Brandon Turbeville

Activist Post

Soldiers and police in America take an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. But knowing who is a domestic enemy of the Constitution can be confusing to a young grunt. So a West Point think tank decided to broadly define what a domestic enemy may look like to ensure soldiers follow orders when the time comes.

In a study recently published by the West Point Combating Terrorism Center entitled, “ Challengers From The Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right ,” Arie Perliger, the author of the study, attempts to present a picture of an America infested with dangerous “Right Wing” domestic terrorists lurking in the shadows and waiting to launch an attack on government establishments, agents, and minorities.

In the study, what Perliger defines as the “Far-Right” is actually a mixture of race hate groups with ordinary militias, anti-abortion activists, Libertarians/Anarchists, and “conspiracy theorists.” Perliger suggets that this “Far-Right” contingent is glued together by an identification with an “anti-federalist” ideology as well as a belief in a “New World Order.” According to Perliger, these groups are concerned with the “corrupted and tyrannical nature of the federal government and its apparent tendency to violate individuals’ civilian liberties and constitutional rights.”

Perliger, who is the director of terrorism studies at the West Point Combating Terrorism Center writes in the Introduction to the study that its purpose is to provide “a conceptual foundation for understanding different far-right groups and then presents the empirical analysis of violent incidents to identify those perpetrating attacks and their associated trends.”

For all the repetition of the terms “terrorism” and “violent” however, it is important to mention just how broad a definition has been assigned to this term in recent years. As Madison Ruppert of End the Lie writes in his article, “West Point study identifies ‘violent far-right’ with recognizing tyrannical, corrupt nature of government,” “It is worth noting that the federal government is quite tyrannical and corrupt with a federal judge ruled the government can claim the legal right to assassinate Americans without any charge or trial while never explaining the legal basis, engage in widespread illegal surveillance (which is dramatically increasing) and indefinitely detain Americans.”

Ruppert continues by stating, “If those aren’t violations of individuals’ civil liberties and constitutional rights, I don’t know what is.”

Yet, while Perliger defines three different branches of the “far-right” – racist/white supremacy movement, anti-federalist movement, and fundamentalist movement – the author lumps the three different branches into one, all while conveniently ignoring pertinent facts that might not back up his claims.

Perliger’s paper notably lacks mention of the fact that a great many “racist/white supremacy” organizations are themselves either partially or even entirely staffed by law enforcement agents of government intelligence. Likewise, Perliger entirely conflates race-based movements (also likely infiltrated and controlled by government agencies) with what he labels the “Christian Fundamentalist” movement. This, as Madison Ruppert points out, is described with a complete lack of understanding (intentional or otherwise) as to what “fundamentalism” actually is.

Yet, the “anti-federalist” movement (itself a variety of movements mixed together to provide an easier category for Perliger and his readers), is the most interesting when evaluating the West Point paper. According to Perliger, this “movement” is centered around a belief in a “New World Order,” and the recognition of the “corrupted and tyrannical nature of the federal government and its apparent tendency to violate individuals’ civilian liberties and constitutional rights.”

In this regard, Perliger writes,

The anti-federalist rationale is multifaceted, and includes the beliefs that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a “New World Order” (NWO) in which the United States will be absorbed into the United Nations or another version of global government. They also espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government. Extremists in the anti-federalist movement direct most their violence against the federal government and its proxies in law enforcement.

In further summarizing the “anti-federalist” viewpoint, Perliger writes,

The anti-federalist movement’s ideology is based on the idea that there is an urgent need to undermine the influence, legitimacy and practical sovereignty of the federal government and its proxy organizations. The groups comprising the movement suggest several rationales that seek to legitimize anti-federal sentiments. Some groups are driven by a strong conviction that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a “New World Order,” (NWO) in which the United States will be embedded in the UN or another version of global government. The NWO will be advanced, they believe, via steady transition of powers from local to federal law-enforcement agencies, i.e., the transformation of local police and law-enforcement agencies into a federally controlled “National Police” agency that will in turn merge with a “Multi-National Peace Keeping Force.” The latter deployment on US soil will be justified via a domestic campaign implemented by interested parties that will emphasize American society’s deficiencies and US government incompetency. This will convince the American people that restoring stability and order inevitably demands the use of international forces. The last stage, according to most NWO narratives, involves the transformation of the United States government into an international/world government and the execution and oppression of those opposing this process.

Indeed, anyone even faintly aware of historical and current events would be hard-pressed to argue with the so-called “anti-federalists” in their analysis.

