John & Nisha Whitehead
“There are no unsafe ideas; believing itself is a hazardous activity.”Hannah Arendt Prepare yourself for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: psychological health
round-ups and involuntary detentions. Under the guise of public health and safety, the federal government might utilize mental healthcare as a pretext
for targeting and securing dissidents, activists and anyone regrettable adequate to be placed on a government watch list. If we don’t nip this in the bud, and soon, this will become yet another pretext by which federal government authorities can violate the First and 4th Modifications at will. This is how it begins. In communities across the country, authorities are being empowered to by force apprehend people they think may be psychologically ill
, based exclusively by themselves judgment, even if those people present no risk to others. In New York City, for instance, you might find yourself by force hospitalized for believed mental illness if you carry”firmly held beliefs not consistent with cultural ideas,”show a”determination to take part in significant conversation,”have” excessive worries of specific stimuli,”or refuse”voluntary treatment recommendations.”While these programs are seemingly focused on getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, psychological health sensor information(tracked by wearable information and kept track of bygovernment agencies such as HARPA), risk evaluations, behavioral sensing cautions, precrime initiatives, red flag weapon laws, and mental health first-aid programs targeted at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a danger to public security, they might well signify a tipping point in the federal government’s efforts to punish those participating in so-called”believed criminal offenses.”As the AP reports, federal authorities are already looking into how to include”‘recognizable client information,’such as psychological health, compound use and behavioral health information from group houses, shelters, prisons, detox centers and schools,
” to its monitoring toolkit. Make no mistake: these are the building blocks for an American gulag no less ominous than that of the gulags of the Cold War-era Soviet Union. The word “gulag”describes a labor or prisoner-of-war camp where detainees (oftentimes political prisoners or so-called” opponents of the state,”real or imagined )were locked up as penalty for their crimes against the state. The gulag, according to historian Anne Applebaum, used as a type of”
administrative exile– which needed no trial and no sentencing procedure– was anperfect punishment not just formischief-makers as such, however also for political challengers of the regime.”Totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union also declared dissidents psychologically ill and consigned political prisoners to prisons disguised as psychiatric healthcare facilities, where they could be isolated from the rest of society, their ideas challenged, and subjected
to electrical shocks, drugs and different medical treatments to break them physically and psychologically. In addition to declaring political dissidents psychologically unsound, federal government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union likewise made use of an administrative procedure for
handling individuals who were thought about a bad impact on others or mischief-makers. Author George Kennan explains a process in which: The obnoxious individual may not be guilty of any criminal activity … however if, in the viewpoint of the local authorities, his existence in a particular place is”prejudicial to public order”or “incompatible with public tranquility,”
he may be apprehended without warrant, may be held from 2 weeks to two years in jail, and may then be gotten rid of by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under cops surveillance for a duration of from one to 10 years. Warrantless seizures, security, indefinite detention, seclusion, exile … sound familiar
? It should. The olden practice by which despotic regimes remove their critics or prospective foes by making them vanish– or forcing them to leave– or exiling them literally or figuratively or essentially from their fellow citizens– is happening with increasing frequency in America. Now, through making use of warning laws, behavioral danger
assessments, and pre-crime policing avoidance programs, the groundwork is being laid that would allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and flexibility fighters who decline to march in lockstep with its dictates. That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the ways by which to debilitate (and disarm )itscritics is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these individuals are declared psychologically ill, locked away versus their will, and stripped of their civil liberties.
