The repressions started discreetly, were disguised as financial crime prosecutions, seemed unconnected, and were covered up or even glorified by the sympathetic media. But recent events have revealed enough to arrive at more ominous conclusions.

In the last six years we have been living through an unprecedented Era of Political Repression, unleashed by Barack Obama, the DNC, and their comrades.

The Left has sought to control and indeed dominate all areas where the government could influence political thought, starting long before 2010. This atrocity is common knowledge and even perceived as a norm, so it is not addressed here. Less known is the fact that Al Gore and Co have crippled the natural sciences in this country in the last 25 years. But freedom of political speech and elections at large have never been openly contested, even in wartime. Until 2010.

Since 2010, the “Democratic” government attacked and successfully suppressed the Tea Party and other grassroots conservative groups. Obama’s IRS was screening non-profits’ applications by keywords such as “Tea Party” and “patriots,” then delaying them and harassing their founders. (Read The Intimidation Game by Kimberley Strassel for more details.) The IRS also specifically targeted individual conservative donors for audit, along with organizations associated with the Republican Party, such as Crossroads GPS, and their supporters. “Democratic” state prosecutors ordered pre-dawn SWAT raids on allies of Republican Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and jailed political author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza for “illegally” contributing $20k to a Republican candidate without real chances in New York. All these attacks share one common attribute – the opposition has been attacked under allegations of financial crimes. Of course, this is not the same as murdering opposition, but such attacks are also harder to notice, and they soil the victims rather than the perpetrators. And such pressure tactics have an even stronger deterring effect than the murder of opposition leaders – there are only a few leaders who can be murdered, but there are about a million audits conducted every year. Thus, to an ordinary person, going to a meeting or donating $300 to a political organization, weaponized IRS audits are a bigger threat than targeted murders.

I grew up in the former Soviet Union and can explain the classical Communist position on free speech in two sentences: free speech, such as that guaranteed by the First Amendment, is just a tool with which the bourgeoisie oppresses proletariat. The “real free speech” exists only when “the proletariat” takes power, and expresses itself through its only legitimate representative - the Communist Party or its equivalent. Apparently, by 2010 the former Democratic Party had adopted some variant of this position. This is frequently linked to the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. But another plausible explanation is the takeover of the Democratic Party by radicals and Sorosites.

Three years later, the Dems came out of the closet, and attempted to tear out the heart of the Constitution – the freedom of speech to influence elections. Of course, this was wrapped in the language of money: “set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections,” and “prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.” I apologize to the reader for quoting this obamination.

All 48 members of the “Democratic” Senate caucus cosponsored this proposal in 2013-2014. 40 Dem Senators (including two “independents”) and scores of congresspersons cosponsored it in 2015. Notice that the proposed limits on speech and “spending money to influence the elections” are imposed only on Americans. Foreign governments, NGOs, and UN agencies remain free to influence the US elections however they please. The same privilege applies to the foreign and domestic media groups referred as “the press.” The proposal thoughtfully ignores financing of the Dem cheerleaders in academia and non-profits, both through the official government budget and off-balance sheet transfers of billions of dollars from fines and settlements with businesses. And this obsession with attacking the funding of Republicans continues, despite the fact that the Dems enjoyed a financial advantage since at least the 2002 elections.

The repressions hit the American intellectual centers -- conservative and libertarian think tanks -- as hard as they hit the Tea Party. The weapon of choice was the accusation of “climate denial,” and the Dems joined forces with the UN organizations and foreign NGOs. The pressure point was the donors to these organizations. Some of the donors had already embraced climate alarmism, and the rest were threatened with prosecution, illegal foreign boycotts, and smear campaigns. The think tanks under attack suffered not only financial losses, but also damage to their reputations, and were not always able to grasp in time what hit them.

A typical example of designating the thought centers as targets for climate alarmism is an infamous “study” by Robert Brulle, which was analyzed recently in connection with the misconduct of the Leftist AGs. The “study” was published in January 2013, indicating it was conceived in 2011. The target list was created by applying the opinions of Greenpeace and the Center for Media and Democracy to a combination of old lists, some going back as far as 1997. Most targets had no substantial link to the climate debates at all. Even worse, the hit list included all the top conservative and libertarian think tanks,[1] without a single exception: the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Mercatus Center, Pacific Research Institute, and Reason Foundation. The frenzied Attorneys General seem to work off an even broader list. For example, at least one “Exxon knew” subpoena mentioned the Federalist Society, which is not on any climatist blacklist known to me.

Notice that silencing dissent causes a vicious spiral. A repressive regime lies, and suppresses voices telling the truth. Hearing only its own propaganda, the regime starts believing it. When its policies fail in the real world or at the ballot box, it blames the dissidents and other “enemies of the people,” and attempts to ramp up the repressions. With each cycle, the beliefs of the regime move further away from reality, suspicions of conspiracy grow stronger, and the desire to repress the real or imaginary opposition overrides any remnants of common sense. This happened in the former Soviet Union. to the Western institutions which had fallen victims to the New Left. The former Democratic Party seems to have become one of these institutions.

The unique twist in the Dem politics is its continuous alliance with foreign forces, growing more hostile all the time. Even the Bolsheviks declared themselves patriots immediately after seizing power in Russia. But the “Democratic Party” has been taken over by MoveOn.org, an organization created around a website, other transnational groups, and offshore hedge funds. And it seems happy with this. The Obama administration regularly sides with the UN against the US.

One final note: the current weakness of the Republican Party is not natural. It is the result of the “Democratic” repressions and foreign interference.

P.S. From the beginning of its second term the Obama administration has been inflaming racial conflicts. Hours before the Dallas massacre, Obama addressed this nation from Poland with an inflammatory, offensive, and vaguely menacing speech. After the massacre, his administration protects the organizations and individuals who solicited their followers to commit murder.

Ari Halperin researches and writes about climate alarmism as a complex and destructive force.