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Patriotic, constitutionally-minded citizens are being
demonized by leftist
"watchdog" groups and elements of the Justice Department as domestic
allies
of international terrorists.
Attention, concerned American citizens: Do you know any
"Super Patriots" in
your community - people who displayed U.S. flags in their front yards before
the Black Tuesday attack, perhaps? Do any of your friends or neighbors talk
just a little too much about the U.S. Constitution, or engage in criticism of
the federal government even as it protects us from Osama bin Laden's
murderous minions? Have you come across anyone who insists that the United
States should withdraw from the United Nations, despite the central role
played by the UN in organizing the global counter-terrorism coalition?
If you have encountered such people, it is your duty to inform
the local
Joint Terrorism Task Force, or any available civilian "watchdog"
organization
devoted to monitoring right-wing hate groups. Only by maintaining vigilance
against domestic extremists can we win the war on terrorism!
This exhortation is a satire - but just barely. The terrorist
atrocities of
September 11th, and the subsequent anonymous bio-terror attacks using
anthrax-laden letters, have proven to be tremendously useful to those who
seek to suppress "right-wing" political dissent. The most obvious
beneficiaries of public anxiety over terrorism are self-appointed leftist
"watchdog" groups who act as an informal intelligence network for
federal law
enforcement agencies.
Who's Watching the Watchdogs?
One key point of contact between federal law enforcement
agencies and the
"watchdog" community is the "Militia Watchdog Mailing List,"
an e-mail
discussion forum established through the State and Local Anti-Terrorism
Training program (SLATT). Created through a grant from the Justice
Department, SLATT is an outgrowth of the "Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death
Penalty Act of 1996," passage of which was propelled by the 1995 Oklahoma
City bombing. Access to the "Militia Watchdog Mailing List" is made
available
to law enforcement and intelligence officials, academics, and journalists who
are deemed to have a legitimate interest in fighting "right-wing
extremism."
In a message posted to the mailing list on September 23rd,
attorney Bernard
J. Sussman suggested that the newly created Office of Homeland Security
should seek out the expertise of SLATT's "watchdogs": "It would
seem to me
that this new Homeland Security agency would be perfect to adopt SLATT and
get really cordial relations with the other watchdogger-type organizations
that already have some insight into domestic troublemakers." Given the
extensive and growing informal cooperation that already exists between
leftist "watchdogs" and various law enforcement bodies, it seems
likely that
Sussman's proposal has been well received.
"Watchdog organizations feed law enforcement agencies
information in order to
prompt them to go after their enemies, real and imagined," writes political
analyst Laird Wilcox in his 1998 study The Watchdogs. Wilcox, author of
several scholarly works and founder of the "Wilcox Collection on
Contemporary
Political Movements" at the University of Kansas, warns that self-appointed
"watchdog" groups "put entirely innocent citizens at risk from
law
enforcement error and misconduct" by "alleging ‘dangerousness' on
the basis
of mere assumed values, opinions and beliefs...." Left-wing groups devoted
to
"monitoring" the "right wing" consistently advocate
"formal censorship or
government reprisals against their ideological opponents.... They appear to
regard their opposition and critics as sub-human and not deserving the
amenities ordinarily afforded to other human beings."
One useful tactic consistently employed by
"watchdog" groups, notes Wilcox,
is to insist that their political opponents are motivated by racism,
anti-Semitism, and similar prejudices - and that these evil motivations are
so carefully disguised and subtle that they can only be detected by the
"watchdogs" themselves. In this fashion, a political activist who
promotes
conservative and traditionalist positions runs the risk "of being ritually
defamed as a ‘neo-Nazi' or a ‘hatemonger' - two categories that can have
profound consequences for the victim," warns Wilcox.
