A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Number of conspiracy-peddling anti-government groups

Posted: Mar 6, 2013

| Tue Mar. 5, 2013 12:05 PM PST

The number of conspiracy-peddling anti-government groups hit a record high last year, according to a report put out Tuesday by theSouthern Poverty Law Center, which also found that hate groups in general remain at near-record levels.

Between 2000 and 2012, the number of hate groups, defined the by SPLC as those that verbally attack minority groups, rose from 602 to more than 1,000. The number declined slightly last year—from 1,018 to 1,007—but the number of so-called "patriot groups," groups that generally believe the government is conspiring to take Americans' guns and freedoms and impose one-world rule, hit a record high of 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008.

"We are seeing the fourth straight year of really explosive growth on the part of anti-government patriot groups and militias," Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC said on a conference call Tuesday. "That's 913 percent in growth. We've never seen that kind of growth in any kind of group we cover."

Why so much hate and paranoia? The culprits are pretty predictable: a liberal black president, the wider shift in demographics in the country, and the mainstreaming of formerly marginal conspiracies like Agenda 21, says Potok.

Although these groups aren't necessarily involved in violence or criminality, their rise still has advocates worried. "Only a small percentage acts violently, but they should raise red flags and cause concern," Daryl Johnson, former senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, said during the conference call. And Potok says that immigration reform, gun control legislation, and the increasing social acceptance of LGBT rights have the potential to further fuel growth of these groups.

On Tuesday, the SPLC sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security urging it to amp up its non-Islamic domestic terrorism monitoring. The agency has done a lot less monitoring on non-Islamic terror since 2009, when a leaked DHS report revealing a resurgence of the radical right caused an uproar amongst GOP lawmakers and right-wing talk show hosts. The controversy spurred Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to withdraw the report and dismantle the domestic non-Islamic terrorism unit that had written it.

Johnson, whose team at DHS wrote the report, says that since then, "nothing at the Department of Homeland Security regarding this issue has changed. DHS has one or two analysts looking at right-wing extremism. Meanwhile it has dozens of analysts and resources looking at home-grown Islamic extremists."

"We need to stand up a domestic terrorism unit and start analyzing this threat," he says.

;

'Patriot' Paranoia: A Look at the Top Ten Conspiracy Theories, - many of which are represented here.

[ In Reply To ..]
From the Southern Poverty Law Center

[Note that the SPLC is a leading CIVIL RIGHTS activist organization--a whole group of people who really don't like government pushing people around and spend their lives doing something about it]

"Conspiracy theorizing has flourished as a virtual art form in all nations and across all political persuasions. But the American radical right has to be considered a strong contender for the title of modern conspiracy champion. A vast body of academic literature exists exploring this history, of which Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" is the most famous. Hundreds of books and articles have chronicled the rise (and fall) of an unceasing march of disparate conspiracy-based movements that, at different points in American history, have trembled before and warned against imaginary threats posed by Catholics, Mormons, Jews, American Communists, Freemasons, bankers, and U.S. government officials and agencies.

Scholars continue to debate the psychological and sociological origins of conspiracy theories, but there is no arguing that these theories have seen a revival on the extreme right in recent years. Over the last two decades, a far-right conspiracy culture of self-proclaimed "Patriots" has emerged in which the United States government itself is viewed as a mortal threat to everything from constitutional democracy to the survival of the human race. This conspiracy revival — which has been accompanied by the explosive growth of Patriot groups over the last year and a half — kicked into overdrive with the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, who is seen by Patriots as a foreign-born Manchurian candidate sent by forces of the so-called "New World Order" to destroy American sovereignty and institute one-world socialist government.

Since Obama's election, the constituent theories within the overarching narrative of the New World Order have increasingly made inroads into the mainstream national discourse. Thanks to conservative cable news hosts like Glenn Beck (of Fox News) and Lou Dobbs (formerly of CNN), conspiratorial rants about FEMA concentration camps and the "North American Union" have been beamed directly into the living rooms of millions of Americans. Websites popular with Tea Party conservatives, meanwhile, have further stoked fears of a socialistic one-world government takeover by "un-American" forces. Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily.com, for example, has grown its influence by peddling paranoia about the president's birth certificate and AmeriCorps' "domestic armies." Earlier this year, the John Birch Society, a group with a long history of hatching and promoting wild conspiracy theories (including the idea that President Eisenhower was a communist agent), co-sponsored the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual powwow of leading conservatives and Republican Party figures. Speakers at this year's conference included such mainstream names as Washington Post columnist George Will, former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Here is a compilation of 10 of the most popular conspiracy theories currently circulating on the radical right and, increasingly, on points of the political spectrum much too close to the center for comfort.

