“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”—Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

As Hohmann explains, “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”

Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, and even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities, and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program.

The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day.

If you see something suspicious, say the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it into a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smartphone.

This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

Yet while community policing and federal programs such as “See Something, Say Something” are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears. You hype them up on color-coded “Terror alerts,” keep them in the dark about the distinctions between actual threats and staged “training” drills so that all crises seem real, desensitize them to the sight of militarized police walking their streets, acclimatize them to being surveilled “for their own good,” and then indoctrinate them into thinking that they are the only ones who can save the nation from another 9/11.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

This is how you turn a people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.

It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other and shadowy forces from outside the country, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

Community policing did not come about as a feel-good, empowering response to individuals trying to “take back” their communities from crime syndicates and drug lords.

Rather, “Community-Oriented Policing” or COPS (short for Community Partnerships, Organizational Transformation, and Problem Solving) is a Department of Justice program designed to foster partnerships between police agencies and members of the community.

To this end, the Justice Department identifies five distinct “partners” in the community policing scheme: law enforcement and other government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofits, churches and service providers, private businesses, and the media.

Together, these groups are supposed to “identify” community concerns, “engage” the community in achieving specific goals, serve as “powerful” partners with the government, and add their “considerable resources” to the government’s already massive arsenal of technology and intelligence. The mainstream media’s role, long recognized as being a mouthpiece for the government, is formally recognized as “publicizing” services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced, as well as shaping public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.

Inevitably, this begs the question: if there’s nothing wrong with community engagement, if the police can’t be everywhere at once if surveillance cameras do little to actually prevent crime, and if we need to “take back our communities” from the crime syndicates and drug lords, then what’s wrong with community policing and “See Something, Say Something”?

What’s wrong is that these programs are not, in fact, making America any safer while turning us into a legalistic, intolerant, squealing, bystander nation.

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall, widening mass surveillance dragnet comprised of fusion centers, red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, terror watch lists, facial recognition, snitch tip lines, biometric scanners, pre-crime programs, DNA databases, data mining, precognitive technology, and contact tracing apps, to name just a few.

This is how the government keeps us under control and in its crosshairs.

By the time you combine the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” with CP3 and community policing, which has gone global in the guise of the Strong Cities Network program, you’ve got a formula for enabling the government to not only flag distinct “anti-government” segments of the population but locking down the entire nation.

Under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Strong Cities Network program works with the UN and the federal government to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal.

What this program is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale with the objective being to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who could be construed as potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats.

The government’s war on extremists has been sold to Americans in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was sold to Americans: as a means of combatting terrorists who seek to destroy America.

However, as we now know, the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that has turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect.

Similarly, the concern with the government’s ongoing anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

These reports, which use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably, indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right, or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.

Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which each successive presidential administration has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.

Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the far-reaching data crime fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state, and federal police agencies.

Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, and facial recognition technology that identifies and tracks you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers which are attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we can put the brakes on this dramatic expansion and globalization of the government’s powers, we’re not going to recognize this country five, ten—even twenty—years from now.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

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This article was published by The Rutherford Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Washington’s involvement in the Russo–Ukrainian war is encouraging new and hostile combinations of powers.

Last week, North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un visited Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was serious, in contrast to their perfunctory summit four years ago. This time Moscow was the suitor, seeking artillery shells, missiles, and perhaps more for its war against Ukraine.

American commentators chortled at the once grand Russian state’s supplications to such an isolated and impoverished regime. Yet whatever embarrassment Putin may feel is undoubtedly minor compared to the potential benefits for his government. Russia already outproduces Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. in critical materiel, and is seeking to increase its edge, possibly to prepare another offensive.

In contrast, Ukraine’s allies are, if not quite useless, then significant disappointments. General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking soldier, complained that Kiev’s artillery forces “have been outshot tenfold at times because of limited resources.” It seems the U.S. has been unable to keep up with Ukraine’s demand. Europe has done no better. Oops!

