By John & Nisha Whitehead
Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: Mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions.
Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.
If we don’t nip this situation in the bud, and soon, it will become yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the First and Fourth Amendments at will.
In communities across the Nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they think might be mentally ill, based solely on their own judgment, even if those individuals pose no danger to others.
In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas, exhibit a willingness to engage in meaningful discussion, have excessive fears of specific stimuli, or refuse voluntary treatment recommendations.
Although these programs ostensibly are aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track persons by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, pre-crime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, they could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called thought crimes.
The AP reports, federal officials are looking into how to add identifiable patient data, such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools, to its surveillance toolkit.
Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the groundwork is being laid that would allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents, and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.
Of course, this situation is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, declared unfit for society, labelled dangerous, or extremist, or turned into outcasts and exiled.
Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others), are a perfect example of this mindset at work and the ramifications of where it could lead.
The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer, or any type of medical professional, to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.
Although in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an immediate danger to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts, and the police.
Remember, this same government uses the words anti-government, extremist and terrorist interchangeably.
This same government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged words, and suspicious activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This same government keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family, or the courts if the government believes them to be threats.
This same government has a growing list, shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies, of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution, 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 could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government soon will declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.
Let that sink in a moment.
Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority in order to preemptively neutralize a potential threat, and you’ll understand why some might view these mental health round-ups with trepidation.
No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans easily can be put to malevolent purposes.
Even the most well-intentioned government law, or program can be, and has been, perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, the war on COVID-19: All of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and since have become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands. For instance, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.
As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas, and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.
—The Rutherford Institute