By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry, purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure, has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.
Think about it.
Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.
In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.
The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.
The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.
Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests, GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently, and profitably, employed.
Case in point: The FBI.
The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the Nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the Nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles, and doing the boss’ dirty work.
The FBI has been particularly criticized for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation, to carry out the plots, entrapment, and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”
It is the government’s answer to precrime: first, foster activism by stoking feelings of outrage and injustice by way of secret agents and informants; second, recruit activists to carry out a plot (secretly concocted by the government) to challenge what they see as government corruption; and finally, arrest those activists for conspiring against the government before they can actually commit a crime.
It is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.
To go after terrorists, they become terrorists. To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers. To go after thieves, they become thieves.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy, a government ruled by thieves, a kakistocracy a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations, and thieves, that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens, or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.
It certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.
Some days, it feels like the FBI is running its own crime syndicate complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.
In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then solve them, the FBI gives certain informants permission to break the law, including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies, in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts. USA Today estimates that FBI agents have authorized criminal informants to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day, 5,600 crimes a year.
In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation, The FBI has repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.
Indeed, for years, the U.S. government has been creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of offensive attacks. As part of this cyberweapons programs, government agencies have been stockpiling all kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking tools that can steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device, or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.
It always follows the same script: The government creates a menace, knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public, then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.
Unfortunately, “we the people” are the ones who keep reaping what the government sows.
We’re the ones who suffer every time, directly and indirectly, from the blowback.
I point out, “Battlefield America: The War on the American People,” this is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
—The Rutherford Institute