Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog [10],
U.S. law enforcement agencies rank the threat of violence from anti-government extremists higher than the threat from radicalized Muslims, according to a report released Thursday by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security (TCTHS).
The report, “Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat,” was based on survey research by Charles Kurzman, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and David Schanzer, director of TCTHS and associate professor of the practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
The survey — conducted by the center with the Police Executive Research Forum — found that 74 percent of 382 law enforcement agencies rated anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction. By comparison, 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations as a Top 3 terrorist threat.
– From Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy [11]
Since September 11, 2001, the frightened and emotionally pliable American public has gullibly relinquished its civil liberties and free heritage in order to allow the U.S. government to wage unaccountable and unconstitutional war again Al-Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorism across the world.
Many of us have warned for years, that preemptively giving up freedoms to protect freedom could only make sense to a propagandized, ignorant public completely clueless of human history. We warned that any totalitarian apparatus implemented to fight an outside enemy, would ultimately be turned around and used upon the public domestically. We already know this is happening with the NSA’s bulk spying and data collection, and we are starting to see a proliferation of the meme that “domestic extremists are more dangerous than Al-Qaeda,” spreading from the mouths of a corrupt and paranoid political class. I’ve covered this topic on several occasions, for example:
The “War on Terror” Turns Inward – DHS Report Warns of Right Wing Terror Threat [12]
Eric Holder Announces Task Force to Focus on “Domestic Terrorists” [13]
Rep. Steve Cohen Calls Tea Party Republicans “Domestic Enemies” on MSNBC [14]
It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists” [16]
If all that’s not enough to convince you we’ve got a problem, I bring to you conclusions from the recently released study, “Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat.” [17] This study was based on a survey conducted by Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, who recently penned an op-ed in the New York Times [18]. Here are some excerpts from their article:
In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum [19] last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State’s efforts to radicalize American Muslims, which began just after the survey ended, may have increased threat perceptions somewhat, but not by much, as we found in follow-up interviews over the past year with counterterrorism specialists at 19 law enforcement agencies. These officers, selected from urban and rural areas around the country, said that radicalization from the Middle East was a concern, but not as dangerous as radicalization among right-wing extremists.
Law enforcement agencies around the country are training their officers to recognize signs of anti-government extremism and to exercise caution during routine traffic stops, criminal investigations and other interactions with potential extremists. “The threat is real,” says the handout from one training program sponsored by the Department of Justice. Since 2000, the handout notes, 25 law enforcement officers have been killed by right-wing extremists, who share a “fear that government will confiscate firearms” and a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”
Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 [20] murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.
Perhaps if the police didn’t harbor such negative thoughts about the general public, there wouldn’t be as many citizens killed by police. The recent tally is up to 463 killed so far in 2015 [21], or an average of 2.5 Americans killed by police every day.
Finally, I came across the following excerpt from a recently published National Journal article [22]:
Senate Democrats are calling for Congress to shift its focus from solely jihadist-fueled terrorism and hold hearings on the threats from domestic groups in upcoming weeks. And the Department of Justice has already opened up a domestic-terrorism investigation into the Charleston church shooting.
The real enemy of the corrupt corporate state is none other than, “we the people.”
