SPLC, DHS, Community Officials Team Up to Attack Patriot Groups

SPLC, DHS, Community Officials Team Up to Attack Patriot Groups



Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 8, 2010

Stewart Rhodes writes today on the Oath Keepers website that the Southern Poverty Law Center is now officially part of the Department of Homeland Security. Rhodes sources a DHS document, entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Working Group,” that lists Richard Cohen as a member of the DHS created group. Cohen is president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition to Cohen, a number of law enforcement officials are members of the DHS group, including Austin Chief of Police Art Acevedo.




Download the document as a PDF.

“What does the working group do? Make recommendations on training and how to use all of the local resources — police, social services, media, NGO’s, you name it – to fight ‘extremism.’ So, now no need to file a FOIA request to discover that SPLC is writing the reports naming constitutionalists as possible terrorists. Now it is in your face and the mask is off,” writes Rhodes.

The document encourages local “partners” and the feds to work together to share “threat-related information… and develop case studies that can be used by local authorities as a learning tool for law enforcement personnel” in order to prevent “ideologically-motivated violent crime (radicalization, violent extremism, etc.), in short the patriot movement.

In early April of 2009, a document produced by the Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” characterized patriot political groups that reject “federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or [reject] government authority entirely” as domestic terrorists.

The DHS report followed similar reports issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and the Virginia Fusion Center. The MIAC report specifically describes supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties.

According to the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, the MIAC documents were heavily influenced by “faulty and politicized research issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti Defamation League (ADL).” In 2008, law enforcement officers from across Missouri gathered in the town of Arnold to hear from ADL experts on right-wing extremism.

The SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League work hand-in-hand with the Department of Homeland Security to demonize patriot and constitutionalist organizations,” we wrote on April 10, 2010, after the government attempted to frame the Hutaree in Michigan. “SPLC’s Mark Potok appears on corporate media networks almost daily peddling his organization’s hysterical rantings and fairy tales about impending violence and mayhem that will be perpetuated by patriot groups and individuals.

In 2009, DHS boss Janet Napolitano showered kudos on the ADL during a conference held on April 22 of that year. “In recent years, the Department has placed our employees in your advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists,” Napolitano said.

Both the ADL and the SPLC have manufactured a cottage industry around the bogus threat of the “modern militia movement” and specialize in going after key individuals and leaders of the constitutionalist, Libertarian, and patriot movements.

Alex Jones is a favored target of the ADL-SPLC propaganda and demonization project. A Google search of the ADL website produces dozens of references to the radio talk show host, most related to the Pittsburgh cop killer and admitted white supremacist Richard Poplawski. Poplawski posted comments on the Infowars website.

Other ADL targets include the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, who are according to the ADL “both part of an anti-government extremist movement that has grown since President Obama took office, promote the idea that the federal government is plotting to take away the rights of American citizens and must be resisted. The two groups are apparently trying to make inroads in the U.S. military,” a distortion that plays right into the DHS “rightwing extremism” document that claims returning veterans pose a violent threat.

In 2009, DHS boss boss Janet Napolitano showered kudos on the ADL during a conference held on April 22, 2009. “In recent years, the Department has placed our employees in your advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists,” Napolitano admitted.

The vicious campaign against the Oath Keepers escalated earlier this week when the CPS in New Hampshire kidnapped the newborn baby of John Irish and Stephanie Janvrin. Authorities said the child was taken in part due to Irish’s association with the patriot group the Oath Keepers. “The Division became aware and confirmed that Mr. Irish associated with a militia known as the Oath Keepers,” confirming the fact that Irish’s political beliefs were the primary reason the child was snatched.

As Stewart Rhodes notes on the Oath Keepers website, the DHS spawned working group details how they plan to utilize local social welfare and mental health agencies to counter “violent extremism” as defined by the government, the SPLC, and the ADL, thus revealing that Irish and Janvrin’s newborn was kidnapped as part of an effort to criminally harass and punish members of the patriot community.