Revenge of the ‘Waco Gene’

William Norman Grigg
Lew Rockwell.com
Friday, April 17, 2009

The Regime has made it official that “right-wing extremism” is a threat to Homeland Security.

That political genus is divided into two species – “white supremacist and anti-government groups” – with the latter further differentiated into various sub-species, including immigration reform activists, “disgruntled military veterans,” gun rights advocates, members of citizen militia groups, anti-globalists, constitutionalists, “hate groups,” and others deemed politically unsuitable by the Regime.

Less than two years ago, Congress enacted – by a vote of 404–6 – the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Its first offspring was an official commission to examine potential content-based Internet restrictions. At some point, it also begat a specialized section within the Homeland Security Department called the Extremism and Radicalization Branch (which we’ll call the ERB).

This means that for the first time in American history, the federal government has a full-time intelligence organ devoted exclusively to scrutinizing the political opinions and affiliations of U.S. citizens. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this development as a milestone in our nation’s apostasy from its founding as a constitutional republic.

Earlier this month, the ERB’s “Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division” issued a nine-page “Intelligence and Analysis Assessment” of “right-wing extremism” for the supposed benefit of state and local law enforcement agencies. That document consists of reheated leftovers from several previous “intelligence analyses” of the “radical right,” including the FBI’s notorious 1999 Project Megiddo broadside.

The ERB report concludes with the observation that the Department of Homeland Security “will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.”

This is significant chiefly because it acknowledges that every “local” police agency in the United States is now a sensory organ, and enforcement appendage, of the Homeland Security State.

As partners with the Department of Homeland Security, your thoughtful and friendly “local” police and state police will be expected to gather intelligence on “extremists” within their jurisdictions and provide it to the Feds. And in the event that they’re required to do so by their “partners” in Washington, those same state and “local” police will be expected to question, arrest, or detain those designated to be severe risks to “homeland security.”

In this connection it’s useful to remember that the Obama administration has taken care to preserve all of the necessary Bush-era precedents regarding the summary imprisonment of those designated “unlawful enemy combatants” by presidential decree, the suspension of habeas corpus, and even the practice of torture as a means of “enhanced interrogation.”

The prospect of the exercise of those powers by the incumbent is causing a loss of bladder control among many of the same GOP-aligned polemicists who insisted that they were perfectly safe when placed at the disposal of his predecessor. This development was as predictable as the “plot” of a porno film. And as Salon’s admirable civil libertarian columnist Glen Greenwald emphasizes, the report on the “radical right” was actually begun under the Bush administration.

In the institutional memory of the American Right, the early Clinton years were characterized by two entirely unnecessary atrocities involving culturally isolated “extremists”: The attack on the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho – which led to the murder of Sammy and Vicki Weaver – and the 51-day standoff at Mt. Carmel, Texas, which culminated in the holocaust of April 19, 1993.

The unbearable memory of those episodes, exacerbated by the “assault weapons” ban, did much to catalyze resistance to the Clinton administration. Prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, there was a widespread, and growing, appreciation for the lethal potential of what we could call the federal government’s “Waco gene” – its latent tendency to isolate, dehumanize, criminalize, and even annihilate those considered to be incorrigible internal enemies.


But although this early Clinton-era anti-government backlash was rooted in worthy and entirely justified sentiments, it was poorly focused in one fairly significant respect: Clinton and his properly maligned Attorney General Janet Reno had relatively little to do with the planning and execution of the ATF’s assault on the Branch Davidians, and nothing at all to do with the criminal assault on the Weaver family. Those were anti-”extremist” initiatives planned and/or carried out by the administration of George Bush the Elder.

(It’s not my intention to demolish a straw man by mentioning Ruby Ridge in this connection; on many occasions I’ve heard that incident paired with Waco when people have recited the litany of the Clinton administration’s crimes.)

During the reign of Bush the Dumber, the GOP-aligned punditocracy insisted that only “peace creeps” and people who perversely sympathize with suicide bombers were outraged over the executive branch’s assault on the Bill of Rights.

When Bush put the chainsaw to due process guarantees running back to Runnymede and mowed them down like so much overgrowth on his postage-stamp “ranch,” some principled voices – with Ron Paul, as always, leading that tiny chorus – took up a refrain similar to that put in the mouth of Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons” after his son-in-law William Roper urged a similar clear-cutting approach to the law.

More, suspected of disloyalty by King Henry VIII, is approached in his home by Richard Rich,* a contemptible opportunist known to be a royal spy. Rich fishes for a bribe, baiting More with the implied threat of blackmail, only to be rebuked and sent away. As Rich leaves, More is urged by his family to place him under arrest.

When More points out that Rich hadn’t committed a crime, and that even “the Devil himself” is entitled to the protection of the law, Roper angrily exclaims that he would “cut down every law in England” to get to the Devil.

“And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?” More inquired. “This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, and not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you are just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes – I’d give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety’s sake.”

