Department of Homeland Security Targets Conservatives & Obama Critics
This very well may be the scariest thing you will ever read. From Michelle Malkin:
Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real
By Michelle Malkin • April 14, 2009 12:01 AM
Yesterday, Roger Hedgecock and the Liberty Papers posted an unclassified DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis report titled:
Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.
The “report” (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.
I spent the day chasing down DHS spokespeople, who have been tied up preparing for a very important homeland security event later today: The First Lady is coming to visit their Washington office. Priorities, you know.
Well, the press office got back to me and verified that the document is indeed for real.
They were very defensive — preemptively so — in asserting that it was not a politicized document and that DHS had done reports on “leftwing extremism” in the past. I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.
By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.
In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.
From the report, p.2:
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority (i.e. supporters of the 10th Amendment! -Admin), or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration. (If you have a pro-life bumper sticker, you are a terrorist threat. -Admin)
From the report. p. 3:
(U//LES) Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.
(U) Exploiting Economic Downturn
(U//FOUO) Rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet continues to focus on the economy, the perceived loss of U.S. jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and home foreclosures. Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish “financial elites.” These “accusatory” tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs. DHS/I&A assesses this trend is likely to accelerate if the economy is perceived to worsen.
From the report, p. 5:
(U//FOUO) Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration (read: anti-illegal-immigration. -Admin) or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.
And echoing the anti-military bigotry last seen in that disgusting Penn State University training video, there’s this on p. 7:
(U) Disgruntled Military Veterans
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today. (In other words, our vets can’t think for themselves. Once you serve your country, you must be monitored as to not develop any personal opinions which might disagree with Obama and the left. -Admin)
There’s no hackneyed left-wing stereotype of conservatives left behind in this DHS intelligence and analysis assessment. I asked both DHS spokespeople to tell me who, specifically, the report was accusing of “rightwing extremist chatter” and which “antigovernment” groups are being monitored as “extremists.” They say they’ll get back to me.
In the meantime, be aware of this from the report, p. 8:
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.
Better make a few last-minute signs for the Tea Party. Obama’s DHS is watching:
Honk if you’re a radicalized rightwing extremist!
Guilty of rightwing extremist chatter
Anti-government, pro-freedom: Sue me
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Previous: Missouri retracts report linking militias, 3rd party candidates.
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Oh, I’m sure DHS will be issuing its report on self-proclaimed bank terrorists like Bruce Marks of NACA and criminal rackeeters harassing private citizens in their homes to “exploit the economic downturn” any day now.
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Update: John Hinderaker weighs in the report.
Also good reading in Jonah Goldberg’s thread here.
Remember, this is how Hitler took over; he targeted those groups and individuals that disagreed with him. More from HotAir.com:
The first question we should ask is whether the DHS is reacting to any specific threats at all? Er … no (emphasis mine):
The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.
This gets repeated over and over again during the report. They have no threat information. In fact, the report can’t even say definitively whether “extremists” are gaining “new recruits”. In order to find that, they’d have to identify the actual groups, note the recruiting patterns, and determine whether in fact they’re gaining recruits or losing members. Bottom line: DHS has no actual data. They’re pulling threats out of their collective arse and publishing them without any supporting research whatsoever.
DHS acts as though white-supremacist groups and militias believing in Zionist world conspiracies stopped existing between 2000 and 2008. Of course they didn’t; George Bush’s strong support for Israel fed those nutcase groups for eight years. Are those groups growing in the last five months, after what DHS assumes is the trigger for all this hate — the election of Barack Obama? They provide absolutely no evidence at all for it, and in fact repeat over and over again that they don’t have that data in a hail of May Bes.
So what’s triggered their antennae?
The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.
In the first place, the “outsourcing of jobs” outrage didn’t get stoked by the Right. That outrage got fed by the Democrats in the last two elections, and it’s a feature of the same anti-globalization loons of the hard Left that continually disrupt G-20 summits as they violently did in London. Barack Obama himself stoked a fair share of it during the presidential campaign with his NAFTA Dance.
And should we not have some concern about the economic recession, debate about trade policy, and insist on maintaining American power and sovereignty? Since when did those topics indicate criminality and terrorism?
DHS also manages to make several hysterical references to returning veterans. I’ll highlight the weasel words and provide the translation at the end:
The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.
Gee, it could lead? What evidence does DHS have of this? Oh, yeah, Timothy McVeigh was a veteran … and that’s it. I’m not joking:
After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.
So let’s be terrified of veterans! Let’s treat them all like potential suspects, even though we don’t have one iota of evidence of any wrongdoing at all. Yeah, that’s the American way.
Imagine, if you will, what the Left would say if we took this entire document and replaced all references to “military veterans” with “Muslims”, and all references to “abortion” with “universal health care”, and then predated this DHS report to 2008, during the Bush administration. They’d be screaming about being smeared as traitors for their political beliefs, and they’d be right to do so. That’s exactly what the Obama administration and Janet Napolitano has done here.
This is a disgrace. Congress should demand Napolitano’s resignation immediately, and the White House should apologize for this attack on normal political dissent.
Update: A few say that the DHS has to track threats and give these kinds of assessments. Read the report again. DHS can’t find any threats, nor do they provide even a hint that they have any evidence that extremism on the Right has increased. They don’t claim to see increases in fringe-group memberships from last year, or even last decade. This report is filled with nothing but completely unsupported conjecture about what might happen if people get upset about the economy or a retreat on American sovereignty. It’s not an honest national-security threat assessment at all. It’s a political hit piece aimed at this administration’s critics in order to cast them as extremists.
Update II: My friend Jazz Shaw files this under “fauxrage”, which makes a nice companion set with Obamteurisms. Read the whole thing, but I’ll challenge my pal to identify one actual threat cited by DHS, or one set of actual data in the entire report. Oh, and the veteran thing? I’m not the one who took offense to that. Talk to the American Legion, which is extremely unhappy with DHS at the moment.
So all veterans are represented by Timothy McVeigh. How would these same people react if I implied that all muslims were represented by Osama Bin Laden?
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Hi,
Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.
Charlie
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