Regardless, in light of the recent push for citizen disarmament, the paper tellingly states,

Linda Thompson, the head of the Unorganized Militia of the United States details the consequence of this global coup: ”This is the coming of the New World Order. A one-world government, where, in order to put the new government in place, we must all be disarmed first. To do that, the government is deliberately creating schisms in our society, funding both the anti-abortion/pro-choice sides, the antigun/pro-gun issues…trying to provoke a riot that will allow martial law to be implemented and all weapons seized, while ‘dissidents’ are put safely away”. The fear of the materialization of the NWO makes most militias not merely hostile towards the federal government but also hostile towards international organizations, whether non-profitable NGOs, international corporations, or political institutions of the international community, such as the UN.

Perliger, of course, does not attempt to challenge any of Thompson’s claims as they are presented in this short quotation nor does he attempt to debunk any of the claims made by the “anti-federalist” communities that he so concisely repeats in the statement above. While, admittedly, it is not a stated goal of the author’s study to defend his position and debunk those of his subjects, one would also be justified in concluding that Perliger does not attempt to defend his case simply because disproving the claims made by the “anti-federalist” activists as he presents them would impossible for him to do in a convincing manner.

Yet the purpose of the paper is not to provide legitimate information about these groups as much as it is to terrify the reader – West Point and other military trainees – into believing that anyone who rightly supposes that their government is overstepping its bounds, violating their rights, or moving forward in otherwise unconstitutional directions is a conspiracy-obsessed, right-wing, racist fanatic who is intent on killing military, police, and minorities.

Unfortunately for the author, however, a careful reading of his own argument causes it to fall apart at the seams.

After postulating numerous reasons for the alleged violence of “far-right” groups ranging from political, socio-economic, geographical, and operational possibilities, Perliger attempts to turn to the actual numbers.

At first, Perliger’s presentation of thousands of violent attacks per year (using 2010 statistics) is quite shocking since such attacks are not known to the general public and the mainstream media has not seized upon them at every available opportunity as one would expect. The actual level of violence in its own right, whether reported or not, would be concerning to say the very least.

These numbers would be an even more concerning situation if they demonstrated that such attacks were on the rise.

Unfortunately for the government argument, however, this is not the case as even Perliger has to admit when he says, “Hence, in periods during which many streams of terrorism have shown improvement in their operational capabilities and, as a result, an increase in their tendency to engage in mass casualty attacks, the violent American far right shows stagnation, at least in terms of its ability to enhance the harm it generates.”

For instance, while the term “right-wing violent attack” might conjure images of lynchings, executions, or mass terror attacks, the statistics, even those presented by Perliger, tend to show a different reality. Indeed, the type of “attack” referenced in Perliger’s study is entirely unclear in terms of just what would constitute a “right-wing violent attack.”

Indeed, when examining Perliger’s statistics, one can easily see that well over half of the “attacks” being described are actually proxy “attacks” (loosely defined term) against property, “foiled attacks” (which are wildly undefined, especially since the overwhelming majority of any foiled terrorist attack in the United States has been directed by the FBI), “heavy damage to property,” and “cross burnings.”

Likewise, with so many acts of property damage and racial symbols being later determined to have been directed by the “victims” themselves, one must also call these numbers into question since they are left unclear in the study.

Of those attacks designed to cause “mass casualties,” the Oklahoma City Bombing was no doubt included in the statistics, an obvious government-run false flag operation.

Yet, even among the 42% of “attacks” described as involving “specific human targets,” the incidents are not necessarily connected with any political, racial, or religious origin. As with any attempt at methods of divide and conquer, there is the very real possibility that any violent attack leveled against any individual of minority status or non-right-wing political ideology is thus considered to be a “specific human target” attack. Under such loosely defined rules of categorization, since the incidence of “specific human targets” were overwhelmingly one on one or (at most) two on one altercations, a simple shoving match between two individuals in which one could be remotely considered right wing, racist, or religious could then be delineated as a violent right-wing attack.

Since Perliger easily allows his own political bias to appear during the course of the paper and, since much of his political theory is based upon Israeli political scientist Ehud Sprinzak’s Iceberg model of the structure of political movements, it is apparent that Perliger’s own methodology is likely devised in a manner that would allow even the most distant and unrelated events seem directly related to the core of political ideology Perliger has set in his sites.

Such a concern is only compounded by the fact that one of Perliger’s main sources for his paper is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a notorious race-baiting organization that routinely accuses anyone who disagrees with the company line in regards to government policy as racist and potentially violent and dangerous. Not far behind, of course, is the citation of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization of similar race-based incredibility.

In the end, Perliger’s report is nothing more than just another cog in the wheel of a military-industrial complex on overdrive in its attempt to brainwash new military recruits into believing that a terrorist lurks behind every bush. More importantly, these new recruits are being trained that such terrorists are no longer shadowy Muslims hiding in caves in Afghanistan, but good ol’ boys, gun owners, and average American citizens that will eventually have to be dealt with.