Indeed, European military efforts barely qualify as pathetic. Germany’s once-celebrated Zeitenwende has turned into a bust, as the Scholz government has retreated from its lofty goals. Even worse, the British government, despite its Churchillian rhetoric, has moved backward on defense outlays as a share of GDP and announced cutbacks in its ground forces since it is protected by water and ships—and by the United States, of course. European officials prefer to leave the latter factor unstated, and Washington continues to play the patsy, especially under President Joe Biden. Rather than laugh at Moscow, Washington should ask why its allies are so much less prepared for war than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Putin’s turn to the DPRK highlights the failure of Washington’s policy of war against all. Although still the world’s most powerful nation, the U.S. has encouraged the formation of a growing antagonistic coalition.

For years, Moscow and Beijing were divided on key issues, and both governments tempered their cooperation with Pyongyang and Tehran. Today, American hostility has driven all four together. Their grouping remains ungainly, but both the DPRK and Iran are strengthening Russia’s war effort and likely will gain much in return. China has increased its political influence with and won economic concessions from Iran, while the DPRK offers a potential military deus ex machina that could greatly complicate Washington’s task in any war with the People’s Republic of China.

Indeed, a few years ago, both Moscow and Beijing were generally opposed to Iranian and North Korean nuclear efforts. Today, perceived necessity has degraded or even dissipated those sentiments. Russia is expanding economic ties with both governments to ease the impact of American sanctions. Forging a new relationship with Moscow has been especially important for the North, which is suffering from serious food shortages. More worrisome for Americans, Russia might also aid Pyongyang’s missile development, including ICBMs capable of targeting the U.S. If so, Washington officials have no one to blame but themselves, having bragged about helping to kill Russian generals and sink Russian ships. Moscow now has a chance to return the favor. Unfortunately for the U.S., proxy wars don’t run only one way.

China has been more cautious but has nevertheless benefited from the purchase of cheap Iranian oil. The PRC has also helped keep North Korea afloat. Although Beijing would prefer a pliant, house-broken ally without nukes, a well-armed, aggressive North offers at least two benefits. The first is to unsettle Northeast Asia and especially Washington’s allies, discouraging them from looking beyond their own security. The second is to pose an especially serious threat if Seoul supports the U.S. in a conflict with China.

To allied officials, the failure of much of the so-called Global South to commit to the West in its campaign against Russia has been a shock. History weighs heavily on one-time colonial relationships. Moreover, the U.S. of late has proved to be inconsistent, reckless, and destructive. Not even its friends feel comfortable dealing with arrogant officials who have carelessly, and often callously, started or supported wars that ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people while insisting that “the price is worth it.”

Most members of the Global South still oppose Moscow’s aggression. Nevertheless, they rejected the West’s claim to moral leadership and eagerly took advantage of discounted oil shipments and sanctions-busting opportunities. Even India, seen as a major counterweight to Beijing, has resisted allied affection.

Yet Washington has learned nothing. For instance, the Biden administration fulminated against North Korea for aiding Moscow. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan suggested that the DPRK would suffer from global scorn: Its support for Russia is “not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community.” Alas, Pyongyang’s rulers are not known for feeling shame. Countries that maintain relations with the North are unlikely to change their position because of an arms deal with Russia. Other states aren’t likely to pay much attention.

Indeed, an air of unreality surrounds Washington’s well-demonstrated ability to make enemies. The Russia-China axis is of greatest concern. Neither country has any interest in warring against the U.S., but mutual cooperation makes it more difficult for Washington to counter their activities in their respective regions. And when their efforts align, as in the Middle East, where both are engaging Iran and Saudi Arabia, American influence suffers.

Unfortunately, antagonism toward America, or at least American policy, is the strongest force pushing them together. For instance, Beijing and Moscow compete for influence in Central Asia and elsewhere, including North Korea. Territorial disputes between China and Russia reach back in history. Beijing has brazenly stolen Russian technology and is ruthlessly using its current geopolitical advantage for economic gain. The PRC also is concerned about its ties with the West amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the Sino-Russian entente looks solid.

