Former FBI assistant director fears the US is entering a period of 'permanent insurrection'

Some of the most sobering commentary on the January 6 invasion of the Capitol Building has come from former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, now a national security analyst for MSNBC. During an MSNBC appearance following the attack, Figliuzzi expressed fears that the violence that rocked Washington, D.C. on January 6 is a preview of things to come.

On January 6, a violent mob of far-right extremists stormed the Capitol Building in the hope of preventing Congress from ratifying President-elect Joe Biden's electoral college victory over President Donald Trump. The crowd succeeded in delaying a joint session of Congress, but despite the violence, the session later resumed — and the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives certified the electoral c ollege results. The inauguration of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is set for January 20.

But the extremists who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6 will not accept Biden as president after he is sworn in less than two weeks from now — and that's what worries Figliuzzi. The former assistant FBI director told MSNBC he fears that the attack on the Capitol Building is not merely an isolated incident, but rather, shows that the U.S. has entered a state of "permanent insurrection." And he made comparisons to ETA in Spain and FARC in Colombia, which are two examples of long-lasting insurrection movements.

In Colombia, FARC (which stands for "Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia" in Spanish) started in 1964 and continued to be an armed insurrection until a peace deal was reached with the Colombian government in 2016. And in Spain's Basque country, ETA is an armed Basque separatist movement that has been around since the late 1950s and does not recognize the legitimacy of the federal government in Madrid.

Figliuzzi warned that "extremists" in the U.S. have been "radicalized" and that the storming of the Capitol Building was a result of that radicalization. The former FBI assistant director told MSNBC's Brian Williams, "Look, this wasn't a surprise for anyone. If you were monitoring social media traffic of known extremist groups, violent groups and individuals, you knew this was coming. So, this was not so much an intelligence failure as a security failure. I don't know any professional member of law enforcement who would consider today successful…. This was a failure of police work today."