I'd forgotten that at the time Comey's FBI censored the mention of ISIS in reports about the Orlando shooting, under the pretext it would "inflame" more terrorists. What's remarkable is the language the agency used at the time to justify Comey's withholding of the tapes of Mateen's calls and redaction of their transcripts:
“We’re actually looking into any potential motive,” [Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald] Hopper said. “We’re not limiting ourselves to coming up with just one motive. We’re looking at a myriad of things right now and that actually is ongoing as we speak, both through social media, friend contacts, people that have only met the individual for one time. That’s why we’re asking for anybody and everybody that’s had any contact with this individual to come forward so we can piece that information together for potential other motives as well.”If this was the first thing you read coming in you'd think the Orlando shooting was a classic whodunit. Then you might learn (with little help from the FBI) that Omar Mateen placed three 911 calls pledging his allegiance to ISIS and its leader (by name), and invoked his friend who died as a suicide bomber in Syria for al Nusra Front, a rival to ISIS (Comey's report said that rivalry rendered the shooter's motives mysterious somehow, as if Mateen is the modern equivalent of a bespectacled Bolshevik carefully crafting an analysis and choosing factions. Obvious nonsense.
So why the need for motives? But you'd never understand until you realize the point here is not to solve a mystery, but to create one.
But there's more here too. This is a remarkable bit of text, a cautionary artifact if a saner time can decipher it. Beneath the deliberate attempt to obscure is both a reassurance and a plea to the like-minded. The subtext comes at them like a public radio pledge drive: rest assured we're piecing together a palatable narrative, and you can help, no contribution is too small, see, because they can be combined. Call now.
Comey said censoring mention of ISIS out of the transcript was necessary because otherwise it would "inflame like minded" individuals--if you could make him out over the sound of their cheering. So, the world-weary thinks, they're afraid of "right wing terrorists", as they so often claim. But we're so far down the rabbit hole we don't see the real scandal when this cycle plays out--and before reading this I'd assumed Europe was the only place misinformation had become so habitual. Because they know the threat of right wing terror is a bogeyman, what they--political leaders conspiring with media--really do with some success is thwart electoral action, that is the peaceful democratic response of a people to violence wrought upon them by a group both foreign and favored by their elite; and they understand this well.
We've accepted the terms of the Narrative for so long even the enlightened have trouble processing it. For the normie it's nigh impossible.
Contrary to the elite trope, there is nothing mystiying about the actions of a Mateen. What's mystifying are the actions of those who profess mystification.
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