FBI domestic terrorism pamphlet

[dusmcj]

in the midst of the enthusiastic amateur proctologists of the NSA giving us all an exam over the phone ("all your phone are belong to us") we shouldn't forget that there aren't just people sniffing the air for unconservative farts. There are also folks who have a definite idea of what the domestic (that's you and me, folks) enemy looks like. With that, I give you the FBI's pamphlet on domestic terrorism. I note that some of the classifications seem quite appropriate, but when they start worrying about people who mention the Constitution, well, umm, I thought they swore an oath or something ? The net they're casting seems a little overbroad ? Anyway, here it is:





oh, nobody trip over the link being from a gun rights board, ok ? Civil liberties apply to all of us.

[Jara sang]

1. nothing, where is it?

[Nordmadr]

2. Wonder why it is "Right wing extremists" and "left wing terrorists"?

While there are legitimate things to look for on those lists, it seems it could be construed to include virtually anyone.

"Hi, FBI? I saw this guy walking down the street by himself. He had a tatoo. I was really scared and called right away".

Olafr

[slackmaster]

3. Curious to know what context keepandbeararms.com presented this

Do they spin this as evidence of anti-patriotic or anti-Christian on the part of the FBI?

[dusmcj]

4. the spectrum of the gun rights community feels itself (is?) painted

as extremists or near-extremists by the powers that be just as by the "libruls" and the "librul media". I would characterize the spectrum as extending from upper-middle-class skeet shooters who spend $2500 on a shotgun and wouldn't give a darn if those bark-eating assault rifle owners were all jailed, through regular folks like you and me (the kind who FDR championed and who kept him in office; what the Democratic party clearly used to be about) who have a cultural tradition of gun ownership, and do it legally and safely, through to the "right" end of the spectrum, which ranges from people who care for our civil liberties in equal measure to and for the same reasons as anyone here, to the more stereotypical gun nuts and out to the semimythical antigovernment revolutionaries (semimythical because aside from instances like McVeigh and Weaver (Ruby Ridge) the reliable evidence about their current existence which reaches lay sources is just about nil). I would suspect the RKBA crowd is concerned, let's say, about the broadness we also note in this pamphlet, because of the perception that fedgov is fairly harsh and unruly in certain instances about controlling firearms ownership, and has a history of stepping over the line into entrapment and fraud when prosecuting questionable civilian firearms owners. For every secessionist nut who was rightly arrested for manufacturing machine guns and destructive devices, there seems to be a horror story about an ATF raid on someone who was lied about by a drug-addicted federal informant and was bankrupted fighting a federal claim that the washers in his basement were going to be manufactured into an illegal silencer.

I think it's time we understood that while the radicalism of the 1960's was a necessary cure, let's say an enema, for the corruption of prim pseudo-liberal postwar society which had matured by that time, it erred in tarring the common people as abettors of the forces of decay. We are all in danger of being unaware, of serving ends which we would not support consciously, simply because we are not omniscient. The people of the middle, the "Red Staters" are to a large extent the same folk that FDR provided opportunity to for the first time, our parents and grandparents, and while they may not be on the leading edge of social development, they have a fairly stout understanding of the absolutes that don't change with every new day which underly this country and the notion and mechanism of popular representative democracy. They frequently see the threat which the current administration presents to inherent civil rights in this country, but they are having trouble extricating themselves from the lies told by the transnational lackeys in DC about how being reticent good-natured conservative hounds is the path to personal and national salvation. The revolutionary flame has not gone out because it too is eternal, it's just that people are lulled into sleeping deeply enough to not see it. It is refreshing to note that this is not a condition which can be made permanent.

In the interests of transparency, I will disclaim about myself here a little, what with me trotting out material from RKBA boards. I have been working for "liberal" causes to the extent I have been able since the age of 13 (protesting at the local electric utility re their buying power from Indian Point - 1977) and have meanwhile volunteered on local Democratic campaigns every two years, etc. etc. etc. - like many here I'm sure. I want to avoid being crude, but if it comes to the question, I feel comfortable with my creds... I have also shot since the age of 8, only an air rifle until 5 years ago though. I took to firearms because I needed a discipline separate from work, remembered that I always enjoyed shooting, and had the realization that I could afford more than BBs - why bother making money if you can't enjoy some of it... My quest for practical information has led me, a pink fuck-you social liberal Yankee from Noo Yawk (upstate though) into various hearts of darkness of deep Red State gun culture (I'm being melodramatic here, nice folks on internet shooting boards whose necks could be characterized as being a little red. Just a little. Sometimes).

From this journey I discern that these people are our neighbors. Anyone not privileged to live a bicoastal metropolitan lifestyle (with the isolation from demographic reality that that also entails) encounters folks like these in the supermarket, on the road, etc. They are largely not gaspassing jerky-farting psychotics who will cook off on you if you look at them funny, they are what was once called the middle and working class in this country, and is now threatened, as are most of us without sufficient socioeconomic privilege, with becoming the lower class. They were the footsoldiers of FDR's success in pulling the nation out of the depression, they were America's footsoldiers in destroying totalitarianism in WWII, and in the context of a socioeconomic system which didn't give a shit about the common man any more than before, they were lured into becoming the footsoldiers of the New Right (which is new only in technique, the current Resident demonstrates daily that this is the Old World Order at work). Certainly they have among them diehard believers in the socioeconomic ladder the Old Right tries to sell, and in fact it is amusing to see the conflicts between the hall monitors trying to enforce orthodoxy (they must have been Young Republicans 20 years ago, I remember the type) and the best of the rednecks, who can tell the man to fuck himself harder, better and louder than most leftists if pressed.

At some point, we will have to find common ground with these folks, and realize that the true source of the problem is the same as it ever was, those who benefit most from a socioeconomic status quo that is anti-individual, anti-liberty and oriented first and only to maximizing the power and wealth of those who already hold it in the largest quantities. This administration is a laboratory-grade example of that grouping at work, and we could stand to make the effort to mine it for all the data about them we can get. What are characterized as America's common folk are also their victims, and we should welcome those people as our allies, sooner rather than later.

[benEzra]

5. Well said. (n/t)