FBI Making List of American "Extremists," Leaked Memo Reveals | Hacker News Reader

FBI Making List of American "Extremists," Leaked Memo Reveals

kenklippenstein.com

42 pointsO1111OOO27 comments

> The target is those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.”

In other words, those exercising the most fundamental of Constitutional rights.

Copy of the Bondi memo at issue: https://substack-post-media.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/post-...

I bet the criteria for being an extremist is not agreeing with everything the state does.

Back during Obama's tenure lots of right sympathetic groups got labeled domestic terror organizations. It's always political. Don't like the state calling you bad names? The solution is to reduce its power not to just get the "correct" people in charge. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/year-hate-and-ex...

> Back during Obama's tenure lots of right sympathetic groups got labeled domestic terror organizations

Which groups were labeled domestic terror organizations by the Obama admin? SPLC is a non-profit, not a government agency.

No they actually didn't. A lot of hate groups pushing violent and hateful rhetoric got called out by individuals and non-profits.

I realize I didn't make the point clearly enough. This is nothing new. It's politics, always has been. The left labels people on the right they don't like with bad names. The right is absolutely going to do it back to the left. That's the game. I don't like it, but that's clearly how it goes.

Don't read what I'm saying as an endorsement of what the right is going to the left right now. Nor should you read it as an endorsement of what the left did to the right back then. They're both bad.

What are you talking about? This is weaponization of the FBI to treat US citizens like criminals by designating them as terrorists or supporters of terrorism. This is not a "both sides" issue. This is the full weight of the state being used against its own citizens for constitutionally-protected activity.

You specifically mentioned Obama. How did the Obama admin do the same? Does it make this a dismissable non-issue?

"Don't read what I'm saying as an endorsement of what the right is going [doing] to the left right now. "

That's me in the post you're critizing me for. I'm explicitly saying it's not good. What else do I need to do to make sure that you understand that I don't think it's okay?

Not say things like "it's always political", and otherwise both-sides the topic as if the current regime is not a watershed break with American norms, however flawed and imperfectly-adhered-to they were. Yes, our government has been decaying towards authoritarianism for quite some time and yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. But if we earnestly care about individual liberty, now is the time to throw our backs into stopping it.

The Obama administration sent the IRS after conservative organizations.

https://waysandmeans.house.gov/2014/06/24/timeline-of-the-ir...

This was also bad, and was criticized by Dem members of Congress along with the mainstream media, and led to the IRS Commissioner's resignation. Hopefully Bondi will too.

Were they domestic terror organizations? The answer to this is important, and often overlooked.

Labeling people across the aisle is nothing new.

Kamala Harris went so far as to badger a judicial nominee about his membership in a Catholic men’s organization. ( Other Democrats did as well ).

https://www.archbalt.org/knights-leader-takes-umbrage-at-sen...

I think there's a difference between badgering a Catholic about where his tendencies will lead him (the pope posts them publicly so we already know) and instructing the national law enforcement to write them up as domestic terrorists.

The Catholics were also smeared as ‘alt-right’, which was an attempt to slide the Overton window left. The Knights of Columbus has been around forever, they perform many charitable acts and have never, ever been accused of anything nefarious.

‘Alt right’ also seems to smell of terroristic accusation, but maybe that’s just my interpretation.

In fact, the KofC has been targeted by the Ku Klux Klan in the past. ( The Klan hates Catholics, as the Blues Brothers movie tells us.)*

Smearing the Knights was a vast overreach.

* If you find your position is in agreement with the KKK, it is a good time to think about it thoroughly.

Were the Catholics smeared as 'alt-right' by an official government agency, and especially by one involved in enforcement of the law?

Or are you merely pointing out that someone somewhere once said something bad, and so BSABSVR?

Not just ‘somebody’, but the Democrats eventual choice for presidential nominee.

Per Google:

Those who have called the organization "alt-right" or similar terms include:

Senator Mazie Hirono: During the confirmation process for judicial nominee Brian Buescher, the Democratic senator from Hawaii included written questions that implied the Knights of Columbus was an extremist group, and later doubled down on the sentiment, with some reports stating she framed religious protections as the "alt-right's position".

Senator Kamala Harris: As a senator from California, she was involved in similar questioning of Buescher.

Jill Filipovic: A fellow at the New America Foundation and a CNN contributor, she referred to the Knights of Columbus as a "right-wing extremist" group in a tweet.

Thankfully, the hate speech seems toned down after Harris’ defeat.

> Senator Kamala Harris: As a senator from California, she once said something kinda like that.

Weak sauce.

> Per Google:

Oh, per Google! Well, that's an incorruptible source of truth.

Now is a good time to read Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Also Umberto Eco's essay Ur-Fascism.

Interestingly to me, Arendt makes a good case that fascism is distinct from totalitarianism. It's possible to have a fascist government that is authoritarian and dictatorial, but not fully totalitarian. It's also possible to have a totalitarian government based on a system other than fascism.

Agreed, it's some sort of a Venn diagram of "traits" present in both -isms.

Hasn't this been true for like ever?

No.

Any former Trump supporters ready to eat some humble pie, admit the mainstream critical narrative was right and this guy really is a freedom-hating fascist con artist with no real constructive plans, and work together to save our country?

Venting may feel good but it does more harm than good to your ostensible cause because it makes it trivially easy for those who disagree with you to dismiss you out of hand (which they're probably already very inclined to do to start with). Assuming you're sincere, of course.

That wasn't me venting. That was me earnestly reaching across the partisan divide, hoping that some more people have fallen out of the reality distortion field. In real life, I've met people who have, and they're quite apologetic about it. Online, they're rarer.

I get the red tribe's general frustration! I'm a libertarian who was both sidesing up until Covid. Heck, I had still thought there was a good chance of Trump coming around to actually leading until through like June of 2020.

My comments were not meant to be inflammatory. They are dispassionate technical descriptions. The strength of the words reflects how bad this guy is for our country.

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