New Jihadists – Homegrown or Imported?

MEF Chief Strategist Jim Hanson spoke to FOX News about the spate of recent terror attacks involving children of immigrants and the Islamist connections.

Transcript:

FOX: So, what is different about this over the last four attacks? What stands out from you which is different from after 9-11 and the years after Iraq?

HANSON: I think the change has been, previously we were concerned about what countries immigrants came from, whether they had been radicalized by a mosque or a particular radically imam preacher, and obviously the internet. But I think now we have to add to that the climate of violent hyperbolic rhetoric by the revolutionary left and some democrats that is demonizing Israel, that is demonizing the Trump administration, you know, for partnering with them in fighting against these terrorists, and in some way is inciting some of this violence.

FOX: Hey Jim, I was watching video in New York City, in Midtown, where hundreds of people were chanting for the Ayatollah, for Nasirella, and for Hamas and Hezbollah in New York City.

I mean, every one of those should have been looked at with facial recognition and find out where they’re getting this sentiment from, don’t you think?

HANSON: 100 percent, and we need to trace back and see who’s funding those, and we know in a lot of ways it is the usual suspects from the revolutionary left, it’s Soros and the rest of those open society type organizations, and we need to look at what they’re doing to fund it, how they’re stirring up this kind of anger in a way that now has boiled over and is causing deaths to American citizens for their cause.

FOX: So, I want to bring you to a quote in the Wall Street Journal about this new made-in-America terrorist trend. Western counterterrorism operated for decades on a simple premise, threats from somewhere else.

That premise no longer holding, the ideology no longer needs territory, command structures, or training camps. It travels easily moving through digital networks and personal grievances. It is radicalized, unfolding quietly inside their own societies.
So, that’s pretty much what you were saying, correct? You don’t have to see if they want to Lebanon. You don’t have to see if they want to spend any considerable time in Iran. You just see where they’re logging on, which is tough to do.

HANSON: And how do you do that in a society where you cannot discriminate based on a religion? You can’t say Muslims are the problem. You have to say Islamists or jihadists. And how do you tell what they’re doing within an insular community, you know, where that may be more acceptable than it is other places? You know, and in this case, I think we should have been able to find the fact that this guy had a brother in Lebanese Hezbollah.

You know, they have their own Lebanese Hezbollah scouts. So, I think it’s likely that this guy may have been a scout as a young kid in that village. So, I think we have to look at all of those, where they came from and how they got radicalized here in the United States.

FOX: I would hope there would be an asterisk next to his name, whatever he did. And what about the Old Dominion? I mean, this guy’s in jail for helping ISIS, gets out on good behavior, I guess, after six years, and no one’s tracking him? Next thing you know, he’s killing one of these great Americans, this ROTC teacher who, if you look at his military career, he’s just a superstar. And he dies because this guy gets out of prison after telling us he’s ISIS.

HANSON: Yeah, that’s a dismal failure of the people who run that part of our justice system, and the mentality of the Democrats that says, oh, no, everyone should have a second chance. I don’t believe anyone who has been involved with terrorism in any way should have a second chance at anything, you know, if he’s naturalized, denaturalized, and re-migrate him right out of the United States.