The Trump administration is laying the groundwork to crack down on political dissent, Ken Klippenstein reported on his Substack — using a three-letter acronym.
The whole situation, he said, recalls how the George W. Bush administration constantly raised the boogeyman of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and this acronym came to be a scare word disparaging anyone who would dare question the Iraq war — even though ultimately no active weapons of mass destruction program existed in Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion.
This time, Klippenstein wrote, the political acronym du jour is FLT — meaning "far-left terrorism." Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to discuss the administration's plans to combat "FLT" at a summit later this week.
"Far-left is hard enough to define (who decides what’s 'far'?) but to add terrorism takes it to another level of crazy," wrote Klippenstein. Nonetheless, Rubio's announcement will clamp down on visas for people affiliated wit "far-left terrorist and other aligned groups." And this won't just include acts of violence, "but also 'economic sabotage including against public and private property' — a phrase broad enough to cover a broken window or a boycott."
While the specifics of what does and doesn't count as left-wing motivated terrorism can be argued, even the most generous estimates show the frequency of terrorism motivated by left-wing ideology is significantly lower than terrorism motivated by either right-wing or Islamist ideology.
This crusade makes more sense, noted Klippenstein, when you look at the "rogues' gallery" advising Rubio on the policy.
For starters, he said, there's Tera Dahl, a former Breitbart writer and Michele Bachmann staffer who once tried to warn inspectors general that the U.S. was infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. There's also Monica Jacobsen at the Counterterrorism Bureau, who has repeatedly claimed Christians are under assault worldwide, Brent Munyon, a former RNC researcher, and Oscar Buynevich, another Breitbart writer "whose career amounted to shoveling culture war slop."
All told, Klippenstein said, it's precisely the same kind of team that advised Bush into the "imaginary Iraqi WMD fiasco" — and the result could be similar.