Everyone seems shocked at this. I personally felt a lot less shocked and more like I’d been waiting for this shoe to drop for 20 years. I’ve been waiting for people to notice the tools of the Iraq War being turned against American citizens for over a decade now.
I spent the better part of 2001 and on arguing against the PATRIOT Act and its codification of terrorism as a crime. Lots of people were against it (we were in the minority, obviously), pointing out how the PATRIOT Act would consider the Founding Fathers terrorists. They committed violence to achieve political ends.
Did everyone just forget that at one point there was actually a nascent conversation on why this was a bad idea, especially considering people warning that they would soon use these laws against their own citizens?
Why did these conversations stop? More importantly, now that Mangione is being charged with terrorism, why aren’t the conversations beginning anew?
I’ve seen tons of discussion around Luigi, almost zero about the history of what lead to this in regards to the War on Terror and earlier anti-terrorism efforts. When the FBI stopped being about catching high-level criminals and became almost exclusively focused on counter-terrorism.
Circlejerking around one guy isn’t necessarily the same as having more complex discussions on how we even came to this point and why. Someone else here even linked to a thread saying “we’ve talked about it before” and yet the thread had zero substantive discussion around such issues, rather just more circlejerking Luigi.
But I guess contextualizing and synthesizing the history of the US is too much to ask for from most of its citizens.
you have to create the engagement that you want to see on lemmy and effort posts & comments on terrorism and how it applies to this situation is going to require an audience that doesn’t fit in well with any “general interest” instance like the one you’re commenting from.
lemmy was meant to be political since its inception and; in your shoes; i would take advantage of that fact to engage on this topic in one of the original political instances since their communities are already inclined to such a discourse as evidenced by the example @davel shared.
the palestine community is really active and i’m have no doubt that they would have interesting perspectives on the west’s War on Terror and earlier anti-terrorism efforts as it pertains to current events induced by the same common imperialistic hegemony that has been fucking over their lives more than it has been fucking up american lives (esp healthcare). now that our government is treating luigi with the same terrorist charge that they’ve levied against palestinian leaders; there’s a commonality that can be explored that won’t happen on a general interest instance.