More on law-enforcement and the Nashvile Christmas Day not-a-suicide-bomber who deliberately killed himself during a bombing

The story of the guy who blew himself up in his RV in downtown Nashvile in from of an AT&T building with bombs he'd been building in his back yard for apparently at least a year is emerging in more detail. We're not even a week out from the Christmas Day explosion in which the bomber killed himself that the press is so reluctant to call either a suicide bombing or a terrorist act.

The Nashville police are scrambling to explain why nobody made any mistakes when the guy's girlfriend and former lawyer gave them what turned out to be an accurate report about Mr. Not-A-Suicide-Bomber building a bunch of bombs in his RV. If they get enough heat, they'll probably find some civilian in their communications department whose boss doesn't especially like them anyway, fire him or her, then tell the public they fired someone responsible but can't say anything about it because it's a personnel matter. (Natalie Allison and Mariah Timms, Did Nashville police do enough to try to search bomber's home in 2019? Experts weigh in Nashville Tennessean 12/30/2020)

NBC News is reporting on one aspect of the investigation into the non-terrorism-non-suicide-bombing bombing. (Tom Winter et al, Feds probing whether Nashville bomber believed in lizard people conspiracy 12/30/2020)

It's important to remember it normally takes a while for incidents like this to be clarified, that we may never have explicit documentation of the not-a-suicide-bomber's motives, and the coulda-shoulda questions always involved some judgment. But this story is a reminder of an important point about US law enforcement's general neglect of the real danger of far-right terrorism from white guys:

[I]nvestigators are looking into the suspect’s previous trips to an undisclosed location in Tennessee where he would camp out in his recreational vehicle and, according to the suspect’s statements to others, hunt possible aliens, the officials said.

In addition, investigators are aware of statements the suspect made about an internet conspiracy that powerful politicians and Hollywood figures are actually lizards or other reptiles who have extraterrestrial origins and are taking over society, the officials said.

Which makes this story is a reminder of what "hate crimes" laws are actually designed to do, a large part of which is to educate local law enforcement to know what it is they are seeing and hearing.

The lizard-people-from-outer-space thing is something that has been promoted by Alex Jones, a popular broadcaster among the lunatic right. (Bob Cesca, Alex Jones Pretends to Be a Lizard Man from Space In Epic Display of Insanity Daily Banter 02/17/2016)

If the Nashville cops had taken the bomb report in 2019 seriously enough to actually find a way to talk to the guy - cops can usually do that if they want to - he might have told them he was worried because the world is being taken over by Demucrat lizard-people space-alien commonists. And if they had known that such talk particularly appeals to people in the violent white supremacist scene, they *might* have done a bit more checking. But he was some white guy with an Amurcan-sounding name, so maybe not.

Allison and Timms also report this statement by Memphis FBI spokesperson Joel Siskovic:

"The FBI does not make a practice of investigating and looking into individuals absent criminal charges, criminal allegations," Siskovic said. "So, I can't get too far into how our system works, but basically if there had been any reason to believe that there was a crime, specifically a federal crime, then we would have taken further steps."

So, is the FBI saying it's not a federal crime to build bombs in your RV in your back yard? Or that it's not a crime for white guys to do it? The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) seems to think it is, according to their official Fact Sheet-Illegal Explosive Devices dated May 2019: "Under federal explosives law, it is illegal to engage in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license; to improperly store explosives; to sell or distribute explosives to any person who does not hold an ATF license or permit."

A final thought on what we call terrorism. The definition does change over time. It does make some sense to take motives into account. But legal and popular understandings may diverge. A gang shooting with multiple casualties or family murder-suicides are horrible and tragic and deadly. But those aren't typically treated as terrorism in the press, nor do I think they should be. In the case of the Nashville bomber, that looks to me like an act of terror, i.e., an act meant to terrorize a lot of people, including the targeting of an important local communications center.

In any case, police and law enforcement should not be "blind in the right eye" when it comes to politically or religiously based terrorism. Including screening out cops who are found to support far-right violence-oriented groups.

