Alex Constantine - September 19, 2023
By Alex Constantine
US-inspired chaos in Brazil
The US State Department periodically publishes a list of state sponsors of terrorism, and it has been fairly consistent since Reagan sat in the Oval Office. The most recent notes that the most egregious offenders are sanctioned pursuant to three laws: section1754(c) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961).
"Taken together," the State Department declares, "the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions." Currently, four countries are designated under these authorities: Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Iran, and Syria."
The department also cites Russia's Wagner Group as state-sponsored terrorists.
By three American allies - Australia, Canada and England - have compiled lists of their own, and the Land of Washington, Lincoln and Trump is ranked among the most notorious exporters of terrorism in the world.
The current issue of Foreign Affairs reports: "The spread of homegrown American conspiracy theories, beliefs in racial superiority, antigovernment extremism, and other manifestations of hate and intolerance has become such a problem that some of the United States’ closest allies—Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom—have designated both American groups and citizens as foreign terrorists."
"Great Replacement Theory" has fueled much of the violence committed by Americans abroad, including the October 2022 murders of two customers at a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, by a neo-Nazi gunman.
"The United States has become the exemplar of far-right extremism and terrorism, " the Foreign Affairs article observes, citing an another example:
"Thanks to technology, these isolated expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and homophobia can rapidly acquire a global audience and play to an international constituency. The ideology bounces across oceans through networks brought together by central marketplaces on social media. In March 2019, Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist terrorist animated by these dangerous ideologies and strategies, murdered 51 worshipers in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He linked his choice of weapons, primarily an AR-15 assault rifle, to the impact it might have in the United States, declaring to have chosen 'firearms for the affect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide, and the affect it could have on the politics of United states and thereby the political situation of the world.' Scrawled across the stock of his semi-automatic weapons were several key terms from the history of far-right violence, including references to the '14 words,' a credo of U.S. origin extolling the importance of protecting the white race for future generations."
The Jan, 6 failed Trump coup has also inspired terrorism abroad. This year, in Brazil, rioters rampaged through the government's capitol in an attempt to overturn the election defeat of Jair Bolsonaro, who watched the mob violence on television in Florida, where he had bled to avoid arrest.
The next State Department needs to take a cue from its closest allies and add America to its list of countries instigating and influencing terrorism abroad. Maybe the US should sanction itself pursuant to the three applicable punitive clauses cited above. If Cuba is listed among leading exporters of terrorism, why not the US? The truth is apparent to the rest of the world -- "The Greatest Country on Earth" is a festering incubator of fascist violence, and the destabilizing shockwaves explode on a global scale.
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