How Government and the Media Equate Political Dissent with “Conspiracy Theories” and “Home Grown Terrorism”

Joachim Hagopian

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels

In this age of propaganda and disinformation when mainstream media outlets act as presstitutes for the corporatized federal government, there has been an overt movement in recent years to label dissenters, patriots, government critics and even returning US soldiers from the warfronts as potential homegrown terrorists. For decades the government and co-opted mainstream media’s onetime favorite tactic heavy-handedly used to customarily dismiss their critics was to simply label those exposing government deception as “conspiracy theorists.” However, with distrust mounting amongst Americans toward both their leaders (86% distrust government) and the media (over 60% little or no trust toward media), this strategy is no longer working because so many conspiracies have been proven to be real. With a fascist state worried that its authority is fast slipping away amongst its populace, today the stakes have never been higher. Slander, character assassination and guilt by association are increasingly utilized nowadays as favorite tools to systematically destroy, discredit and demonize those citizens courageous enough to speak the truth exposing government lies, deception, theft and destruction.

Raising the stakes from the relative benign label “conspiracy theorist” to “homegrown terrorist” reflects a parallel process the US government has historically employed in manufacturing convenient enemies as needed – Russia and China’s expanding Communism from the 1950’s cold war through the 1980’s, to al Qaeda’s expanding terrorism in the twenty-first century and now back to Russia and China’s expanding imperialism all over again. The vicious cycle locked by design in a forever do-loop as the same subversive strategy remains unchanged throughout the years, only the names and dates change as the government self-servingly sees fit. As long as there are enemy targets to conveniently blame designed to induce fear and elicit support from a dumbed down, brainwashed and powerless American public, war and the military security complex will continue to flourish on a perpetual permanency basis, of course at the expense of humanity both domestically and globally.

Evidence of this formula for laying waste to what the US government targets as its next enemy can be observed with the latest propaganda spin covering the recent Las Vegas shooting spree killing two policemen and a third armed bystander as victims of so called home grown terrorism. Last weekend’s shootout conveniently resurrects the Timothy McVeigh-Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber from the 1990’s era right back into our nightly news living rooms peddling the same domestic brand of “homegrown” terrorism to once again fear. Be on the lookout that your neighbor is not some neo-Nazi (though in Ukraine the US makes them national heroes and leaders) hater of America and its government. Your more than 25 local or 50 state fusion centers along with Homeland Security are all there at your service to enthusiastically take your concerns very seriously as Americans turn against Americans ratting them out in mostly imagined, paranoid fear.

That said, no doubt there are a handful of violent extremists with warped political agendas bent on killing other Americans and these few individuals do need to be apprehended by law enforcement prior to committing murderous acts. But the operational keyword here is handful. Yet the fear tactics so zealously embraced and deployed by the government-media outlets purposely exaggerate the actual danger, preying on public fear that promotes a sense of mass and cultural paranoia in the population. Additionally, this is just another self-serving device of deception inherently used to justify and proliferate the ever expanding existence of the military security complex.

This latest mass shootingwas perpetrated by a disgruntled, hatemongering husband and wife team Jerad and Amanda Miller who were quickly referred to in the press as “homegrown terrorists” angry at their federal government for tyrannically overstepping its authority and control over the American people. After gunning down at point blank range the police officers sitting in a pizzeria, then planting a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and a swastika on their lifeless bodies, the married couple walked away towards a nearby Walmart where outside in the parking lot they encountered a man carrying a not so concealed weapon. After the wife realized he was armed and trying to stop them, she killed the would-be fallen hero. The murdering couple proceeded inside the Walmart and moved to the back of the store prior to engaging in a shootout with the arriving SWAT team. A witness allegedly overheard the husband yell out, “the revolution is about to start!” Ultimately the wife reportedly shot her husband and then killed herself. 

Right away the media began interviewing various “hate experts” from organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) referencing the spiked rise in anti-government militia groups as part of a growing backlash of angry Americans responding to what they believe has become a militarized police state. The SPLC maintain that since 2010 there have been 32 instances of terrorism by far-right groups. Though it may be a fact that homegrown terrorism is increasing, it sends a very broad stoke message that repeatedly reverberates off the media echo chamber walls and translates into countless headlines stating that the Vegas shooters were avid adherents to the so called “Patriot” movement, the name ascribed those Americans espousing their Second Amendment rights amidst growing calls for gun control. 