Nashville cops on suicide bomber back in 2019: He's got an RV full of bombs? Aw, don't worry about it, it's probably no big deal

This is an amazing story on how the Nashville Metro police handled the white guy who blew himself up in an RV in downtown Nashville in a huge explosion but mainstream news outlets don’t want to call him either a “terrorist” or a “suicide bomber”. Even though he killed himself with explosives in a location designed to take out communications in the area and, uh, terrorize the entire city. (Ben Hall, Anthony Warner's girlfriend warned police he was building bombs in his RV last year News Channel 5 Nashville 12/29/2020) See also: Natalie Allison, Girlfriend warned Nashville police Anthony Warner was building bomb a year ago, report shows Nashville Tennessean 12/30/2020

Here's how the owner of a business in the affected area describes the we-don't-call-it-terrorism attack (Rachel and Mariah Timms, 'It's like war': Residents, business owners get first look at damage in Nashville bombing 12/30/2020):

Segroves Bergeron, a Nashville-based photographer and art curator, runs Studio 208, a gallery and art show room at 208 Third Avenue North in Nashville, just a block away from the site of a Christmas morning bombing that shook the city.

On Tuesday, she was one of dozens of residents and business owners allowed to retrieve needed supplies and assess the damage to their property that's been behind an investigative perimeter since Friday.

“I’ve been fortunate to never have to be in a war zone so I can’t be sure this is what it would be like, but it feels like war, it feels eerie, it feels surreal,” she said. “Everyone’s faces are dazed. The crew, the police, FBI, everyone. Just dazed and tired.”

The Channel 5 report is also a great example of why initial police statements on their own performance should be taken with a lot of skepticism. An event like this is a big PR opportunity for police departments to show off their bravery and heroism and remind people how glad they should be to have them around.

It's worth mentioning here that it's still early, so some of the details may vary. The Channel 5 report may give the impression that the girlfriend and the attorney were at the bomber's house when the cops showed up. But in the Natalie Allison, it sounds like the police spoke to the two of them at a separate house. And in that story, the attorney also says in the Natalie Allison story that he hadn't been the guy's attorney for a while.

We even had a story from one of the cops on the scene Christmas morning that he “literally” (his word) heard God tell him to turn around and walk away from the direction of the RV just before it exploded. Which would be entertaining in a "testimony" in a conservative church. But my first thought was, let me get this straight: the Nashville police department has an officer walking around with a gun and a license to kill who says publicly that he can “literally” hear a voice in his head that he knows is the voice of God?

Except now, a few days later, we find out that in August a year ago, the heroic and vigilant Nashville police were at the we-don’t-call-him-a-suicide-bomber’s house based on a call from the bomber’s girlfriend who was there and told them that the guy was building bombs in the RV setting right there in his yard. Funny, I’m pretty sure the cops were saying just a couple of days ago that, gee, we had no idea there was anything threatening about the guy. "Warner wasn’t on the radar of law enforcement before Friday’s explosion, ["authorities"] said, and officials have declined to deem the bombing an act of terrorism." (Natalie Allison, Anthony Quinn Warner, self-employed computer guru ID'd as lone Nashville bomber, killed in blast Nashville Tennessean 12/27/2020)

The bomber’s OWN ATTORNEY was on the scene and told the cops he thought her story about the bombs was credible. So they knocked on the house door a couple of times and the guy didn’t respond. They looked at the RV from outside the fence it was in and claimed they didn’t see anything suspicious. I guess if it doesn’t have BOMB FACTORY painted on the outside, it’s not worth the trouble.

So, they left to go to the donut shop or wherever. They filed a request for records with the FBI, who responded they had no information on him. (Don’t be surprised if we later hear the FBI had several gigabytes of data on him.)

To understand how problematic this is, we just have to imagine if they were out in a black neighborhood on a call like this. Or if the girlfriend and attorney had told the cops the guy's real name was something “Muslim-sounding” name like Hasan al-Bomba. Would they have even bothered to get a warrant before they sent a SWAT team to bust through the door?

This is a nationwide problem that authorities just don’t take white terrorism seriously enough, even though for years most deaths from terrorist attacks in the US have been due to far-right groups with some more-or-less white supremacist political ideology.

Lots of people (not just conservatives) claim to be upset by the protest slogan “Defund the Police”. But cops who get a credible complaint about a guy who’s going bonkers from the guy’s girlfriend and the man’s own attorney but just say, “Well, the girlfriend sounds kind of hysterical, it's probably her time of the month or something. And this is a white guy, so he’s probably just a good ole boy who ain’t really causing no trouble” – we shouldn’t be paying public money for that kind of cops.

Cops who say publicly that they are following orders from a “literal” voice in their head that they know is God's – nah, “defunding” cops like that sounds like a good idea, too. Police PR departments who put top priority on staging their officers as heroes immediately after a horrible terrorist attack but cheerfully try to avoid accountability for their own fecklessness about the perpetrator? No, that’s probably not the best use of public funds, either.

