WASHINGTON—U.S. special forces are trained to parachute into hotbeds of hostility and win the hearts and minds of unwelcoming locals.

It’s hard work. For example, their mission to pacify Texas isn’t going well.

Thousands of Texans suspicious of President Barack Obama have become convinced that a large two-month military exercise planned for the summer is really a sinister plot involving the president — and maybe China and also possibly Walmart — to take over the state and impose martial law.

Their unfounded fears, fuelled by online connectors of imaginary dots, have been indulged by prominent elected officials. Gov. Greg Abbott asked the State Guard to “monitor” Operation Jade Helm 15 to “protect Texans.” Rep. Louie Gohmert demanded changes from the Pentagon. Sen. Ted Cruz, a presidential candidate, said he understands Texans’ concerns.

“I don’t believe that the people that are upset about this are conspiracy theorists,” Terry Wareham, one concerned resident, told the Star. “You just look at what’s going on in our government and the eroding of rights that we have. It’s pretty freaky, pretty scary.”

Jade Helm is a “realistic military training” exercise designed to prepare special operations soldiers for unconventional warfare. Troops will operate in seven southwest states on public land and on private land offered up by volunteers. Parts of three states, including all of Texas, have been designated “hostile” territory for the purpose of the game.

This designation is alarming to some of the alarmed Texans. So is the “Jade” in the exercise’s name, which sounds like a code word for China if you want it to, and the exercise’s motto, “Master the Human Domain,” especially because Walmart suddenly closed two Texas stores in April, leading one radio host to suggest that the empty outlets will be used by the state’s new masters as “processing centres” for newly detained humans.

Walmart felt compelled to deny the allegations this week. Last week, an army lieutenant-colonel attempted to quell the simmering unrest at a jam-packed meeting in Bastrop, an Austin-area county of flag-waving conservatives who asked the man in uniform whether the military was planning to bring Islamic State operatives to Texas, seize legal guns and suspend civil liberties.

The officer said no. Much of Bastrop was unconvinced.

“You just look at what the federal government does these days, and that’s all I’ve got to say,” Tracy Stamper, owner of a clothing store, said Wednesday. “There are a lot of things our government does that make me concerned. And I’m just not going to go into it, because let’s face it, it doesn’t take much to wind up on a watch list.”

“This administration has not been transparent, they’ve not been trustworthy, and it’s really more of a thing like: we don’t trust the government,” said Wareham, who is active in a local Tea Party group.

“If the military is here in our town, and they’re doing training, we just get used to seeing them there. And my concern is, at what point do we realize: alright, this isn’t training anymore, this is real martial law?”

Robert Goldberg, a professor of history at the University of Utah — Utah is another “hostile” state — said the Jade Helm theories follow from a long line of theories about the New World Order, Obama as a Manchurian candidate, and foreign sleepers lying in wait for “activation.”

And it is part of a grand American political tradition: distrust of federal authority.

“You can go back to the American Revolution and before to get this idea that concentrating power in central government is wrong,” said Goldberg, who wrote a book about American conspiracy culture. “The idea is that American liberty depends on vigilance, watchfulness, and here’s the key word, even suspiciousness. That has been sounded by Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan.”

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Goldwater and Reagan have now been joined by another conservative luminary: Chuck Norris. The actor, best known for Walker, Texas Ranger, says questions about Jade Helm are “neither overreactionary nor conspiratorial.”

“The U.S. government says, ‘It’s just a training exercise,’ ” Norris wrote on a right-wing website. “But I’m not sure the term ‘just’ has any reference to reality when the government uses it.”

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