Countering Conservatism

By: Chris Johnson

The other day, as I was walking back to the house from my mailbox, I was thumbing through the letters. There, on the top left corner of one of the envelopes, was the name no one wants to see: IRS.

Now, I pay my taxes every year, and I’m not into any funny business, but still I wondered for a moment as I opened the envelope if the Biden administration had decided to torment me for some of the political stands I’ve taken. Thankfully, they were just letting me know I was eligible for Obamacare or something; they must have discovered I don’t have insurance because I’m better taken care of by my brothers and sisters in Christ through Samaritan Ministries!

You could chalk up my concern to paranoia, and I wouldn’t blame you. I recently had similar feelings while watching Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, “Police State.” It opens with a dramatic scene of the FBI bursting in on a picturesque traditional family enjoying breakfast together and I thought, “c’mon, isn’t that just a little overdramatic – a little fear-mongering?”

Yet, despite what you think of my paranoia, the IRS has targeted conservatives for their political stands, and – even more worrisome – the FBI has raided conservatives for their beliefs as well.

It was their targeting of the Rufini family which made news most recently. As Jeremiah Rufini explained, it was his son who drew the federal law enforcement agency’s attention: “His interests in history and theology led him down a rabbit hole where he was recruited into group chats targeting teenage traditionalist Catholics with extreme political content. We later learned that these chats were being closely monitored, and possibly operated by, FBI agents as part of an effort to investigate Traditional Catholics that was downstream of a broader domestic investigation spurred by the events of January 6th.”

The father continued: “Unbeknownst to us, he was being drawn deeper and deeper into these chat groups and goaded into doing things like take pictures of himself in public wearing ski masks and to print out memes and leave them on picnic tables. They would ask him if he had access to guns (he would go target shooting under the supervision of my brother, who lived in an in-law apartment at our home and owned firearms) and encourage him to sneak photographs of the guns and post them. Ironically, our legal troubles began when he had an attack of conscience and abruptly deleted all of his chat apps. He later told us that he felt using social media was a coping mechanism and it had been affecting his mood and ability to sleep.”

When the young Rufini dropped out of the chats, the agents running the operation apparently came to the conclusion that he had met up with some sort of real-life Catholic terrorist cell (if such a thing exists) and was planning a violent attack.

Rufini continues his account: “There was no such plan and they had no evidence of one, but it didn’t stop them from spending two weeks fabricating a legal pretense for a search warrant of our home. At 10:00pm on a Sunday evening we were dragged out of our home at gunpoint, handcuffed and locked in a van while they searched our home for evidence of this imagined plot. Having found no such evidence, they seized my brother’s firearms and had my son hospitalized on mental health pretenses.”

When it was realized that there was no grand Catholic conspiracy to commit acts of terror, the FBI dropped the case, but the family was left to pick up the pieces – including $20,000 in legal fees. A recent online fundraising effort met that need for the family.

Stories like this are shocking, and the Rufini family is not alone. Peaceful pro-life activists have also had their homes raided as if they were members of an al Qaida terror cell.

“How can this happen?” we’re prompted to ask. How can passionate conservatives be treated like Jihadis just for expressing our very traditional beliefs?

The answer goes back to a doctrine established in the intelligence community under the Obama administration called “Countering Violent Extremism.” When this change was adopted, the language which intelligence and law enforcement used to determine who to focus their attention upon underwent a subtle, but crucial, switch. “Terrorism” was replaced with “Violent Extremism” in their guide books and manuals.

As I said, that’s a subtle change, but a crucial one for this reason: “terrorism” is an action. “Violent Extremism” is – well, it’s whatever you want it to be. Especially in our day, when sometimes “silence is violence” and sometimes “speech is violence” and “extremism” is anything the left doesn’t like.

Stephen Coughlin explained this in a presentation hosted by the American Decency Association,  

“One of the things I like to point out is, with Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), we use the language to talk about going after al Qaida or ISIS. But if you… just do a search of CVE articles – no matter how much the article starts with Bin Laden or something going on in Syria, it always ends with someone talking about the Constitution, here…

“We have [a report,] ‘Challenges from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.’ Where did this come from? It was published at West Point! And you go into the document and the document says, ‘There are three major ideological movements within the American violent far right: a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement, and a fundamentalist movement.’

“So, if you are in an anti-federalist movement, you are in the same category as a white racist and, of course, throw in fundamentalists. You see what’s happening here? This is West Point. These are the people training our future officers. And it tells you, ‘the anti-federalist movement…espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self-government.’ This is who are being defined as ‘right-wing extremists’ and ‘violent extremis[ts].’”

“…One of the codes you have to crack is all conservatism is extremism in this paradigm…”

This presentation was given in 2015, and I suspect, if Coughlin were to give that presentation today he would point out that all “conservatism” is now “white supremacism” in this paradigm, as well.

However, in Coughlin’s presentation, he also points out how – in the FBI handbook – the Bureau cannot open an investigation based only on this classification. Perhaps that’s what has prompted the FBI’s recent bad habit of planning terrorist attacks and trying to talk conservatives into carrying them out.

 Michigan governor kidnap case: hardened terrorists or FBI dupes?

THE FBI GROOMED A 16-YEAR-OLD WITH “BRAIN DEVELOPMENT ISSUES” TO BECOME A TERRORIST

Top FBI official dodges when Cruz asks if agents participated in Jan. 6 riot.

If I were Jeremiah Rufini, I’d suspect the FBI was operating those chat groups as well.

The sad truth is that we have a government which justifies such paranoia and I don’t believe any amount of elections will change that. And – let me be clear for any feds who may be reading this – neither will acts of violence. Only an act of God can get this country back on track – whether it’s through a slow-moving resurgence of the influence of the Church, or through some cataclysm that turns the American people towards Him, or through another Great Awakening which revives the purpose of America’s forefathers who fled their own persecution: “…for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith…” (the Mayflower Compact). All illusions to the contrary are being stripped away; the more attention you pay to politics and culture – our only Hope is in Christ. Stay faithful.

To view this article in your browser, Click Here

For more information, articles and newsletters, please check out our website at https://americandecency.org/

You can support ADA financially by visiting: https://give.cornerstone.cc/americandecency

 

---