This is particularly true in post-Black Tuesday America, as
the public is
besieged with media accounts describing the so-called "radical right"
as a
domestic arm of the international terrorist network that has killed thousands
of our fellow citizens. "Watchdog" activists, who are deferred to as
"experts" by the establishment media, insist that law-abiding,
principled
conservatives - such as pro-life activists, defenders of gun rights, home
schoolers, and advocates of U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations - are
close kindred to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other militant
bigots. One prominent "watchdog" activist has suggested that
pre-emptive
detention of "right-wing radicals" may be necessary in order to win
the war
against terrorism.
Beating the Drums for a Purge
"Although no one can say with certainty who's being
investigated in the
anthrax investigation," reported the November 22nd edition of the leftist
cyber-journal Salon, "watchers of right-wing hate groups say there's been
no
dragnet pulling in members of militant antiabortion, white supremacist,
Christian right or militia groups for questioning, let alone detention."
Among those complaining about the federal government's supposed negligence is
John Foster "Chip" Berlet, a veteran Marxist agitator who grandly
styles
himself the "senior analyst" of Political Research Associates (PRA).
PRA,
notes Wilcox, is actually a minuscule think-tank with a three-person office
in Boston. But neither this fact, nor Berlet's long history of support for
Marxist terrorism, has deterred the media from treating Berlet and PRA as
reliable "experts" on the subject of the "radical right."
Berlet's devotion to the farthest fringes of the radical left
can be seen in
his 1980s-era membership in the "Chicago Area Friends of Albania" (CAFA),
which described itself as a group of people who "are friendly with and
supportive of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania." At that time,
Albania was ruled by the Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. When PRA
relocated from Chicago to Boston in 1987, CAFA commended Berlet for being
"a
steadfast friend of Albania through thick and thin."
But CAFA was not the only - or the most important -
Marxist-Leninist front
group in which Berlet enlisted. In his résumé, Berlet proudly refers to
himself as a former vice-president of the National Lawyers' Guild (NLG) and
secretary of the NLG's Civil Liberties Committee. The NLG, notes Professor
Harvey Klehr of Emory University, was created as "an affiliate of the
Soviet-controlled International Association of Democratic Lawyers" and
served
as a legal front for the U.S. Communist Party. A primary function of the NLG,
observed Los Angeles Police Department counter-terrorism specialist Arleigh
McCree, was "to act as a clearinghouse and as an apologist and defender for
terrorists and terrorism."
In January 1984, Berlet, along with several representatives of
Communist and
subversive groups, signed an open letter to Judge Charles Sifton demanding an
end to federal grand jury investigations of left-wing terrorists. A July 1984
letter "To All Progressive People," signed by Berlet, applauded
"grand jury
resisters" who were charged with criminal contempt of court for refusing to
cooperate with investigations of left-wing terrorists. "Criminal contempt
is
a ‘legal' mechanism to establish political internment in the United States …
an attempt to instill a ‘snitch mentality' in which fear of jail overrides
justice and principle," declared the letter.
It is not surprising that Berlet now acts as a
"snitch" against conservative
Americans - and that he is openly suggesting that "political
internment" of
law-abiding conservatives is justified by the "war on terrorism." In
an
interview with Salon, Berlet protested that the Justice Department, "in a
racist way," is "going completely overboard in rounding up [Arab and
Muslim]
people for whom there's no evidence whatsoever that there's criminal
activity" while ignoring the supposed threat from "the militia
movement" and
other elements of the so-called right wing.
Asked to describe "possible domestic terrorism
suspects," Berlet separates
the "right wing" into "three sections. You have the Christian
right, the
patriot/militia movement and then the extreme right, where you find
neo-Nazis, the Klan, and so on.... I do know that the Justice Department and
federal agencies have reached out to draw from various researchers that have
studied all three sectors of the right, but one never knows how that gets
filtered up into the decision-making process of how to lead the
investigations."
