When Anti-Government Violence Erupts, Who Is Really At Fault?

This past week, I have been examining a recently leaked document from the Department Of Homeland Security entitled “Domestic Violent Extremists Pose A Threat To Government Officials And Law Enforcement.” (It’s true; the title leaves nothing to the imagination.)

Generally, such documents are not classified. But it is internally accepted that they should not be shared with the public. Similar documents like the Missouri Information Analysis Center report titled “The Modern Militia Movement” and the Virginia Fusion Center’s Terrorism Threat Assessment are not designed to import in-depth knowledge to law enforcement. In fact, if you actually investigate these white papers thoroughly, you will find they read like a mentally challenged middle-school student’s last-minute book report on liberty groups in America.

Rather than convey the complexity of the conflict between federal bureaucracy and constitutionalists, the papers linked above are meant to indoctrinate law enforcement officials against even considering what we have to say or why we take the actions we take.

Often, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a shameless propaganda outlet known for its Saul Alinsky tactics, is tapped as the primary source of “data” for these reports. At no time have I ever seen a government report on “domestic extremism” that actually allows a subset of the liberty movement to personally describe our position.

Often, the DHS will claim to LEOs (legally entitled to oppress) that there is a “disparity in our beliefs that makes us unpredictable” or that they do not have a full understanding of our motivations during a particular event. The confrontation at Cliven Bundy’s ranch was the latest shock, after which federal officials acted as though the standoff attitude of armed liberty activists was incomprehensible.

The reality is that establishment cronies know all too well why activists are angered to the point of taking up arms.

In any piece of propaganda, including the leaked DHS report, the goal is to paint opposition to state power in the darkest manner possible, so that the useful idiots (unconstitutional LEOs and federal agents) can maintain the false sense that they hold the moral high ground. It is the information that such propaganda fails to mention that holds the key to unraveling the government position. For instance, the paper overtly mentions armed patriots at Bundy ranch as a brand of escalation, but does not mention the heavily armed Bureau of Land Management agents and contracted snipers that came first, seeking to terrify the Bundy family into compliance.

Nor does the paper mention the trampling of protester 1^st amendment rights with the BLM’s absurdly inadequate, fenced-off “First Amendment Area.” In light of this, I ask: Who triggered the confrontation at Bundy ranch?

Is the federal government really all that surprised that liberty activists from all across the country came armed and ready to fight or even die? Some people believe the establishment is so ignorant or blinded by hubris that they can’t see the typhoon at their door, but I don’t think they are as dumb as they pretend.

Tragedies like Waco and Ruby Ridge do not have a shelf life. They accumulate in the minds of the people over time, and generations can pass without the anger ever fading. At Bundy ranch, the liberty movement resolved that we would not allow another such event to occur again without direct consequences – meaning nonsensical false-flag terrorism like the Oklahoma City bombing will never be our method, though the Feds would like you to assume as much. No, our method is to stand in between the aggressors, whoever they may be, and the victims, whoever they may be, and stop the tragedy before it happens.

At Bundy ranch, the BLM and its military contractors ran away, returning Bundy property as they went. Thus, the liberty movement removed the immediate threat and prevented another possible Waco. This is called “escalation” of violent extremism by the establishment. I call it de-escalation of violent government abuse by liberty activists.

The federal government would have you believe that the rise of “militias” and violent opposition is somehow taking place in a vacuum; that government officials can’t understand why such escalation is occurring now; that it must be a product of “racism” due to a black president; and that it’s all a chaotic, self-mutating mess of extremist insanity. This is ridiculous.

Why are people gearing up for revolution? I’ll break it down simply: If you try to take our freedom, our chance at prosperity or our lives, we are going to fight you until one side or both sides dies. Period.

I’m not sure how this could be difficult to comprehend, and I do not think the feds haven’t grasped it. I think if they are surprised at all, it is because they have been steamrolling over Americans for so long that they are not used to the idea of regular people stopping them cold. Powder kegs are revealing themselves all across the U.S., from Bundy ranch to Ferguson, Missouri, and all caused by authoritarian overreach by federal and state officials.

What is the solution? To stop the rise of anti-government violence, we must remove government intrusion into people’s lives, and the public must take community security into its own hands. In Ferguson, anger has developed into street activism, but also random looting. Michael Brown himself is not an endearing character, but that is not a rationalization for the outright execution of suspects by the police. If the citizens of Ferguson really want to erase this conundrum from their lives, they are going to have to establish neighborhood watches and even community “militias” (there’s the dreaded “M” word again) to bring peace to their town.

By refusing to take responsibility for their own security, Ferguson residents have invited city and state LEOs to do the job for them, and this has resulted in the possibility of unwarranted death-by-cop. Ferguson residents can and should remove LEO presence by establishing their own security. But this means they would have to stop the looting by petty thugs using protests as cover, and it also means they would have to prevent or intervene in criminal activities by men like Brown.

The Founding Fathers answered the question of “who watches the watchmen” by creating a system by which the people are the watchmen. This was the militia system, a system that the federal government now labels “domestic extremism” and violent escalation.

I have been saying it for years, and I’ll keep saying right up until the shooting starts: Americans must take responsibility for their own futures and their own defense. Whether or not the people of Ferguson accept this, I have no idea, but the crisis will never stop until they do. And this problem applies to all other communities across the nation as well.

Dupes and statists will argue that the only way to change the system is to play by the rules, build a majority, elect the politicians you want and fight unconstitutional laws in the courts. But what should the people do when our political structure is rigged by special interests representing only a handful of elites? What should the people do when independent parties are muscled out of the mainstream and the leaders of the major parties sabotage any internal movements to change the status quo? What do the people do when their protests and redress of grievances are bashed by the media, violently attacked by the authorities or outright denied by government-enforced curfew? What do the people do when the courts stall justice and drown dissent with legal red tape? What do people do when playing by the rules only makes the situation worse for us all?

Americans must realize an important fact: There is no power over us but that which we give away.

The original intent of our republic is that the people are the government — not a select few elitists handpicked by corporate bankers. Politicians are supposed to be our employees, not a ruling class that sits above the populace. The current growing conflict between the citizenry and the government is igniting exactly because our government does not represent the common man anymore. The government is not “by the people, for the people.” It is a separate entity, representing corrupt and hostile parties. It cannot be changed from within. The federal government is now foreign to us, a guarded enemy with malicious motives.

Americans can take back the power they have neglected by taking responsibility for themselves and their communities. The government can only do two things in reaction: accept that we are in charge of our own lives and walk away, or try to stop us with force and assert its dominance. If it chooses the latter, then all violence that follows after will be on its hands, not ours. Anti-government activities arise only because of destructive government attitudes. If the establishment really fears a wave of violence against it, then it should do exactly as it did in Bunkerville, Nevada — walk away and leave people in peace.

–Brandon Smith