Who Is A “Terrorist” In Biden’s America? | Greanville Post

Far from being a war against “white supremacy,” the Biden administration’s new “domestic terror” strategy clearly targets primarily those who oppose US government overreach and those who oppose capitalism and/or globalization.

In the latest sign that the US government’s War on Domestic Terror is growing in scope and scale, the White House on Tuesday revealed the nation’s first ever government-wide strategy for confronting domestic terrorism. While cloaked in language about stemming racially motivated violence, the strategy places those deemed “anti-government” or “anti-authority” on a par with racist extremists and charts out policies that could easily be abused to silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government.

Even more disturbing is the call to essentially fuse intelligence agencies, law enforcement, Silicon Valley, and “community” and “faith-based” organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, as well as unspecified foreign governments, as partners in this “war,” which the strategy makes clear will rely heavily on a pre-crime orientation focused largely on what is said on social media and encrypted platforms. Though the strategy claims that the government will “shield free speech and civil liberties” in implementing this policy, its contents reveal that it is poised to gut both.

Indeed, while framed publicly as chiefly targeting “right-wing white supremacists,” the strategy itself makes it clear that the government does not plan to focus on the Right but instead will pursue “domestic terrorists” in “an ideologically neutral, threat-driven manner,” as the law “makes no distinction based on political view—left, right or center.” It also states that a key goal of this strategic framework is to ensure “that there is simply no governmental tolerance . . . of violence as an acceptable mode of seeking political or social change,” regardless of a perpetrator’s political affiliation.

Considering that the main cheerleaders for the War on Domestic Terror exist mainly in establishment left circles, such individuals should rethink their support for this new policy given that the above statements could easily come to encompass Black Lives Matter–related protests, such as those that transpired last summer, depending on which political party is in power.

Once the new infrastructure is in place, it will remain there and will be open to the same abuses perpetrated by both political parties in the US during the lengthy War on Terror following September 11, 2001. The history of this new “domestic terror” policy, including its origins in the Trump administration, makes this clear.

It’s Never Been Easier to Be a “Terrorist”

In introducing the strategy, the Biden administration cites “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as a key reason for the new policy and a main justification for the War on Domestic Terror in general. This was most recently demonstrated Tuesday in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statement announcing this new strategy. However, the document itself puts “anti-government” or “anti-authority” “extremists” in the same category as violent white supremacists in terms of being a threat to the homeland. The strategy’s characterization of such individuals is unsettling.

For instance, those who “violently oppose” “all forms of capitalism” or “corporate globalization” are listed under this less-discussed category of “domestic terrorist.” This highlights how people on the left, many of whom have called for capitalism to be dismantled or replaced in the US in recent years, could easily be targeted in this new “war” that many self-proclaimed leftists are currently supporting. Similarly, “environmentally-motivated extremists,” a category in which groups such as Extinction Rebellion could easily fall, are also included.

In addition, the phrasing indicates that it could easily include as “terrorists” those who oppose the World Economic Forum’s vision for global “stakeholder capitalism,” as that form of “capitalism” involves corporations and their main “stakeholders” creating a new global economic and governance system. The WEF’s stakeholder capitalism thus involves both “capitalism” and “corporate globalization.”

The strategy also includes those who “take steps to violently resist government authority . . . based on perceived overreach.” This, of course, creates a dangerous situation in which the government could, purposely or otherwise, implement a policy that is an obvious overreach and/or blatantly unconstitutional and then label those who resist it “domestic terrorists” and deal with them as such—well before the overreach can be challenged in court.

Another telling addition to this group of potential “terrorists” is “any other individual or group who engages in violence—or incites imminent violence—in opposition to legislative, regulatory or other actions taken by the government.” Thus, if the government implements a policy that a large swath of the population finds abhorrent, such as launching a new, unpopular war abroad, those deemed to be “inciting” resistance to the action online could be considered domestic terrorists.

Such scenarios are not unrealistic, given the loose way in which the government and the media have defined things like “incitement” and even “violence” (e. g., hate speech” is a form of violence) in the recent past. The situation is ripe for manipulation and abuse. To think the federal government (including the Biden administration and subsequent administrations) would not abuse such power reflects an ignorance of US political history, particularly when the main forces behind most terrorist incidents in the nation are actually US government institutions like the FBI (more FBI examples hereherehere, and here).

Furthermore, the original plans for the detention of American dissidents in the event of a national emergency, drawn up during the Reagan era as part of its “continuity of government” contingency, cited popular nonviolent opposition to US intervention in Latin America as a potential “emergency” that could trigger the activation of those plans. Many of those “continuity of government” protocols remain on the books today and can be triggered, depending on the whims of those in power. It is unlikely that this new domestic terror framework will be any different regarding nonviolent protest and demonstrations.

Yet another passage in this section of the strategy states that “domestic terrorists” can, “in some instances, connect and intersect with conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.” It adds that the proliferation of such “dangerous” information “on Internet-based communications platforms such as social media, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, all of these elements can combine and amplify threats to public safety.”

Thus, the presence of “conspiracy theories” and information deemed by the government to be “misinformation” online is itself framed as threatening public safety, a claim made more than once in this policy document. Given that a major “pillar” of the strategy involves eliminating online material that promotes “domestic terrorist” ideologies, it seems inevitable that such efforts will also “connect and intersect” with the censorship of “conspiracy theories” and narratives that the establishment finds inconvenient or threatening for any reason.

Pillars of Tyranny

The strategy notes in several places that this new domestic-terror policy will involve a variety of public-private partnerships in order to “build a community to address domestic terrorism that extends not only across the Federal Government but also to critical partners.” It adds, “That includes state, local, tribal and territorial governments, as well as foreign allies and partners, civil society, the technology sector, academic, and more.”

The mention of foreign allies and partners is important as it suggests a multinational approach to what is supposedly a US “domestic” issue and is yet another step toward a transnational security-state apparatus. A similar multinational approach was used to devastating effect during the CIA-developed Operation Condor, which was used to target and “disappear” domestic dissidents in South America in the 1970s and 1980s. The foreign allies mentioned in the Biden administration’s strategy are left unspecified, but it seems likely that such allies would include the rest of the Five Eyes alliance (the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) and Israel, all of which already have well-established information-sharing agreements with the US for signals intelligence.

The new domestic-terror strategy has four main “pillars,” which can be summarized as (1) understanding and sharing domestic terrorism-related information, including with foreign governments and private tech companies; (2) preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; (3) disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and (4) confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.

The first pillar involves the mass accumulation of data through new information-sharing partnerships and the deepening of existing ones. Much of this information sharing will involve increased data mining and analysis of statements made openly on the internet, particularly on social media, something already done by US intelligence contractors such as Palantir. While the gathering of such information has been ongoing for years, this policy allows even more to be shared and legally used to make cases against individuals deemed to have made threats or expressed “dangerous” opinions online.

Included in the first pillar is the need to increase engagement with financial institutions concerning the financing of “domestic terrorists.” US banks, such as Bank of America, have already gone quite far in this regard, leading to accusations that it has begun acting like an intelligence agency. Such claims were made after it was revealed that the BofA had passed to the government the private banking information of over two hundred people that the bank deemed as pointing to involvement in the events of January 6, 2021. It seems likely, given this passage in the strategy, that such behavior by banks will soon become the norm, rather than an outlier, in the United States.

