A 17-year-old in Peoria, Ariz., has been arrested over his plans to load up a drone with explosives and send it into the Phoenix Pride parade. He was hoping to “bomb 2024 Pride Parade and take over USA” and said that he had ordered bomb-making equipment. He was, however, discovered and stopped before he could carry out his attack. Still, you should have heard about a terror plot of this magnitude, yet the establishment media is maintaining near-radio silence about it.
Now, foiled attacks always get less attention than ones that are successful, and that’s why you likely haven’t heard about this particular plot, but there is another reason as well: the perpetrator was not a “white supremacist” gun nut who could be easily shoehorned into the left’s standard narrative about supposed “right-wing” violence.
#BREAKING: Marvin Aneer Jalo, 17, of Peoria, was arrested on Oct. 18. https://t.co/vBQNYoqfn7 pic.twitter.com/8tfSMEpl7J
— azfamily 3TV CBS 5 (@azfamily) October 23, 2024
Instead, Marvin Aneer Jalo was an Islamic jihadist, coming at a time when the left’s alliance with Islamic groups is fraught with tension over the Biden-Harris regime’s failure to betray Israel as thoroughly as Muslim leaders have been demanding they do, as well as over social issues, with many Muslims furious over the left’s unshakeable determination to embrace and normalize every fantasy, delusion and perversion that comes down the pike. So this was just the worst time for a Muslim to plot to blow up a Pride Parade, and that’s why you’re likely to hear about this plot only here.
AZFamily reported Wednesday that Jalo was arrested last Friday, the first day of the LGBTQEIEIO Pride Parade in Phoenix. Due to the gravity of his plans, he is “being charged as an adult with terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism, both class 2 felonies.” It seems that the precocious young fellow “started communicating in internet chat rooms in 2023 with people he described as extremists who were recruiting him.”
The “extremists” in question were jihadis from the Islamic State (ISIS), and Jalo was more than willing to be recruited. He “reportedly posted that they could ‘bomb 2024 Pride Parade and take over USA.’” The “take over USA” part was more than a little grandiose, but they certainly could have carried out the plot to bomb the Pride Parade. Jalo also “later said he was having supplies shipped to him to make explosives.”
On his phone, the aspiring jihad terrorist had “numerous photos of firearms and an instructional video depicting an ISIS fighter making the explosive Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP).” That’s another reason why you won’t hear much, if anything, about this plot. Up until Tim Walz and Adam Kinzinger discovered their love for guns, however inept they are at handling them, the left’s sole interest in firearms involved strategizing about how to circumvent the Second Amendment and take them away from law-abiding civilians. If Jalo hadn’t been a jihadi, leftist media organs would have given this story massive attention as yet another indication that Americans can’t be trusted with weapons.
But Islamic jihadists who use firearms, or just save photos of them for future reference, don’t qualify to become part of the left’s exhibit on how bad guns really are. Muslim leaders are enraged at Kamala Harris for the Biden-Harris regime’s continued claims to support Israel; though the regime has betrayed Israel left and right, this never seems to placate them. The leftist establishment doesn’t dare risk enraging Muslim voters further by giving any notice to a jihad plot, much less to one against a Pride Parade.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Of Course), meanwhile, was a parade grand marshal and issued this pro forma statement: “I’m shocked and horrified at the alleged plot to attack innocent Arizonans and members of the LGBTQ community who attended the Phoenix Pride festival, and I’m grateful for the swift actions taken by law enforcement to prevent a potential tragedy. Arizonans must come together to reject hate wherever we find it. I was proud to serve as Grand Marshall of the Phoenix Pride parade this year, and I’ll continue to stand with the LGBTQ community in the face of bigotry and violent extremism.”
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That’s right, “bigotry and violent extremism.” She is wary of being specific for fear of offending Muslims. But how can authorities defeat jihad when they’re afraid even to call it what it is? And that denial isn’t limited just to Katie Hobbs. AZFamily noted that “the arrest of Jalo, 17, highlights a trend of teenagers getting recruited or influenced by terror organizations.”
It quoted Seamus Hughes of the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) explaining: “You’re talking about individuals that are just forming kind of the process of who they are and trying to make sense of the world. And they’re finding that in an echo chamber online that says that their extremist beliefs are okay.”
Sure. There are, however, plenty of older people who share the same beliefs. Hughes, Hobbs, and the rest would do better to examine the nature of the jihadi appeal to young Muslims, and ponder why it resonates with them, instead of just tut-tutting about “online extremism.” Such an examination, however, would almost certainly lead into Islamic theology and doctrine, where the timid and politically correct resolutely refuse to venture. And so the denial and willful ignorance that gave us Marvin Aneer Jalo will give us many other young men like him.
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