Tag: extremism

PayPal Working with ADL to Financially Blacklist and Spy on ‘Extremists’

PayPal took its first step towards suppressing dissent when it banned the account of Julian Assange in 2011. In recent years it has targeted the right, blacklisting the free speech video platform BitChute, Republican congressional candidate and activist Laura Loomer, and the conservative street artist Sabo.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a liberal digital rights organization, has opposed the rise of financial censorship for over a decade. In 2018, the organization warned that banks, payment processors, and credit card companies were becoming “de facto internet censors.”

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FBI Asks Americans To Spy On Own Families And Friends To Prevent ‘Extremism’

The FBI fired out a tweet Sunday afternoon urging Americans to check on their own family members and make sure they aren’t planning any ‘extremism’, prompting a wave of comparisons to authoritarian communist governments.

The wording of the tweet, which links to a Department of National Intelligence (DNI) “booklet” about “homegrown violent extremism” is clear.

The 2019 document contains images commonly associated with radical Islamic terrorism and lists “mobilization indicators” including “communicating directly with violent extremists online.”

Yet there is a distinct ‘Hey Americans, spy on your families for the government’ vibe in the FBI tweet, as numerous detractors noted.

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Police To Target Americans For Their Ideological Beliefs And Behaviors

As America closes in on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, the Feds want the public to believe that unknown terrorist organizations are recruiting your neighbor[s] to become a domestic extremist. But it is not just any neighbor, this time it is far-right “extremists” or White supremacists and Trump supporters who they want to recruit.

For years DHS officials have warned Americans of the dangers that lurk just outside their front doors or worse in the far-flung Middle East where extremists are plotting to bomb us, shoot us, or poison our water systems. The only difference to the terrorists that await Americans is that now they are allegedly targeting a person’s ideological beliefs.

According to Cohen, “the most significant terrorist threat facing the U.S. today comes from individuals or lone offenders, and small groups of individuals who based on an ideological belief system, primarily an ideological belief system they self-connect with online activity, but they’ll go out and commit an act of violence on behalf of that belief or a combination of ideological beliefs, or a combination of ideological beliefs and personal grievances.”

What does this mean for Americans?

It means that the Feds can target individuals for expressing anti-government sentiments.

“In many respects, this is a much more individualized threat, and what I mean by that is if you look at the lethal attacks that have occurred in the U.S. over the last several years, they have been conducted by individuals who spend incredible amounts of time online viewing extremist content, content about past violent attacks, they tend to be individuals who have shared behavioral health or environmental characteristics,” Cohen said.

Targeting people for their ideological beliefs is horrifying in and of itself. Biden’s new domestic terror law will also give law enforcement the right to target people based on their behaviors.

“What we mean by that, yes, the motive and ideological beliefs are important as part of the analytic process, but the threat tends to come from individuals who have a very superficial understanding of the ideological belief system they use as the validation for an act of violence, but they do have shared behavioral characteristics,” Cohen said.

If any of this is beginning to sound like China, one only need look at Hong Kong to see the similarities. Speaking out in print against an authoritative regime is an arrestable offense, demonstrating against police brutality is an arrestable offense and so on.

As a recent Brietbart article pointed out, there is no “official Pentagon definition of extremism.” So how can our government give more powers to law enforcement to surveil and arrest suspected “domestic extremists”?

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DHS warns ‘perfect storm’ of ‘violent extremist-white supremacists’ is imminent

A Homeland Security bulletin obtained by ABC talks about “violent extremists” and the July 4th holiday.

It warned “attacks” against a “range of potential targets.” With no warning, of course. Those “domestic violent extremists” – aka DVEs, the feds said, are motivated by “violent ideologies” and the “ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists,” or those RMVE-WSs, were sharing information about “mass gatherings.” AND “law enforcement officers.”

“We have the perfect storm,” ABC was told by a “senior law enforcement official.”

So the network posted online: “‘Perfect storm’: Bulletin warns of extremist violence as pandemic restrictions lift.”

However, buried down in the report was the perhaps-significant comment that, “no specific plot has been identified for Independence Day,” but that the warning “ominously” said federal officials are seeing “evidence of planning” by radicals.

ABC said it obtained access to the warning “exclusively,” and that it includes that charge, that “34 states will have State of Emergency orders expire” soon, so that “mass gatherings and social distancing restrictions will be largely lifted.”

It expressed, too, that, “As of 16 June, Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists (RMVE-WSs) were sharing downloadable links to a publication discussing targeting mass gatherings, critical infrastructure, and law enforcement officers.”

The law enforcement official told ABC, “It’s a very volatile moment and it’s about to be a more target-rich environment.”

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Pentagon Looking to Better Screen Social Media of Service Members and Recruits for ‘Extremism’

The Pentagon is looking into better screening recruits’ and service members’ social media as part of its effort to get rid of “extremism” in the United States military, according to a recent memo from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The Pentagon released the memo on Friday afternoon, approximately 60 days after Austin ordered a force-wide “stand-down” for commanders to discuss extremism in the military with troops after some military veterans took part in protests at the Capitol on January 6.

The Pentagon has never defined exactly what “extremism” means or given an estimate of how many “extremists” there are in the military — which defense officials have said was part of what Austin wanted to get a better grasp on during the unprecedented stand-down.

Friday’s memo, dated April 9, is Austin’s first action taken since the end of the stand-down and outlines immediate steps to be taken, as well as the establishment of a “Countering Extremism Working Group (CEWG),” which will have a representative from each military service.

One of the CEWG’s four lines of efforts (LOE) includes pursuing better screening of troops’ and recruits’ social media:

This LOE will examine the Department’s pursuit of scalable and cost effective capabilities to screen publically [sic] available information in accessions and continuous vetting for national security positions. The LOE will make recommendations on further development of such capabilities and incorporating algorithms and additional processing into social media screening platforms. This LOE will also endeavor to develop policy to expand user activity monitoring of both classified and unclassified systems.

Kirby said the Pentagon is looking to do that in a “legal, lawful way.” 

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