It looks like we’ve rewound back to 2009.
Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.
These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.
These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.
The story cites all of two cases in the entire United States, then segues to this.
FBI agents said they do not have a tally of people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens.”
If the FBI takes the trouble to hold a press conference alerting us to the growing threat of “sovereign citizens,” shouldn’t they have some idea of how many of these folks there are and what they’re up to? One of the FBI’s consultants claims there are 100,000 of them — but the consultant makes his money by amping up the threat.
Back in 2009, Obama’s DHS warned the world of the “growing threat” of “right wing extremists” and veterans returning from the war.
Meanwhile, the US border with Mexico is an actual war zone, as many as 35,000 dead including some Americans and the mayhem increasingly spilling across the border, and what’s the Obama administration doing about that? Trying to run from the fact that it allowed thousands of guns to walk across the border and into the hands of Mexico’s hyperviolent drug cartels.
Has anything similar been done to the #OWS crowd?
If not, then this is a political agenda at work. These guys need to understand the mass needed for them to fool most of the people most of the time does not yet exist. They simply won’t be able to spin their way into more power.
President Obama is really paranoid about Americans, America itself, & the Tea Party.
More like we’ve rewound to 1993-1995. It’s simple: liberals are literally more terrified of homegrown, right-wing terrorists than they are of any foreign enemy. Militias are the great redneck boogiemen that all Progressives fear.
ISTR reading elsewhere that the “disturbing trend” is a rise in crimes committed by these groups from 10 to 18. Most of them are tax evasion; 3, I think, were violent.
In short, there were more cases of “sudden jihadi syndrome” last year than violent crimes committed by the “sovereign citizens movement”.
I read the actual memo and you are needlessly trying to gin up hysterics.
First of all, the memo talks about violent actions, not beliefs. Secondly, it mentions many other groups besides right-wing groups.
And in case you forgot, the worst terror act on our soil before 9/11 was by a right-wing group.
This is getting silly.
Could you refer me to the occupy page on the FBI terrorism site?
OK, here’s the memo. If you read the whole thing, you will see “left-wing extreme groups”.
http://www.tdbimg.com/files/2009/04/30/-hsra-domestic-extremism-lexicon_165213935473.pdf
All I’m saying is that there’s no need to get hysterical.
WRONG!!! The FBI documents we’re citing are more recent. The memo you cited is from 2009. I ask again, since times have changed: Where’s the FBIdocument discussing the Occupy movement, which has committed far more terroristic activity in the last 6 months than any other group. FBI reported 18 cases of “sovereign citizen” crimes for each year 2010 and 2011, and most are non-violent. Occupiers have committed rape and assault, in addition to vandalism, terroristic threats, and theft.
No Occupy memo, no dice on the “just chill out” meme.
“And in case you forgot, the worst terror act on our soil before 9/11 was by a right-wing group.”
And in case you forgot, since 9/11 the worst terror acts on our soil have come from the left.
The next one will apparently happen at CPAC.
These acts may not have not risen to Oklahoma City levels, may never rise to that level, may stay at their current “terror acts in training phase”, but they are in fact violent, they do often end up including attacks on police officers, and they are intended to bring about a political outcome. So I think I will look askance at the FBI if “sovereign citizens” is what they fear most, and most wish to publicize.
I will not even include in the above Major Hasan, a true terrorist act, except to note that I’m fairly sure the political correctness before the event which allowed the man to continue *essentially* un-looked at for so long, as well as the political correctness after the event which has mischaracterized his motivation (and act)–well, I’m fairly sure the motivating forces for that political correctness have not been coming from the right, nor the seeming sympathy for extreme Islam (or at least desire not to call it extreme) which for some reason sometimes seems to arise here in the United States.
I could go on, but will not. Real world acts from leftists and those sometimes at least sympathetically supported by the left have been occurring regularly now. The FBI chooses to highlight a group on the right. I say “bull”.
All you say is true, but it does not change the fact that a right-wing extremist killed 160 men, women, and children on American soil. All the subsequent terrorist acts by muslims will not make that fact go away. So what do you expect a law-enforcement agency to do? Ignore Oklahoma City, say it never happened?
There’s another article on PJM about this and it’s gotten over 200 comments. I went in and looked at them and it’s all hysteria. Conservatives. Right.
Timothy McVeigh right wing extremist?
TM with a T-shirt containing a John Wilkes Booth quote. (Booth killed a Republican president, an act supported by southern Democrats who eventually retook the South during Reconstruction by relying on terrorist organizations like the KKK.)
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100411181315kays.nb/topstory.html
He was more like an ideologue who grabbed whatever verbiage justified his actions. This is more psychopathic than political.
So why should we trust you that we’re over-reacting? Maybe you have been ever since you concluded McVeigh was a right-wing extremist. That hallucination is clouding your judgment, which is just what the government wants.
Acts of violence, however damaging, should never act as justification for the denial of natural rights on anyone but the actors and collaborators.
The continued subversion of the people’s natural rights not just those enshrined by the founders is the real issue.
We have not rewound anything.
The “sovereign citizens movement” espouses a specific ideology that absolutely rejects any and all existing government authority in all forms, from taxes to traffic laws to paying their debts and beyond.
They believe they are fully “sovereign” – complete and separate governments.
As part of that they engage in criminal activity ranging from common fraud to the murder of police officers during traffic stops.
They are not Tea Partiers asserting their unalienable and Constitutional rights, and calling for government to obey its Constitutional limits.
This is not an extremist group to back out of reflexive suspicion of anything the FBI is doing during Obama’s term of office.