The Trump administration, FBI and police unions have labeled Black men and women who are concerned, angry and distressed about the steady stream of news stories about White cops killing unarmed Black men and not being held accountable for their actions, as possible terrorists who need watching because they may resort to violence in retaliation.
The FBI labeled the Black men and women who are outraged over the deadly shootings “Black Identity Extremists,” (BIE), reported Foreign Policy magazine, which broke the story titled “The FBI’s New U.S. Terrorist Threat: Black Identity Extremists.”
Reporters Jana Winter and Sharon Weinberger noted that “BIE” is a new term first appearing in government documents nine days before the White supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va. Aug. 11 where a counter demonstrator was murdered by an Alt-right supporter.
The FBI assesses that “BIE perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will likely serve as justifications to such violence.”
Except there is no “BIE movement but in the fertile mind of those within the Trump Administration,” reports The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which covered the Foreign Policy article. The Brennan Center’s article was written by Andrew Cohen.
“No journalist or academics have discovered and chronicled such a movement. No such leaders have come forward to say they are part of a movement. No one has killed a cop in the name of such a movement. The only citations to the movement, the Foreign Policy piece tells us, come from internal law enforcement writings made over the past two months,” wrote the Brennan Center.
Knowledge about the alleged movement comes after Trump supported White racists who marched in Charlottesville. Conversely, Trump called Black National Football League players who took a knee during the national anthem “sons of bitches” who should be fired because he claims they are disrespecting the American flag and members of the U.S. military, which was far from the truth.
The football players are protesting the murders of unarmed Black men by White police officers who claim they feared for their lives. So far this year, police have shot and killed 748 people including 168 African Americans.
“In this sense, the report is the FBI’s version of the cynical “war on cops” argument that President Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and police union officials have been pitching as a policy to justify ending the modest judicial reforms implemented by the Obama administration,” reported the Brennan Center.
Foreign Policy cited the July 2016 shooting of 11 Dallas cops by Micah Johnson, a former U.S. Army reservist who was angry about police violence against Blacks. The shootings occurred during a Black Lives Matter movement, but the FBI doesn’t mention the organization by name.
“The tactic here is almost diabolical. To deflect legitimate criticism of police tactic to undermine a legitimate police protest movement that has emerged in the past three years to protest police brutality, the FBI has tarred the dissenters as domestic terrorists, an organized group with a criminal ideology that are a threat to police officers,” the Brennan Center said.