As self-proclaimed “patriots” some are literally and others rhetorically calling for revolution as the means to take back their country from an invasive federal government that since 9/11 has usurped citizens’ constitutional rights and civil liberties. The gun toting motley crew that assembled a couple months ago to defend Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy “rights” would be considered card carrying members of the Patriot movement. Last weekend’s Las Vegas killers were allegedly in Nevada but rejected and ousted for being too radical by even Bundy’s militant mod squad.

Lumping anyone critical of the federal government in with so called homegrown terrorists is a transparent smear tactic currently being pumped out by both mainstream media outlets and individuals very high up in the federal government. For instance, Arie Perliger, a social science professor who is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of research at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, authored a report last year that purposely and brazenly spewed this very dangerous message to America’s future leaders. 

Perliger categorizes fringe right wing extremist groups such as “patriotic” members of various paramilitary organizations not unlike last weekend’s Vegas couple and the Bundy camp as well as hardcore Christian fundamentalists, tea party fanatics, gun rights activists, survivalists and the home school crowd in with the progressive left that include libertarians, constitutionalists, civil rights and civil liberties activists and political activists like the Occupy movement. He is preaching hate and distrust to cadets and Americans alike when he generalizes all of these diverse groups from both the political right and left into one enemy camp because they all happen to be critical of the federal government. 

Warning America to watch out for this dangerous and violent anti-government enemy lurking everywhere, in effect implicates and demonizes all these groups, lumping them all together as potential homegrown terrorists. Yet this is the political extremism heading the US Combating Terrorism Center at prestigious West Point. If such dangerous thinking comes from those holding such powerful positions in America, no wonder the government, military and police have turned Americans against Americans and our nation tragically into such a dangerously militarized police state.

 
But really there is nothing new in this perverse form of bigotry and hate. It is really just more of the same post-9/11 Bush neocon doctrine of overly simplistic black and white thinking expressed by the war criminal himself, “You’re either with us or against us.” This over-the-top ploy is aimed in one fell swoop to separate and pit Americans against each other into two very distinct opposing camps. Clearly an agenda that battle lines are currently being drawn could possibly end up as the rallying battle cry in America’s second civil war.

The “with us” camp are those Americans blindly obedient and loyal to the government who simply do what they’re told, coerced into joining the one in six Americans already employed in the sprawling, overarching military-homeland-security-prison complex that include both government and private contractors. The “against us” crowd are those Americans outside this fascist domain being vilified as potential homegrown terrorists because they openly oppose and criticize the government’s pervasive theft, violent destruction, ruthless tyranny, increasing oppression and web of relentless propaganda and deceit. Obviously the latter group are likely already on a growing government watch list slated for the FEMA roundups as soon as martial law is declared after the next major false flag is firmly planted with a bang on American soil. 

In recent years Americans choosing to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public places as demonstrators to express dissenting views have been brutally attacked with tear gas, maced, beaten and forcibly arrested by terrorists in police uniform. The Occupy Wall Street movement from 2011 was effectively destroyed by a nationalized campaign out of Washington delivering marching orders to its militarized police force to literally and violently wage war on a defenseless, unarmed population. The overkill tactics to violently injure, arrest, imprison and aggressively persecute and prosecute US protestors have now become a shameful national policy toward dissent in America. 

This oppressive strategy is designed to clearly send the message to American citizens that they can no longer exercise their constitutional rights because the courts are rigged by treasonous criminals wearing long dark robes who unlawfully no longer uphold the US Constitution that they swore under oath to protect. The same applies to all our elected members of the federal government who have betrayed both their Constitution and their constituents. Since the coup that was the inside job of 9/11, the fascists in power have instituted a systematic practice of totalitarianism with an out of control executive branch that under wartime powers gave rise overnight to dictatorship and a legislative branch characterized by a corrupt two party system bought and owned by the same oligarchic interests they now represent (since they clearly do not represent the citizens who elected them) that by polarized design is completely dysfunctional, broken and worthless. This is what happens when a supposed democracy morphs into oligarchy.

