January 18: Bass Pro Shops Extremists

White House “designates” Houthis; DOJ’s Qatar connection; Chinese scientists kill mice

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Apologies for the confusion on Wednesday’s edition: due to an editor’s mistake (mine), the edition was sent out to readers on Tuesday evening, rather than scheduled for Wednesday morning as it should have been. And because we’re an email newsletter, once it’s out, it’s out.

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The Big Story

As part of its investigation into the Jan. 6 riot, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) asked banks to search customers’ Zelle transactions for terms such as MAGA, Trump to identify persons of interest to law enforcement and warned that the purchase of “religious texts” was a potential indicator of “extremism,” according to documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee and first reported on by Fox News. FinCEN also distributed slides instructing banks on how to detect if customers were “potential active shooters,” “domestic terrorists,” or “homegrown violent extremists”—by searching merchant codes for “sporting and recreational goods and supplies” along with keywords such as Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

“In other words,” wrote committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a Wednesday letter to the former director of FinCEN’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement, “FinCEN used large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”

And, as Fox went on to report:

A source familiar with the documents told Fox News Digital that while Jan. 6, 2021, was the “impetus” for the queries and searches, none of the documents the committee has obtained reveal any specific time frames or limitations for banks searching customer transactions with the terms. The source said the federal government used the information for investigations beyond Jan. 6.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that Jan. 6 has served as a pretext to bend the law to invade Americans’ privacy rights. As Glenn Greenwald reported in January 2022, the Jan. 6 Committee subpoenaed private banks to provide records of their customers’ financial records, but did so in a way designed to prevent the customers from learning about it, therefore effectively precluding them from contesting the legality of the subpoena—a right that is typically reserved for Americans under investigation from the FBI or other federal law enforcement. 

It’s also not the first time we’ve seen the specter of “domestic extremism” used to reclassify large swathes of Americans as potential national security threats rather than citizens with rights. Previous suspects identified by federal law enforcement and its various civil society adjuncts include “pro-life moms,” “traditionalist Catholics,” critics of the government’s Covid-19 policy, and, of course, anyone who posted on social media in support of Donald Trump.  

IN THE BACK PAGES: Eitan Fischberger explains why violence is a feature, not a bug, of America’s pro-Palestinian protests

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The Rest

→The Biden administration finally redesignated the Houthis as a terrorist group—or did it? The White House announced on Wednesday that it was designating the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). But don’t be fooled just because “terrorist” is in the title—that’s a different and less severe category than Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), which is what the Houthis were until February 2021, when the Biden administration delisted them. The main difference between the two is that the SDGT label gives the administration more room for carve-outs, and indeed the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday announced five general licenses granting exceptions to U.S. sanctions on the Houthis. As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Richard Goldberg told Washington Examiner, “They know FTO status would put maximalist pressure on the Houthis, which is why they won’t do it. They want the Houthis legitimized enough to be a part of the governing structure in Yemen. … They can get around that with OFAC licenses for the SDGT. Not so much with the FTO.”

→Pakistan announced Thursday that its forces had carried out “a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted strikes” against Baloch separatists inside Iran, two days after Iran struck Pakistan with ballistic missiles and drones in what it said were targeted attacks on the Baloch Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl. The tit-for-tat has dangerously escalated tensions between Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan, which maintains friendly relations with both the United States and China. For now, however, both countries seem hesitant to escalate further: Iran referred to Pakistan as a “friendly country” in announcing it strikes, while Pakistan on Thursday called Iran a “brother country” and emphasized the need to “find joint solutions,” according to CNN.

→Matthew Graves, the top-ranking prosecutor in the DOJ, previously worked as a lawyer for the Qatari government, the Qatari-government-owned media network Al Jazeera, the Qatar Foundation, and other entities linked to the Hamas-supporting Gulf emirate, Washington Examiner reports. Graves, who has led the DoJ’s prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters, did the work for Qatar prior to joining the government, when he was a partner at law firm DLA Piper. Among the other DLA Piper clients listed on Graves’ financial disclosures is the Bank of Palestine, which was sued in 2019 for allegedly “transferring money to terrorists and allowing Hamas leaders to maintain bank accounts.” These revelations, from the Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky, are further confirmation of a crude but useful rule of thumb we like to use to understand the often-opaque world of D.C. lobbying and influence peddling: In the Middle East, Democrats tend to be aligned with Qatar (and with it, Iran), while Republicans tend to be aligned with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Exceptions apply, but as a general matter, this rule shouldn’t steer you wrong.  

