Tracking Patriots Like Terrorists

• Justice Department, Southern Poverty Law Center team up to target activists, anarchists.

By John Friend —

As a direct result of a heavy-handed and very public lobbying campaign carried out by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), easily one of the most un-American organizations operating on United States soil today, the Justice Department (DoJ) has announced the creation of the Domestic Terrorism Counsel, which is specifically tasked with identifying, analyzing, and combating domestic terrorism and homegrown extremism.

The obvious concern for advocates of free speech and thought in the U.S. is that anyone voicing any sort of criticism toward the federal government, its policies or the various lobbying organizations shaping and influencing its agenda could now be considered a “domestic terrorist” who must be dealt with.

The Domestic Terrorism Counsel, a position designed to track and coordinate federal investigations into domestic terrorism, will work with and serve as a liaison between a variety of federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and various departments within the DoJ, along with private intelligence and lobbying organizations, such as the SPLC.

J. Richard Cohen, who serves as the president of the SPLC, lauded the DoJ’s move, which came about as a direct result of his organization’s pressure, arguing that the decision reflected “a renewed and long-overdue focus on violent homegrown extremism.”

Mark Potok, who serves as a leading spokesman for the SPLC, also praised the DoJ’s decision,  noting his organization’s long-running campaign advocating the creation of such an office along with a direction of federal resources towards combating so-called domestic terrorism and homegrown extremism.

“We’ve been pushing for something like this for quite a few years,” Potok told The Kansas City Star. “We feel like it’s very much a step forward,although we’ll have to see how it plays out.”

Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin, speaking in Washington, D.C. at an event co-sponsored by the SPLC and the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security’s brand new Program on Extremism, which is affiliated with George Washington University, proudly announced the creation of the new office. Carlin stated that, although the U.S. continues to address the “evolving international threat of violent extremists, we have not lost sight of the domestic terrorism threat posed by other violent extremists.”

Carlin went on to ominously warn: “Terror and extremism do not always originate elsewhere or take place outside our borders. Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on the full spectrum of hate. Anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other despicable beliefs. When it comes to hate and intolerance, no single ideology governs.”

In the wake of the reported shooting in Charleston, S.C., allegedly carried out by Dylann Storm Roof, a young white man said to have “white supremacist” leanings, the SPLC and other anti-white hate organizations have been hysterically calling for an open war on so-called white supremacists and anyone questioning the government and mass media’s depiction of reality.

Immediately following the alleged Charleston shooting, Morris Seligman Dees, the founder of the SPLC, and Cohen co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times essentially arguing that “white supremacists” must be targeted in the next phase of the engineered “Global War on Terror.”

Dees and Cohen advance the notion that “racists,” “white supremacists,” “conspiracy theorists” and other anti-government extremists are using the Internet to organize globally in a manner similar to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups. This, they argue, is leading to “lone wolf terrorists” committing violence and murder across America—a threat the U.S. federal government must immediately confront.

Unsurprisingly, DoJ has willingly succumbed to the SPLC’s demands.

John Friend is a California-based writer who maintains a blog.

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