Nashville Christmas suicide bomber

With the reporting on the Christmas suicide bomber in Nashville, I'm following some of the media narratives without asuming that we have anything close to a full picture of what was going on with the bomber.

Here is a recent report from ABC News, Nashville bombing suspect identified from DNA evidence 12/207/2020:

That segment features one of the standard tropes of such reports, the self-presentation of the police as heroic saviors. There's nothing wrong with recognizing police who do a good job, on the contrary. But police departments are also very experienced in highlighting themselves as efficient public servants in the wake of an immediate crisis. Not so fast to identify shortcoming in their work, which typically only emerge later or not at all.

This report by Natalie Allison shows other tropes familiar from mass shooter events, even though in this case it appears that the suicide bomber actually tried to avoid civilian casualties: Anthony Quinn Warner, self-employed computer guru ID'd as lone Nashville bomber, killed in blast Nashville Tennessean 12/27/2020

A white guy carries out a suicide bombing in downtown Nashville that damages 41 buildings but the press and the authorities are tippy-toeing around calling him a terrorist or even suicide bomber? The post-9/11 press practice of restricting the term "terrorist" to Muslims and/or foreigners. That sloppy press practice has been particularly influential in downplaying the significance of domestic far-right terrorism in the US, which is currently definitely more of risk for violent crime than Muslims or foreigners, not to speak of "antifa".

We also get the trope of interviews with the neighbors. He was quiet. He had dogs. No, say the neighbors, they had no idea that he was any kind of a weirdo. This is the same tape that we hear replayed every time someone like this gets identified. Of course, the neighbors are going to say, no, no, we hardly knew him.

Which is probably true in most cases. Somebody planning a suicide bombing or mass shooting is not likely to go door-to-dorr in his neighborhood blabbing about what he's planning to do. But the same press boilerplate is rolled out over and over. Apparently this man grew up and had lived maybe his entire life in the general neighborhood. Nashville is a city, so it's not infeasible that people in his neighborhood had no particular reason to think he was morphing into a suicide bomber.

But it's also not unusual in these cases to find out that people in contact with him actually did notice odd behavior that at least in hindsight they wish they had taken more seriously. It's also not at all unusual to find out that local police had some contact with the person in a context of some kind of threatening behavior. Or even that the FBI had some information about such threatening behavior. The ABC report above says that "investigators" say "that he was not on any law enforcement agency's radar before this."

But what you are extremely unlikely to hear in a case like this is the police chief holding a press conference a day or two after the incident and saying, "Yeah, half the police force knew this guy liked to git drunk at the bar and brag about how he was gone blow the hell out of the communications network in the city. But, you know, ever'body thought he was just a good ole boy tellin' tall tales."

That ain't gonna happen. Nor will the FBI come out and say, "Oh, we were using him as an informant against local white supremacists. But I guess we didn't keep him on a close enough lease. Sorry, our bad."

It's human to speculate. But we don't know what we don't know. And law enforcement has legitimate reasons to not say everything they know about the incident before they've had time to thoroughly investigate. The ABC report mentions that several sources told him that the suspect may have been motivated by conspiracy theories about 5G technology.

Another dangling thread of the story so far as I've seen is reports of shots fired around of the RV before it exploded: "Police were responding to a report of shots fired Friday when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes." (Nashville bomber blew himself up, police say Politico/AP 12/27/2020)

On part of the story that I find concerning comes from Yihyun Jeong and Cassandra Stephenson, '15 minutes to clear the area': How Nashville police raced to save lives as a bomb ticked down Nashville Tennessean 12/27/2020. A police officer named James Wells reported the following:

Wells began walking toward the RV, when he too, felt a need to change direction.

"I literally hear God tell me to turn around and go check on Topping, who was by herself down on Broadway," he said Sunday, tearing up as he spoke.

He took what felt like three steps, when the music stopped.

He kept walking when suddenly he saw the color orange. And then heard a loud boom.

This kind of religious story offering thanks to God after surviving a dangerous situation is fairly standard in various Protestant religious traditions, especially in the South.

But I'm sorry, when a police officer is talking in public about how he literally got verbal instructions from God, his superiors should make sure he is probably checked medically and psychologically. He may be carelessly using language better restricted to similar believers. Or he may have been suffering some kind of physical effects of the blast.

Or you might also think that someone in his department should at least tell not to blab to the press about his supernatural abilities. It seems like the kind of secret weapon that the police department might want to keep under wraps.