A predatory corporatized oligarchy bent on destroying America has decimated the middle class in two simultaneous decade long war defeats, eliminated a onetime thriving, vibrant manufacturing sector through greedy profit gouging and outsourcing, and allowed its cities and infrastructure to become crumbling urban war zones and disaster zones waiting to happen. Oligarchs plotted and devised this sinister New World Order scheme to take down America and make it just another Third World nation struggling desperately to survive in a global era of extreme austerity and impoverishment. Nearing full execution of the devastating pre-9/11 neocon regime change agenda to take down seven sovereign nations in five years, few of us ever realized until recently that the eighth would be America. But on 9/11 a coup took place whereby the Constitution was overthrown, no longer recognized or accepted as the rule of law. 

Also by calculated design, US foreign policy has left nation after nation around the globe far worse off than before US interventions, permanently immersed in sectarian civil wars, be they by invasion, regime change, protracted occupation or prolonged siege of economic sanctions. After inventing, training, financing and arming al Qaeda, using it to pull off the most sinister false flag in human history with 9/11, wage war under false pretense and destroy so many lives and nations – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, the list goes on and on. 

Now where no al Qaeda even existed before, al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, the Middle East and Africa are stronger in territory and number than ever before. America propagated the al Qaeda myth and continues to hire al Qaeda mercenaries to fight its proxy wars in Syria and Libya and the Balkans  throughout the 1990’s.

Like Vietnam fell two years after the American military left, now in Iraq the same pattern is recurring. After capturing Iraq’s second largest city as well as Fellujah earlier this year, al Qaeda aligned forces are heading south to the Baghdad capital threatening to overthrow the US installed puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Soon enough history will be once again repeating itself in Afghanistan when Americans are gone and the Taliban will likely overpower the weaker, corrupt, US puppet government there. This US pattern is a recurring global nightmare of unfathomable death, waste and destruction that has been operating nonstop decade after decade with no end in sight. 

In a growing warmongering climate of extreme geopolitical polarization, militarization and feudal debtor-based privatization, the war drums are beating louder on every continent with wars already begun and others about to commence, with a looming World War III precariously hanging over the earth in the balance. This present world in utter turmoil is in fact the conspiracy the oligarchs have long been planning, using the old divide and conquer strategy that historically works like a demonic curse every time. Their plan is now well underway toward being fully executed.

This is why it becomes so importantly crucial for the US government as the oligarchic apparatus to ensure that Americans be propagandized into turning against each other. If Americans can be conned into accepting that dangerously destructive “us versus them” mindset, then an ever increasingly polarized America will successfully be drawn into two opposing enemy camps, those who are part of and favoring the tyranny of a US police state nation and those who refuse to react as intimidated, fearful sheeple sounding the needed alarm to oppose a cold blooded agenda of tyranny and oppression. Many of us who love our country are patriots not out to violently overthrow or destroy the US government. It is both equally grossly unfair and grossly untrue to conveniently lump those of us who love our nation and Constitution with terrorists. There are more homegrown terrorists working for the US government than any other terrorists. Those of us who truly love our country are willing to fight for our stolen lost rights and liberties through such nonviolent civil disobedience methods espoused by our modern day role models Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.

America’s founding fathers achieved a remarkable feat eloquently defining America’s rule of law based on carefully crafted principles of checks and balances, civil liberties and freedom embedded in and protected by our Constitution. The vast majority of us Americans protesting the dismantling of our Constitution are neither terrorists nor violent. But we will not idly stand by and watch our rights be further trampled by an oppressive, morally bankrupt and thoroughly broken government determined to enslave, imprison and murder its own citizenry. The present government is using underhanded divisiveness to maliciously instill crippling fear and toxic hatred in people that can then be malevolently used as the diabolical driving force and incendiary fuel to both domestically and globally ignite massive conflict, war, death and destruction. Life ultimately is made of choice. And we as a nation, a people and a human race must choose life over death.