01 Chemtrails
In the world of Patriot antigovernment paranoia, New World Order forces attempt to manipulate and control the unwitting population from every conceivable source and direction — from the images on your television screen to the very water that comes out of your kitchen tap. In recent years, the New World Order has been meddling most nefariously from above, high among the clouds.

Few Internet-age antigovernment conspiracies have spread as quickly or as widely as the idea of "chemtrails": the belief that air and water vapor contrails that form in the wake of high-altitude aircraft are really clouds of toxic soup being deliberately sprayed by hundreds, if not thousands, of secret government planes executing the designs of the New World Order. What is the insidious purpose of the chemtrails program? It depends which paranoid Patriot you ask. The most popular theories include population control, weather manipulation, and outright human extermination. If, as some cultural historians suggest, the UFO sightings of the 1940s and 50s were the skyward projection of early atomic-age fears, chemtrails are the climate-change-age corollary, with cultural panic over pollution and strange weather mixing with deeper traditions of Patriot antigovernment animus.

Hundreds of websites currently peddle chemtrails theories, along with books, DVDs and all manner of survivalist gear. They maintain that toxic clouds in the sky are easily distinguished from normal contrails by their longer duration and expansive dissipation patterns. Most of the spraying is believed to take place at night over the population centers of the NATO countries, especially the United States.

Who, exactly, is responsible for the program? There are conflicting schools of thought here as well. But among Patriot groups it is generally agreed that some alignment of New World Order lords — sometimes referred to as the Illuminati — is busy spraying cities and towns with pathogens. In the grimmest of the scenarios, the spraying represents the first of a two-stage depopulation program. Stage one involves spreading pathogens to weaken humanity's collective immune system; once general T-cell weakness is attained, goes the theory, we can expect aerial dispersal of smallpox or anthrax to finish us off.

Fear over chemtrails long ago spread beyond the Patriot fringe. Twenty years ago, the buzz surrounding chemtrails had grown to the extent that the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration felt compelled to issue a joint "Aircraft Contrails Factsheet." The six-page illustrated report patiently explained the science of contrails, such as the role humidity plays in the variance between how long contrails linger and spread, sometimes forming cirrus cloud cover, and pointed out that they have zero impact on human health.

But as these things go, official efforts to confront the conspiracy only fueled its growth. It is today bigger than ever, commanding adherents across the globe.

02 Martial Law
If Patriot groups fear anything more than the water vapor in the sky, it is the imminent imposition of martial law. A longstanding and central plank of the Patriot catechism is the belief that one day — very soon! — federal forces, in league with the states, will suspend constitutional government and institute a police state.

During the first few years after the 9/11 attacks, this fear was also discussed on the left. But what was a temporary concern there has long been an absolute certainty on the far right. Today, hundreds of Patriot groups around the country are actively preparing for the declaration of martial law, some of them by mapping wilderness areas, learning how to set booby traps, studying and practicing guerrilla warfare tactics, and setting up short-wave radio communications systems. The question is not if, but when, the New World Order will come crashing down.

Patriot groups believe the legal groundwork for the inevitable imposition of martial law is being laid in Washington, within the pages of a steady stream of classified National Security documents and directives. At the local level, meanwhile, they suspect town and city governments are also in on the plan, as evidenced by their passing of emergency powers ordinances.

Once the legal mechanisms are in place, all that's needed is a "crisis trigger," for which Patriots are constantly on the lookout. Whether this trigger is real or manufactured matters less than the fact that it will succeed in frightening the population into submission and be used to justify suspension of the Constitution. This crisis trigger could take any form. Common scenarios suggested on Patriot discussion boards include economic collapse, followed by massive social unrest; a global (and likely government-created) pandemic; multiple acts of mega-terrorism (again, featuring government collusion); or possibly a fraudulent presidential election, resulting in rioting in major cities around the country.