→Headline of the Day:

Chinese lab crafts mutant COVID-19 strain with 100% kill rate in ‘humanized’ mice: ‘Surprisingly’ rapid death

Happy Thursday, courtesy of the New York Post. The virus in question is GX_P2V, a “cell-culture mutant” of a coronavirus-like virus discovered in Malaysian pangolins, which the Chinese scientists cloned and then gave to genetically modified mice, which in turn died of what the scientists guessed was “late-[stage] brain infection.” But don’t worry, it’s not as if any virus has ever escaped from a Chinese biolab before. 

→Speaking of lab-engineered Chinese viruses and their consequences, the CDC drafted a health alert connecting the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines to myocarditis in May 2021 but never sent it, according to an internal email obtained by The Epoch Times. Vaccine-related myocarditis (a potentially fatal inflammation of the heart) was central to the case against vaccine mandates, especially for healthy young men: In 2021, several European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, restricted or halted the use of the Moderna vaccine in young people due to concerns over myocarditis. While the CDC publicly acknowledged the link between Covid-19 vaccination and myocarditis, it continued to falsely claim (along with American media and fact-checkers) that young men were more likely to contract myocarditis from COVID-19 than from the vaccines—and to recommend full mRNA vaccination for all age groups. An August 2022 study published in the journal Circulation, however, found that men under 40 were more likely to contract myocarditis from vaccination than from infection and that the risks of vaccination were worse for younger age groups. Although the draft text of the alert has not yet been published, the email suggests that the CDC was, at minimum, aware of the issue yet chose not to notify the public about it. 

→Quote of the Day: 

I don’t know when the war in the north [will happen]. I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past.

That’s IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi speaking to troops in northern Israel on Wednesday evening about the prospects of a war with Hezbollah. Cross-border clashes between Israel and the Iranian terror militia have continued to escalate over the past several days, with Hezbollah missiles killing two civilians in northern Israel on Sunday and the IDF striking Hezbollah and Hamas targets in Lebanon throughout the week. While the Israelis increasingly seem to regard the status quo on their northern border as intolerable, The New York Times reported on Jan. 7 that “the United States has told Israel that if Hezbollah comes over the border, Washington will support Israel—but not the other way around.”

→More news on Fatah, the “moderate” alternative to Hamas that the Biden administration wants to put in charge of Gaza: On Wednesday and overnight Tuesday, the IDF carried out a series of drone strikes in the West Bank city of Nablus, targeting members of a terror cell. According to Abu Ali Express’ Telegram channel, five of those killed were immediately claimed as members by Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. On Monday, meanwhile, Fars Khalifa, a lieutenant colonel in the PA’s counterintelligence department, was killed in a shoot-out with IDF troops near the Einav checkpoint, also according to Abu Ali Express. And, as we reported yesterday, the Fatah-ruled PA has just pledged lifetime martyrdom payments to the families of all Hamas militants killed in Gaza. 

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TODAY IN TABLET: 

DEI Squelches Student Reporting at Yale, Penn, by Sahar Tartak

A new generation of reporters is taught that censorship imposed by diversity committees is more important than objective reporting of facts

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Violent Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Are Not a Bug

They’re a feature of a dangerous new politics

By Eitan Fischberger

Anarchic, pro-Palestinian rallies have continued to intensify across the United States ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. These nationwide protests, marked by highly disruptive tactics, have raised critical questions about the nature of protest, the boundaries of dissent, and the willingness of Western governments to assert and protect basic social values. When one delves deeper into the protesters’ driving ideology, it becomes clear that mass disruption is not a byproduct of their agenda, but the agenda itself.

These groups’ tactics have included blocking roads to international airports on New Year’s Day; endangering passenger planes by launching balloons over the runways; blocking highways that delayed the delivery of organ transplants to hospitals; illegally occupying a House office building near the U.S. Capitol; vandalizing stores supposedly complicit in Israel’s “genocide” of Gaza; disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in major cities; and storming the World Trade Center, defacing public monuments, targeting a cancer hospital, and attacking the White House gates while screaming “Allahu akbar” and “intifada revolution.”

What drives these protesters to such extremes, and convinces them to opt for such woefully misguided methods that—by disrupting the lives of ordinary people—appear to be counterproductive to their cause?

At the forefront of these demonstrations are various Islamic organizations often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as fringe Jewish anti-Zionist groups championing progressive causes such as climate justice and women’s rights. These groups find common ground in an ideology, ostensibly influenced by works of the French Martinican psychiatrist and post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon, that sees “liberation” and “decolonization” as a global revolutionary struggle and perceives their disruptive actions as a vital component of it. They believe that by obstructing crucial social services and public spaces, they effectively challenge superstructures deemed oppressive. This worldview is predicated on the notion that any inconvenience caused to innocent individuals is justified in the pursuit of societal transformation; their obstructive protest methods aren’t a defect, but a requirement of this worldview.

