Reply #8: inthesetimes.com: Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

[L. Coyote]

Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
By Lindsay Beyerstein
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3388/examining_the_homegrown_terrorism_prevention_act/


The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a vote of 404-6. The wide margin is indicative of a growing concern among U.S. authorities about the potential for so-called “homegrown terrorism” in the United States.

“The impetus is that homegrown terror is something that we now see in Western Europe. It’s by far the number one threat to security in Britain,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who introduced the bill, told In These Times.

Some of the most infamous terrorist attacks in U.S. history have been carried out by citizens, including the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Harman doesn’t believe homegrown terrorism is a major threat to U.S. security today, but she says that it is important to learn from experiences in other countries like Britain and Canada, where citizens have been inspired to commit terrorism at home by Islamic propagandists reaching out over the Internet.

One of the findings of the bill is that, “the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

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