Berlet even suggests that the anthrax-contaminated letters
sent to various
news outlets and Democratic lawmakers are somehow a continuation of the
campaign to impeach Bill Clinton: "They [the anthrax letters] all go to
either media or Democrats. Well, OK, what have we just been through in the
United States? A gigantic war against liberal media and liberal Democrats
culminating in the impeachment of a president.... There are still people in
the extreme right, but also in the Christian right and in the patriot/militia
movement, who see leading Democrats and liberal media as the cancer eating
away at the American body politic.... I wouldn't close the door yet to these
folks because there are some logical arguments that can be made that connect
those dots."
Berlet's comments could be considered fair warning to anybody
who still has
an "Impeach Clinton Now!" bumper sticker on his car.
Asked by Salon if he expects "a louder drum beat calling
on the Justice
Department to focus on some of these domestic right-wing groups," Berlet
replied: "Oh, I hear the drums, I just don't hear the response."
Berlet and
his fellow leftist "watchdogs" have been dutiful drum majors, leading
a
veritable parade of media stories depicting the American "right wing"
as
allies of Osama bin Laden. "U.S. government experts do not seem to have
seriously considered the possibility that Middle Eastern terrorists might
have slipped some weapons-lab anthrax to a right-wing ally in the U.S.,"
Berlet complained to the November 22nd Christian Science Monitor.
A Crescendo of Alarm
Another drum major is James Ridgeway, author of an overheated
study of "right
wing hate groups" entitled Blood in the Face. In the October 31st issue of
the left-leaning Village Voice, Ridgeway insists that the American "right
wing" is essentially a fifth column for our nation's foreign enemies.
Referring to what he describes as the "virulent hatred
shared by thousands of
extremists within U.S. borders," Ridgeway writes that "the recent
anthrax
attacks look increasingly like their doing. Some of these people have yearned
to acquire the means of biochemical warfare, and today they're calling for an
assault." Further, he maintains, "there's always the chance the
white-power
guys in the U.S. won't have to do this all by themselves. Fueled by a shared
anti-Semitism, the white supremacists of America's hinterland have forged
links with extremists in Europe - and perhaps even the Middle East."
In its coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing, THE NEW AMERICAN
reported
extensively on the documented connections between Timothy McVeigh's neo-Nazi
co-conspirators and various Middle Eastern terrorist chieftains.* But
Ridgeway, like scores of other leftist media scribblers and self-proclaimed
"experts," isn't using the word "links" to describe actual
operational
connections between criminal elements in this country and foreign terrorists.
Instead, he and others are operating on the assumption that America's
domestic enemies are defined by unacceptable views regarding the role of the
U.S. government, both domestically and internationally.
"White supremacists and Islamicists like Osama bin Laden
just plain agree on
a lot of things - in particular, that globalism and multiculturalism are the
über-enemies," wrote Michelle Cottle of The New Republic. This theme was
also
sounded in an October 18th Newhouse News Service article, which warned that
potential domestic allies of our terrorist enemies included "the loose and
fractious network of neo-Nazis, skinheads, Klansmen, Christian patriots,
neo-Confederates and white separatists" and those who call for "an
‘America
First' shift toward isolationism."
The article cited left-wing activist Brian Levin, director of
the Center for
the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernadino,
who maintains that Osama bin Laden and the American "right wing" are
joined
by "a rigid philosophy on how society should be ordered. Both want their
own
homeland, hermetically sealed, where they can practice their own
exclusionary, religion-based social order. In many ways, American racial
radicals mirror the intolerant, extremist groups you see on the international
scene."
Obviously, there are millions of Americans who are concerned
about the loss
of national sovereignty, and who have nothing but contempt for the twisted
mind-set of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and others of that ilk. But the cumulative
portrait being drawn of the "radical right" as a domestic enemy
deliberately
omits such distinctions. Those who express "anti-government" views -
"anti-government," that is, according to the emerging official line -
are now
being cast as potential terrorists.
