Christopher Hasson is just the latest sign of America's rising far-right domestic terrorist tide
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The scripted violence scenario represented by Christopher Hasson, the 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant arrested last week and charged with plotting a massive domestic terrorist attack on leading media and Democratic Party figures, is the stuff of national nChristopher Hasson is just the latest sign of America's rising far-right domestic terrorist tide
The scripted violence scenario represented by Christopher Hasson, the 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant arrested last week and charged with plotting a massive domestic terrorist attack on leading media and Democratic Party figures, is the stuff of national nightmares. But the nightmare is hardly over. Even more frightening is the realization that Hasson likely is just one of many radicalized white men poised to take violent action on “a scale rarely seen.” Certainly Hasson’s plans were remarkably wide-reaching. Inspired in large part by Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik—and in particular by Breivik’s ardent belief in the white-nationalist hoax theory called “cultural Marxism”—Hasson wrote: “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on earth.” Foremost among his targets were leading media and Democratic Party figures, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Ari Melber, and Chris Hayes, CNN’s Van Jones and Don Lemon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker. To carry out these assassinations, Hasson had amassed an armory in his basement, including 15 weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. In his deleted emails, investigators found Hasson musing about carrying out a “two-pronged attack” using bioterror weapons and a sniper attack. He also was an ardent white nationalist. In addition to his admiration for Breivik, Hasson corresponded with other neo-Nazis. He was particularly keen on the work of white supremacist Harold Covington, who promoted creating a “white homeland” in the Pacific Northwest, but who died in 2018. “How long can we hold out there and prevent niggerization of the Northwest until whites wake up on their own or are forcibly made to make a decision whether to roll over and die or wake up on their own remains to be seen,” Hasson wrote Covington in a 2017 draft letter. However, when Hasson was first arrested on Feb. 14, it was on mundane drug and weapons charges, and hardly merited a blip on anyone’s radar. Hasson was caught because he had been buying the addictive painkiller Tramadol from a drug dealer while stationed at U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Baltimore. Those circumstances underscore the haphazard nature of American law enforcement’s handling of far-right domestic terrorism: Hasson wasn’t caught because investigators were seeking neo-Nazis within the ranks of the military—which is indeed a serious and ongoing issue, but one which very few resources are directed to addressing—but simply by fortunate happenstance. Read more