Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
A few years back, I (and many others) picked up on an emerging trend which has only intensified over time: the framing of “domestic terrorists” (meaning, in practice, any political opponents of the Deep State/Brandon regime) as something on par with foreign terrorists of the Islamic persuasion.
You may recall these fighting words from Former CIA Director John Brennan, now an MSNBC talking head, directed at “far-right” “domestic extremists” back in 2021:
“[The Biden intelligence services] are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas…
It brings together an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians. And unfortunately I think there’s been this momentum that generated as a result of unfortunately the demagogic rhetoric of people that’s just departed government, but also those who continue in the halls of Congress and so I really do think that the law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence, and even the defense officials are doing everything possible to root out what seems to be a very very serious and insidious threat to our democracy and our republic.”
“Even libertarians”!
And remember: “white supremacists” need not be white any longer; opposing racist government policies makes you a racist; “nativists” are individuals who don’t want endless foreign wars with no benefit to the taxpayers who finance them. These terms’ definitions are nothing if not malleable.
Now, reading off the same script, Deep State goon Paul Rieckhoff is calling for a new-age PATRIOT Act, the ultra-draconian legislation that enabled the worst excesses of the Bush-era, post-9/11 national security state.
“A lot of Americans are up for grabs. I wouldn’t dismiss it as just something only people on the right or watching Fox News latch on to. We are in a battle for hearts and minds and there people are on the fence.
You got to have leaders and messages and messengers and programs to get to those people that bring them over into community organizing and into non-profit organizations and away from the Patriot Front and Oathkeepers.
I think the parallels of 9/11 are important. We talked about this before. After 9/11, the laws didn’t work. They made massive changes to respond to a new threat. I think we have to face the fact that many structures, laws and policies may not work. After 9/11 we created the Department of Homeland Security, there was the PATRIOT Act. There was massive change in our entire society to face the number one threat, or at least what was communicated as the number one threat.
We need the same kind of tectonic shift.”
Let this be a lesson to us all (one that was actually offered by the Founders but that apparently we haven’t absorbed properly): granting sweeping new powers to any government, no matter how apparently benevolent, to conduct law enforcement activities in the dark with no accountability, under the guise of national security, is always, without fail, a Trojan Horse that ultimately comes back to bite the frightened, propagandized people who allowed it to happen in the first place.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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