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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   32547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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What is the value of these ploys to the FBI?

Arrests. So long as they are arresting people, they can continue to justify their budget to congress.

Consider instead that they don't arrest him with the information they have. Six months later, he blows himself up in a mall and takes a dozen people with him. Headlines scream: 'Mall Jihadist on FBI radar and they did NOTHING,' whichever political party not in control of congress spins up an investigation and media frenzy to score points in the next election, people hate the FBI anyways.

It's easy to just say the spooks are doing shady things again, but probably harder and more valuable to think about the systemic incentives we've given them to behave that way.

But there's the other possibility of going and saying "We need more funding, in order to prevent terrible things like that mall Jihadist!"

blows himself up in a mall

Except in this instance there's no claim he had actually communicated with actual terrorists, only FBI pretending to be terrorist recruiters.

Isn't the expectation that the FBI should be disrupting terrorist networks? There's no network here only the FBI communicating with a young man described by his father to The Intercept as;

“He was born prematurely, he had brain development issues. I had the school do a neurosurgery evaluation on him and they said his brain was underdeveloped,” Ventura said. “He was suffering endless bullying at school with other kids taking food off his plate, tripping him in the hallway, humiliating him, laughing at him.”

Except in this instance there's no claim he had actually communicated with actual terrorists, only FBI pretending to be terrorist recruiters

Here’s the thing- he doesn’t have to get in touch with actual jihadis to commit an act of jihad. Isis attacks in western countries are for the most part basically indistinguishable from garden variety nuts carrying out mass casualty attacks, just with different stated reasons, and usually carried out by perpetrators who fit the profile of garden variety mass shooters except for claiming a different ideology. And I want to emphasize that last bit; taliban bombers might be particularly religious, but it doesn’t seem like IS attackers in western countries are.

a young man described by his father to The Intercept as;

I mean does his increased susceptibility to the FBI agent's advances surely not also imply increased susceptibility to real terrorists? In which case it's better than he be arrested in this way than find his way to a real recruiter an go on to be a real terrorist.

increased susceptibility to real terrorists

Likely describes 10's if not 100's of thousands of people. Is the FBI going to arrest them all one at time?

Perhaps the recruiter groomer should have gone for stupid idpol instead.

The purpose of the FBI is not supposed to be to test people to destruction.

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