It all started in 2009 - when Barack Obama's DHS secretary Janet Napolitano sent a memo to law enforcement warning of "right wing domestic terror".
It didn't take long for the usual suspects, the left's little army of chanting-point bots, started solemnly intoning that this country would face a wave of "right wing terror" that'd, in the words of one D-list pundit I recall, "dwarf 9/11".
It's not like "right wing terror" has never happened; the murder of Denver talk show host Alan Berg, the Medina Shootout and of course the Oklahoma City bombing all qualify.
Of course, those episodes have something in common; they occurred 30-40 years ago. Before the younger members of the audience were born.
More recent attempts to conjure up significant "right wing terror" - like "Umbrella Man", the "white supremacist Hell's Angel" alleged by some to have started the real rioting in Minneapolis five years ago - have had a wee problem with nobody apparently beingi able to prove he existed in the wild.
Why, if you were a cynic, it's almost seem like the government was making the whole thing up to try to jam down bad, authoritarian policy in the name of public safety.
And as we see in the Biden-era files released by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard on Wedneday, "almost" is being restrained an charitable:
As promised, I have declassified the Biden Administration’s Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) April 16, 2025
Read it here: https://t.co/VAXDHkgZTK https://t.co/oNXjKDqamc pic.twitter.com/p9co00Scge
And the receipts, as the kids say, are here. And it's a laundry list of the left's betes noir: "misinformation", the Second Amendment and others:
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents from the Biden administration Wednesday, revealing how “domestic terrorism” was used as a pretext to attempt to curb gun rights and target “misinformation"...
...Biden’s intelligence community zeroed in on firearms — specifically “ghost guns,” “high-capacity magazines” and “assault weapons,” the documents show.
The Gun Owners of America - the "bad cop" to the Second Amendment Foundation's "good cop" on national Second Amendment issues - zeroed in on the attack on Americans' rights to self-defense implicit in the attack:
🚨 BREAKING🚨
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) April 17, 2025
Tulsi Gabbard declassifies President Biden’s secret plan to eliminate the Second Amendment in the name of “counterterrorism.” https://t.co/MYeIPX9K4W pic.twitter.com/g6Jv75esiS
As is so frequently the case these days, the "conspiracy theories" that all three (ahem) terms of the Obama adminsitration were trying to provoke public hysteria - to get public opinion to conflate crime (especially ghastly school shootings) with "terrorism" to justify ratcheding up attacks on on "ghost guns", "red flag orders", hysteria about "assault weapons" and "high capacity" magazines, "safe storage" laws and Covid-era "hate crimes", and contaminating public health policy with gun control efforts, tinkering with the mechanics of background checks - weren't theories at all.
And it's not just guns. Financial privacy? The government will...:
Explore ways to enhance the identification and analysis of financial activity associated with domestic terrorists and related or similar threats abroad, as well as enhancing engagement with financial institutions on domestic terrorist financing, including through existing provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act.
Co-opting the mental health system?
Create a guidance resource that is designed for mental health crisis staff as well as ongoing mental health and substance use disorder
practice settings on the current duties of professionals in the identification and management of individuals who pose a threat of targeted violence or potential domestic terrorism. (Lead: HHS with DOJ and FBI)
The ever present analysis of "Misinformation" and "Disinformation"?
Action 2.2.lb: Share with relevant technology and other private-industry companies, as appropriate and as expeditiously as possible and on a consistent basis,relevant infonnation on OT-related and associated transnational terrorist online content in.order to foster these relationships. Ensure appropriate review of information intended for sharing with technology companies, such as legal, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties review, classification review, and interagency de-confliction. (Lead: FBI, NCTC, and OHS)
And...this curious mention?
Action 2.1.3d: Continue to drive the innovation of the evidence base supporting prevention initiatives through coordinated investments in research and evaluation of domestic violent extremism and related topics, including the role of gender, women/girls, and youth in prevention, and coordinate the sharing of research findings with the public and prevention practitioners through regular conferences and website updates. (Lead: DHS and DOJ with llllS, ED, and DOD)
My head is positively buzzing right now trying to figure out the role of "gender, women/girls, and youth" in preventing "domestic terror". Perhaps I'm too stuck in the Cold War, but it all smacks of Stalin-era "teaching the kids to denounce their parents" to me.
Unless I'm wrong (seriously, someone stop me if I'm wrong), but this seems to confirm the thesis that the Obama and Biden administrations were cultivating an alarmist - dare I say "McCarthyist" - view of "domestic terror" to logroll the nation into line on their social policy agenda.