The second pillar is ostensibly focused on preventing the online recruitment of domestic terrorists and online content that leads to the “mobilization of violence.” The strategy notes that this pillar “means reducing both supply and demand of recruitment materials by limiting widespread availability online and bolstering resilience to it by those who nonetheless encounter it.“ The strategy states that such government efforts in the past have a “mixed record,” but it goes on to claim that trampling on civil liberties will be avoided because the government is “consulting extensively” with unspecified “stakeholders” nationwide.

Regarding recruitment, the strategy states that “these activities are increasingly happening on Internet-based communications platforms, including social media, online gaming platforms, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, even as those products and services frequently offer other important benefits.” It adds that “the widespread availability of domestic terrorist recruitment material online is a national security threat whose front lines are overwhelmingly private-sector online platforms.”

The US government plans to provide “information to assist online platforms with their own initiatives to enforce their own terms of service that prohibits the use of their platforms for domestic terrorist activities” as well as to “facilitate more robust efforts outside the government to counter terrorists’ abuse of Internet-based communications platforms.”

Given the wider definition of “domestic terrorist” that now includes those who oppose capitalism and corporate globalization as well as those who resist government overreach, online content discussing these and other “anti-government” and “anti-authority” ideas could soon be treated in the same way as online Al Qaeda or ISIS propaganda. Efforts, however, are unlikely to remain focused on these topics. As Unlimited Hangoutreported last November, both UK intelligence and the US national-security state were developing plans to treat critical reporting on the COVID-19 vaccines as “extremist” propaganda.

Another key part of this pillar is the need to “increase digital literacy” among the American public, while censoring “harmful content” disseminated by “terrorists” as well as by “hostile foreign powers seeking to undermine American democracy.” The latter is a clear reference to the claim that critical reporting of US government policy, particularly its military and intelligence activities abroad, was the product of “Russian disinformation,” a now discredited claim that was used to heavily censor independent media. This new government strategy appears to promise more of this sort of thing.

It also notes that “digital literacy” education for a domestic audience is being developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Such a policy would have previously violated US law until the Obama administration worked with Congress to repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, thus lifting the ban on the government directing propaganda at domestic audiences.

The third pillar of the strategy seeks to increase the number of federal prosecutors investigating and trying domestic-terror cases. Their numbers are likely to jump as the definition of “domestic terrorist” is expanded. It also seeks to explore whether “legislative reforms could meaningfully and materially increase our ability to protect Americans from acts of domestic terrorism while simultaneously guarding against potential abuse of overreach.” In contrast to past public statements on police reform by those in the Biden administration, the strategy calls to “empower” state and local law enforcement to tackle domestic terrorism, including with increased access to “intelligence” on citizens deemed dangerous or subversive for any number of reasons.

To that effect, the strategy states the following (p. 24):“The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, with support from the National Counterterrorism Center [part of the intelligence community], are incorporating an increased focus on domestic terrorism into current intelligence products and leveraging current mechanisms of information and intelligence sharing to improve the sharing of domestic terrorism-related content and indicators with non-Federal partners. These agencies are also improving the usability of their existing information-sharing platforms, including through the development of mobile applications designed to provide a broader reach to non-Federal law enforcement partners, while simultaneously refining that support based on partner feedback.”

Such an intelligence tool could easily be, for example, Palantir, which is already used by the intelligence agencies, the DHS, and several US police departments for “predictive policing,” that is, pre-crime actions. Notably, Palantir has long included a “subversive” label for individuals included on government and law enforcement databases, a parallel with the controversial and highly secretive Main Core database of US dissidents.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the “pre-crime” element of the new domestic terror strategy explicit on Tuesday when he said in a statement that DHS would continue “developing key partnerships with local stakeholders through the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to identify potential threats and prevent terrorism.” CP3, which replaced DHS’ Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention this past May, officially “supports communities across the United States to prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence and intervene when individuals have already radicalized to violence.”

The fourth pillar of the strategy is by far the most opaque and cryptic, while also the most far-reaching. It aims to address the sources that cause “terrorists” to mobilize “towards violence.” This requires “tackling racism in America,” a lofty goal for an administration headed by the man who controversially eulogized Congress’ most ardent segregationist and who was a key architect of the 1994 crime bill. As well, it provides for “early intervention and appropriate care for those who pose a danger to themselves or others.”

In regard to the latter proposal, the Trump administration, in a bid to “stop mass shootings before they occur,” considered a proposal to create a health DARPA” or “HARPA” that would monitor the online communications of everyday Americans for “neuropsychiatric” warning signs that someone might be “mobilizing towards violence.” While the Trump administration did not create HARPA or adopt this policy, the Biden administration has recently announced plans to do so.

Finally, the strategy indicates that this fourth pillar is part of a “broader priority”: “enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.” In other words, fostering trust in government while simultaneously censoring “polarizing” voices who distrust or criticize the government is a key policy goal behind the Biden administration’s new domestic-terror strategy.

Calling Their Shots?

While this is a new strategy, its origins lie in the Trump administration. In October 2019, Trump’s attorney general William Barr formally announced in a memorandum that a new “national disruption and early engagement program” aimed at detecting those “mobilizing towards violence” before they commit any crime would launch in the coming months. That program, known as DEEP (Disruption and Early Engagement Program), is now active and has involved the Department of Justice, the FBI, and “private sector partners” since its creation.

Barr’s announcement of DEEP followed his unsettling “prediction” in July 2019 that “a major incident may occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.” Not long after that speech, a spate of mass shootings occurred, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, which killed twenty-three and about which many questions remain unanswered regarding the FBI’s apparent foreknowledge of the event. After these events took place in 2019, Trump called for the creation of a government backdoor into encryption and the very pre-crime system that Barr announced shortly thereafter in October 2019. The Biden administration, in publishing this strategy, is merely finishing what Barr started.

Indeed, a “prediction” like Barr’s in 2019 was offered by the DHS’ Elizabeth Neumann during a Congressional hearing in late February 2020. That hearing was largely ignored by the media as it coincided with an international rise of concern regarding COVID-19. At the hearing, Neumann, who previously coordinated the development of the government’s post-9/11 terrorism information sharing strategies and policies and worked closely with the intelligence community, gave the following warning about an imminent “domestic terror” event in the United States:“And every counterterrorism professional I speak to in the federal government and overseas feels like we are at the doorstep of another 9/11, maybe not something that catastrophic in terms of the visual or the numbers, but that we can see it building and we don’t quite know how to stop it.”

This “another 9/11” emerged on January 6, 2021, as the events of that day in the Capitol were quickly labeled as such by both the media and prominent politicians, while also inspiring calls from the White House and the Democrats for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the incident. This event, of course, figures prominently in the justification for the new domestic-terror strategy, despite the considerable video and other evidence that shows that Capitol law enforcement, and potentially the FBI, were directly involved in facilitating the breach of the Capitol. In addition, when one considers that the QAnon movement, which had a clear role in the events of January 6, was itself likely a government-orchestrated psyop, the government hand in creating this situation seems clear.

