American Jihad

American Jihad is a phrase often used to describe terrorists living in the US who are sympathetic to, aligned with, and in some cases coordinated by, Islamic terrorist organizations. 

America now needs to confront the fact that there are groups within its borders who might more properly be termed American Jihadi. These are the right wing violent extremists, seditionists, and anti-government insurrectionists who came to Washington for Insurrection Day. 

Like their Islamic brethren, they advocate the use of violence to achieve their ends, seek to terrorize democratically elected officials, and rely on the same recruitment and indoctrination methods. They push the same buttons with very similar groups of psychologically vulnerable people; those who feel a sense of grievance, of being somehow left behind, who are angry and restful, who feel they haven't been treated fairly. By exploiting those feelings, amplifying their fears and feeding them distortions and lies, local American Jihadi leaders build groups that can be easily activated to acts of violence as 6/1 made all too clear. 

And like their Islamic counterparts, they are egged on by public figures who encourage and condone them while managing to remain above the fray and our of reach of the law. Using veiled threats that can't legally be used as evidence of sedition, these public figures, who American Jihadis worship with cult-like unquestioning reverence, orchestrate their activities from their bully pulpits and, disturbingly, still see nothing untoward in their actions. 

Joe Biden themed his run for the presidency as a battle for the soul of the nation; it looks as though a sizable proportion of one party's elected officials, in refusing to hold those responsible for inciting Insurrection Day accountable, have already made their no-refund-no-returns deals with the devil.