Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?
Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?
Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.
Mind you, the government has begun using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
Moreover, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that can be used to identify an individual (especially anyone who disagrees with the government) as a potential domestic terrorist.
Let that sink in a moment.
If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your religious or political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
According to one FBI report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”
In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.
So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?
For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal — surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc. — to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous.
In addition to carrying out heightened surveillance on Americans who may be perceived as anti-government, the government is also grooming the American people to spy on each other.
As part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”
Journalist Leo Hohmann explains: “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”
Moreover, as internal documents released by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year reveal, the FBI has also been plotting to enlist churches and other places of worship in spying and informing on their congregants.
The concern with these kinds of programs, of course, is not only that they chill lawful First Amendment activity, but that they paint with such a broad brush as to render lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.
Following the current trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, watched all the time, and rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
We’re almost at that point now.
Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government.
Certainly, in an age when the government has significant technological resources at its disposal to not only carry out warrantless surveillance on American citizens but also to harvest and mine that data for its own dubious purposes, whether it be crime-mapping or profiling based on whatever criteria the government wants to use to target and segregate the populace — including race, religion or politics — the potential for abuse is grave.
Partisan politics have no place in this debate.
Any attempt by a government agency to establish a system by which the populace can be targeted, tracked, singled out, and spied upon based upon their ideological viewpoints and affiliations must be met with extreme caution.
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books “The Erik Blair Diaries” and “Battlefield America: The War on the American People” are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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