NYPD Report Warns of Domestic Jihadis

The New York Police Department has just issued a report called Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat that suggests individuals in America represent as much a terrorist threat as Al Qaeda. The report studied a few attempted terror plots and concluded that Al Qaeda and its ideology are merely inspirational in those cases rather than operational. Thus “unremarkable” individuals become terrorists. This would be news except one remembers Timothy McVeigh.

The NYPD report focuses on the Fascislamic threat, and as a result, doesn’t consider that terrorism of the Michigan Militia, drug lord or youth gang variety kills just as dead. Just under two weeks ago, three youths were shot execution style in Newark, New Jersey. The culprits were not jihadis if the Newark authorities have arrested the right guys. While the accused may not count as terrorists by New York Police Department standards, no jihadi has killed anyone in Newark. So, what really is the threat?

The report focuses on busts of Al Qaeda wannabes in Lackawana, New York; Portland, Oregon; Northern Virginia; and two different New York City plots (one against the Herald Square Subway stop and the other known as The Al Muhajiroun Two). The report suggests that there are four phases that these unremarkable folk go through on their way to becoming terrorists: Pre-Radicalization, Self-Identification, Indoctrination and Jihadization. This is socio-psycho-babble that makes it sound like something very complicated is going on when, in fact, the process is readily understandable to anyone who has survived the social trauma known as high school.

Quite insightfully, the report says, “the transformation of a Western-based individual to a terrorist is not triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge, or desperation. Rather, it is a phenomenon that occurs because the individual is looking for an identity and a cause and unfortunately, often finds them in the extremist Islam.” Thirty years ago, it was Maoism or some other mental state related to Marxism (both Bader and Meinhoff were well off middle class kids lost in 1970s German society). In the 1930s, it was either Marxism or some kind of fascism. In the 1880s, it was anarchism. “Jihadization” could just as easily be “Unabomber-ization.” In other words, there’s nothing special about Fascislam, and treating it as such results in missing a lot of other threats. The Manson Family was just a bunch of lost kids until Charles was in charge.

Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Timothy McVeigh, and Seung-Hui Cho weren’t Muslim extremists, or Muslim at all. However, much of what the NYPD report notes as the road to terrorist from mild-mannered nobody applies in their cases as well. Limiting the intelligence function in this case to the Muslim parts of America (or any other place where they are a minority) causes an heightened sense of persecution where one doesn’t want it, and it dismisses other threats from other directions.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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