An op-ed column by Gary Ackerman and Cheryl Loeb in the
October 24th
Christian Science Monitor cited a "warning to America" from the
website of an
"extremist Christian group" to illustrate that "there are
disaffected
Americans who harbor intense hatred for their own government and are willing
and capable of committing violence against national targets.... Given the
existence of these groups, speculation that one or more may have been
involved in the spate of anthrax-filled letters going to prominent American
targets has some credibility."
Ackerman and Loeb, who are researchers for the Monterey
Institute of
International Studies, argued: "The ideology of antigovernment militants
telegraphs the possibility of a backlash against heightened security,
post-September 11.... They view the federal government as an enemy of the
people, depriving U.S. citizens of their civil rights and pandering to
interests suggested by vast global-conspiracy theories such as the ‘New World
Order,' under which United Nations-led foreign troops will impose a despotic
rule over the U.S."
"Such extremist groups may therefore feel affronted if
the FBI is granted
more extensive powers of surveillance and detection," continued Ackerman
and
Loeb. "Ditto, the increase of federal law-enforcement and military
personnel
at airports, sporting events, metro stations and other public venues. They
may believe that the proposed plan for a system of national identification
cards is just another way for the government to subjugate U.S. citizens to
its ‘oppressive' rule. The plan for NATO surveillance planes to patrol
American skies will only further cement the beliefs of these groups that the
government is illegally imposing its ‘tyrannical' rule on the people."
It's important to note that Ackerman and Loeb's argument is
constructed in
such a way that truth offers no defense for critics of government policies.
All of the measures they describe represent dramatic - and in some instances,
unconstitutional - enlargements of the federal government's police power, and
a co-mingling of the roles of law enforcement and the military. The NATO
surveillance planes they refer to are under the command of a UN regional
affiliate and manned by crews of foreign troops. But under the logic - such
as it is - offered by Ackerman and Loeb, by merely pointing out such facts,
one identifies himself as a "domestic enemy" of the U.S. government.
"America, of course, needs to increase its
security," they concluded. "But
new measures do raise the specter of a possible backlash from U.S.
extremists. Continued attention to these groups is called for. While fighting
the enemy without, we must not forget the enemy within."
Who is the "Enemy Within"?
Who exactly is the "enemy within"? In scores of
post-Black Tuesday media
reports, potential "right-wing" domestic terrorists have been referred
to by
the curious designation "such groups" - with the word "such"
used to imply an
undefined association with hate groups of the neo-Nazi variety.
The November 22nd Christian Science Monitor article cited
above offers a
useful example of this tactic. Asserting that "white supremacists,
Christian
Identity adherents, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, skinhead groups, and
other extremists" have used the Black Tuesday tragedy to recruit new
members,
the article reports that "338 such groups" are active across the
Midwest. In
the same fashion, the November 11th Chicago Sun-Times informed its readers:
"There are 56 such groups in Illinois, with 22 in the Chicago
area...." The
November 19th Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel cited reports from
"watchdogs" that
"there are as many as 25 hate groups in Wisconsin" and that "such
groups
[are] … pounding on immigration, civil liberties and anti-Israel
themes...."
A chart accompanying the Journal-Sentinel article, entitled
"A Geography of
Hate," displayed a map of Wisconsin on which were marked the locations of
various "hate groups." Included in that category were various Ku Klux
Klan,
neo-Nazi, and skinhead groups, several self-styled "militia" units, a
handful
of "Christian patriot" associations, the Wisconsin branch of the U.S.
Constitution Party, and the home office of The John Birch Society (of which
THE NEW AMERICAN is an affiliated publication).
Clearly, the only thing this collection of organizations has
in common is the
fact that they are all, for various reasons, despised by the far left -
thereby illustrating that a "hate group" is any group the left hates.
