I Know What Law Enforcement Is Really Worried About

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelfanone.substack.comWhen most people think “national security,” they picture something far away. Foreign flags. Shadowy cells. A villain you can point to on a map.That’s not what keeps a lot of cops and federal agents up at night anymore.What scares them is closer. It’s here. It’s the person who isn’t on anyone’s watchlist until the day they snap. The one who doesn’t attend meetings or carry a membership card. The one who doesn’t need a handler because the internet did the handling for free.They’re at home. Alone. Scrolling. Getting soaked in grievance until they start to believe violence isn’t just acceptable — it’s righteous.That’s the threat most Americans don’t think about until the sirens are already in their neighborhood.And I’m not saying this as a pundit. I’m saying it as someone who spent nearly two decades in law enforcement watching how people move from anger to action.The Michael Fanone Show is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Here’s the shift: the old model was easier to track. Organized crime, gangs, even structured extremist groups — they leave patterns. They talk. They recruit. They move money. They use the same people and places. That gives investigators something to follow.The new model is uglier because it’s quieter. A person can radicalize in isolation, build a fantasy world in their head, and decide a school board member, a judge, an election worker, or a synagogue is the enemy — and nobody around them realizes how far gone they are until they’re already in motion.Federal agencies have been warning for years that domestic violent extremism is one of the most persistent threats facing the country, and that many offenders act alone or in very small clusters. DHS has repeatedly described lone actors and small groups as the most likely source of politically motivated violence in the U.S.And if you want a simple way to understand how it happens, it usually starts with one thing: permission.Not permission in writing. Permission in culture.Permission to stop seeing your neighbors as human beings. Permission to believe anyone who disagrees with you isn’t just wrong — they’re evil. A traitor. An invader. A threat.Once someone accepts that frame, everything downstream gets easier. Threats feel justified. Harassment feels like activism. And violence starts to feel like “doing your part.”We’ve watched that play out in the open. Election workers chased and threatened because they were told “the vote was stolen.” Judges targeted because a ruling didn’t go someone’s way. Public officials hounded out of their jobs. People walking into spaces with guns because they’ve been convinced the law doesn’t apply when you’re on the “right side.”Research tracking politically motivated violence in the U.S. has found a sharp rise in attacks and plots aimed at government targets tied to partisan beliefs in the last decade — especially after 2016.Here’s what alarms me most: this isn’t self-correcting.Every election cycle, every manufactured moral panic, every politician who flirts with “second amendment solutions,” every media figure who paints fellow Americans as enemies — it feeds the same machine. The topic changes. The grievance rotates. The process stays the same: isolation, outrage, reinforcement, escalation.And the overwhelming majority of people never cross that line. Most Americans are decent. They argue, they vote, they live their lives.But the people who do cross it don’t need to be “many.” They just need to be enough — and motivated enough — to make the rest of society feel unsafe.That’s what makes it a democracy problem, not a “politics” problem. Democracies can survive disagreement. They can’t survive intimidation becoming routine.So no — this isn’t about whether you’re left or right. It’s about whether we still believe in the basic deal of living together: you don’t threaten people because you lost, you don’t terrorize your neighbors because an algorithm fed you a lie, and you don’t get to rebrand violence as patriotism.If you care about this country, don’t just consume it and move on. Share the episode. Push back on lies when you hear them. Call out the people making excuses for intimidation. Be the person in your circle who refuses to let “jokes” about violence slide.Because the people trying to make fear normal are counting on everyone else being quiet.And we’re not giving them that.🟧 Paid subscribers get 15% off your next merch order🟧 Founding Members get 20% off for lifeYou’ll get the link in your welcome email.GET DISCOUNTS BELOW! ENJOY!