I saw this Tweet from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1136329869783117824

I get it.  It is the thesis of the Left that America is intrinsically a White Supremacist nation, and therefore it must go easy on violent White Supremacists and go extra hard on Muslim extremists.

The evidence for that is that violent White Supremacists are not “domestic terrorists” while Muslims are, and clearly, that is bigotry.

The clip in AOC’s Tweet is very selectively edited (a big shock) and a much less edited video is available below:

Congresswoman and Islamic Terrorist supporter, Rashida Tlaib, also got into this line of questioning.

Despite all her crying, both AOC and Tlaib don’t seem to know the law.

FBI Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Michael McGarrity, tired his best to explain the law.  It is 18 U.S. Code § 2339 under 18 U.S. Code chapter 113 – Terrorism.  Code § 2339 prohibits providing aid, training, support, or financial assistance to an international terrorist group. That is defined by 18 U.S. Code § 2331.

Simply put, “domestic terrorism” is a nice buzzword but it is not a criminal statute or something a person could be convicted of.

They can be charged with aiding an international terrorist organization.

The San Bernardino shooters and Pulse shooter both pledged allegiance to ISIS and the global Jihad movement, which made them supporters of an international terrorist organization.

Dylann Roof did not.  And while AOC can postulate that White Supremacism is a global problem, it is not as organized as ISIS.  Shit posters on 8Chan are not engaged in a multi-national money laundering operation to fund terrorism using means as diverse as selling oil from captured Iraqi wells to the ransom of cargo ships off the African coast.

Domestic terrorism is merely a classification the FBI uses in working an investigation.

AOC and Tlaib didn’t seem to get that the issue isn’t with the FBI it is with the legislature.  In addition, the Legislature is held back by the Constitution.

The reason groups like the Ku Klux Klan is allowed to exists and can’t just be taken down by declaring them a “domestic terrorist organization” is the text of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Right of Assembly allows groups like the Klan to exist.  The challenge for law enforcement has been to sift through the Klan (and other groups like it) for the fraction of members that can be proven to have committed the crimes in the name of the Klan.  Simply charging the entire clan as a group is unconstitutional.  I’m also talking about the Klan in modern times (post 1950’s), not the Klan during Reconstruction.

The same prohibitions prevent mass arrests of Muslims at the “Terror Mosque” in New Jersey that has had a number of members radicalized.

That right does not belong to non-US citizens outside the borders of the United States.

Rather than try to understand this and try to figure out how to make new law to deal with the variety of threats this nation faces, AOC and Tlaib would rather just try and prove their thesis that America is a racist nation.

Also, reading between the lines, it seems like they want to FBI to go easier on Islamic extremists.