white “supremacists” but that we refer to as “White Domestic Terrorists” are characterized within the document as “Racially Motivated Extremists”. The Document incorrectly also suggests that there would be a decline in the number of white supremacists and groups rather than the exponential growth that has existed since 2016.