Patriot groups often refer to the unelected junta that will rule the coming police state as a "metropolitan government." This language, like the martial law scenario, has a long pedigree. As Patriot/survivalist Don Harkin explains in the Idaho Observer, a conspiracy rag popular among militia groups: "Metropolitan government was exposed in the late 1950s by Jo Hindman. … [Today] this unconstitutional form of government is being implemented all over the country — particularly in the nation's more densely populated areas such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle."

Once the "metropolitan government" is instituted, most Patriots are certain they will immediately be rounded up and sent to internment camps — which takes us to our next conspiracy.

03 FEMA Concentration Camps
Following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Domestic Terrorism held hearings on the Patriot/militia subculture that bred and nurtured the bombers. Throughout the hearings, a running theme expressed by Patriots was a fear that "urban gangs," directed by Washington and possibly acting in concert with U.N. and foreign troops, would sweep in from the coasts, confiscate their guns, and round them up. This home-invasion force would hold down the streets during the imposition of martial law, then send the members of Patriot militias to internment camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which most Patriot groups consider to be "the executive arm of the coming police state."

This conspiracy has recently surged in popularity, especially after the Senate in March 2009 passed the Serve America Act, the meat of which was a multi-billion-dollar expansion of AmeriCorps, a federal program that employs many inner-city youths in community service jobs. For the Patriot fringe (and media enablers like Glenn Beck), the thought of billions of dollars going to employ inner-city youth evoked images of "domestic armies." Soon, the far-right media was full of warnings about "Obama's brown shirts" and "slavery."

The renewed chatter about "FEMA concentration camps" took many forms. Glenn Beck promised to "look into it." Films such as "Camp FEMA: American Lockdown," featuring conspiracy-monger Alex Jones, have been wildly popular on conspiracy-driven websites like martiallawsurvival.com, outselling all previous conspiracy-driven pseudo-documentaries. Aerial photographs, each supposedly showing secret government holding facilities, went viral on the Web.

Of course, the photos showed nothing of the sort. A careful review of some of the photographs carried out by Popular Mechanics editor James Meigs made clear that the visual "evidence" was bogus in every instance. For example, a photograph of an alleged secret prison was actually a North Korean work camp. Other photographs showed nothing more sinister than well-known National Guard training centers and Amtrak rail yards.

Just as the agencies responsible for air travel and air quality have tried to respond to the chemtrails conspiracy allegations, so, too, has FEMA gone on record reassuring Americans that it has no intention of abrogating the Constitution or rounding up citizens. An internal FEMA memo, however, made clear that agency brass understands the losing-battle nature of trying to quell the conspiracies. "Most people know us as the agency that responds to natural disasters," the memo read. "Others believe we have a somewhat sinister role. For the latter, it is not realistic to think that we can convince them otherwise and it is advisable not to enter into debate on the subject."

04 Foreign Troops on U.S. Soil
While "urban gangs" are considered a leading candidate to enforce a New World Order (NWO) lockdown, they are not the only threatening force clouding the Patriot mind. There is also a belief on the radical right that treasonous government officials are colluding with other governments to suppress Americans with the use of foreign troops. Patriots believe this foreign assistance will be necessary due to the patriotism of America's own troops. As explained on the Patriot website libertyforlife.com, many U.S. active military personnel and veterans would likely refuse orders to suppress the rights of their fellow citizens, and so "the US/NWO/UN government is importing foreign troops into the USA to do what US soldiers did to Iraq." Among the many Patriot groups dedicated to resisting this is the Oath Keepers, made up of veteran and active-duty U.S. military personnel.

Whose troops, exactly, would be deployed here? Those of whichever allies the U.S. is partnering with at any given moment. For example, Patriot sites were atwitter with news that, in July 2009, FEMA organized a terrorist-response exercise in conjunction with troops from 14 allied countries, including Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

After the 2009 exercise, the Web burst with YouTube clips attempting to alert people to the sinister presence of foreign troops. Like other popular conspiracies to see a revival in recent years, this one is hardly new. In 1997, one Patriot blogger warned that Red Chinese troops would be allowed to take over America. The fevered language of this Clinton-era theorist nicely captures the frantic energy that has always defined Patriot conspiracy culture, as well as the racial dimension never far from the surface of so many conspiracies:

"During the 1950's, the elitists planning for world government made plans to use occupation forces in every country that did not submit to their greedy, arrogant ambitions. Their plan called for using Chinese troops in America… . Now that American soldiers have been used in Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, a precedent has been set to bring the red Chinese troops here. The UN could justify such an action if the Black Muslims instigate a race war. I expect this scenario if the Democrats loose [sic] the White House and Congress in the 2000 elections. Comrade Clinton could not be slicker in making himself Commandant of Gulag America."

