Obama Readies Citizen Spies For Action

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market

I think at this point it is fair to say that the name “Barack Obama” has become irrevocably synonymous with the phrase “Brownshirts”, and with very good reason. Riding the euphoric wave of a Prozac-addled collectivist saturated puppy-love election season, the teleprompter dependent basketball playing android immediately launched several programs designed to centralize community organization using federal oversight. One of these initiatives, ‘The Universal Voluntary Public Service Program’, stood out as one of the most unabashedly fascist concepts to come out of any presidential administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s forced internment of innocent Japanese Americans. The idea of requiring citizens to “volunteer” for quasi-military or federal service and subsequent statist indoctrination didn’t play too well with the majority of the public, and has, for now, been abandoned.

The problem with governments with aspirations of totalitarianism, however, is that they never actually fully give up on any reach for power. Instead, they shelve one tactic and try out another, until the citizenry starts to nibble the bait.

To be fair, this behavior was going on long before Obama, and his particularly unhinged presidency is only an amalgamation of all those corrupt puppet politicians that came before him.

Much of the police state apparatus we see being slowly inserted into our daily lives was constructed in stages. George W. Bush’s implementation of the Patriot Acts, the DHS, and the FISA Bill, for instance, gave Obama an easy framework of tyranny to build on. Whoever globalists deem suitable to replace Obama in 2012 or 2016 (if we even have the option of rigged elections by then), will certainly carry on where he left off (perhaps Rick Perry can have an insincere prayer circle with his Fusion Center hit squads before heading out to attend another Bilderberg conference).

That said, Obama and the DHS under his administration have had a particularly busy couple of years. While our attentions have been understandably captivated by concerns over the economic collapse which is unfolding right before our very eyes, a new push for the induction of community groups into the fold of the Homeland Security apparatus is taking place. The key to any successful tyranny, of course, is the inclusion of average and ignorant citizens who become the eyes and ears of the offending bureaucracy. With the unveiling of the White House’s “Counter Extremism Plan” this past month, the process of recruiting citizen spies has been put on the fast track.

Countering “Extremism”?

With a minimum of fanfare, the White House in the first week of August released an eight page white paper entitled ‘Empowering Local Partners To Prevent Violent Extremism In The United States’:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/empowering_local_partners.pdf

The content is decidedly bland, and typically uninformative, spotted with broad statements and empty proclamations of “patriotism and freedom” (which I found disingenuous and rather offensive). In fact, the whole document could have easily been summarized down to two paragraphs without losing anything of importance. The real issues inherent in the paper do not concern what is said, but what is NOT said….

To begin with, not once does the White House or the DHS ever actually define what they mean specifically by “extremism”. What is extremism? What signs exactly are communities supposed to be watching their neighbors for? The White House release, as well as the very similar DOJ project, ‘Guidance For Building Communities Of Trust’ (BCOT), never outline what they believe extremism is, or how they plan to identify and thwart it. The assertion made in these public releases is apparently that you and I should simply KNOW already what an extremist is, how he is supposed to behave, and how he stands out in comparison to “non-extremists”.

An analytic NPR piece covering the Local Partners paper attempts to flesh out greater details on the program which is slated to move forward over the course of the next 6 to 12 months:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/04/138955790/white-house-unveils-counter-extremism-plan

The article falls pretty flat (you can’t expect much depth from NPR), but, certain passages are revealing. On the whole, we are seeing an acceleration of the rhetoric surrounding the now infamous idea of “white Al-Qaeda”. That is to say, we are being asked to believe that an organization of Middle Eastern CIA assets trained and utilized for terrorist applications is apparently looking to recruit troubled American teens and lonely guys in basement apartments to do their super evil bidding. I know . . . it’s diabolical.

The government has gone to great lengths to perpetuate the absurd notion of a widespread Al-Qaeda network infecting every region of the country and comprised of people from all walks of life, of all religions, and of all ethnic persuasions. To their credit, Al-Qaeda is arguably the most inclusive fake terrorist organization in history.

While the above government papers and shill articles refrain from laying out specific attributes of the dreaded extremists they seek to oppose, they have already made these signals quite clear in other documents which were not meant to be so public. Who can forget the leaked MIAC Report, or the Virginia Fusion Center Report, which categorized Ron Paul supporters, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, anyone who talks about economic collapse, and anyone who owns a Gadsden Flag, as possible extremists or terrorists. The government later stated that the MIAC Report was an “embarrassing mistake”, and that such slip ups would be corrected in the future. The DHS, though, was obviously not embarrassed by the content of the reports. Otherwise, they never would have shoved them into the hands of state police where they would be quickly applied. Rather, the DHS was embarrassed that such reports were openly exposed.

And what about the post trial statements of the DOJ’s Anne Tompkins, who after railroading Liberty Dollar founder Bernard von NotHaus, stated that even those who create alternative currencies and decoupled markets, though not violent, are still akin to “domestic terrorists”. This along with other attacks on non-conformist groups from raw food producers to bloggers shows that the government is less concerned with “violent” extremists as it is concerned with anyone who seeks to walk away from the controlled mainstream system.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) continues to this day to pigeonhole all traditional conservatives (as opposed to globalist Neo Conservatives) using arbitrary labels and unsupported documentation in a shameless frenzy of false association. I don’t think I have ever heard Mark Potok say the words “Patriot”, or “Constitutionalist”, without using the words “Extremist” or “Racist” in the same sentence. This is the same organization that feeds “intelligence” on so called extremist groups to fusion centers and local law enforcement. They tell the cops who to profile. They work with the DHS to create the training models which are then utilized by police. You want to know who the White House considers an extremist? If you are reading this article now, then you probably fit their list.

Community Or Collective?

