{"id":64094,"date":"2021-01-21T19:37:51","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T01:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=64094"},"modified":"2021-01-21T19:39:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T01:39:00","slug":"64094","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=64094","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BLUF:
\nBrennan is defining \u201cinsurgency\u201d as anyone who \u201chas an ideology other than neoliberalism\u2014in other words, other than the ruling class.<\/strong>\u201d The elites in the ruling class, he warned, are about to \u201ccongeal and merge with the power of the state.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a chilling notion, one that is by no means unimaginable.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gird Your Loins, Libertarians. The Biden Admin Is Going to Be Keeping an Eye on You.<\/a><\/p>\n

Former CIA Director John Brennan let the cat out of the bag during an MSNBC appearance Wednesday, saying that the Biden administration is laser-focused on rooting out \u201cinsurgency movements\u201d in the U.S., cracking down on pernicious malefactors like (gasp!)\u00a0libertarians<\/em>. No, really.<\/p>\n

\u201cMembers of the Biden team who have been nominated or appointed are now moving in laser-like fashion to uncover as much as they can about what looks similar to insurgency movements that we see overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country,\u201d Brennan warned. \u201cThey gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists,\u00a0even libertarians<\/strong>.\u201d [Emphasis added]<\/p>\n

.@JohnBrennan<\/a>: Biden intel community \u201care moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about\u201d the pro-Trump \u201cinsurgency\u201d that harbors \u201creligious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians\u201d\u00a0pic.twitter.com\/SjVXWhPhR8<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Tom Elliott (@tomselliott)\u00a0January 20, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pay no attention to the antifa and BLM nutters who were torching American cities all summer, it\u2019s people like Justin Amash and Rand Paul we need to worry about.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure our astute readers will recall that Brennan, as director of the CIA, was a libertarian\u2019s worst nightmare.\u00a0Scott Shackford wrote at Reason in 2018<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As director of the CIA, Brennan\u00a0defended terrible practices<\/a>\u00a0such as torture and extrajudicial drone assassinations. Under him, the CIA secretly\u00a0snooped on Senate Intelligence Committee staff<\/a>\u00a0who were researching and producing a report critical of the CIA\u2019s use of torture in interrogations of terrorism suspects during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then Brennan played dumb about it. And then\u00a0nothing happened<\/a>. Brennan is neither the hero of this story nor a victim, and he is probably still going to do just fine as a talking head on the news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such critiques might explain why Brennan, who was nominated to the post of CIA director by Barack Obama, has it in for libertarians. The question is whether Biden (or whoever\u2019s calling the shots in the Oval Office tonight) also has libertarians in his sights. In his inaugural address, Biden vowed to wage war on \u201cpolitical extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That sounds nice at first glance. Who doesn\u2019t hate white supremacists and terrorists, after all? The problem is, there are many on the left who call all 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump white supremacists and everyone who opposes abortion domestic terrorists.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ve been at this for a while.<\/p>\n

Remember when the Obama administration circulated a\u00a0terrorism dictionary<\/a>\u00a0in 2009 that described \u201cantiabortion extremism\u201d as \u201cA movement of groups or individuals who are virulently antiabortion and advocate violence against providers of abortion-related services, their employees, and their facilities\u201d? It went on to say that some individuals who oppose abortion \u201ccite various racist and anti-Semitic beliefs to justify their criminal activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2012,\u00a0a Department of Homeland Security threat assessment<\/a>\u00a0warned of \u201csingle-issue\u201d extremists they described as \u201cgroups or individuals that obsessively focus on very specific or narrowly-defined causes (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-nuclear, anti-Castro). You can find more examples\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Words mean whatever the left wants them to mean\u2014and whatever will further their political ambitions. Words are violence, we\u2019re told. If you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, you\u2019re canceled and sent to the digital gulag (it\u2019s mostly digital\u2014for now).<\/p>\n

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the few honest liberals left in America, is a critic of the left and the right alike. He walked away from a plum job at The Intercept last year, citing the website\u2019s censorship of views with which they disagree, including his criticism of then-candidate Joe Biden.\u00a0He wrote at Substack<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and \u2014 regardless of the risks involved \u2014 simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Greenwald was appalled at Brennan\u2019s comments about libertarians and other verboten people groups. He told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that \u201cit would be one thing if they were saying, \u2018look, there\u2019s a band of people, 20 here, 50 over here, who wear swastikas and armbands, who still are in the KKK, there\u2019s maybe 2,000.\u2019 That\u2019s not what they\u2019re saying. What [Brennan\u2019s] saying is the exact opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained that Brennan is defining \u201cinsurgency\u201d as anyone who \u201chas an ideology other than neoliberalism\u2014in other words, other than the ruling class.\u201d The elites in the ruling class, he warned, are about to \u201ccongeal and merge with the power of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a chilling notion, one that is by no means unimaginable.<\/p>\n

They are using \u201cthe tools that they used to take ISIS off the internet,\u201d Greenwald added. \u201cThe tools they used to destroy al-Qaeda.\u201d He said the left is \u201ccriminalizing\u201d opposing ideologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is literally nothing that could be more dangerous and it\u2019s not fearmongering or alarmism to say it,\u201d he declared. \u201cThere are bills pending by [Congressman] Adam Schiff, as well, that would simply take the existing War on Terror legislation, always aimed at foreign government and foreign actors, and simply amend it to say that we can now do that in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenwald wrote at Substack last week<\/a>\u00a0that political elites of both parties are using powers they were granted in the wake of 9\/11 attacks to silence wrongthinking Americans:<\/p>\n

Calls for a War on Terror sequel \u2014 a domestic version complete with surveillance and censorship \u2014 are not confined to ratings-deprived cable hosts and ghouls from the security state.\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0reports that \u201cMr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of\u00a0passing a law against domestic terrorism<\/a>, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Greenwald warned: \u201cThat a new War on Terror is coming is not a question of speculation and it is not in doubt. Those who now wield power are saying it explicitly. The only thing that is in doubt is how much opposition they will encounter from those who value basic civic rights more than the fears of one another being deliberately cultivated within us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch your backs, libertarian friends. It\u2019s only a matter of time until they come for you too\u2014if they haven\u2019t already.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF: Brennan is defining \u201cinsurgency\u201d as anyone who \u201chas an ideology other than neoliberalism\u2014in other words, other than the ruling class.\u201d The elites in the ruling class, he warned, are about to \u201ccongeal and merge with the power of the state.\u201d It\u2019s a chilling notion, one that is by no means unimaginable. Gird Your Loins, … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-scratch-a-lib-find-a-tyrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64094"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64097,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64094\/revisions\/64097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}