Rather than consider revising policies that have backfired so spectacularly, some U.S. policymakers assume that eventually one of the contrary powers will defect. For instance, three years ago the Atlantic Council’s John Herbst wrote: “The Chinese-Russian temporary alignment of interests is unlikely to overcome the fundamentals of geopolitics.” Alas, Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine undercut that theory, with Russia becoming dependent on the PRC. Nevertheless, Herbst still insists that Russia will eventually come the West’s way, choosing to be a docile junior partner to America rather than China.

There is similar talk about the PRC and North Korea. American analysts insist that Chinese support for the North is not to Beijing’s benefit, which should give its nominal ally to the U.S. If only Xi Jinping properly understood his own nation’s interest, he would encourage Korean unification under a government allied with America, strengthening Washington’s containment policy toward the PRC. Moreover, Moscow’s burgeoning dealings with the DPRK, assert American policymakers, should spark concerted Chinese pressure against the North’s ongoing military expansion. If only American officials explained Beijing’s interests to Beijing’s solons, the latter would enthusiastically advance U.S. interests.

These are charming sentiments of the “wouldn’t it be great” variety. Wouldn’t it be great if the U.S. could do whatever it wanted without the slightest response from its adversaries? Wouldn’t it be great if American officials merely needed to state their wishes and foreign leaders would rush to comply? Wouldn’t it be great if even the most foolish, self-serving, and counterproductive American policies were greeted with wild acclaim and complete acquiescence around the globe?

Unfortunately, that isn’t our world today.

The anti-American coalition might not last because its internal pressures are so great. Washington, however, is doing its best to hold its adversaries together. Warring against Moscow and threatening other states both politically and militarily creates an obvious common bond. Challenging the serious, even vital interests of such governments cannot help but foster shared antagonism toward America. Absent a change in American policy, confrontation seems certain and conflict is possible.

Yet American policymakers never seem to learn. Today, Capitol Hill is filled with demands to wage war in (and effectively on) Mexico in the name of combating the drug trade. If the U.S. invades, one can imagine the hostile reaction in Mexico and across Latin America, which long have bridled at imperious Washington policies. Some of those governments might seek greater cooperation with China and Russia in response.

The Putin-Kim détente reflects decisions made in Moscow and Pyongyang—but also in Washington. Myopic American policies are encouraging cooperation among several unfriendly governments. The U.S. may outlast or overcome any such combinations. If the past is prologue, however, many brave Americans may end up dying unnecessarily along the way. Such is the price of Washington’s “war against all” approach to the world.

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This article was published by The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The latest news is that the FBI (otherwise known as the Federal Bureau of Immorality) had so many paid plants in the crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, that it lost count. The “fedsurrection” is real, not a conspiracy theory.

It was an FBI plant that later testified to the innocence of the Kansas City Proud Boys (the FBI has also been accused of destroying evidence for the Proud Boys’ case). We have video footage from one undercover cop who mingled with the crowd that day and urged people on into the Capitol. Likely federal asset Ray Epps boasted that he had “orchestrated” Jan. 6. We know that the majority of protestors there that day were peaceful and that at least some if not most of the violent minority were also plants, or at least not Trump fans; MAGA protestors tried to intervene to stop the destruction, identifying the violent rioters as Antifa. Nancy Pelosi had a camera crew set up before the event.

It was a set-up to destroy Donald Trump and MAGA. Since then, innocent Jan. 6 prisoners have been imprisoned, tortured, and denied both their rights and basic necessities in jail.

“[InfoWars, Sept. 20] The former head of the FBI’s Washington D.C. field office, Steven D’Antuono, is blowing the whistle on the bureau’s countless number of paid informants who took part in the Jan. 6th debacle.

D’Antuono told the New York Post this week his field office had ‘Confidential Human Sources’ (CHS) embedded in the J6 crowd, but also explained ‘informants run by other field offices’ were taking part in the protest unbeknownst to him at the time…Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund previously told The Post the FBI ‘had at least 18 undercover agents in the crowd plus another 20 from the Department of Homeland Security’ in addition to the unknown number of CHSs.”

Jan. 6 really was a fedsurrection.