And what if next week the voice in his head tells him to murder some random person? I mean, the cop did say that he "literally" heard God talking to him. I really do favor the idea of a separation between police work and voices in your head.

There's also an odd connection involved in the story, of the kind tabloids love. Warner before his suicide-bombing death transmitted some property to a woman in California who is an entertainment executive, as Christina Zhao and Naveed Jamali report for Newsweek in Anthony Warner, Nashville Bomber, Engaged in Flurry of Mystery Property Deals Before Attack.

The Both Sides Do It! alibi for white supremacist terrorism

This may be a case of giving a tiny amplification to a bad piece of political propaganda.

But Trump and the Republicans playing Both Sides Do It on two mass murders this past weekend, one by a white supremacist terrorist in El Paso complete with a racist-nationalist manifesto justifying it, the other by a young man who murdered his own sister and others outside w nightclub in Dayton OH for which there seems to be no evidence at all of political motivations in the shooting.

It always important to remember that that in the US legal system three is a presumption of innocence on criminal charges. The suspect in the Dayton killings was himself killed by police in the incident. The suspect in El Paso was arrested. In his case, the event was a very public one and the shooter was seen by many witnesses and caught on security cameras.

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian analyse White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway's version of it in Kellyanne Conway's IDIOTIC Statement on Dayton Shooter The Young Turks 08/07/2019:

The FBI in an official statement made clear they were approaching the El Paso mass murder as a terrorist event, the Dayton one as a murder (FBI Statement Regarding Shootings in El Paso and Dayton 08/04/2019):

The attack in El Paso, Texas, underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violent extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes. The FBI is supporting its state and local partners in Texas through investigative, intelligence, and technical assistance. The El Paso investigation is also being supported by the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell, which was established in spring 2019. Composed of subject matter experts from both the Criminal Investigative and Counterterrorism Divisions, the fusion cell offers program coordination from FBI Headquarters, helps ensure seamless information sharing across divisions, and augments investigative resources.

The FBI is also providing assistance to the Dayton (Ohio) Police Department’s investigation into the shooting in Dayton, through the Bureau’s Cincinnati Field Office, with support from FBI Headquarters personnel.

The Guardian reports the following on Wednesday (FBI says Dayton gunman who killed nine explored 'violent ideologies' – live 08/07/2019):

• The FBI said investigators have uncovered evidence that the Dayton shooter explored “violent ideologies”. The bureau has opened an investigation alongside the Dayton police department’s homicide investigation.
• White House aides have sought to elevate reports that the Dayton gunman supported leftwing ideas and endorsed 2020 candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but the FBI said the shooter did not appear to be linked to a “bias motive”.

Claudia Koerner reports in The Dayton Mass Shooter Had An "Obsession With Violent Ideations" And The FBI Is Investigating Buzzfeed News 08/06/2019, "In Dayton, investigators have yet to determine if Betts [the killer] was motivated by a particular ideology, but evidence has so far revealed that he was seeking out information that promoted violence, FBI Special Agent in Charge Todd Wickerham said."

Napp Nazworth at the Christian-fundamentalist-oriented Christian Post wasn't nearly as reserved, coming out with this report on Monday, El Paso, Dayton shootings appear motivated by opposite sides of political spectrum 08/05/2019. Both Sides Do It!

The Christian Post's homepage as of this writing on 08/07/2019 displays this:

The fact is we have a Republican President actively inciting hatred and violence against immigrants and racial minorities and some far-right militants are taking violent, murderous action in furtherence of those hatreds.

The Christian Post is obviously trying to keep itself comfortable for Republicans by tiptoing around the white supremacy and terrorism problems. Richard Land, who passes for a sort of moderate in those circles, writes in the CP (We need more dialogue about the many contributing factors of mass shootings 08/05/2019):

Several vexing problems rending the social fabric of our nation immediately come to mind to jumpstart the honest and frank discussion we must have: Fatherlessness; the failure of our inner cities; racism; identity politics that forever emphasize our differences rather than our common humanity; the mindless glorification of violence in our media and entertainment industry; our failed mental health system; and the systematic disrespect and mocking of police officers, and by implication, disrespect for the law they represent. That’s just the preliminary first draft of a long list of contributing causes.

