It’s been obvious for quite some time that the so-called “war on terror” is nothing more than a fear-mongering induced power grab; a convenient excuse to strip the citizenry of its civil liberties and humanity. Many commentators, including myself, have predicted for years that the entire counter-terror juggernaut that has been constructed post-9/11 would be ultimately redirected upon the domestic population.
Snowden’s heroic whistleblowing has already proven without a doubt that the government spy apparatus (along with tech company complicity) has been zeroed in on the domestic population for quite some time, but is the situation about to escalate? Are the feds so fearful of their own people, they are about to focus all their counter-terror energy on U.S. citizens? It appears so.
I warned about this development back in 2011 in my post: The War on Freedom. In it I stated:
This whole charade shouldn’t be called “The War on Terror.” It is actually all about keeping the citizenry terrified. The government loves keeping you in a state of fear so that then they can do anything they want to the little sheep. It should be called “The War on Freedom.” Your freedom.
Before I get to the main topic of this article, I think it’s important to read excerpts from yesterday’s powerful and timely op-ed by Noam Chomsky titled: Edward Snowden, the World’s “Most Wanted Criminal. Discussing the Snowden revelations, he writes:
These exposures lead us to inquire into state policy more generally and the factors that drive it. The received standard version is that the primary goal of policy is security and defense against enemies.
The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.
To defend state power and private economic power from the domestic enemy, those two entities must be concealed – while in sharp contrast, the enemy must be fully exposed to state authority.
The principle was lucidly explained by the policy intellectual Samuel P. Huntington, who instructed us that “Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”
Huntington added a crucial illustration. In his words, “you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine” at the outset of the Cold War.
Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled.
From that day forward, in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug lords, mad mullahs seeking nuclear weapons, and other ogres said to be seeking to attack and destroy us.
Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim.
In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.
The theme of the U.S. government viewing the population as the true enemy has been a theme of this site for many years. For some background, I suggest reading the following:
Rep. Steve Cohen Calls Tea Party Republicans “Domestic Enemies” on MSNBC
It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists”
The reason I chose to highlight these two articles, is that one case it is the “tea party” being demonized, and in the other it is Occupy Wall Street. It doesn’t matter if the dissent is seen as emanating from the “right” or the “left,” it is dissent in general which is increasingly being demonized as “domestic terrorism.”
With all of that in mind, here is what Eric Holder’s “Justice” Department is up to. From the LA Times:
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder, Jr. on Monday announced the creation of a task force within the Justice Department to combat an “escalating danger” from “homegrown” terrorists within the United States.
The task force will chiefly comprise leaders from the FBI, the Justice Department’s National Security Division and U.S. Attorneys. Called the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, it is a recreation of a task force formed by former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The task force fell into disuse after 9/11.
Though the original task force, which was little known, focused mainly on right-wing zealots, Holder’s version is aimed at U.S. citizens or visitors radicalized via the Internet. Holder said the government will continue to fight terrorists abroad.
“But we also must concern ourselves with a different type of threat. We face an escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” he said.
“Now — as the nature of the threat we face evolves to include the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet — it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home,” Holder said.
NPR adds that:
“The threat from al-Qaida is much more diffuse after Sept. 11, and the threats posed by a single horribly misguided citizen or permanent legal resident in the U.S. is in a sense as great as what core al-Qaida posed before Sept. 11,” says Neil MacBride, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
There you have it. It’s no longer al-Qaeda, it’s now supposedly your friends and neighbors. This is the prevailing meme of every tyrannical fascist regime in history.
The state’s war on the citizenry is becoming overt. Don’t be fooled, this is real and it is very dangerous.
Image at the top of this post is brought to you by the always excellent WilliamBanzai7.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
