nsfw | How -- and why -- the left and right united to turn TSA agents into public enemy number one.
On Friday morning, 23-year-old Paul Ciancia walked into Terminal 3 of
the Los Angeles LAX airport, pulled a Smith & Wesson AR-15
semi-automatic rifle from a duffel bag and started shooting his way
through a security checkpoint. He specifically targeted TSA agents,
killing one screener and wounding three other people before an airport
cop took him down with a shot to the face.
At first police suspected that the shooter was a disgruntled former
TSA employee. But a different picture emerged a few hours later: Ciancia
was an anti-government conspiracy nut who came to LAX specifically to
kill TSA agents.
One witness said she looked directly into Ciancia's eyes and heard
him "curse the TSA." Several FBI sources told reporters that Ciancia
carried a rambling racist and homophobic note that touched on "fiat
currency" and the New World Order, denounced TSA oppression and
described himself as a "pissed-off patriot" who "wanted to kill TSA and
pigs" to "instill fear" into their "traitorous minds."
While details about the LAX shooter continue to emerge, it has become
clear that Paul Ciancia is a mentally unstable individual who had come
under the sway of some very toxic anti-government conspiracy theories.
But one question remains: Why did he focus his hatred on the TSA? Out
of all the possible federal agencies to choose from, what convinced him
that airport screeners - who don't have arrest powers and aren't allowed
to carry weapons - are the root of all government evil, and deserve to
be hunted down and killed like animals?
In a way, it was just a matter of time before something like this
happened.
For the past three years, a vicious PR campaign has
demonized and dehumanized TSA screeners. Launched by the
libertarian-right, this smear offensive sought to equate the TSA in the
public mind with the worst people imaginable: Nazis, rapists, gropers,
child molesters and sadistic enforcers of a police state.
The right-wing echo chamber would routinely trot out violent tropes
and racist and homophobic language describing the TSA as Obama's
"private army" and calling on liberty-loving Americans "to do something"
to stop this "bureaucratic monster."
But while this anti-TSA campaign was created by the
libertarian-right, it was enabled and strengthened by the left. Some of
the most prominent progressive and leftie bloggers and journalists took
an active part in the TSA media witch-hunt.
They joined the right in
labeling the TSA as America's enemy within, unaware that underneath the
big-brother rhetoric and feigned right-wing concern about civil
liberties, the anti-TSA campaign was really a union-busting operation
with a specific set of political goals:
to prevent the TSA from unionizing, to privatize airport security and
to introduce Israeli-style racial profiling into the airport-screening
process.
