“Domestic Violent Extremists” is not a rhetorical flourish when employed by intelligence agencies. It has a very specific meaning and empowers US government intelligence and law enforcement officials to take enhanced steps to monitor and investigate you.
What would be “unreasonable” searches under the Fourth Amendment suddenly become “reasonable,” based on your enhanced danger to the community.
So when the Biden administration designated people who opposed MASK and vaccine mandates during the COVID pandemic, it put much of the country–including most Trump supporters–in the crosshairs of law enforcement.
The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records obtained by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports. The designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation, said a former FBI agent.
The report, which the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has declassified, claims that “anti government or anti authority violent extremists,” specifically militias, “characterize COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as evidence of government overreach.” A sweeping range of COVID narratives, the report states, “have resonated” with DVEs “motivated by QAnon.”
The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) coauthored the December 13, 2021 intelligence product whose title reads, “DVEs and Foreign Analogues May React Violently to COVID-19 Mitigation Mandates.”
The report cites criticism of mandates as “prominent narratives” related to violent extremism. These narratives “include the belief that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.“
“It’s a way they could go to social media companies and say, ‘You don’t want to propagate domestic terrorism, so you should take down this content,’” said former FBI agent Steve Friend.
Remember all those anti-mandate riots in the summer and fall of 2020? I do. White Supremacist militias burned down vast swathes of cities, created anti-mask occupation zones in cities like Seattle, and torched Minneapolis’ Third Precinct.
I think I remember that. Republican congressmen even pledged their fealty to these insurrectionists.
Fascists, I tell you. Fascists. Good thing Biden sent law enforcement after them.
Most Americans want to forget just how oppressive Western governments became during the COVID pandemic. Bureaucrats and politicians became drunk with power and were motivated by a burning hatred for those who defied them. They mobilized the intelligence community, collaborated with foreign powers to censor dissenters, and even employed military psychological warfare units to gaslight citizens.
The report suggests the Biden administration’s political goals, such as full compliance with the COVID vaccine mandates, drove intelligence collection requirements so that the raw data would reinforce, not undercut the policy. Versus, an open minded approach to intelligence collection, which seeks the facts on the ground to inform government officials who make policy decisions.
During Biden’s famous 2022 “red speech,” named after the blood red background behind him, he said, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
There are scant references to original source data in the report. Rather, it uses language that forecasts the potential for violence such as “vaccination mandates for school-age children, employees facing termination for lack of compliance, or perceptions of unfair healthcare treatment for the unvaccinated might trigger increased violence by DVEs.”
When he announced the mandates, Biden disparaged the unvaccinated, using the phrase “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and stating, “We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.“
Ironically, within months of this declaration, a wave of domestic violent extremism swept the country, starting on college campuses, spilling out into our streets, and vividly demonstrated with yet another set of assassinations on the streets of Washington DC. You may have heard of it. They want to globalize the intifada, yet every one of the same people who labeled COVID skeptics–who have been proven prescient–violent extremists are not working furiously to claim that the people who have declared their allegiance to Hamas in the wake of October 7th are merely exercising their First Amendment rights.
It’s not what you do; it’s who you are that matters.