05 'Door-to-Door' Gun Confiscations
One of the defining features of Patriot/militia subculture is an obsession with firearms. Patriot groups stockpile them, train using them, and, perhaps most of all, worry about losing them. Any attempt to restrain their gun rights is viewed as the thin-edge-wedge of a New World Order crackdown. Patriots believe it inevitable that NWO forces in black masks and jackboots — and possibly UN blue helmets — will one day be sent door to door to take away their weapons by force. This fear is also stoked by mainstream figures within the conservative movement. Wayne LaPierre, the president of the National Rifle Association, a major player in the Republican Party coalition, is the author of a book entitled, The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the UN Plan To Destroy the Bill of Rights. In 2006, Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter attached an amendment to a domestic-security spending bill that prohibited the confiscation of legally owned guns during an emergency. The measure passed by a vote of 84-16.

Within Patriot subculture, the gun-confiscation fear sometimes dovetails with other conspiracies of an anti-Semitic flavor. Proponents of gun control in these instances are seen as representing a New World Order cabal run by Jews. At the website Real Zionist News, for example, a New York State gun control law aimed at protecting police officers was described as "the first step toward confiscation." According to the site, "The real agenda is to disarm law-abiding GENTILES, whom Zionist Jews fear will soon discover Jewry's anti-American, freedom-hating mission."

06 9/11 as Government Plot
The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., were seen by both the far left and far right as fitting the bill for an intentional "crisis trigger." In the weeks and months after the attacks, a subculture of "9/11 Truthism" emerged in which the attacks were seen as anything but a simple case of well-trained Al Qaeda operatives flying planes into landmark buildings. Instead, "truthers" argued that the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed by controlled demolitions, that a missile brought down United Airlines 93, and that a missile — and not an airliner at all — struck the Pentagon. Who was responsible? The U.S. government, of course. On the far left, the reason seen for attacking the American people was to justify a perpetual state of war; on the far right, it provided an excuse for the government to, at long last, institute a police state.

On both extremes, a distinct current of anti-Semitism runs through 9/11 conspiracies. Especially in the right-wing variants associated with Patriot groups — and in a number of radical-right black separatist group as well — the central agents are often very pointedly described as either high officials of Jewish descent or outright Israeli agents. Another feature of anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracies is the popular claim that 4,000 Israelis and Jews did not show up for work at the World Trade Center on the morning of the attacks. The origins of that conspiracy theory appear to have come from a statement by the Israeli Foreign Ministry that some "4,000 Israelis" were in the New York and Washington areas the day of the attacks. Here again, we see how a misread or misconstrued fact can be distorted through paranoia and multiplied by the power of the Internet, allowing totally unfounded rumors to travel the globe at warp speed.

For many Patriot groups dedicated to the fight against the New World Order — often referred to as "American Revolution II" — the American people have been denied the truth about the 2001 attacks by "the New World Order-controlled corporatist-Jewish media."

Of course, when this media does mention 9/11 truther claims, this, too, is seen as evidence of a conspiracy within a conspiracy. For example, when former White House official Van Jones was found to have signed a petition calling for an investigation into truther-related allegations, Patriots saw the subsequent media attention as a ruse. "Our patriot movements are totally being hijacked," said Jeffrey Grupp of the popular conspiracy website AntiMatterRadio.com, "not by infiltrators, but by a takeover of our patriot discussions."

That's typical of most conspiracies in the Patriot pantheon: When the mainstream media does not address the conspiracists' allegations, it is proof of their propaganda role. And when they do, it is a sign of an even more sophisticated and perfidious manipulation.

07 Population Control
For the conspiracy-minded, there is no such thing as an accidental tragedy or historical caprice. Each epidemic, mass industrial poisoning and medical advance (vaccinations, in particular) is just another highly suspicious example of the latest technologies being employed to further the agenda of hidden New World Order forces.

When the fluoridation of the U.S. water supply began in the middle of the last century, proto-Patriot groups screamed of a poisonous plot by communists in high places. A half century later, when the Food and Drug Administration approved aspartame as an ingredient in numerous food items, the descendents of the anti-fluoride conspiracists sounded yet another poison-ingredient alarm. But even aspartame paled in comparison to the threat supposedly posed by the avian flu virus, which many Patriots, from the late 1990s to the present, believe to be the result of research conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Maryland's Fort Detrick.