Transfixed by the demonic evil of Islamic terrorism, intoxicated by a sense of vindictive righteousness, the Republican Right eagerly collaborated in the effort to mow down legal protections for those designated enemies of the state. With the frustrated puzzlement of dimwitted children they now find themselves naked and shivering in the wind – and that chill blast is a mere zephyr compared to the Force Ten gale that’s coming.

For a long time, conservatives have extracted much undeserved pleasure from the aphorism that “A law-and-order conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.” Now they’re given an opportunity to learn the truth of its counterpart: “A civil libertarian is a law-and-order conservative who suffered an ass-beating at the hands of the police.” Perhaps this lesson could be learned – but, given the propensity of conservatives to miss the obvious and resist admissions of error, I’m not optimistic.

One aspect of the ERB’s “Intelligence Assessment” that offers cause for unintended mirth is the concern it expresses over the possibility that the ongoing economic collapse is being “exploited” by “rightwing extremists.” The unspoken corollary here, of course, is that our rulers would never exploit economic or political upheavals in order to aggrandize their own power – the well-documented eagerness of both the Bushi’ites and the Obamatrons not to “let a serious crisis go to waste” notwithstanding.

You see, according to the Collectivist Lexicon, when those exercising the powers of government suspect the worst of the people they rule, it’s called vigilance; when those on the receiving end of government power suspect the worst of their rulers, it’s called paranoia.

In the interest of clarity, I should point out that, as the term is typically used today, a “paranoid” is someone who notices things without government permission. Similarly, a “conspiracy theorist” is anyone who draws unacceptable anti-government conclusions from politically inconvenient facts.

A “hate group” consists of any group of people who are hated by collectivists.

And a “terrorist” is anyone, anywhere, who is imprisoned, tortured, or killed by the state with extreme prejudice. In the near future we may see some interesting applications of that infinitely flexible definition.

When citizens are hyper-vigilant toward government, liberty is one possible result. Where government is hyper-vigilant toward is subjects, tyranny is the inevitable outcome.

*A painful personal admission: Richard Rich, the despicable invertebrate who betrayed the heroic St. Thomas More, is a distant ancestor (by adoption, I hasten to point out).

You think they will really kill off all those Millions of people who are against policy? A few at a time would probably be less MSM coverage.
When do you imagine the raids will begin? Is there a time frame?

Disband DHS

I feel Vindicated. haha

If there wasn't a will to bring on unrest people who are not happy with this administration will be more than delighted to stir up insanity we all can share freely. UGH

A “hate group” consists of any group of people who are hated by collectivists.

And a “terrorist” is anyone, anywhere, who is imprisoned, tortured, or killed by the state with extreme prejudice. In the near future we may see some interesting applications of that infinitely flexible definition.


These are not true by general definition. It is a definition with a spin to it.

Observing these certain groups is nothing new. Back in the day the Communists and Socialists were the hated groups and they were observed constantly. And anyone associated with them got a bad mark.

We have done this since the beginning of this country so what is the scare now?

What is the paranoia?

I knew they were going to observe "risky" groups. Risky groups know they are going to be observed. I knew I would be observed on the internet. I knew that I would be spied on anytime they got ready under Bush for sure.

What is the great big problem?

Returning Military= Terror Threat?

The act of being antiabortion= Terror Threat?

Knowing, appreciating and quoting the Constitution= Terror Threat?

My political beliefs of a all encompassing move towards world government gets me branded a terror threat?

And then you ask what the problem is...

The eugenics loving Globalists openly call for an 80% reduction in world population. What makes you think that they wouldn't? Oh oopsy, we've had an "accidental" release of bird flu from Labratory X... We only have about 250,000 vaccines available. Report to Fema camps in your location until vaccines can be produced and distributed.

ok...my issue is this....people can believe as they chose to. it is their right as americans as long as they don't break laws (violence, murder etc)

Why Yellow... you sound positively Libertarian!

i'm not right, left, conservative or liberal. i march to the beat of my own drummer....just wish the drummer could keep a beat

you can afford a drummer?

LOL!

nah....it's one of those wind up monkey toys

That's why it can't keep a beat, those things are made in china!

I know what you mean about marching to your own beat though, as my march beat sounds like what would happen if you put a heavy metal band together with Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg as the front men.

what a thought war lol

but seriously...who decides what is right and wrong for people to believe???? as long as there aren't laws broken etc...we can believe what we want. whether it's religion, politics, sexual preference, race, gender, whatever

I stand behind the "do no harm" theory.

It's very Libertarian in its base, but it's real roots are for those who respect the Constitution and love true Liberty.

doesn't the constituion give us the right to believe what we do and have peaceful protests???? like I said...as long as laws aren't bronken....whether i agree with a persons belief or not...they are in their right as americans. even groups like the KKK. i don't like their beleifs but as long as laws aren't broken, then they have the same rights as i do

The Constitution is there to restrict Government from having the power to usurp the "God" given rights that all (wo)men are supposed to be born with.

As for beliefs and , lets say speech, KKK is protected, because the first amendment is there to ensure and protect unpopular speech. They have a right to say what they want and I have the right to tell them they're full of sh!t.

war...i agree with you on this 100%. but when the government tries to silence people...that goes against what our founding fathers set up IMO