Feds Enlist Schools in War on “Extremist” Children

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In one of its most Orwellian schemes to date, the Obama administration is taking a page from Communist East Germany’s infamous Stasi by asking school teachers to start spying on American students so “extremists” can be reported to the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. Among others in the federal government’s cross-hairs: pro-life activists, anarchists, environmentalists, animal-rights activists, Muslims, religious students critical of “Western corruption,” constitutionalists, and even children who simply criticize or question authorities too much.

In a January 2016 unclassified FBI document about “preventing violent extremism in schools,” the FBI comes across as paranoiacs imagining that there are “extremist” children hiding under every bed. “High school students are ideal targets for recruitment by violent extremists seeking support for their radical ideologies,” claims the agency, which has become increasingly politicized under the Obama administration. “High schools must remain vigilant in educating their students about catalysts that drive violent extremism and the potential consequences of embracing extremist beliefs.” It claims there is a “very fine line” between protected speech and thought crimes.

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Much of the document sounds unhinged and downright preposterous. For example, the document frets about “violent propaganda,” suggesting the federal government now believes free speech can somehow be violent. The FBI scheme also warns that children are supposedly “embracing violent extremism by maintaining biases towards others due to their race, religion, or sexual orientation.” In other words, mere disapproval of homosexuality, Islam, and more can now considered “extremism,” and the Obama FBI wants schools and teachers to join the war on such “extremism.” In Communist East Germany, the murderous dictatorship and its “State Security” agency, known as the Stasi, were also infamous for using teachers as snitches in adition to their brainwashing duties.

The Obama FBI warns schools that “more youth” are supposedly ready to “embrace extremist ideologies.” Some of them even “view hatred” as an “acceptable outlet for their grievances.” Why the FBI believes its job description includes students’ ideologies, biases, or hatreds is not made clear in the document, despite the ham-handed effort to equate “ideologies” the government dislikes — such as “anti-government views” and “abortion [pro-life] extremism” — with terrorism and violence. The Obama administration has previously claimed that returning veterans, constitutionalists, pro-life activists, liberty lovers, people suspicious of federal authority, anti-immigration activists, Ron Paul supporters, and others are extremists or even potential terrorists, too.

Of course, as The New American reported in 2014, much of the “terrorism” that does exist in the United States today is actually attributable directly to the FBI. Indeed, the U.S. government often manufactures and creates the alleged “terrorism threats” it purports to be fighting, in some cases even prodding mentally challenged dupes into bogus “plots” that authorities concocted in the first place. A report by Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that almost every high-profile domestic terror case across America between the September 11 attacks and the 2014 report featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants. In some cases, virtually the entire “terrorism” plot — from start to finish — was actually led and financed by government operatives.

Those troubling facts aside, the Obama FBI claims to be “committed” to helping schools with “extremism.” Among other ways to address it, the agency calls for enhancing “student social and emotional well-being,” code words for sending in swarms of tax-funded psychiatrists and psychologists. The document also pushes more “information sharing” on American children between government agencies, as if not enough of that was going on. It seeks to “deter youth from embracing extremist ideologies,” too, with “extremist ideologies” defined by the same federal bureaucracies packed full of anti-Constitution extremists.

If finding extremism is the goal, though, a good place to start would be the Obama administration. Obama, of course, famously launched his political career in the home of confessed communist terrorist Bill Ayers, whose Castro-backed terror group, the Weather Underground, murdered police officers and bombed multiple federal facilities. According to the FBI’s Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the terrorist group, the Weathermen, as they were called, were hoping to round up and exterminate millions of “counter-revolutionaries” with help from the regimes in Cuba, Moscow, Beijing, and more. Now that is violent extremism. But that is not the sort of extremism the Obama FBI wants teachers to seek out.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to shower weapons and money on violent extremist dictatorships and U.S.-designated terror groups across the Middle East and worldwide. From a deliberate plan to create an Islamist principality in Eastern Syria (now known as ISIS) to unlawfully supporting multiple communist and Islamist terror groups officially designated as banned terrorist organizations by the U.S. government, Obama has violated multiple federal terror laws under various pretexts.

Ironically, the FBI’s definition of “violent extremism” in the document — “encouraging, condoning, justifying, or supporting the commission of a violent act to achieve political, ideological, religious, social or economic goals” — could quite properly be applied to dozens of actions perpetrated by the Obama administration, maybe more. From arming jihadists in Syria and bombing Libya to smithereens in an alliance with al-Qaeda without congressional approval, to admittedly arming the communist PKK, al-Qaeda, and even Mexican drug cartels in Operation Fast and Furious, Obama has flagrantly and repeatedly defied federal terror laws. An everyday citizen would be in prison for a long time.

