The FBI last week thwarted a planned Christmas terror attack. This is good news. It represents more of the winning that President Trump promised in the terribly named “Global War on Terror” when he ran for office. As usual, however, the mainstream media’s account misses the mark and fails to name the real culprit for the attempted terror attack. Always desperate to avoid speaking the truth when it bucks the preferred narrative, the press claims not only was the 26-year-old Modesto, California-native, Everitt Aaron Jameson, a “lone-wolf” terrorist but he was also a former United States Marine!
Most reports on the planned Christmas Day attack on Pier 39 in San Francisco buried the relevant details of Jameson’s conversion to Islam and his professed support for the Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Instead, the media have stressed the fact that Jameson was briefly in the United States Marine Corps—as if this man’s deplorable behavior can be chocked up to some kind of latent psychological trauma in the armed services. Because, you know, washing out of boot camp turns young men into monsters . . . or something.
Then the media insists that Jameson was a “lone-wolf”—just like those pesky right-wing terrorists, who roam the American countryside, looking for some minorities to butcher with their “bump stock assault rifles!”
So, don’t worry folks, all of Jameson’s repeated public professions of love and adulation for ISIS and its leadership; all of his public castigations of the Trump Administration for its recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, they play no part in Jameson’s attempted terror plot. No, his Marine background must be why he’s a “lone-wolf” terrorist. Of course, being a lone-wolf terrorist does not in itself explain the purpose of any planned attack. Just because someone acts alone does not mean that they are not acting out of fealty or love for a group or ideology. But, the media never lets a good narrative go to waste.
Oh, and if Jameson’s radical politics did play any role in his development of the terror plot in San Francisco, it was Trump’s fault, because Jameson blamed Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Probably Trump should have considered that his decision might set off people like Jameson before making his decision, the media explain.
If you understand the particulars of this attempted attack, you begin to see that Islamism was at its very heart.
We know that Jameson was inspired by the October 31 ISIS attack in New York City (an attack that was inspired by other ISIS attacks in the West). It’s clear these ISIS terror plots are building on each other in ways similar to the escalation of al-Qaeda’s attacks throughout the 1990s, which culminated in 9/11. This is a pattern that not only must be acknowledged publicly, but it is one that should be reinforced so that everyone—not just our law enforcement people—can be aware of their surroundings at all times.
Our media shamelessly opts instead to focus on Jameson’s background as a Marine, playing into the narrative perpetuated by pop culture that America’s veterans are a bunch of broken psychopaths.
Fact is, San Francisco’s Pier 39 is a tantalizing “soft” target for terrorists. After all, America’s consumerism has been a serious bugaboo of most Islamists, so targeting a popular shopping spot is not surprising (I would hope security precautions will be taken at America’s other leading shopping malls in the aftermath of this attack, at least through the holiday season).
Further, San Francisco is not only a major city, but it is also one of America’s most liberal cities. More than anything, Islamic extremists are at war with Western progressivism—the ideology that, in their eyes, perpetuates profligate sexuality and overt drug use; seeks to elevate women to an equal footing; is militantly secular; supports globalization; and continues to place the United States at loggerheads with the Muslim world. San Francisco is a perfect symbol for such an attack. That the attack was planned to occur on Christmas allowed for ISIS to target the other, more conservative part of the United States, which is generally Christian.
The recent collapse of ISIS’s physical caliphate, and the Trump Administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, are galvanizing would-be terrorists here in the United States. In fact, the letter that the FBI uncovered in Jameson’s apartment ends with the ominous declaration that, “We have penetrated and infiltrated your disgusting country.”
Does this sound like the narrative that the media is broadcasting today? Does any of this have to do with either Jameson’s background as a Marine or his loner personality? Of course not.
Rather than cogently warning the public of the potential threat by providing background and context, the mainstream media has yet again abdicated its responsibility to inform the people, and has opted instead to take the often-traveled route of political correctness. In this case, a committed Islamist—swearing fealty to the Islamic State—plotted to conduct a mass-casualty terror attack in San Francisco on Christmas Day. It is neither the first nor the last such attempt.
Those are the facts. Instead of being told that, however, we’ve been told that the FBI prevented an angry ex-Marine from perpetrating the same kind of attacks that right-wing zealots carry out against minorities every day in America, because Everitt Aaron Jameson was a lone-wolf.
The media never lets a good narrative go to waste.