In the Patriot mind, population control is often intimately linked to gun rights. After all, they say, it was gun control that led to large-scale slaughters in nations as diverse at Idi Amin's Uganda, Josef Stalin's Russia, Adolf Hitler's Germany and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's Turkey. American citizens, they believe, once deprived of their guns, will be next in line for a slaughter worthy of the history books.

What is the point of limiting — or even intentionally decimating — the U.S. population? One Patriot theory says the United Nations wants to create a "biosphere" out of most of the United States, and that eliminating the humans who put pressure on the environment will be a necessary first step.

Increasingly, devastating weather events are considered the result of government-engineered efforts to depopulate the country. In Patriot circles, Hurricane Katrina was not only seen as a pretext to begin confiscating guns, but is sometimes viewed as a man-made disaster orchestrated in secret government command centers where sophisticated high-altitude weapons control both the weather and the minds of men.

Chief among these weapons is one allegedly operating high above the earth, appropriately enough named after the instrument traditionally favored by mythological angels.

08 HAARP
This is the "Death Star" of the Patriot conspiracy galaxy, around which so many other conspiracies orbit and often intersect.

According to the U.S. government, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a joint scientific research project of the Air Force and Navy, based in Gakona, Alaska, whose stated purpose is "studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes."

Few true-blue Patriots believe that — and they aren't alone in their skepticism. Earlier this year, former Minnesota governor and tele-conspiracist Jesse Ventura visited the HAARP site for his TV show in an attempt to probe the official claims and find out "what's really going on." For those enthralled to a Patriot view of the world, the government's description of HAARP only scratches the surface. To the conspiracy-minded, HAARP is a government program tasked with creating secret directed-energy weapons, instruments for weather and mind control, and even potent new methods to cause earthquakes. Predictably, after January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, some Patriot sites noted that the neighboring Dominican Republic was undamaged, leading them to speculate that the U.S. government was responsible and had targeted Haiti alone — ignoring the more relevant explanation that the Republic's capital and major population center, Santo Domingo, was 160 miles from the quake's epicenter.

Discussions of HAARP often overlap with the chemtrails conspiracy. Many Patriot sites argue that NATO aircraft are spraying the toxic soup as part of a top-secret HAARP-related weather-modification program, or are refining a new-generation of high-frequency atmospheric weapons developed at the HAARP research center. Any number of wild-eyed (and self-published) introductions to the subject of HAARP are circulating on the web; one example is HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy, by Jerry E. Smith.

09 The Federal Reserve Conspiracy
It wasn't long after its creation under Woodrow Wilson that the Federal Reserve System became a central fixture in the world of right-wing conspiracy. It was seen, rightly, as introducing European-style central banking into the United States. It was also seen, this time wrongly, as the latest form of spreading Jewish and banker control over every aspect of American life. No one did more to promote anti-Fed hysteria in the early years than automobile magnate Henry Ford, who in the 1920s penned a multi-volume, anti-Semitic conspiracy opus called The International Jew, in which the Fed plays a starring role.

Ford's modern-day ideological descendants in the Patriot movement continue to view the Fed — without question, an opaque institution to most — through a lens colored by deep suspicion, paranoia, and hatred. For many, it remains the ultimate symbol of New Word Order power, in both Jewish and non-Jewish variants. Nor is anti-Fed paranoia limited to the Patriot fringe. Both the Idaho-based neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations and the black separatist Nation of Islam have claimed significance for the fact that the Federal Reserve System and the Anti-Defamation League both were founded in 1913.

In May 2009, a group of leading radical rightists convened on the South Georgia key known as Jekyll Island, where 100 years earlier bankers and government officials first hashed out plans for what became the Federal Reserve System. This meeting played a key role in launching the current resurgence of militias. Less than five months into the Obama Administration, the Jekyll Island conclave warned of "increasing national instability," worried about the coming New World Order, denounced secret schemes to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States, and furiously attacked the President Barack Obama's "socialized" policies.

Which leads, appropriately, to our final top conspiracy.