It goes without saying that the official reasons offered for these militaristic “domestic terror” policies, which the US has already implemented abroad—causing much more terror than it has prevented—does not justify the creation of a massive new national-security infrastructure that aims to criminalize and censor online speech. Yet the admission that this new strategy, as part of a broader effort to “enhance faith in government,” combines domestic propaganda campaigns with the censorship and pursuit of those who distrust government heralds the end of even the illusion of democracy in the United States.

Source: Greanville Post

Modern America & Its So-Called ‘Democratic’ Allies Have Turned Into ‘Liberal-Totalitarian’ States, Claims Russia’s Top Spy | RT.com

By Jonny Tickle

The US and some other Western nations held up as “models of liberal democracy” are rapidly turning into totalitarian regimes reminiscent of the Soviet Union, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has claimed.

Speaking on Thursday at the Moscow Conference on International Security, Sergey Naryshkin claimed that there are “almost all signs of a totalitarian dictatorship” in some Western countries, including a “monopoly on the media,” the “police nature of the state,” and the “irremovability of oligarchic elites.”

“It is astonishing to see how the West is trying to divide our diverse world into two completely artificial camps – a supposedly democratic one and a supposedly authoritarian one,” Naryshkin said, noting Russia, China, and Iran have been placed into the second camp, along with NATO ally Turkey and, on some issues, EU member state Poland.

“The US and other so-called models of liberal democracy seem not to notice that they themselves are rapidly turning into a liberal-totalitarian regime,” the chief spook said.

According to Naryshkin, the West’s imposition of ideological attitudes is somewhat reminiscent of the history of the late Soviet Union, in that it doesn’t even believe the values it tries to project abroad.

However, the head spy pointed to the US-Russia summit in Switzerland earlier this month as a potential turning point, noting that he hopes the West will be able to use “the spirit of Geneva to try to build a safer and fairer world.”

Naryshkin’s belief that the West is attempting to split the world into ‘democratic’ and ‘authoritarian’ echoes a statement made by Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu at the same conference on Wednesday.

“Today, a new trend is coming to the fore,” Shoygu said. “The formation of global coalitions, the division of the world into ‘friends’ and ‘strangers.’”

Source: RT.com

Three Men Who Own & Control Corporate America | No More Fake News

By Jon Rappoport

Editor’s Note: Let’s say you own a company. You’re public, meaning you issue stock for sale. Suddenly, the fake pandemic hits. The governor of the state issues restrictions, including lockdowns. You have to close your doors. You’re going to take a staggering financial hit. Your first reaction? Anger. Seething anger. You’re determined to fight back. You call your lawyer to work out a plan. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I have some bad news. Do you know who is now the majority shareholder of your company? Bill Gates. And he has voting rights. If you object to the lockdowns, he’ll roast you alive. You’ll be out on your ass.”

In every case, these people completely and utterly support conventional medical reality. They are unshakable. A man like Fauci says jump and they jump. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

As you read on, you’ll see why this is important…

Airlines, hotel chains—you name it, they all folded when the lockdowns were imposed. They closed up shop, they took a knee, they opted for bailouts. Why?

The CEOs of these corporations are supposed to be hard chargers and ruthless operators. Why didn’t they rebel?

I could cite several reasons. Here I want to focus on a little-known and staggering story.

Imagine an employee of a company is motivated to speak out against the lockdowns and go public. Then he thinks about the owner of the company. That owner happens to sit on the board of a large hospital.

Uh oh. That owner is SOLIDLY WIRED into official medical reality. He isn’t going to appreciate a naysayer who says the lockdowns are a ridiculous and destructive overreach. Better to stay quiet. Better to fit in and go along.

Well, it so happens that three of the most powerful corporate bosses in America DO have deep connections to major hospitals, and these three men run corporations that OWN CORPORATE AMERICA.

What???

The three men are Larry Fink, Joseph Hooley, and Mortimer Buckley.

Buckley is the CEO of the Vanguard Group. Hooley is the CEO of State Street. Fink is the CEO of BlackRock.

These three companies are titanic investment funds. Financial services companies.

Buckley is a board member of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. From 2011 to 2017, he was chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees.

Hooley serves on the president’s council of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Fink is the co-chair of the NYU Langone Medical Center board of trustees.

Let’s look at their investment funds: State Street, BlackRock, and Vanguard—known as The Big Three. The reference is an article at theconversation.com, “These three firms own corporate America,” 5/19/17, by Jan Fichtner, Eelke Heemskerk, and Javier Garcia-Bernardo.

“Together, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have nearly US$11 trillion in assets under management.”

“We found that the Big Three, taken together, have become the largest shareholder in 40% of all publicly listed firms in the United States.”

“In 2015, these 1,600 American firms [the 40%] had combined revenues of about US$9.1 trillion, a market capitalisation of more than US$17 trillion, and employed more than 23.5 million people.”

“In the S&P 500 – the benchmark index of America’s largest corporations – the situation is even more extreme. Together, the Big Three are the largest single shareholder in almost 90% of S&P 500 firms, including Apple, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Electric and Coca-Cola.”

“What is undeniable is that the Big Three do exert the voting rights attached to these shares. Therefore, they have to be perceived as de facto owners by corporate executives.” (emphasis mine)

“Whether or not they sought to, the Big Three have accumulated extraordinary shareholder power, and they continue to do so…In many respects, the index fund boom is turning BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street into something resembling low-cost public utilities with a quasi-monopolistic position.”

If the CEO of a corporation whose main shareholder is The Big Three thinks about rebelling against the official COVID medical consensus…

And he knows that The Big Three bosses are heavily wired into the US medical complex…

That CEO has a HUGE reason to forget about being an old-time hard charger.

He has a reason to swallow his anger when he’s told to lock down and shut down.

He has a reason to knuckle under and play the game.

He has a reason to surrender to a story about a virus and Fauci and Bill Gates.

He has a reason to stand down and stand aside and watch economic devastation sweep over the land.

HIS CORPORATION IS OWNED BY THE BIG THREE, AND THE OWNERS OF THE BIG THREE ARE LOYAL MEMBERS OF THE MEDICAL COMPLEX…THE COMPLEX THAT FORMS THE CURRENT POLICE STATE THAT HAS SUBDUED THE WORLD, UNDER THE FALSE BANNER OF “SAVING HUMANITY FROM THE VIRUS.”

It’s that stark.

I keep telling you we’re now living in a medical civilization.

From the financial side of things, you’ve just read how that is so.

The three men who own corporate America are also medical denizens.

Think it through.

Source: No More Fake News

THRIVE II: This is What it Takes

After watching the film “THRIVE II: This Is What It Takes” twice and taking copious notes throughout, Happy and I have concluded that this is one of the most profound and important documentaries for ushering in a truly sustainable future for life on Earth.

Besides claiming individual sovereignty as the context for taking back ones power from external authority, an enlightened and technologically advanced civilization based on connected resonance with the unified field is not only possible, but absolutely essential for continuing the diversity and health of all life on Earth.

Kudos to Foster and Kimberly Gamble for having the courage and foresight to bring these discoveries to light and sharing them with the rest of us. This film is a must watch for every conscious human being.