These advancements are simply the realization of numerous U.S. government efforts going back to 2009, including one called Operation Vigilant Eagle which requires surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and possible domestic terrorist risks because
they may be”dissatisfied, disillusionedor suffering from the mentalimpactsof war.”Paired with the report on “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment”provided by the Department of Homeland Security(curiously enough, a Soviet term ), which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups
“that are primarily antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or regional authority, or rejecting government authority completely,”these techniques bode ill for anybody viewed as opposing the federal government. Therefore, what started as a blueprint under the Bush administration has actually since become an operation handbook for
exiling those who challenge the government’s authority. A crucial indicate consider, however, is that the federal government is not simply targeting people who are voicing their discontent so much as it is securing people trained in military warfare who are voicing sensations of discontent. Under the guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and police officials, these veterans are significantly
being represented as ticking timebombs in need of intervention. For example, the Justice Department released a pilot program aimed at trainingSWAT groups to deal with conflicts including extremely trained and frequently heavily armed combat veterans. One tactic being utilized to handle so-called “mentally ill suspects who also take place to be trained in contemporary warfare”is through making use of civil commitment laws, found in all states and used throughout American history to not only silence but trigger dissidents to disappear. For example, NSA officials attempted to label former employee Russ Tice, who wanted to testify in Congress about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, as”mentally out of balance”based upon two psychiatric evaluations bought by his superiors. NYPD Officer Adrian Schoolcraft had his house raided, and he was handcuffed to a gurney and taken into emergency situation custody for an alleged psychiatric episode. It was later found by method of an internal investigation that his superiors were retaliating
versus him for reporting police misbehavior. Schoolcraft invested 6 days in the mental facility, and as an additional indignity, existed with a bill for $7,185 upon his release. Marine Brandon Raub– a 9/11 truther– was jailed
and apprehended in a psychiatric ward under Virginia’s civil commitment law based upon posts he had actually made on his Facebook page that were critical of the federal government. Each state has its own set of civil, or uncontrolled, commitment laws. These laws are extensions of 2 legal concepts: parens patriae Parens patriae(Latin for”moms and dad of
the country “), which allows the government to step in on behalf of people who can not act in their own best interest, and cops power, which needs a state to protect the interests of its people. The fusion of these two concepts, paired with a shift towards a dangerousness requirement, has actually led to a Nanny State frame of mind carried out with the militant force of the Cops State. The problem, of course, is that the
medical diagnosis of mental disorder, while a genuine concern for some Americans, has over time end up being a convenient methods by which the federal government and its business partners can punish certain “undesirable”social habits. In fact, in the last few years, we have actually witnessed the pathologizing of individuals who resist authority as suffering from
oppositional bold condition(ODD), defined as” a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and bold behavior towards authority figures.”Under such a meaning, every activist of note throughout our history– from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.– might be categorized as struggling with an ODD mental illness. Obviously, this is all part of a larger pattern in American governance where dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, stated unsuited for society, identified hazardous or extremist, or turned into castaways and banished. Warning weapon laws(which license federal government authorities to seize weapons from individuals viewed as a threat to themselves or others), are a perfect example of this state of mind at work and the implications of where this could lead. As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws” allow a member of the family, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of doctor to submit a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be momentarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health medical diagnosis or an arrest.”With these red flag gun laws, the mentioned intent is to deactivate individuals who are possible dangers. While in theory it appears completely affordable to wish to deactivate people who are plainly suicidal and/or pose an”instant risk “to themselves or others, where the issue develops
is when you put the power to identify who is a potential risk in the hands of government companies, the courts and the police. Keep in mind, this is the exact same government that utilizes the words”anti-government, “” extremist”and”terrorist”interchangeably. This is the exact same federal government whose representatives are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat evaluations, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,”and “suspicious”activity reports utilizing automatic eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software application, and resident spies to identify potential threats. This is the very same federal government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Permission Act(NDAA), which enables the military to detain American residents with no access to pals, household or the courts if the government thinks them to be a danger. This is the same federal government that has a growing list– shown blend centers and law enforcement agencies– of ideologies, behaviors, associations and other qualities that might flag somebody as suspicious and result in their being identified prospective enemies of the state. For example, if you think in and exercise your rights under the Constitution(namely, your right to speak easily, praise freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, slam the federal government, own a weapon
, require a warrant prior to
being questioned or browsed, or any other activity considered as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign ), you might be at the top of the federal government’s terrorism watch list. Additionally, as a New York City Times editorial cautions, you may be an anti-government extremist( a.k.a. domestic terrorist )in the eyes of the cops if you hesitate that the government is plotting to seize your guns, if you think the economy has to do withto collapse and the federal government will quickly state martial law, or if you display an uncommon number of political and/or ideological decal on your vehicle. Let that sink in a minute. Now consider the implications of providing cops that type of authority in order to preemptively reduce the effects of a potential danger, and you’ll understand why some might view these mental health round-ups with nervousness. No matter how well-meaning the politicians make theseadvancements on our rights appear, in the right(or wrong)hands, kindhearted strategies can easily be put to malevolent purposes. Even the most well-intentioned public law or program can be– andhas been– perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate functions as soon as profit and power are contributed to the formula. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal migration, the war on COVID-19: all of these programs started out as genuine reactions to pressing issues and have given that become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands. For example
, the very same mass monitoring innovations thatwere allegedly
so necessary to eliminate the spread of COVID-19 are now being utilized to suppress dissent, maltreat activists, bother marginalized communities, and link individuals’s health info to other monitoring and law enforcement tools. As I explain in my book Battlefield America:
The War on the American People and in its fictional equivalent The Erik Blair Diaries, we are moving quickly down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only viewpoints, concepts and speech revealed are the ones permitted by the federal government and its businessmates.
We stand at a crossroads. As author Erich Fromm alerted, At this moment in history, the capability to question, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.”Initially published by The Rutherford Institute Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is creator and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People(SelectBooks, 2015 )is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email secured] SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN For direct-transfer bank information click on this link.