10 The North American Union
Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, fears of economic dislocation and loss of sovereignty have animated both sides of the political spectrum. On the left, these fears are centered on the growth of transnational corporate power at the expense of U.S. labor and national policy. In some circles on the right, the trade bill is seen as the beginning of the so-called "North American Union" (NAU), the goal of a secret plan to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada and, in the process, eliminate sovereign government for each country. It is also a dominant conspiracy theory animating the hard-line anti-immigration movement, which overlaps heavily with Patriot territory.

As proof of the NAU plot, left- and right-wing conspiracy theorists typically point to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a series of working groups between the countries of North America to study regulatory cooperation in transportation, energy, aviation, the environment and more. To many adherents, participants at these meetings plot how best to send millions of Mexico's citizens to the United States, erect international courts designed to overrule and undermine American law, and pass continental hate crime laws that will send anti-gay Christian preachers to prison, and more.

In recent years, the paranoia about the SPP process has become so intense that a proposed highway project linking Canada, Mexico and the United States — the NAFTA-inspired Canamex Corridor concept which has managed only 85% completion after 15 years of planning — is seen as part of an evil design that will end with the Mexican government seizing control of Kansas City's Missouri River port. Other conspiracy theorists fear that a new currency, the "Amero," will displace American dollars — though no U.S. official of even marginal influence has ever proposed such a thing. (This last fear is odd coming from Patriot circles that otherwise have no love for Federal Reserve-issued greenbacks.)

As with so many conspiracies, the NAU plot is often inflamed by real news items that are seen as vastly more significant than they really are. This is especially true when the news items involve traditional New World Order bogeymen. In 2005, for example, when the Council on Foreign Relations released a document entitled "Building a North American Community" — calling for exploring the idea of further integration of Canada, the United States and Mexico — Patriot sites responded as if the report were a New World Order directive, spelling the imminent end of national sovereignty.

I'm pretty sure chemtrails - are flaring up my allergies

[ In Reply To ..]
And I'm determined to get to the bottom of it!

Was taking this article seriously until I saw the words - Truthhurts

[ In Reply To ..]
"right-wing extremism" and then I went to the link and saw it was Mother Jones, who in themselves, are a very left-wing extremist blog/yellow journalism "newspaper.

Then I went to the Southern Poverty Law Center and this sentence jumped out at me....as RACIST!!!

"The resurgence of the Patriot movement, as well as the broader radical right, has been fueled by the election of America’s first black president, the troubled economy and non-white immigration."

I do NOT believe the Patriot movement has been fueled byt the election of America's first black president. Why? Because of this: "the number of so-called "patriot groups," groups that generally believe the government is conspiring to take Americans' guns and freedoms and impose one-world rule, hit a record high of 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008," not because of the President.

I definitely believe it's because of the economy and the President's pushing the Patriot Act after spewing all kinds of bull against it as a JR. Senator, adding NDAA (the TRUE reason), and stepping on the Constitution and Bill of Rights more and more, and especially the drones in the U.S. allowed to shoot Americans without trial.

Before some of you jump all over me for the drone remark, think of it like this: If they can jail you without trial (innocent until proven guilty-gone) or even wipe you out for speaking against the government (drone attack), what else will they do to take away more of our rights?

Before Al-Awlaki was killed, he spoke before the government about the Islamists and was thought to be the voice of reason but since he turned out to be a sympathizer and was living overseas, he was killed as an Al Qaeda organizer.His son was killed because Gibbs stated he should have had a far more responsible parent. So, just because this kid had a father who may have been a terrorist, he was killed....AND HE WAS AMERICAN. The son NEVER renounced his American citizenship.

The Washington Post published an expose on the White House's growing database of people it believes it has the authority to kill without trial and the American Civil Liberties Union warned that the policy of "bureaucratized paramilitary killing" is illegal and will backfire.

This is our government today? Yes...and so, the upsurge in patriotic movements that our government is calling homegrown terrorists...and it's now wonder!

Oh, the pain! You can go directly to the SPLC for - the source if you like. As for racism

[ In Reply To ..]
as a factor in the rise of anxiety, of course. As everyone knows, including you. This is an honest source, so it can be expected to contain occasionally painful reminders, as well occasionally painful new facts.

Similar Messages:

Jul 21, 2017
Top officials with 14 anti-poverty nonprofits were paid as much as $869,900 as their organizations were enriched with $900 million of taxpayer money, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group has found. The activist groups received as much as 85 percent of their revenue from federal, state and local governments and collectively spent millions on lobbying, TheDCNF’s analysis found. Also, half of the charities’ CEOs made political contributions – nearly all of wh ...