Why is it so important for the DHS and the White House to condition the public to associate “extremist behaviors” (often normal behaviors) of regular Americans with the Al-Qaeda brand name? The excerpts from the NPR article disclose the motivation below:

When al-Qaida was sending operatives into the U.S., it made sense to rely on federal agencies to catch them at the border or arrest them as plots were discovered. But as terrorists groups have turned to American operatives who are already here, it makes sense to take the fight to the grass-roots level…  

The White House envisions bringing together a roster of agencies and departments — from the Department of Education to the Labor Department and Energy Department — to provide local officials the tools they need to counter radicalization…

The law enforcement trust initiatives will hold round tables that allow community leaders to help cops distinguish, for example, between an innocent cultural behavior and possible criminal activity…

And there you have it! Using the Counter Extremism program as a catalyst, the White House and the DHS plan to link together and centralize organizations as unrelated as the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, in tandem with community contacts, around a national witch hunt for anyone the government happens to deem undesirable. This process will be achieved through the NSI (Nationwide SAR Initiative), an effort to create a standardized information hub used for gathering, documenting, processing, analyzing, storing, and sharing terrorism related suspicious activity reports.

We have already seen the beginnings of this monstrosity in the construction of numerous Fusion Centers, which meld together elements of the FBI, CIA, and DOD and effectively militarize local law enforcement. It has also reared its ugly head in the form of the “See Something Say Something” initiative, which calls on citizens to become amateur informants, keeping their eyes open for dastardly warning signals of extremism, like white guys in hoodies, driving cargo vans, and taking pictures with cell phones while writing in notebooks:

The paranoia that the DHS is trying to illicit goes far beyond the absurd, but this is what happens in all countries that devolve into tyranny. The absurd becomes rational, and reason becomes criminal. Some skeptics may deny that these programs will ever be implemented at the community level on a scale that makes them threatening to civil liberties. I disagree. The danger is already taking shape. Oath Keepers recently came into possession of an FBI Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force handout given to Military Surplus Stores, directing owners to take note of specific purchases like:

Weatherproofed Ammunition Or Match Containers


Meals Ready To Eat


Night Vision Devices; Night Flashlights; Gas Masks


High Capacity Magazines


Bipods Or Tripods For Rifles

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/wp-content/uploads/ColoradoFBISurplusStore.pdf

These are very common purchases, not for terrorists, but for Preppers and Survivalists, who are obviously the targets of the FBI profile, not secret Al-Qaeda agents. The handout goes on to list behaviors such as “making anti-U.S. or radical theological comments (?)” or “insisting on paying in cash”, as signs of terrorism. It even instructs store owners to subtly interrogate their customers in order to draw a fuller profile. THIS IS CALLED CITIZEN SPYING. Period.

The FBI Denver Handout is a perfect example of the oligarchic quest not for community participation, but for hardcore collectivism. That is to say, corrupt leaderships are not interested in community safety, or the elevation of individuals which make up a neighborhood, town, or city, but the manipulation of these people into mere extensions of the state itself. A procedure by which individuals are subdued and conscripted as mouthpieces and listening devices; weapons to be used, not to safeguard their community, but to enslave it.

The Counter Extremism Program falsely paints an image of community cooperation with federal agencies as balanced and mutual. It attempts to deflect fears of Orwellian oversight by suggesting the introduction of “Community Advisory Boards”, which would ostensibly wield the power to demand transparency in federal activities. In fact, such advisory boards are the perfect petri dish in which to condition local leaders into furthering the goals of centralization. As in despotic societies of the past, they go in thinking they are in charge, and come out as brainscrubbed servants of a dishonest regime. In this way, communities are pacified and wielded for state purposes, until those left who refuse to conform become utterly surrounded and fearful, never knowing who is and who is not watching their every move. As explained plainly in the BCOT:

In addition to engaging communities on a wide range of issues, the Federal Government is using its convening power to help build a network of individuals, groups, civil society organizations, and private sector actors to support community-based efforts to counter violent extremism. Myriad groups with tools and capabilities to counter radicalization to violence often operate in separate spheres of activ­ity and therefore do not know one another. The Federal Government, with its connections to diverse networks across the country, has a unique ability to draw together the constellation of previously uncon­nected efforts and programs to form a more cohesive enterprise against violent extremism…

The Sad Life Of The Citizen Spy

Projects for “community policing” like those being introduced by the White House and the myriad sewage swells of alphabet agencies in this country attract a very particular kind of person. Citizen spies tend to be rather uninteresting and unaccomplished people stricken with feelings of repressed inferiority and a complete lack of individual awareness. Their frantic need for outside acknowledgment, regardless of how superficial, is insatiable. Being unable to achieve anything truly meaningful in their spurious lives and generally shunned by anyone with an iota of self respect, the desire to feel important or accepted leads them to participate in the most vile government sanctioned crimes, if only to belong to the “winning team” or the “greater good”.

Ultimately, citizen spies sacrifice much more than they expect while vying for their fifteen minutes of fame or a firm pat on the head from Big Brother. While naively believing themselves to be superheroes, or pillars of the community for their relentless subversion of free speech and civil dissent, they soon discover that their lifestyle leads to alienation. No one trusts an informant, not even other informants. In the event that the leadership they serve is overthrown, citizen spies are relegated to the very worst levels of reprisal and hatred. People remember well the transgressions of lying governments, but reserve a special brand of fury for lying neighbors. It is truly the citizen spy that makes totalitarianism possible. Without them, there can be no censorship, there can be no stifling of protest, there can be no disruption of organized resistance, there can be no full spectrum dominance. In order to maintain control, despots require citizens to police each other. This is the sole purpose of the Counter Extremism Plan. To make us fear, suspect, and subjugate each other, so that elites can sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of our self imposed dystopia.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: [email protected]

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