Terrorism 'expert' declares Timothy McVeigh would be a run-of-the-mill Republican

Intelligence "expert" Malcolm Nance recently appeared on an MSNBC segment discussing the final report of the January 6 Committee.  According to hostess Katie Phang, one of these recommendations was the suggestion that "federal agencies should move forward with strategies that combat the threat of violent activity posed by all extremist groups."

Phang then asked of Nance:

What does it tell you Malcolm about the strength, organization, and the complexity of these extremist groups that the 1/6 Committee addressed that threat so extensively in their report?

To this, Nance replied:

Well they certainly had to address it extensively, you know, I published a book last year with the provocative title, "They Want to Kill Americans", and that's what we've been seeing in the era of Trump.

Nance then laments that "neo-Nazi and White supremacy" ideologies were once "beyond the fringe" — what an ironic observation for someone who is actually allied with the Azov Battalion in Ukraine (its members have swastika tattoos, and the logo "comprises two neo-Nazi emblems"), having joined a foreign military unit.

Furthermore, as a former member of the press, if Nance is so anti-Nazi, shouldn't he decry Zelensky's "news information policy"?  After all, the move involved the combination of "all national TV channels, the program content of which consists mainly of information and/or information-analytical programs [news]," into "a single information platform of strategic communication," which would be called "United News."  If you ask me, that sounds a lot like something Joseph Goebbels would do, despite his claim that he had the "natural intention to be and to remain the warm-hearted protector of the German press."

After all, fascism is a left-wing political philosophy; ergo, it's geographically closer to Democrat politics than Republican ones.

Nance then makes this wild claim:

In today's world, Timothy McVeigh would be considered a mainstreamer, he might get an internship at a Congressman's job and actually would organize with larger numbers of people[.]

What's funny is that Nance focuses on a hypothetical, while there's real evidence of political terrorists being celebrated — albeit not on the mainstream conservative side.  Remember when Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a militant with the Puerto Rican Marxist-Leninist FALN, which carried out "more than 130 bomb attacks between 1974 and 1983"?  And then Rivera rode atop a float as a distinguished icon in a Puerto Rican parade in New York?

(Nance also tweeted that Kyle Rittenhouse was a "low rent Timothy McVeigh incel.")

Finally, Nance ends his diatribe positing that there ought to be more laws on the books for law enforcement to "actually charge an American citizen with terrorism."  We all know what Americans in particular he means.  His book he mentioned above includes this excerpt:

To varying degrees, as many as 74 million Americans have expressed hostility towards American democracy. Their radicalization is increasingly visible in our day to day life: in neighbor's or family member's open discussion of bizarre conspiracy theories, reveling in the fantasy of mass murdering the liberals they believe are drinking the blood of children. These are the results of the deranged series of lies stoked by former President Donald Trump, made worse by the global pandemic.

(Watch the full exchange here.)

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