Apr 05, 2017
tax exempt status in 2014. Conclusion: Obama administration was pro Satan clubs and against the Tea Party and Christianity. I hope the corrupt politicized IRS is on Trump’s radar. ...

Oct 17, 2016
This is just one set of interlocking "arrangements" involving a South Korean millionaire making donations to the Clinton Foundation in return for a sweetheart deal arranged by Hillary Clinton's inner circle, in which $125 million of US taxpayer money was also thrown into the deal. If anyone can read this NY Times expose all the way to the last sentence and still vote for Hillary Clinton, the American electorate is no longer the last defense against rampant, brazen government corruption. C ...

Sep 04, 2014
"A former rising star in the Republican Party, former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell was red-faced and sobbing Thursday when a jury convicted him and his wife on multiple counts related to influence peddling while he was in office. After more than a month of sometimes soul-baring testimony, the federal jury issued guilty verdicts on 11 counts against McDonnell, while clearing him on two others. His wife, Maureen, was convicted on nine while cleared on four. The former first couple wept openly in ...

Jul 23, 2011
at Labour Party sponsored summer camp. Wingnuts worldwide must be very proud. What I don't get is why analysts say unless this turns out to be an organized effort with identifiable leaders behind it, it "probably won't have far-reaching, long-term effects." Reports say police and government "didn't see it coming" despite a significant increase in right-wing net chatter of late, since Islamic extremism is perceived to be "the greater threat." This desp ...

Aug 07, 2012
It seems Romney wants the people to believe that a democrat is actually "gutting" welfare. Really? He does realize Obama is a democrat? LOL. Regardless, the uninformed neo-con/right-wing/or whoever is paying him more this week speaker seemingly will try anything... And what does Clinton have to say about this? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/bill-clinton-mitt-romney-welfare-reform_n_1754150.html ...

Jan 10, 2016
How I wish that people knew more about the history of this nation, and about the expansion of government with more agencies, more laws, more regulations, more inspections, and other impediments to personal success that has occurred especially since the 1930s, and in which NONE of the parties in power have been blameless. Folks, we now have officials shutting down lemonade stands and fining people for collecting rainwater from their own roofs. If you have a koi pond in your back yard, the ...

Oct 13, 2013
Government: Must Worship the beast. I didn't care for Bush too much, but even HE wouldn't do something like this to poor families. He is beyond evil. He doesn't have to do this at all. He is a SUPER VILLAIN punishing innocent people, even children just to get his way. ‘Folks About to Riot’: Twitter Explodes with Outrage Over Electronic Food Stamp Shutdown Worship The Beast or Die A Time of Testing Someone has said that truth can be stranger than fiction. I ...

Mar 26, 2010
So certain groups are exempt from this plan. Not only unions (of course), but the Amish and Muslims. Oh, and the people who wrote the bill. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/03/amish_muslims_to_be_excused_fr.html ...

Mar 12, 2013
I have been working at home as a transcriptionist for about 20 years - give or take a temp job from time to time. I would like to know if there are any social groups anyone knows of for those of us who work at home. I got into this field because I have a special needs child and needed to work at home. I have a hard time with the isolation of working at home and it seems like it would be great to work in an office, etc., but then I wouldn't have the flexibility and the other advantages of ...

Jan 20, 2011
Montpelier, VT: (AP) Five New England residents and five national health care advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal agency that administers Medicare, saying it had illegally reduced or denied benefits to thousands of patients with chronic health problems. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington, named Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as its sole defendant and took aim at an arm of Sebelius' agency, the Centers for Medicare and ...

Aug 17, 2010
At one time or another and in some cases on multiple occasions the GOP not only have voted against these folks, but they also have tried to whip up outrage and disdain for them via their various attack machines. 1. The President, by all means their number one target, along with any other previous democrat who ever held the office 2. The First Lady 3. All duly elected members of the House and Senate whose names are followed by a D+name of state 4. 9/11 first responders in need of medi ...

May 10, 2013
Is this Administration facing tough times or not? Another bunch of ILLEGAL activity and harrassment by the most hated arm of government in this country. Can't say there isn't someone behind this who "suggested" they do this. Congress and the conservative groups shouldn't accept their apology. Too bad Congress didn't look into it sooner. I.R.S. Apologizes to Conservative Groups Over Application Audits By JONATHAN WEISMAN Published: May 10, 2013 WASHINGTON – The ...