The source of the "Geography of Hate" map, as well
as the statistics on "hate
groups" breathlessly cited by newspapers and wire services across the
country, is a report entitled "State of Hate: White Nationalism in the
Midwest, 2001-2002," produced by a Chicago-based leftist group called the
Center for New Community (CNC). The chief author of that report is Devin
Burghart, director of the CNC's "Building Democracy Initiative" and
former
research analyst for a Seattle-based "watchdog" group called the
Coalition
for Human Dignity. Not surprisingly, Burghart has been extensively cited as
an expert on the supposed danger of "right-wing" terrorism in the wake
of
Black Tuesday.
Burghart's debut as one of the media's favorite
"experts" came in early 2001,
when he released a report alleging that former Missouri Senator John
Ashcroft, who is now attorney general, harbored secret
"neo-Confederate"
sympathies. "The Senate Judiciary Committee should focus on Sen. Ashcroft's
endorsement of Southern Partisan [magazine]," declared Burghart in a press
release. Accusing Ashcroft of giving "legitimacy to one of the leading
white
nationalist groups in the country," Burghart insisted that "Southern
Partisan
and its publisher have a long history of promoting bigotry."
Whatever one thinks of the relative merits of Southern
Partisan (which, in
fact, does not promote bigotry of any variety), it is worth noting that
Burghart made these accusations at about the same time one of Britain's most
notorious left-wing journals published an article he co-wrote with Leonard
Zeskind, a veteran Marxist agitator.
Zeskind is a spokesman for the Atlanta-based Center for
Democratic Renewal
(CDR), which orchestrated - and profited handsomely from - the "black
church
arson" hoax of 1996. Prior to 1986, the CDR was called the National
Anti-Klan
Network, which in 1982 was described by a rival left-wing group as a "loose
coalition" of radical leftist groups organized around a nucleus of
"pro-Peking Stalinists." Zeskind himself was an organizer of the
Sojourner
Truth Organization, a 1970s-era revolutionary group that sought to create
"schools of communism" throughout the midwestern United States. One of
the
group's organizing manuals, "Towards a Revolutionary Party: Ideas on
Strategy
and Organization," described the group's work as that of "linking
[the]
fragmentary autonomous elements and socializing them into a new culture of
struggle."
Burghart and Zeskind collaborated on an article published in
the February
2001 issue of Searchlight, a British publication dedicated to
"anti-fascist"
activism. Searchlight was founded in the 1970s by Maurice Ludmer and Gerry
Gable. Ludmer was a former reporter for the Daily Morning Star, the English
Communist Party newspaper; Gable was a former member of the Young Communist
League, a former Communist Party political candidate, and a convicted felon.
Clearly, using Burghart's own standards as applied to John Ashcroft's trivial
association with the Southern Partisan magazine, we would have to conclude
that Burghart has lent "legitimacy" to individuals with a "long
history" of
promoting Marxist subversion and crime.
But the content of the article co-written by Burghart is even
more revealing
than the publication that carried it. Burghart and Zeskind lamented the fact
that with Ashcroft's confirmation as attorney general, "anti-fascist
groups"
- that is, hardcore Marxist groups who seek to criminalize conservative
activism - "failed to find a voice inside DC [and] also failed to mobilize
their own constituencies in the Northwest, Midwest and South into active
opposition." As a result, "anti-fascist-type groups have yet to
develop an
adequate national fight-the-right apparatus."
The crisis that began with the Black Tuesday terrorist attack
gives Burghart
and his comrade "watchdogs" a new opportunity to build their
"national
fight-the-right apparatus" - even if it means cooperating with a Justice
Department under the direction of John Ashcroft.
Patriots as Terrorists?
The influence of leftist "watchdog" groups on
federal counter-terrorism
efforts was illustrated by the 1999 release of the FBI's Project Megiddo
report, which described "religious motivation and the N.W.O. [new world
order] conspiracy theory [as] the two driving forces behind the potential for
millennial violence." Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates has
acknowledged that Project Megiddo did little more than "recapitulate
previously released reports and conference papers" produced by several
leftist "watchdog" groups, including his own.