Source: ThriveOn.com

A New Zealander’s 9 ‘Starter Steps’ to Save America From Socialism | The Epoch Times

By Trevor Loudon

Though I’m a New Zealander, I know America and its people well. I’ve traveled to every state in the Lower 48 and have addressed more than 500 audiences across this amazing nation. My message has always been the same: The United States is heading toward a brutally tyrannical socialist revolution—and if America goes down, every free country follows.

Well, now it’s here, people, unfolding before our very eyes.

So, what can be done? Can the Republic be saved? Honestly, I don’t know.

However, I can suggest some steps that would at least give this country a fighting chance.

1. Face Reality

Millions of Americans are still in complete denial. Many think the military is secretly in control—that it’s only a matter of time until justice is done and President Donald Trump is restored. There’s a “secret plan”—just “have faith.” The truth is that Trump was outmaneuvered by an alliance of communists, globalists, and even traitors in his own party. The “deep state” is now almost fully in control.

Trump isn’t coming back into office any time before 2024—if we still have meaningful elections by then.

To make sure they can never be voted out of office, the Democrats plan to enfranchise 22 million illegal immigrants, abolish the Electoral College, gain at least four more far-left senators through Puerto Rico and D.C. statehood, and flood the country with tens of millions more refugees and illegal immigrants. They also plan to nationally introduce voting “reforms,” i.e., mass mail-in balloting, abolition of ID requirements, etc., that will guarantee eternal Democratic Party control.

If the Democrats can abolish the Senate filibuster and place at least four more leftist “justices” on the Supreme Court, there’ll be virtually no way to stop any of this if we rely on traditional political methods.

We’re undergoing a Marxist-Leninist revolution driven by China—right now, in real time.

The military can’t save us, nor can Trump. On the contrary, it’s up to patriots to protect Trump and the Armed Services from unrelenting Democrat/communist attacks.

When enough Americans face the unpleasant truth, then, and only then, can we talk about hope.

2. Stop All Violent Rhetoric

Violence will not save America. The harsh reality is that President Barack Obama had eight years to replace patriotic generals with left-leaning political appointees. He did a great job. If violence breaks out (God forbid), the military will stand with the government, not the insurgents.

Does anyone think Russia and China and Cuba and North Korea and Iran would stand idly by while their Democratic friends are being defeated by a patriotic uprising? They would undoubtedly use the opportunity to finish off their “main enemy” once and for all.

Beware of anyone inciting violence online, at a public gathering, or in a private meeting. Distance yourself fast. They will be at best hopelessly naive, at worst government provocateurs.

The left is praying for “right-wing” violence. It will give them an excuse for a massive crackdown on patriotic Americans. This country will be saved peacefully or not at all. If significant violence breaks out, it’s over.

Having said that, the Second Amendment must be preserved at all costs. An armed populace is at least some check on tyranny, even if useless in the face of biological warfare or nuclear attack. Americans should keep their guns and work every day to ensure they never have to use them against their own people.

3. Restore Election Integrity in All Red States

If voter trust isn’t restored within months, the Republican Party is doomed. Democrats will continue to vote. Large numbers of Republican voters will stay home. They won’t trust the elections and will refuse to participate. We’ve already seen this play out in the Georgia Senate elections.

Thirty states are currently led by Republican legislatures. Some are already holding inquiries into fixing deficient electoral procedures. Most will be whitewashes unless the public gets heavily involved. If the resulting recommendations don’t include the elimination of electronic voting machines and heavy penalties for organized voter fraud, it’s likely to be a window-dressing exercise. Be alert.

Patriots must work to restore voting integrity first in the red states, then the red counties of the blue states—then after 2022, the whole nation.

Get involved in this process. It’s a top priority.

4. Close the Republican Primaries Immediately

This should be a no-brainer, but no one is talking about it. Only five U.S. states have truly closed Republican primaries. This means that in most states Democrats and independents (even communists) can vote in Republican primaries—and they do. All over the country, the GOP’s enemies vote in Republican primaries to pick the weakest, most wimpy candidate they can.

That’s why the Republican base is super patriotic but most of their elected representatives in most states vote like “progressive” Democrats.

Close the primaries, Republican patriots. It will transform your party.

5. Organize a Compact of Free States

MAGA folk need to build a “nation within a nation.” This doesn’t mean secession—Russia and China would be quick to exploit such division. What’s needed is a reaffirmation of 10th Amendment rights as already outlined in the U.S. Constitution. The already out-of-control federal government is about to go on a rampage against every form of independence left in the country. Every red state with the courage to do so must immediately begin working toward a formal compact to collectively oppose all forms of federal overreach.

Such a formal alliance should start with Florida and Texas, then grow by inviting Oklahoma, the Plains states, most of the Southern states, New Hampshire, the free Midwestern states, and the Republican-led Northern and Western states.

Such an alliance, stretching from the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Great Lakes and the Canadian border and even Alaska, would bisect the entire country.

Adding the red counties of the blue states such as Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California, would create a voting and economic bloc that Washington would find exceedingly difficult to challenge.

When the Biden administration recently suggested that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis close all restaurants in his state to slow the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, the governor politely refused—citingthe ineffectiveness and horrendous economic consequences of mass lockdowns.

Biden then reportedly hinted at an unconstitutional ban on air and road travel to and from Florida. This threat might work against Florida alone. It wouldn’t work against Florida plus Texas and Oklahoma and 10 to 25 other states.

The United States is technically a federation of free and independent states. It’s time to fully realize that ideal.

Southern states will soon be reeling under a massive new wave of illegal immigration. The federal government will do nothing to prevent it. Texas, Florida, Arizona, and the free counties of New Mexico and California need to be preparing to defend their borders now. This isn’t an immigration issue that is the constitutional preserve of the federal government—this is a state public welfare issue.

Of course, the Biden-Harris administration plans to pack the Supreme Court with more left-wing justices to make virtually anything they want “constitutional.” But this shouldn’t even need to go to the courts. State governments already have the power under the 10th Amendment to nullify federal overreach; they simply have to band together to put Washington back into its constitutionally tiny box.

The Republic will be saved through the courageous application of the First Amendment (free speech) and the 10th Amendment (state sovereignty).

6. Republic Review

Every free state should immediately embark on the adoption of the “Republic Review” process. There’s a small but growing movement in some Western and Northern states to review their engagement with the federal government to eliminate or nullify all unconstitutional relationships.

Under the Constitution, the states are technically superior to the federal government. They’re sovereign under the “equal footing” doctrine and have the legal power to refuse to engage in unconstitutional programs.

For instance, most states only get about 10 percent of their education budget from the feds—but are almost completely subservient to Department of Education dictates. Why not forgo the measly 10 percent in exchange for a return to local control over all public education? America is losing its youths in public schools. Every patriotic parent knows that.

This would give parents more control over their children’s education and restore citizens’ control over their own government. Is this worth 10 percent of your state’s education budget?

If the free states are willing to stand against federal overreach, they must also be prepared to forgo unconstitutional federal money.

A thorough Republic Review audit would soon return power to the state legislatures—where it belongs.

7. Form a Multi-State ‘America First’ Popular Alliance

The left has “Our Revolution,” a nationwide alliance of 600 groups operating both inside and outside of the Democratic Party. Operated by Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party USA, Our Revolution works in the Democratic primaries to elect far-left candidates such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) into office. Our Revolution isn’t subject to Democratic Party discipline, but it does get to choose Democratic candidates.

We need an “America First” umbrella group to operate both outside and inside the Republican Party—even possibly within the Democratic Party in some areas.

This organization should be all about pushing the MAGA/America First agenda at every level of government, in every state of the union.

Such a movement could harness the energy of 70 million to 80 million Trump voters without being under Republican Party control.

America First could unite the Tea Party and MAGA movements, grassroots Republicans, patriotic Democrats, and independents to mobilize tens of millions of voters to transform the GOP into the truly populist, patriotic MAGA party it should always have been.

Take that, Mitch McConnell!

Trump is already vetting candidates to stand against Republican House members and senators who betrayed their own base after the 2020 election.

America Firsters should register Republicans by the millions to primary out dozens of Republican sell-outs in 2022. The America First/MAGA movement could “own” every level of the GOP by 2024. The GOP needs the MAGA movement way more than the MAGA movement needs the Republican brand.

Meanwhile, there are almost 70 far-left Democratic members of Congress in red states. Just restoring voter integrity alone could defeat several of them in 2022.

Running MAGA candidates backed by Trump in every one of those races could flip many more. It would be more than feasible to take back the House in 2022 to make Biden a “lame duck” president.

8. Boycott/Buycott Bigtime

Patriots should be abandoning Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. for more honest platforms. They should also enthusiastically support efforts by DeSantis to heavily fine Big Tech operators who “cancel” patriots. If 25 or 30 free states did the same, Big Tech would soon be little tech.

Patriots need to organize nationwide boycotts of unpatriotic companies and buycotts for loyal American companies like My Pillow and Goya Foods.

Already, local groups are drawing up lists of “unfriendly” local companies and friendly alternatives so patriots can stop supporting their opponents and spend more with their fellow MAGA supporters.

It would also be smart to sequentially target vulnerable unpatriotic companies.

Imagine if 80 million MAGA patriots resolved to begin a nationwide boycott of one such company, starting now. The boycott would go on indefinitely until the target company was broke, or it apologized for “canceling” patriots. If applicable, every MAGA family could simultaneously commit to buying at least one of the canceled person’s products this year.

On April 1, another disloyal company could be targeted, then another on May 1, another on June 1, etc.

After two or three companies had collapsed or apologized, we would soon see large companies start to back away from the “Cancel Culture.”

Patriots have spending power in this country, people. We need to starve our enemies and feed our friends.

Again, patriots need to build a nation within a nation.

It should be also a given that every U.S. patriot boycotts all communist Chinese goods wherever possible. Check those labels! Buying Chinese communist products in 2021 is like buying Nazi products in 1939. It’s immoral and it’s suicidal.

The Chinese Communist Party just crippled the U.S. economy with the CCP virus. Then, pro-China communists instigated mass Black Lives Matter rioting. Then, the same people worked to influence the 2020 election.

It’s about time Americans stop funding their No. 1 enemy—the CCP.

9. Remove Malign Foreign Influence at State Level

DeSantis has announced legislation to massively curtail communist Chinese activity in Florida. The legislation also targets several other enemy states, including Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela—all of which interfere in this country’s internal affairs.

In December 2020, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe revealed that the Chinese Communist Party was conducting a “massive influence campaign” focused on dozens of members of Congress and their aides, including through attempted blackmail and bribery.

Currently, thousands of foreign companies from hostile regimes are buying up land, food production facilities, technical companies, educational facilities, and infrastructure. Tens of thousands of foreign agents are co-opting unpatriotic businessmen, unethical politicians, and sympathetic journalists in the interests of China and other malevolent states.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, nothing will be done to stop these activities at a federal level—but much can still be done by the free states. If every free state cracked down on foreign bribery, corruption, espionage, and subversion, this country would be transformed.

If hundreds of corrupt academics, journalists, businessmen, and politicians (from both parties) were exposed and punished, this country would soon be well on the way to moral, economic, and political recovery.

What Do You Think?

These steps alone won’t save America—but I believe they would be a huge step in the right direction. I will be following up with further suggestions and plans. But for now, I’d love to see your comments, suggestions, and criticisms in the comments section.

Thank you for reading. From a grateful Kiwi, God bless America.

Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics. He is best known for his book “Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” and his similarly themed documentary film “Enemies Within.” His recently published book is “White House Reds: Communists, Socialists & Security Risks Running for U.S. President, 2020.”

Source: The Epoch Times

The American establishment has lost its mind in its obsession with trying to discredit Trumpism | RT.com

By Michael Rectenwald

An appallingly biased new article on Trumpism in Foreign Affairs shows that if the American establishment was an individual, it would be diagnosed as clinically insane, likely suffering from delusions of persecution and paranoia.

Yet this same establishment calls half the population of the US conspiratorial, delusional, and terroristic, even as it parades a lunatic’s version of events during a second unfounded, evidence-free impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump, and as it continues lamentations over the supposed malignancy of his presidency, weeks after it has ended.

At this point, it would be a misdiagnosis to call this illness Trump Derangement Syndrome. The idée fixe persists unabated, even in the absence of its favorite bogey, and extends well beyond any reasonable obsession with Trump himself. This syndrome, whatever it is, appears to be resistant to treatment. The ministrations of political outsiders have only left the patient with a firmer ideational conviction. Electoral engineering and repeated political exorcisms have apparently been to no avail. 

This illness has affected every element of the broad political left, the political and corporate establishment, and the mainstream media. Unsurprisingly, the nation’s foreign policy “experts” remain in its thrall. Like Jonathan Kirshner, political science and international professor at Boston College, they display its symptomology without remission.

In an article titled Gone But Not Forgotten: Trump’s Long Shadow and the End of American Credibility, Kirshner exhibits the signs of the recalcitrant derangement with a fact-free, hyperbolic prognosis of US foreign policy in the wake of the Trump presidency. Like others bewitched by him, Kirshner repeats the tired shibboleths associated with hallucinatory Trump repudiation: he cozied up with dictators, scorned long-term allies, and represents “a deeply regrettable, and in many ways embarrassing, interlude” in American international relations. 

The patient refers to Trump’s management of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and alludes to Trump’s most unreasonable demand that NATO partners pay their fair share of dues to the European peace-keeping organization that’s waning in importance. Yet evidence of the widespread “anarchy” caused by Trump is never given–no doubt because it doesn’t exist. 

Kirshner exhibits the typical apriorism expected from the afflicted. Trump is guilty–of something, anything–in advance. The point of the exercise is to look for crimes committed by the presumed villain, even as the language for conviction must remain forever nebulous and abstract, as it does in this piece of feigned objectivity. 

Somewhat off-topic for a commentator on foreign policy, Kirshner immediately excoriates Trump’s handling of “a pandemic that killed well more than a quarter of a million of the people under his charge.” Kirshner’s guilty verdict is meted out without evidence, and despite the fact that the death rate in the US is broadly on par with that of Europe and elsewhere.

It’s not as if Italy has fared any better, or that Sweden, which eschewed draconian lockdown laws, did any worse than Italy or France. But carrying on about Trump’s supposedly disastrous pandemic response measures is a requisite symptom of the establishment’s disorder, and Kirshner must display it like all the others. Never mind that, soon after taking office, Biden stated that there was nothing he could do to stem the spread of the virus. 

As Kirshner sees it, one of Trump’s most egregious transgressions was the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the first week of his presidency. No mention is made of the fact that no one really knew what was in the deal. Never mind that, like NAFTA, it would likely cost more Americans their jobs, jobs probably shipped to China, where wage slaves work under penal colony conditions. And never mind that it would likely gut environmental regulations to please China. 

Kirshner levies the usual charges against Trump’s foreign policy: “isolationism,” “nationalism,” and “knuckle-dragging Americafirstism.” 

America first” has been the most maligned and misrepresented element of the Trump doctrine, and Kirshner’s declamation is no exception. Like other detractors, he refuses to acknowledge what Trump meant by the phrase: the interests of the majority of Americans should come before all else when making any political decision, not that America should become a selfish, dominating player on the world stage. From the standpoint of the economic and political oligarchy, who stood to lose the most by it, “America first” was unconscionable, and remains impossible to excise from national and international consciousness.

Kirshner barely acknowledges the fact that the Trump doctrine follows from a particular brand of populist American nationalism, including a foreign policy stemming from 19th-century Republican politics. Those who have subscribed to this political position have been traditionally non-interventionist, while demanding that a premium be laid on national self-determination, the protection of national sovereignty via strong borders, and the promotion of national self-interest over international or “globalist” entanglements. Instead, Kirshner misrepresents “America first” by surreptitiously associating it with fascism and Nazism.

No mention is made of the fact that, of the past five presidents, Trump was the only one not to begin a new war, and the only one not to extend the American military presence throughout the world. Instead, Kirshner gives away his hand by mourning that the US may “soon simply be out of the great-power game altogether.” This admission signals Kirshner’s allegiance to the neocon military establishment, and practically disqualifies him as an interlocutor supposedly concerned with international order and stability. It’s as if George W. Bush’s unprovoked and disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have been entirely forgotten and forgiven, while Trump’s partially flouted attempts to withdraw troops from the Middle East and Afghanistan are the real international crimes.

Yet the biggest specter haunting Kirshner’s storyline is “the significant possibility of a large role for Trumpism” in the future, regardless of whether or not Trump himself continues to play a role in national politics. This is the crux of the matter, and the real problem Kirshner sees. How can the US be a reliable international partner while Trumpism persists? Kirshner’s real concern is that Trump’s policies were actually popular, and that Trumpism thus cannot instantly be extirpated from the national identity. 

This fear of Trumpism haunts the entire political establishment. It explains the second impeachment trial, the calls for re-education, and the characterization of Trump supporters as “terrorists” and “the enemy within.”  It is this new leftist McCarthyism, and not Trumpism, that really afflicts the country. And it is this which makes the US an unreliable player on the international stage. For how can the US act as a single nation when the entire establishment suffers from schizophrenia?

Source: RT.com

The World Watches While the US Elite Wages War on America | The Epoch Times

US National Guard troops patrol the vicinity of the US Capitol hours before the Inauguration of US President-Elect Joe Biden in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2021. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

By Lee Smith

On Saturday, Peoples’ Republic of China planes flew into Taiwan’s airspace. Incursions are a normal occurrence but the most recent one represented an escalation. Typically one or two planes will probe Taiwan’s air defenses but in this case it was reportedly eight bombers and four fighter jets. It appears Beijing is eager to test Joe Biden early. It’s likely China won’t be the only one. The more than 20,000 National Guard troops in Washington to last week protect the new president’s nearly unattended inauguration is evidence that the United States is broken.

Observers widely misunderstood the National Guard deployment as a show of force asserting the Biden team’s legitimacy as the elected government of the United States. But the most salient fact of the troop presence is that some who were found to have supported Donald Trump were sent home. And thus the reason for the deployment, which may now continue into March, is that the Biden White House is keen to use the sporadically violent but mostly peaceful Jan. 6 march on the Capitol building as a political pretext to further target Trump supporters.

From the perspective of the administration and its media surrogates, Trump supporters were already deplorable, but now that they have attempted an insurrection, the gloves will come off. The nearly 75 million people who voted for Biden’s opponent deserve whatever is coming to them next—further impoverishment, further collective punishment in the guise of public health (i.e., coronavirus) measures, designation as domestic terrorists, imprisonment, and even death.

Let’s try to imagine how foreigners see our circumstances: Neither traditional U.S. allies nor adversaries can share the new administration’s assessment that the United States government faced an insurrection Jan. 6. In comparison to their own domestic challenges, those protests were plainly mild.

In France, for instance, the Yellow Vests movement has been engaged in protests for more than two years that have frequently devolved into street violence, leaving 11 dead and more than 4000 wounded. From the perspective of the nation that produced the French Revolution, Jan. 6 was nothing like an insurrection. Same for Israel, which has been fighting terrorist attacks plotted by some of the state’s Arab citizens since the country’s founding.

Consider how authoritarian states must see it. Does the Islamic Republic of Iran, periodically engaged in low-level violent conflict with its growing opposition movement, believe that Jan. 6 was an attack on America’s domestic peace? What about Russia, where over the weekend authorities arrested more than 2000 who marched nationwide to demand the release of Vladimir Putin critic Alexander Navalny? Does the Chinese Communist Party, which uses mass detentions and forced sterilizations to eradicate the Muslim minority Uyghur population, believe that American families and seniors marching in the winter cold amounted to an existential threat to the American regime? No, they all see through it—the American political, corporate, cultural, and media elite is waging war on the Americans it despises.

What can foreign powers be thinking when journalists, think-tank experts, and current and former law enforcement officials recommend that the Biden administration deploy the same counterterrorism tactics against Americans that U.S. forces have used to kill Islamic extremists around the globe since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Or how can they interpret the heavily guarded inauguration attended by faded pop-stars celebrating a man in a black mask who prophesied a “dark winter,” who for months had been hidden underground by his handlers, and who is unlikely to finish his four-year term under his own power except as a drum circle of celebrity necromancers? If our allies and adversaries see us at all clearly, they are thinking America’s leaders have lost their minds.

It can hardly surprise anyone to see the country gone mad since Biden’s inauguration represented the culmination of the U.S. elite’s four-year-long insurrection against reality.

It began in December 2016 when Barack Obama instructed his director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan to delegitimize his successor by assessing he was helped to the presidency by a foreign power, Russia. Subsequently, with the robust support of prestige media organizations and the rest of the elite’s ideological apparatus—the academy, think tanks, Hollywood, and so on—half the country invested its political convictions and mental health in a conspiracy theory.

It does not require much imagination to see America the way outsiders have for the last several years. The U.S. agency singly responsible for discovering and stopping the efforts of foreign agents to sabotage the American political system, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was focused instead on sabotaging the American president. Because top officials were not held accountable for their illegal political operation, others were emboldened to join the effort. An official from the Pentagon and another from the CIA led a government-wide campaign that included senior American diplomats to impeach Trump.

With the arrival of COVID-19, the U.S. elite’s increasing use of the phrase “the new normal” to rationalize unconstitutional edicts targeting the businesses, homes, and liberties of Trump supporters was evidence that the country was split not between political parties but between those who saw the light slipping away and those who had willfully migrated to a dark dreamworld.

We will be fortunate if adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party choose to simply stand aside and watch while America’s leadership class consumes itself in madness. But we shouldn’t count on it.

Source:

Ideological Alignment Pushing America Toward Totalitarianism, Experts Warn: Concerns over the nexus of big tech, big media, and big government | The Epoch Times

The American flag blows in the wind after it was lowered to half-staff Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, in Washington, after the Supreme Court announced that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

By Peter Svab

The formation of a totalitarian state is just about complete in America as the most powerful public and private sector actors unify behind the idea that actions to stamp out dissent can be justified, according to several experts on modern totalitarian ideologies.

While many have warned about the rise of fascism or socialism in “the land of the free,” the ideas have largely been vague or fragmented, focusing on individual events or actors. Recent events, however, indicate that seemingly unconnected pieces of the oppression puzzle are fitting together to form a comprehensive system, according to Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal arts professor at New York University.

But many Americans, it appears, have been caught off guard or aren’t even aware of the newly forming regime, as the idea of elected officials, government bureaucrats, large corporations, the establishment academia, think tanks and nonprofits, the legacy media, and even seemingly grassroot movements all working in concert toward some evil purpose seems preposterous. Is a large portion of the country in on a conspiracy?

The reality now emerges that no massive conspiracy was in fact needed—merely an ideological alignment and some informal coordination, Rectenwald argues.

Despite the lack of formal overarching organization, the American socialist regime is indeed totalitarian, as the root of its ideology requires politically motivated coercion, he told The Epoch Times. The power of the regime is not yet absolute but it’s becoming increasingly effective as it erodes the values, checks, and balances against tyranny established by traditional beliefs and enshrined in the American founding.

The effects can be seen throughout society. Americans, regardless of their income, demographics, or social stature are being fired from jobs, getting stripped of access to basic services such as banking and social media, or having their businesses crippled for voicing political opinions and belonging to a designated political underclass. Access to sources of information unsanctioned by the regime is becoming increasingly difficult. Some figures of power and influence are sketching the next step, labelling large segments of society as “extremists” and potential terrorists who need to be “deprogrammed.”

While the onset of the regime appears tied to events of recent years—the presidency of Donald Trump, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) viruspandemic, the Capitol intrusion of Jan. 6—its roots go back decades.

Is It Really Totalitarian?

Totalitarian regimes are commonly understood as constituting a government headed by a dictator that regiments the economy, censors the media, and quells dissent by force. That is not the case in America but it’s also a misunderstanding of how such regimes function, literature on totalitarianism indicates.

To claim power, the regimes don’t initially need to control every aspect of society through government.

Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Workers Party in Nazi Germany, used various means to control the economy, including gaining compliance of industry leaders voluntarily, through intimidation, or through replacing the executives with party loyalists.

Similarly, the regime rearing its head in America relies on corporate executives to implement its agenda voluntarily but also through intimidation by online brigades of activists and journalists who take initiative to launch negative PR campaigns and boycotts to progress their preferred societal structure.

Also, Hitler initially didn’t control the spread of information via government censorship but rather through his brigades of street thugs, the “brown shirts,” who would intimidate and physically prevent his opponents from speaking publicly.

The tactic parallels the often successful efforts to “cancel” and “shut down” public speakers by activists and violent actors, such as Antifa.

Dissenting media in America haven’t been silenced by the government directly as of yet. But they are stymied in other ways.

In the digital age, media largely rely on reaching and growing their audience through social media and web search engines, which are dominated by Facebook and Google. Both companies have in place mechanisms to crack down on dissenting media.

Google gives preference in its search results to sources it deems “authoritative.” Search results indicate the company tends to consider media ideologically close to it to be more authoritative. Such media can then produce hit pieces on their competitors, giving Google justification to slash the “authoritativeness” of the dissenters.

Facebook employs third-party fact checkers who have the discretion to label content as “false” and thus reduce the audience on its platform. Virtually all the fact checkers focused on American content are ideologically aligned with Facebook.

Attempts to set up alternative social media have run into yet more fundamental obstacles, as demonstrated by Parler, whose mobile app was terminated by Google and Apple, while the company was kicked off Amazon’s servers.

To the degree that a totalitarian regime requires a police state, there’s no law in America targeting dissenters explicitly. But there are troubling signs of selective, politically motivated enforcement. Signs go back to the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups or the difference in treatment received by former Trump adviser Lt. Gen Michael Flynn and former FBI deputy Director Andrew McCabe—both allegedly lying to investigators but only one getting prosecuted. The situation may get still worse as the restrictions tied to the CCP virus see broad swaths of ordinary human behavior being considered “illegal,” opening the door to nearly universal political targeting.

“I think the means by which a police state is being set up is the demonization of Trump supporters and the likely use of medical passports to institute the effective equivalent of social credit scores,” Rectenwald said.

While loyalty to the government and to a specific political party plays a major role, it’s the allegiance to the ideological root of totalitarianism that gives it its foot soldiers, literature on the subject indicates.

Totalitarian Ideology

The element “that holds totalitarianism together as a composite of intellectual elements” is the ambition of fundamentally reimagining society—“the intention to create a ‘New Man,’” explained author Richard Shorten in “Modernism and Totalitarianism: Rethinking the Intellectual Sources of Nazism and Stalinism, 1945 to the Present.”

Various ideologies have framed the ambition differently, based on what they posited as the key to the transformation.

Karl Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, viewed the control of the economy as primary, describing socialism as “socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature,” in his Das Kapital.

Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Workers Party in Nazi Germany, viewed race as primary. People would become “socialized”—that is transformed and perfected—by removing Jews and other supposedly “lesser” races from society, he claimed.

The most dominant among the current ideologies stem from the so-called “critical theories,” where the perfected society is defined by “equity,” meaning elimination of differences in outcomes for people in demographic categories deemed historically marginalized. The goal is to be achieved by eliminating the ever-present “white supremacy,” however the ideologues currently define it.

While such ideologies commonly prescribe collectivism, calling for national or even international unification behind their agenda, they are elitist and dictatorial in practice as they find mankind never “woke” enough to follow their agenda voluntarily.

In Marx’s prophecies, the revolution was supposed to occur spontaneously. Yet it never did, leading Vladimir Lenin, the first head of the Soviet Union, to conclude that the revolution will need leadership after all.

“The idea is that you have some enlightened party … who understand the problem of the proletariat better than the proletariat does and is going to shepherd them through the revolution that they need to have for the greater good,” explained James Lindsay, author of “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody.”

Elements of this intellectual foundation can be found in ideologies of many current political forces, from neo-nazis and anarcho-communists, through to progressives and to some extent even neoliberals and neoconservatives, Lindsay acknowledged.

“This is why you see so many people today saying that the only possible answers are a full return to classical liberalism or a complete rejection of liberalism entirely as fatally disposed to create progressivism, neoliberalism, etc.,” he said.

That’s not to say these ideologies are openly advocating totalitarianism but rather that they inevitably lead to it.

The roadmap could be summarized as follows:

  1. There’s something fundamentally and intolerably wrong with current reality
  2. There’s a plan to fix it requiring a whole society buy-in
  3. People opposing the plan need to be educated about the plan so they accept it
  4. People who resist the persuasion need to be reeducated, even against their will
  5. People who won’t accept the plan no matter what need to be removed from society.

“I think that’s the general thrust,” Lindsay said. “We can make the world the way we want it to be if we all just get on the same page and same project. It’s a disaster, frankly.”

Points four and five now appear to be in progress.

Former Facebook executive Alex Stamos recently labeled the widespread questioning of the 2020 election results as “violent extremism,” which social media companies should eradicate the same way they countered online recruitment content from the ISIS terrorist group.

The “core issue,” he said, is that “we have given a lot of leeway, both in traditional media and on social media, to people to have a very broad range of political views” and this has led to the emergence of “more and more radical” alternative media like OAN and Newsmax.

Stamos then mused about how to reform Americans who’ve tuned in to the dissenters.

“How do you bring those people back into the mainstream of fact-based reporting and try to get us all back into the same consensus reality?” he asked in a CNN interview.

“And can you? Is that possible?” CNN host Brian Stelter added.

The logic goes as follows: Trump claimed the election was stolen through fraud and other illegalities. That has not been proven in court and is thus false. People who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and managed to break inside and disrupt the electoral vote counting did so because they believed the election was stolen. Therefore, anybody who questions the legitimacy of the election results is an extremist and potentially a terrorist.

With tens of thousands of troops assembled to guard the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) recently told CNNthat all guard members who voted for Trump belong to a “suspect group” that “might want to do something,” alluding to past leaders of other countries who were “killed by their own people.”

Former FBI Director James Comey recently said the Republican party needs to be “burned down or changed.”

“They want a one party state,” commented conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza in a recent podcast. “That is not to say they don’t want an opposition. They want a token opposition. They want Republicans where they get to say what kind of Republican is ok.”

Just as Marx blamed the ills of the world on capitalists and Hitler on Jews, the current regime tends to blame various permutations of “white supremacy.”

“Expel the Republican members of Congress who incited the white supremacist attempted coup,” said Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) in a recent tweet, garnering some 300,000 likes.

She was referring to the Republican lawmakers who raised objections on Jan. 6 to election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Their objections were voted down.

“Can U.S. Spy Agencies Stop White Terror?” Daily Beast’s Jeff Stein asked in a recent headline, concluding that a call for “secret police” to sniff out “extremist” Americans “may well get renewed attention.”

Under the regime, allegations of election fraud—de facto questioning the legitimacy of the leader—have become incitement of terrorism. YouTube (owned by Google), Facebook, and Twitter have either banned content that claims the election was rigged or are furnishing it with warning labels. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey was recently recorded as saying that banning the president’s account was just the beginning.

The approach closely mirrors that of the Chinese communist regime, which commonly targets dissidents for “subverting” the state or “spreading rumors.”

What’s the Alternative?

If calls for radically reorganizing the world are inherently totalitarian, how is the world to avoid them? The question appears to be its own answer. If totalitarianism inherently requires allegiance to its ideology, it can’t exist in a society with a lack of such allegiance.

The United States was founded on the idea that individual rights are God-given and unalienable. The idea, rooted in traditional beliefs that human morality is of divine origin, stands a bulwark against any attempt to assail people’s rights even for their own good.

“If you’re not a believer in actual God, you can posit a God’s ideal on the matter … We have to posit some arbiter who’s above and beyond our own prejudices and biases in order to ensure these kinds of rights. … Because otherwise you have this infinitely malleable situation in which people with power and coercive potential can eliminate and rationalize the elimination of rights willy-nilly,” Rectenwald said.

Source: The Epoch Times

No, Donald Trump Did Not Incite An Insurrection | The Federalist

By David Marcus

The Democrats and their media allies are trying to convince the American people that President Donald Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection last week. In both legal terms and in terms of the plain meaning of the English language, their claim is absurd on its face. There are two fundamental reasons for this: Trump did not incite the riots at the Capitol, and the riots were not an insurrection.

The Standard for Incitement

Legally speaking, incitement has an incredibly high bar that none of Trump’s actions since the election come close to meeting. These standards were set by the Supreme Court in its landmark Brandenburg v. Ohio case. Among other things, the decision held that in order to constitute incitement to violence, speech must include intent and specific, not abstract, instructions to act. It also required that the speech in question would likely produce “imminent lawless action,” which went a step further than the previous legal tests for incitement. According to the ruling:

[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

So as a legal matter, this seems pretty clear. But what about more generally? In Salon, Amanda Marcotte attempts to make a case that Trump incited an insurrection. She starts with a big claim: “There is no doubt Donald Trump incited the insurrection on January 6. It happened largely in public and is recorded for posterity. Let’s review the record.” But only a paragraph later she writes, “[T]he people who stormed the U.S. Capitol armed with guns, pipe bombs and flex cuffs to take members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence hostage understood Trump’s wink-and-nudge style loud and clear.”

One cannot incite with a wink and a nudge — not unless those gestures have already been specified to mean a call to violence. In this case, nothing Trump said at his speech before the violence broke out was a specific call for violence, much less insurrection. Part of how we know this is that the vast, vast majority of those who attended his speech (where he called literally for a peaceful protest at the Capitol) did not engage in any violence whatsoever.

What Trump asked his backers to do was to make their voices heard in support of the members of Congress who were working to ensure that the election was a fair one. What happened next was a chaotic mess caused by a small number of violent agitators, a complete and total breakdown of security at the Capitol, and a poor response once things began to get out of hand. Some of that poor response was owing to the fact that the events were surprising. If it was so bloody obvious that Trump was telling people to storm the Capitol, why were we all so shocked and caught off guard when some people did?

This Was No Insurrection

So much for incitement. As to insurrection, at no point was the overthrow of the government of the United States even a remotely possible outcome, not even close. Those cosplaying idiots taking selfies in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and parading around with podiums had no intentions of forming a new government. This was an expression of anger, not a realistic, organized coup attempt. Anyone among the rioters who believed their actions would result in the overthrow of the government, if there were any, were delusional to the point of insanity.

So if it wasn’t incitement and it wasn’t insurrection, why do the Democrats, the corporate media, and the big tech tyrants want you to believe it was? That is quite simple, actually. The purpose is to create an atmosphere of crisis and emergency that gives cover to extreme and illiberal actions to punish and silence those with whom they disagree politically.

And that has worked. Trump is banned from Twitter, as are thousands of his supporters, and big tech has colluded to destroy its competitor, Parler. Democrats are moving forward with an absurd and pointless impeachment, Simon & Schuster has canceled Sen. Josh Hawley’s book that criticizes big tech, and people who merely attended the rally and never stormed the Capitol are being fired and abused.

None of the above actions are just. None of them can be justified. This is not some existential threat to the Republic, and it never was. This is now all about power, about those on the left milking a tragedy for all it’s worth in an attempt to destroy their political rivals. But Americans are a clear-eyed people with a healthy dose of skepticism about those in power. They see what’s going on here. They will not allow the bad actions of a tiny few to fundamentally change forever the country and its freedoms they love.

Source: The Federalist

Tucker: Our only option is to fix what’s causing this | YouTube

Editor’s Note: Here’s another level of censorship by Google/YouTube whereby they decide what’s appropriate for viewers to watch or not, then label it as such (especially political content they choose not to agree with). Welcome to 1984 today!.

Source: YouTube