May 14, 2013
for the IRS to determine tax-exempt status - but Obama's brother has a charity - that was rushed through by Lois Lerner herself. Wait....Obama's brother has a charity? Is it himself? Oh, wait, that's the uncle. Never mind. But here's a link to the story. ...

May 18, 2013
"...advocates of reform worry that, in light of the IRS disclosure of targeting small groups, government regulators will be less likely to scrutinize the tax-exempt status of the bigger, more powerful groups out of fear that they will appear to be targeting groups for political reasons." "Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., urged the House Ways and Means Committee not to ignore the influx of groups that may be abusing the tax code as part of its upcoming IRS probe, saying: ‘I hope we can remove t ...

May 17, 2013
As IRS efforts targeting politically-conservative groups gained momentum, George Soros-funded liberal groups repeatedly called on the IRS to investigate conservative nonprofit organizations. While the first reported instances of extra IRS scrutiny for conservative groups began in Cincinnati in March of 2010, the attacks began to pick up steam on a national level soon after Soros-funded groups began firing off letters to the IRS in October of that year - following the Supreme Court's Citize ...

Aug 27, 2013
If the GOP burns down its own house there... The splintering of tea party groups could complicate Ohio Gov. John Kasich's reelection campaign next year. (AP PHOTO/RICK OSENTOSKI) The Ohio tea party's fracturing of the state GOP could be a serious worry, we noted last Friday, if the harsh rhetoric is followed by real action. Today, a report in the Columbus Dispatch shows just how bad things have gotten in the Buckeye State. Tea party gr ...

Jun 13, 2016
Good to see at least some groups are coming to their senses. Killary will continue on with the same feckless leadership as the current occupant of the White House. Make America Great Again for Everyone! ...

May 05, 2017
They wanted to work with the House but weren't allowed to. The House was only interested in repealing instead of our interests. Hopefully, the Senate will work with them and the democrats. ...

Mar 28, 2010
By Andrew McLemoreSaturday, March 27th, 2010 -- 6:25 pm Hatred is getting a lot of press this week as reports of violent harassment against Congressional Democrats continue to surface. It began last weekend with Tea Party activists shouting racist and bigoted comments at House Democrats during the final push for health care reform. But new research shows the Tea Party may be the nice guys amid soaring numbers of hate groups. An "astonishing" 363 anti-government or "Patriot" groups appeared in ...

Sep 19, 2012
that explicitly forbids gender-identity-based discrimination. Today the company has put into writing, for the first time, that its employees are to "treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation and gender.... our intent is not to engage in political or social debates." Score one for the home team and for minority rights, and kudos to the CFA honchos. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/chic ...

May 03, 2017
Remembering that Soros - a Nazi war criminal - said that the greatest accomplishment of his career would be taking America down, you can see he's working hard at it. I'm afraid that some of us here are the unwitting pawns that he's counting on, based on some of the posts I'm reading. ...

Feb 29, 2012
of the Republicans since day one of President Obama's presidency, before he had done anything good or bad, has been to make him a one-term president? I can see it being their second or third priority, but #1? Shouldn't the first priority be working together for the welfare of our country and the citizens who elected them? I also find it quite odd that during this administration anytime something bad occurs Obama is responsible, anytime good things happen he gets no ...

Apr 19, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI ...

Sep 11, 2015
This is a real eye-opener. I had no idea! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE ...

May 04, 2011
At first the outlandishness was mildly entertaining. Now, it is getting tiresome. Yet the sane citizens will continue on disregarding the tinfoil hat crowd, as always. ...

Aug 05, 2015
No mistake that Obama's detailed, lengthy, speech on Iran Deal at American University, referring to all sorts of history and other analytical and factual items---ended at a time that the "girls" on Fox's Outnumbered were on duty...LOL...above their heads. ...

Jun 24, 2011
This social degenerate is the biggest threat to freedom since Stalin. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/23/section-527-works-to-seat-liberals-as-election-ove/?page=all#pagebreak Soros and liberal groups seeking top election posts in battleground states A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee th ...

Nov 07, 2012
nm ...

May 24, 2013
The same IRS office that deliberatelytargeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year. The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica. In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati ...