![LewRockwell](https://lrc-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/2017/09/cropped-favicon-500x500-32x32.jpg)
By Ben Bartee
The Deep State has big plans for a very particular demographic among the US citizenry.
The terminologies tossed into the word salad vary (âdomestic extremist,â âhomegrown terrorist,â âright-wing fanatics,â âbitter clingers,â) but they all mean more or less the same thing: the conservative, Christian, gun-owning, mostly white, non-compliant remnants of the Middle America middle class.
Operating in lockstep, the apparatuses of the Deep State intelligence community/military-industrial complexâhave set sights squarely on uncooperative âlibertarianâ elements inside the US.
How precisely are âlibertarian extremistsâ â or whatever buzzword de jour the corporate media has weaponized at the moment â defined? Unsurprisingly, loosely and conveniently, however the Deep State wishes to, with a broad, imaginative brushstroke to sweep up the maximum volume of political opponents possible:
âan unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertariansâ
This posturing against âright-wing extremistsâ (again, simply meaning any individual or group who challenges the dominant neoliberal power structure) is not new in DC rhetoric, but it has intensified dramatically since the so-called âinsurrectionâ of January 6th:
âFormer CIA Director John Brennan made the statement that [the] Biden intel community [is] âmoving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can aboutâ the pro-Trump âinsurgencyââŠÂ 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.â
The CIA is by no means alone in its efforts â this is a carefully coordinated, tightly choreographed operation spanning multiple federal agencies (the so-called âalphabet boysâ for their myriad acronyms), including:
- The FBI
- Department of Defense
- Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
- Homeland Security
- NSA
- US Department of Justice
The US Department of Justice, the enormously powerful agency tasked with enforcing federal law, recently requested an 11% overall budget increase to âcombat domestic extremism, racial inequality, environmental degradation and gender violenceâ:
âAttorney General Merrick B. Garland told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Justice Department needs more money for Biden administration priorities including combating domestic extremism.⊠Mr. Garland has prioritized efforts to fight domestic terrorism and protect civil rights over the departmentâs focus during the Trump administration on street crime and gangsâŠ
The department is also seeking an additional $101 million to address the rising threat of domestic terrorism.â
One of the major priorities of the Deep Stateâs âcounter-extremismâ operations is disarming the American population. In its plea for more resources for the cause, the DOJ submitted a ârequest for an additional $232 million to curb gun violenceâ:
âThe additional funding would be used to⊠support improved background checks and more comprehensive red-flag laws, which allow the police to temporarily confiscate firearms from people who are deemed a danger to themselves or others.â
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In a nation whose schoolchildren learned real lessons from history and the tenants of civilized society, none of this would be tolerated. Unfortunately, instead, 21st-century children of American public schools learn about gender pronouns and critical race theory from lobotomized education majors fresh out of their indoctrination camps in the liberal social sciences.
What is afoot is the American Empire crumbling in on itself, the comeuppance of decades of public indifference to immoral foreign occupations, of millions of dead civilians overseas, all in the service of advancing the interests of a tiny globalist elite that benefits from war.
The citizenry did nothing to stop the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, and now the ruling eliteâs tools of external control and subjugation of far-away populations have been turned inward.
Consequently, normal Americans â even non-violent, relatively apolitical ones who go to work, love their families, and just want to be left alone â are now in the crosshairs of a murderous, bloodthirsty national security state.
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Again, the phenomenon of a government directing its violence onto the population it theoretically exists to protect is not an overnight development.
Since the heyday of the Bush-era neoconsâ Orwellian, unwinnable âWar on Terror,â civil liberty activists have warned that the siege tactics employed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other immoral foreign wars would inevitably be imported onto US soil for use on the American population.
âThis ainât police work. No, it ainât. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your fucking enemy. And soon the neighborhood that youâre supposed to be policing, thatâs just occupied territory.â
â Maj. Howard âBunnyâ Colvin, The Wire
The new âWar on Domestic Terrorâ waged by the Deep State â aided and abetted by the corporate media â is not about âliberationâ or protecting democracy, just as the previous âWar on Terrorâ at the turn of the century was not about those things in the far-off regions where it was waged.
Instead, what we are witnessing is an unprecedented attempt to assert domination and control over an uncompliant US populace increasingly frustrated with the unrepresentative federalized forces that occupy their land â only this time, the battlefields will be Nebraska and Mississippi, not Fallujah, and the âinsurgentsâ are average Americans, not Iraqis.
When they are met with force, and agents of the repressive federal state killed, as will inevitably occur, it will not be the Nebraska corn farmer who is to blame. Self-defense is an inalienable right of free people everywhere.