I read the nine page DHS report that got so much publicity last week.
It was assinine, but then, these people are interested in suppressing us. With Brigid and I each having been arrested four times for prolife non-violent civil disobedience (and with Brigid having 17 days of jailtime to her credit) we are the types who make the "extremist" list.
The fact that I've been arrested eight times protesting our nuclear weapons and WMD's doesn't matter. For that I was, in the words of one Judge in Manhattan, practicing "Gandhi-like civil disobedience". I got "ACD'd" (adjourned contemplating dismissal) for that one, and with a smile.
Do the same thing at an abortion "clinic" and it's a federal offence (FOCA), with a $10,000 fine and six months in jail for the first offence. Justice is blind? How about that for a political crime?
But I digress. Here's a very good analysis of the DHS report by a right wing extremist lawyer on the right wing extremist website, National Review Online. Excerpts below the link; the whole article is not very long.
DHS Wants to Know What You’re Thinking by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online
For eight years, we’ve been treated to hysterical rhetoric from Democrats, including Barack Obama, about the scourge of “domestic spying.” Now that the Obama administration is openly calling for domestic spying — the real thing, not the smear used against President Bush — they’re suddenly silent.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in coordination with the FBI, has issued an intelligence assessment on what it calls “Rightwing Extremism.” It is appalling. The nakedly political document announces itself as a “federal effort to influence domestic public opinion.” It proceeds, in what it acknowledges is the absence of any “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,” to speculate that “rightwing” political views might “drive” such violence — violence, it further surmises, that might be abetted by military veterans returning home after putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for good measure, in violation of both FBI guidelines and congressional statutes, the Obama administration promises scrutiny of ordinary Americans’ political views, speech, and assembly.
The word “rightwing” appears repeatedly in the assessment, which was issued by the same DHS component (the “Extremism and Radicalization Branch”) that, a year ago, suggested purging the terms “jihadist” and “Islamofascist” from our lexicon for fear of insulting moderate Muslims.
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In short, the government uses the term as a caricature of the Right: noxious, non-conservative views thoughtlessly labeled “rightwing extremism” to smear actual conservative values as a purported societal threat. As the report absurdly elaborates:
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
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