As Y2K commemorations approached, the FBI warned police
agencies across the
country to keep an eye on people who displayed "excessive" distrust of
the
federal government or concern about our growing entanglement in the United
Nations. While "right-wing extremists" were kept under intense
scrutiny as
potential terrorists, officials made one significant arrest of a potential
terrorist - Ahmed Ressam, a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Ressam was intercepted at the Canadian border with a carload of explosives he
intended to use in an attack on Los Angeles International Airport.
As it happens, Ressam had no connections of any kind to
American "right-wing"
groups. He did, however, have a bogus passport issued by radical Muslim
elements within the Bosnian government, which was installed by the Clinton
administration and has been kept in power by a United Nations
"peacekeeping"
force. Predictably, the same "experts" who strain to find a
"right-wing"
connection to every terrorist threat have entirely ignored the UN connection
to Ressam's aborted terror attack.
Project Megiddo's "strategic assessment" of
terrorist threats ignored the
subject of radical Islamic terrorism completely. The same curious omission
was made by the author of a counter-terrorism pamphlet produced by the
Phoenix FBI office in 1999. That pamphlet, which was distributed in 1999 but
made public in late 2001 by internet-based firearms activist Angel Shamaya,
instructed police officers: "If you encounter any of the following, call
the
Joint Terrorism Task Force." Several categories of terrorist suspects are
then listed, including "Hate Groups" such as Nazis, Black Separatists,
Klansmen, and the like; "Single Issue Terrorists," such as animal
rights
radicals, eco-terrorists, and "insurgents"; and "Left-Wing
Terrorists"
motivated by "Marxist/Leninist philosophy."
But the very first category listed in the document - and,
presumably, the
single greatest danger - was "Right Wing Extremists," specifically
"‘defenders' of US Constitution against federal government and the UN
(Super
Patriots)." Police were also warned about "Common Law Movement
Proponents,"
who run the gamut from eccentrics who refuse to obtain drivers' licenses and
license plates to people who simply "make numerous references to [the] US
Constitution."
Once again, the pamphlet entirely ignored the possibility of
radical Islamic
terrorism. This oversight is even more remarkable in light of the fact that
Middle Eastern terrorists "just walk across" Arizona's increasingly
porous
border with Mexico, according to a federal counter-terrorism official who did
not wish to be identified. "They just blend in with the illegal immigrants
from Mexico, pretending to speak Spanish," the source told THE NEW
AMERICAN.
Another federal law enforcement officer, Ed Hall of the
Phoenix FBI office,
sought to play down the importance of the 1999 counter-terrorism pamphlet.
"The categories and traits listed in that pamphlet are historic in
nature,"
Agent Hall explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. "We were not saying that everyone
who meets any of the criteria should be considered a terrorist, but rather
that these are traits that have been recorded in people who have been
arrested for criminal activity. So we distributed that pamphlet as a way of
offering guidance to police officers." The federal counter-terrorism
official
contacted by THE NEW AMERICAN offered a slightly different assessment of the
pamphlet. "It reflects the same mind-set that led to the Megiddo report,
which was very anti-Christian and made some ridiculous assertions about the
nature of the potential threat," commented the source.
Following the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, all 56 U.S.
attorney's offices
were instructed to create a Joint Terrorism Task Force like the one that
distributed the notorious Arizona pamphlet. Each of those bodies is a prime
target for subversion by leftist "watchdogs" who seek nothing less
than the
criminalization of conservative political activism - and both the Megiddo
report and the 1999 Phoenix counter-terrorism pamphlet illustrate that this
process is well underway.
With the onset of the post-Black Tuesday anthrax incidents,
comments the
counter-terrorism official, "there has been a big push to link the anthrax
letters to domestic rather than international terrorists. I don't know how
they reached that conclusion, because to me it looks like the work of foreign
terrorists." The "big push" he describes suggests that elements
of the
Justice Department share the eagerness of leftist "watchdogs" to
create a
"national fight-the-right apparatus."