Here the list with my translations out of RepublicanSpeak in italics:

Fatherlessness [black people! sluts!]; the failure of our inner cities [scary black people!]; racism [black peole! brown people!]; identity politics [feminists! gays! black people! lesbian professors!] that forever emphasize our differences rather than our common humanity [black people are racists!]; the mindless glorification of violence in our media and entertainment industry [the NRA is God!]; our failed mental health system [the NRA is God and Trump is his Prophet!]; and the systematic disrespect and mocking of police officers [scary black people! dope-smoking hippies!], and by implication, disrespect for the law they represent [we should celebrate when white cops murder unarmed black people!].

The Christian Post really isn't much into that leftie idea about the Good Samaritan and all.

They have run some pieces nominally condemning white supremacy as an ideology. (You can't call me a racist and if you do YOU'RE the real racist!)

The Times article on how the US government was blind in the right eye over domestic terrorism

If you're wondering how far-right terrorist attacks became as unsurprising a part of American life as mass murders at schools (despite violent crimes overall continuing to decline), this is a big part of the story: U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It. New York Times 11/03/2018.

The portion featuring former Homeland Security intelligence analyst Daryl Johnson is very revealing. The story he relates about how the Obama Administration backed off on investigating and enforcing the law against violent-focused far-right groups in 2009 under heavy pressure from Republicans isn't new. It was very publicly discussed at the time. You just had to make an effort to listen to journalists and researchers concerned about the problem. Because the mainstream press wasn't giving it more than a fraction of the coverage that they devoted to (often sloppy) reporting about the "Tea Party" antics that year.

By chance, during the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlestown in August of last year when the news came in that Heather Heyer had been murdered by one of them, I was in Atlanta listening to a presentation on far-right extremism moderated by David Neiwert of the SPLC that included Johnson and Rabiah Ahmed of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Johnson talked about his 2009 experience and the continuing problem.

With all the incidents since, it's worth recalling that the murderous Charlottesville Nazi crowd were described by the President of the United States as containing "very fine people." He won't be listening to Daryl Johnson's advice.

Pipe bomb attacks, the far right, and "stochastic" terrorism

Dave Neiwert analyzes the Republican and far-right tactic of launching a "false flag" conspiracy theory when confronting evidence that a rightwing terrorist was at work in an incident like the pipe bombs this week: Mail-bomber 'false flag' theories overwhelm discourse on terrorismSPLC Hatewatch 10/26/2018.

This is one point he emphasizes:

Just for the record: Explosive devices like the pipe bombs sent in the mail have long been favored weapons of the radical right in the United States, reflecting its propensity for weapons of mass destruction generally. The use of pipe bombs by right-wing domestic terrorists dates back at least to the 1984 rampage of the neo-Nazi gang The Order, as well as subsequent terrorist plots that emanated from the Aryan Nations compound in northern Idaho in the ‘80s and ‘90s. These included pipe-bomb attacks on the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper and a Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. The man who bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Eric Rudolph, used pipe bombs in his attacks on abortion providers and gay bars.

More recently, homemade bombs turned up in a spate of cases involving radical-right extremists in 2009-10. These included an older case, from 2004, when neo-Nazis sent a bomb in the mail to the director of the Office of Diversity for the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, and nearly killed him.

Eyal Press talks about this string of pipe bombs sent to figures identified with left or center-left politics in the context of "stochastic terrorism" ( New York Times 10/25/2018):

In recent years, a term has begun to circulate to capture this phenomenon — “stochastic terrorism,” in which mass communications, including social media, inspire random acts of violence that according to one description “are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.” In other words, every act and actor is different, and no one knows by whom or where an act will happen - but it’s a good bet that something will.

The examples in his article relate to the extreme antiabortionists. As he notes in the article, he was writing before a suspect had been arrested in the letter-bomb series.

Heather Timmons updated this story to include some information about the arrest, Stochastic terror and the cycle of hate that pushes unstable Americans to violence Quartz 10/26/2018.

Juan Cole applies the concept to the pipe bombs in Suggestive Terrorism: Trump, Pipe Bomber and the ISIL Technique Informed Comment 10/27/2018, noting it#s one that ISIL has used to incite terrorist attacks in Europe and the US:

This free-floating willingness to fall under the influence of a charismatic leader calling for violence, is common between Trumpism and ISIL.

Trump has asked his crowds to beat up journalists in attendance. He has threatened o jail former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. His fantasies inhabited the dreams of his followers. Just as Trump didn’t actually ask anyone to bomb for him, neither did ISIL.

Those Republicans who point out that there are dangerous crazy people in both major parties are right. But in only one party is the leader actively calling for people to be beaten up or otherwise attacked. That’s the difference. [my emphasis]