“US military asks the public for help finding its missing F-35 fighter jet after its pilot had to eject while training over South Carolina.”

While the above Insider headline may sound like a comedic piece straight from the pages of The Babylon Bee, it’s not. The U.S. military actually publicly claimed it had lost a multi-million-dollar fighter jet.

The loss occurred Sunday following an alleged “mishap” that required the aircraft’s pilot to eject. The F-35 purportedly kept on flying. It wasn’t until Monday evening — a day after Joint Base Charleston requested the public’s assistance in finding the missing jet — that military officials announced they had discovered a debris field “about two hours northeast” of the base.

The debacle has since prompted the Marine Corps’ acting commandant, Eric Smith, to issue a “two-day stand-down” order for all military aviation units “both inside and outside of the United States.”

A Sign of Decline

This episode raises so many questions. For one, how does the U.S. military — the supposed best and most advanced fighting force on the planet — lose a highly-valued asset, especially over U.S. soil?

Why are military bases such as Joint Base Charleston acting as landing pads for commercial planes transporting members of the People’s Republic of China — the very government trying to topple the United States as the world’s hegemon?

While it’s improbable any of these questions will actually be answered to the public’s satisfaction, the likely answers probably wouldn’t reverse Americans’ waning confidence in the ability of U.S. military leadership to defend the American homeland. Nor should they.

This week’s fighter jet fiasco is just one example of many showcasing a U.S. military in severe institutional decline. Instead of focusing on how to win wars — which should be the sole purpose of any military — top Pentagon brass have since at least the Clinton administration treated the service as one giant, left-wing social experiment.

Through its adoption and outright promotion of neo-Marxist ideologies including DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), the military has sacrificed efficiency, ruthlessness, and strength for LGBT celebrations, racial politics, and climate alarmism. A look into the backgrounds of President Biden’s many military nominees shows the primary focus of the Pentagon’s leading figures isn’t defeating communist China or protecting Americans from other international threats, it’s crafting a “diverse” and “inclusive” social club where leftist lunacy is treated as gospel and conservative “wrongthink” as extreme.

Look no further than the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which violates U.S. law in using taxpayer money to pay for female military members’ travel expenses to kill their unborn child. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Democrats have baselessly claimed for months that Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s slow-walking of Biden’s military nominees in protest of the policy harms “military readiness.”

If that’s true, then why hasn’t the Pentagon dropped its policy? If “readiness” is such a major concern, why did the military fire thousands of service members who chose not to get an experimental shot? And why isn’t Democrat Chuck Schumer using his power as Senate majority leader to approve Biden’s supposedly important nominees?

The reason, as tacitly admitted by the heads of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, is that taxpayer-funded abortions are a sacrament of the leftist religion so must be preserved at all costs. Coupled with decades of failed military adventurism and nation-building like that conducted in Afghanistan, it’s no wonder the U.S. military is facing the worst recruiting crisis since shifting to an all-volunteer force in 1973.

A High Price To Pay

The Marxist hijacking of America’s military isn’t an accident; it’s an intentional act contributing to the left’s greater plan to re-invent society. For the left, the military is just another piece on the American chessboard to coopt. It’s why the military so vigorously promotes Marxism and penalizes conservative beliefs: to dissuade the God and America-loving patriots who have largely staffed it for generations from joining or remaining in service.

As witnessed many times before, however, the leftist takeover of institutions has its costs. Only America’s “rainbow” military could cost our country its security and well-being.

For decades, the U.S. military has prevented widespread global conflict, deterring aggression from hostile actors and maintaining peace through strength. If the world’s leading aggressors no longer view America as the dominant military power, where does that leave us? If the U.S. gets dragged into a war with a rival power, can we be confident our “rainbow” fighting force can get the job done? The withdrawal from Afghanistan and growing quagmire in Ukraine atop the failed war in Iraq and our military’s distraction into identity politics don’t bode well.

Much like the missing F-35, our nation’s military is lost with no sense of direction or purpose, and those faithfully committed to the American cause are forced to bail out. Let us hope and pray for new military leadership before it’s too late.

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.