The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is expanding its counter-terrorism efforts by launching a propaganda site for children, complete with a comically primitive video game that no kid would want to play.
The stated purpose of the FBI’s new program, called “Don’t Be A Puppet: Pull Back the Curtain on Violent Extremism,” is to “keep young people…from embracing violent extremist ideologies in the first place.”
While it is laudable to discourage young people from engaging in violence, the campaign reeks of hypocrisy. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, the U.S. government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
That’s why it’s hard to tell to who we should be thinking of when reading the FBI’s website.
More and more, violent extremists are trying to radicalize and recruit our nation’s youth, especially through the Internet and social media.
This website…uses a series of interactive materials to educate teens on the destructive nature of violent extremism and to encourage them to think critically about its messages and goals.
The site emphasizes that by blindly accepting radical ideologies, teens are essentially becoming the “puppets” of violent extremists who simply want them to carry out their destructive mission—which often includes targeting or killing innocent people.
These characterizations are certainly true of groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram, but they could also describe elected officials who whip the citizenry into supporting wars of aggression such as Vietnam and Iraq.
Radicalizing and recruiting youth into the “us vs. them” mindset, blindly accepting ideologies such as “pre-emptive war,” and accepting that the killing of innocent people is necessary for the cause, are all goals of puppet masters to recruit soldiers for military aggression.
Those are strategies of our own violent extremists such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama and all the other politicians who spouted lies and propaganda to gain acceptance and to prevent critical thinking about their messages and goals.
The free video game on the FBI website, called “The Slippery Slope to Violent Extremism,” involves a running goat that you maneuver with the left/right arrow keys to avoid hitting blocks. If you hit a block (which represents a violent extremist) too many times then you lose the game.
Upon losing, you’ll see a screen saying:
AVOID DISTORTED LOGIC:
Our group is under attack.
The enemy is responsible for this injustice.
We must defend our traditions.
The use of violence is the only way to defend our beliefs.
Our violent actions will result in a better future.
These catechisms could summarize the propaganda of U.S. politicians and MSM cheerleaders who revel in the false notion of American exceptionalism and the wicked might of the military-industrial complex.
They could be a summary of the Statement of Principles laid out by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think tank run by well-known war mongers that had long advocated for the invasion of Iraq and any country that stood in the way of American hegemony.
PNAC was active in the 1990s, finally achieving their goal of invading and occupying Iraq as part of an overarching strategy to gain military control of the region and geostrategic positioning. The founders of this disreputable group included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and others who worship at the altar of big government and military might.
Yes, let’s discourage kids from engaging in all forms of violent extremism, from foreign terrorist groups to the war-mongering of our own politicians.
Justin Gardner writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com
The FBI needs to PULL THEIR HEAD OUT and call violent extremism for what it really is. ISLAMIC MUSLIM EXTRMIST TERRORISTS!
The FBI needs to PULL THEIR HEAD OUT and call violent extremism for what it really is. ZIONISTJEWISH EXTREMIST TERRORISTS!
Since 9/11, about which the government lied, right wing terrorism has killed more people than Muslims or Zionists. Far outdistancing all, 150,000 Americans have killed each other in everyday murders.
STOP calling others what you really are, your statements are absurd and are seen for what they really are~
Amen sons of anarchy 5768 ME TOO
The US gun totting military is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,
By far the most violent and extremist ideology is Zionism.
Vietnam was the result of he spread of communism beyond the borders of the former USSR, China, and N Korea and the fact that Ike and JFK had promised the Free South Vietnam citizens protection from the communist North. The French and Vietnamese had requested military aid and some of the allied troops were from the UN. The brutal commie VC and NVA were imposing death, re-education camps and torture in order to eradicate any resistance. After a surprise attack, the Tet offensive that failed in early 1968, General Giap wrote in his memoirs that we had them on their knees ready to surrender. Then LBJ decided to go to the peace table and in effect surrendered to them. Thanks to the commie led riots and protest, and “Hanoi” Jane Fonda and her cronies, we left the South Vietnamese to suffer a defeat by the communist and the “killing fields” began. Nixon saved some face by bombing the crap out of Hanoi before we left. From a guy that was there. US Navy vet, 1966-1970; Hospitalman (HM2), FMF Corpsman “Doc”, Pharmacy Tech; the “Big E” (CVN-65), USS Repose (AH-16); USS Lexington (CVA/S/T-16); God Bless America, the most Exceptional Nation of the face of the Earth, ever; America, Home of the Free Because of the Brave; Anchors Aweigh, Semper Fi, Ooorah.
Bullshit. The Vietnam war started under french colonial control and continued. Despite the spectre of the commie boogeyman and fear of international communism the history speaks for its self. North Vietnam was invaded shortly after American withdrawal by the Chinese. This sucker punch from China occurred during the NVA invasion of Cambodia to crush the Khmer Rouge regime (an effort to not only depose a madman, but to reunify a Vietnam split up under French colonialism). Kinda throws a wrench in that international “communist solidarity” theory. The war for Vietnam was lost when we installed a puppet Jesuit dictator in South Vietnam that went about slaughtering Buddhists and non Catholics. There were egregious crimes on both sides, but the NVA were not the ones that started the war, nor did they intervene in a sovereign nation on behalf of a policy that was essentially support for colonialism.
All wars, are banker’s wars. France (a US ally that was leaning dangerously close to communism post WWII) had lost a lot of revenue when the Viet Minh kicked them out, and a US ally lost a strategic position near China. They sent you and your friends to die for a territorial pissing match and a bank investment. Then you got home to be subjected to a broken VA and a government that betrayed you and your comrades. A war prosecuted based on a lie (Gulf of Tonkin) that resulted in millions of innocent people being maimed, killed and poisoned (Agent Orange) including the US troops.