Individuals, after all, matter little in the struggle of global class and sectarian warfare. In the protesters’ eyes, “Palestine” is a stand-in, a representation of every ostensible victim class across the world fighting for their liberation from oppression. Their “solidarity” transcends geographical boundaries, making any random cause and the Palestinian cause inseparable in their eyes.

That’s why, as Seattle-based Palestinian American journalist Tariq Ra’ouf so eloquently put it when his cohorts blocked Seattle’s northbound I-5 last week: “We are going to inconvenience every single person who doesn’t give a fuck [about Gaza] until they give a fuck. That’s how this goes.”

This entire worldview was epitomized in a November 2023 statement released by the Samidoun Prisoner Solidarity Network, a proxy of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and leading protest organizer, which read:

The power of the US-led imperial core is declining but it continues its desperate stranglehold on capitalism. Gaza is a focal point of this stranglehold and the testing ground for a completely new tactic of extermination … It is increasingly clear that this tactic will not stay contained to Gaza. From Kashmir to Korea, fascist states like India and the US are already laying the groundwork to replicate this tactic. It is clearer every day that we are facing a coordinated effort to normalize not just the genocide of the Palestinians but the genocide of any and all people who resist the US-led imperialist world order.

Similarly, at a 300,000-person, pro-Palestinian march in Washington, D.C., in November, organizers highlighted purported similarities between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and police treatment of Black Americans. They blathered about imperial powers, and stressed the importance of connecting with other global liberation struggles, like the Haitian and Algerian revolutions, to enhance the “collective fight for liberation.” It’s also why, in the wake of U.S. strikes against the Houthi terror group that’s been terrorizing Middle Eastern waterways for months, protesters in New York City chanted “from the river to the sea, Yemen will be free.”

Amid the rising chaos and fervor of these protests, which have been allowed to routinely disrupt life in America’s major cities for over three months now, it's essential to consider their broader impact on the American social and political fabric. These events are not just isolated demonstrations; nor are they simply responses to the realities of Israel’s conflict with Gaza. They’re also symptomatic of a deeper shift in protest culture in the United States.

According to the Crowd Counting Consortium, between Oct. 7 and Nov. 28 there were 1,869 pro-Palestinian protests in the U.S. involving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people collectively. These protests have included civil disobedience, vandalism, and violent assaults, resulting in 1,600 arrests during that time period (the number is undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands higher by January 2024). Young people are disproportionately represented in these protests, which is unsurprising since American universities have been key vectors for indoctrinating Americans into third-world sectarianism and the valorization of its violence.

Remarkably, many of these demonstrators, and the organizations that pay them and routinely bail them out, are also being supported by wealthy nonprofits such as the People’s Forum, and taxpayers (to the tune of $9 million in NYC). The highly politicized intersections of identity politics, wealthy domestic and foreign funders, and government backing certainly helps explain why these demonstrations have been allowed to continue, month after month, despite open calls for genocide and the destruction of public and private property, and the disruption they inflict on the lives of ordinary citizens.

Despite the volume of pro-Hamas protests—or maybe because of it—84% of Americans continue to support Israel over the terror group. Predictably, there’s also been a mounting backlash to the disruption inflicted by the protesters. “They antagonized people so much that they frightened people, to the point that they were not hearing what they were protesting about,” said Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics, after protesters interrupted a Jan. 5 event in Las Vegas where Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., was speaking and had to be escorted out a back door. In a viral video posted online on Jan. 8, a Black New Yorker was seen exiting his van and shoving protesters blocking traffic in New York City, yelling, “You can’t do that! It’s against the law! I have a daughter in Brooklyn … I have to get home!”

The trajectory of anti-Israel protests across America suggests a deeper, more unsettling trend. Far from a legitimate expression of opposition, they’ve morphed into a troubling display of ideological extremism and physical violence cloaked in the guise of social justice and backed by wealthy domestic radicals and by foreign states like Qatar, the primary global sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood. The reckless tolerance of this continuing level of radicalism and disruption does a profound disservice to the principles of democracy and civil discourse. Whatever one believes the rights and wrongs of the Israeli-Arab conflict to be, allowing violent demonstrators calling for genocide and supporting terror organizations like Hamas and the Houthis to own the streets of Western democracies sends a very dangerous message—one that threatens the fabric of a society built on liberal values and legitimate dissent.