But instead of investigating those clear, admitted federal crimes, the FBI apparently prefers to focus on schoolkids who question government or disagree with homosexuality.

The FBI does pretend to be inclusive in its search for extremists in schools. It claims to be looking for movements “including but not limited to white supremacists, animal rights and eco-terrorists, and anti-government or radical separatist groups.” So-called “violations,” the document continues, include “hate-based activities.” It was not clear when the FBI imagines that “hate” became a crime. And while it may sound nice to persecute haters, the document itself suggests that the sort of “hate” the Obama administration is seeking out involves, among others elements, “biases” against “sexual orientation.”

In short, Christians with a biblical worldview who disagree with the notion of a homosexual “marriage” are in the cross-hairs. The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which praises communist terrorist Bill Ayers on its website and works with tentacles of the Obama administration, regularly labels mainstream Christian groups as “hate groups” for their religious beliefs on the sanctity of marriage. And the FBI document is packed with SPLC-style rhetoric, even going so far as to attack the influence of families and parents on their children. It says, for example, that the beliefs of adults who embrace “extremist ideologies” can “permeate family norms, oftentimes influencing children.” If you disagree with Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America, they are looking at you. Aside from parental influence, “unobserved space” and the Internet are both key targets.

When students do display views and attitudes the Obama administration dislikes, the FBI calls on schools to create “intervention” plans in conjunction with federal and state agencies. “An intervention cadre should contain professionals from the local community representing multiple disciplines such as mental health, social workers, law enforcement, school resource officers, faith-based organizations, and/or crisis intervention teams,” the document states. Schools should also report children to law enforcement.

The news that the FBI was conscripting teachers in their hunt for “extremist” children made headlines worldwide. In the United States, across media outlets ranging from Alternet on the far-left to alternative liberty-minded sources such as Infowars, commentators slammed the FBI’s scheme as an assault on civil liberties and common sense. Even media outlets backed and controlled by authoritarian-minded governments — Kremlin-run news services, for example, and even media controlled by Iran’s mullahs — seized on the document to paint the U.S. government as increasingly unhinged and totalitarian.

Critics from across the political spectrum also blasted the FBI plot. Anti-“Islamophobia” author Arun Kundnani, for example, slammed the government for drawing on “the junk science of radicalization models” and noted that the document “dangerously blurs the distinction between legitimate ideological expression and violent criminal actions.” ACLU staff attorney Hugh Handeyside with the left-wing outfit’s national security project, meanwhile, said that “broadening the definition of violent extremism to include a range of belief-driven violence underscores that the FBI is diving head-first into community spying.” “Framing this conduct as ‘concerning behavior’ doesn’t conceal the fact that the FBI is policing students’ thoughts and trying to predict the future based on those thoughts,” Handeyside added. Kurt Nimmo at Infowars, citing whistle-blowers from the intelligence community, highlighted the parallels between the increasingly extreme tactics and machinations of the U.S. government and those used by the brutal communist dictatorship that terrorized East Germany for generations.

Even more extreme “extremism” scheming is happening in the United Kingdom, where authorities are telling teachers to report students with negative views on homosexuality to police and social services. More recently, U.K. authorities, as part of their war on so-called “non-violent extremism,” launched a crackdown on homeschooling families and even Christian Sunday schools, which must now register with the government. Prime Minster David Cameron even asked the United Nations — primarily composed of extremist non-democratic governments of various varieties, such as communist, socialist, Islamist, and military dictatorships — to help wage a global jihad on what he called “non-violent extremism.” Obama and the UN teamed up to launch a planetary war on “ideologies,” too.

In the United States, virtually everyone with an opinion has been declared a potential terrorist or extremist by the Obama administration in recent years. The U.S. Defense Department was even caught teaching U.S. troops that Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox Jews were “religious extremists” like al-Qaeda and Hamas. And now, the discredited SPLC, widely criticized as an “anti-Christian hate group” or a money-making scam, is working with Obama’s new domestic “terror” czar to target conservatives, Christians, libertarians, constitutionalists, and others the SPLC hates. The SPLC’s propaganda was also cited in 2012 by a convicted anti-Christian terrorist who attempted to slaughter employees at the pro-family Family Research Council.

Buried within all of the extreme rhetoric urging schools to wage war on ideologies the government does not like, there may be some information that might be useful, perhaps. However, the document paints a picture of a federal government that is totally out of control, suggesting that assaults on liberty, privacy, thought crimes, and people who disagree with out-of-control government will soon accelerate without concerted action to rein in Washington, D.C.

Schools and all Americans should reject the Obama administration’s fear-mongering and extremism. Instead, parents and concerned citizens should work to educate others about the dangers of totalitarian government, and hold officials accountable to the U.S. Constitution they all swore to uphold.

Photo: AP Images

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at: [email protected].